Italian Americans like to imitate drum beats when they talk. Capeesh? Kapow! Badumcha. They speak a kind of Percussionese dialect, refusing to integrate into their host country. Such is the phrase “Bada Bing Bada Boom” which means a “job well done” and according to my dictionary, is diminutive of a drum roll. But I ain’t […]
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Holy Roman Melodies
Welcome new friends. This is now a Christian music blog, even though the Devil hast the best tunes. This blog has converted to Christianity, so no more tritones or synthetic scales. And no more Rock ‘n’ Rolla either. From now on, it’s all potato chip potato chip up in here.1 Behold and hearken the sacred […]
Halloween
It’s Halloween and that means it’s time for minor chords. Aeolian and Melodic. Hungarian and Harmonic. Chromatic like a carnival. October is the month of minor pop odes like “Thriller”, a mostly Dorian groove, and the reverse picardy choruses of the mostly Mixolydian “Ghostbusters”. Speaking of which, all the classic Halloween themes come from movies. […]
Favorite Chords
A man’s favorite chord can change throughout his life, but finding one is about as rare as falling in love. Of course, there are thousands of chords out there, and in a way I love them all just the same. In my teens, I was infatuated with Diminished chords, the ugly formation of minor thirds […]
Song of the Day: How to Make a Mouth in Nature
“How to Make a Mouth in Nature” is a psychedelic allegory about art and morality. Historically, most musical instruments have macabre origins—the catgut of stringed instruments and their horsetail bows, the goatskin of drumheads, the bone glues of guitars, and not to mention, the occult sacrifices of the Big Three. Andy Goldsworthy is a plant-based […]
Full Metal Jody
In the US Armed Forces, military cadences are called “jodies”, and usually entail call-and-response melodies sung by soldiers while marching to a cut time beat. Left-right-left, like boom-pah-boom. Sometimes jodies are dirty as is the case in Full Metal Jacket. Ronald Lee Ermey, who played the Drill Sergeant in the film, was an actual Drill […]
This is the Way Wee Oh Wee Oh
Military cadences have seemingly taken over Popular Music. Everywhere you go, there’s four fours on the floors. The people used to jitterbug, spastically flailing their limbs, just to break free from the boring ole beat of war drums—in a kind of music known as “Jizz” or “Jazz”. But now they welcome the March and dub […]
