In preparation for the Halloween season, I would like to share several suspenseful pieces that I have been working on for some time. The Forebodings for electronics (stereophonic playback) began with the desire to experiment with and distort different timbres of the piano: both on the keyboard and inside of the instrument. I settled on the title “Foreboding,” a term meaning the dreadful feeling that something bad will occur, after creating and listening to the first piece created from 2017 to 2019. The ​Forebodings mostly involved improvising on the piano and editing the tracks by using programs like Audacity and Lexis Audio Editor to add multiple effects: things like applying “Echo,” “Reverb,” and “Reverse” to give the music a more unsettling quality. The CD-ROMantic smartphone application also enabled me to add more depth to “Foreboding II” and “Foreboding III” by altering the speed through “Vaporwave Effect” feature.[1]

The final track created this month, “Foreboding IV,” deviates from the piano soundscape to focus on synthesized tones via the Arpio application. I altered the arpeggiation to bend the pitches by shaking my smartphone from side to side while recording the music. I then distorted this music by applying “Reverse,” “Reverb,” and “Echo” at different increments of delay from roughly one-thousand milliseconds to five-thousand milliseconds. I later ran the track through CD-ROMantic to change the speed and add more “Reverb” The end result produces a cluster of simultaneous sounds meant to convey the fear of the unknown, or that something does not feel quite right.

​These tracks represent efforts in trying to maintain attention to sonic detail. There are those, however, who have expanded beyond the compositional techniques that I have described to incorporate something entirely new. I recently came across a device called the Apprehension Engine at the suggestion of a commenter on YouTube. Created as a collaboration between Canadian film score composer Mark Korven[2] and instrument maker Tony Duggan-Smith, the Apprehension Engine consists of a wooden box combined with parts from musical instruments (like the guitar and hurdy gurdy) with found objects (like rulers and other pieces of metal) and electrical wiring for special effects. It is a very versatile contraption used specifically for horror films, and there are many tutorial videos that both show and explain how to build an Apprehension Engine at home. One such video series consists of twenty-four episodes revealing the history and construction process behind this instrument.


[1] I have previously used the CD-ROMantic app to create a digital musical album that combines original tracks that I created this year with the 1980s and 90s postmodern musical aesthetic of Vaporwave popularized in the 2010s.

[2] Mark Korven is best known for his music to horror movies like The Witch (2015), The Lighthouse (2019), and The Black Phone (2022). The latest film is currently available on the Peacock streaming service from NBC/Universal.  

Located in the city of Lubbock, Texas, the Buddy Holly Center houses artifacts from one of the most important musical artists in rock and roll and pop culture history. It chronicles the life and career of Charles Harden “Buddy” Holley (1936-1959): from his humble beginnings in Lubbock and his rise to fame with his band The Crickets, to his sudden death in a plane crash on February 3, 1959. The Buddy Holly Center functions as more than just a museum showcasing his audio recordings, concert tours, and family memorabilia. It demonstrates how his creativity and approach to musicianship revolutionized the sound and visual presentation of rock and roll music and served as the model for future artists: both in the United States and overseas. Holly drew inspiration from Black, Latin American, and Country/Western influences, He was also one of the first to give visibility to rock musicians when performing onstage by giving equal attention to himself and his bandmates, as seen in their performance of “That’ll Be the Day” on The Ed Sullivan Show. Buddy Holly also experimented with different and unconventional musical soundscapes for the 1950s rock and roll era. His studio recording of “Everyday,” for instance, uses hand slapping accompanied with a celesta.
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What proved most intriguing for me during my visit to the Buddy Holly Center stemmed from the global impact that Buddy Holly left on the United Kingdom. During his short professional career (about eighteen months or so), Holly became one of the first artists to tour England in 1957. That experience served to inspire bands like The Beatles to incorporate his Americana sound and vocality into their works. Many have written extensively about this influence. Paul McCartney has also frequently acknowledged the importance of what Buddy Holly accomplished as an artist, to the point where the Buddy Holly Center archived a 2014 tour where McCartney performed in Lubbock. Footage o that concert, as well as news and promotional coverage of his arrival in the city, is currently archived via social media.       

In 2021 I posted content related to celebrating the commemoration of Junteenth as an official federal holiday. I would like to continue this discussion one year later by offering readers of this blog more resources that they can access both to put this holiday into greater perspective and as part of Black Music Month. It is especially important to note the global impact of Juneteenth. The investigative research that I have conducted over the past few years on the Gullah Geechee and Afro-Latin diasporic  musical and religious connections, for instance, demonstrates shared histories and struggles concerning emancipation and equal rights… including moments where obtaining these freedoms and rights meant physically fighting back against oppression.

 I must also add that, like the opera Omar that I discussed in my last post, musical perceptions of African American musical identity are constantly changing to promote greater visibility in performative spaces often deemed socially excluded. Consider works like Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2017 rap album DAMN and Michael R. Jackson’s A Strange Loop: the Pulitzer Prize-winning and 2022 Tony-winning musical that openly explores Black Queer identity and trauma. Consider, too, the importance of the efforts behind the Los Angeles-based group the Re-Collective Orchestra. Since their establishment in 2018 by Matt Jones and Stephanie Matthews, the ensemble aims for greater inclusiveness and representation within both the classical and popular music realms, as many of the orchestra members had initially collaborated on the film score to the 2018 Marvel film Black Panther.
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One must also not forget the constant musicological research concerning Black and African diasporic composers to expand the knowledge and repertoire beyond Scott Joplin and William Grant Still. In many instances, that involves searching for works from farther back in time beyond the twentieth century. Musicologists have recently rediscovered pieces of the musical legacy from the Afro-Portuguese Renaissance composer Vicente Lusitano (born circa 1520). In addition to composing choral works, serving as a Catholic Priest, and later converting to Protestantism, Lusitano also wrote extensively about Western Music Theory and Acoustics. His sacred choral pieces, like the motet Inviolata, integra, et casta es from 1551, employ the polyphonic vocal writing of the era while still maintaining tonality: in this case, using a musical texture of eight voices. Several compositions by Vicente Lusitano, which have been restored and notated by Samuel Brannon, are currently available to the public via the IMSLP musical score website.  

Over the years since I started this blog, I have discussed the impact of the African American, BIPOC, and African diasporic musical connections across the world and across myriad genres. Kicking things off with Black Music Month, I must expand upon my discussion of the role that contemporary classical music plays in these cultures: specifically, how BIPOC composers in the twenty-first century apply classical music genres like opera to not only demonstrate inclusiveness by fighting against stereotyping and historical inaccuracies, as have been the case for works like Porgy and Bess and a recent opera about Emmet Till.[1]  These composers also explore previously overlooked facets of history or social struggles and directly communicate these audiovisual experiences with audiences.

Such has been the case with the opera entitled Omar, a new work from Rhiannon Giddens and Micheal Abels. As a Grammy-winning singer and multi-instrumentalist, Giddens uses her musical talents to explore the African diasporic relations to European and American folk and popular genres. Abels is best known as a film score composer for the critically acclaimed Jordan Peal Horror films Get Out (2017) and Us (2019). Their collaboration on Omar (with Giddons as the librettist/musician and Abels as the composer) presents an important work about preserving enslavement narratives, in addition to addressing religious belief systems as forms of communication and hope through struggles. Listening to Giddons and Abels speak with Martha Teischner at the 2022 Spoleto Festival USA, Giddens and Abels set Omar Ibn Said’s life story to music by basing the libretto on his recently recovered autobiography, which sheds light on both his decades in captivity from Senegal to the United States in the nineteenth century and the impact of his devotion to Islam. The collaboration proved both a challenging and important experience in helping to elevate the operatic genre and help to erase the stigma of exclusivity. It does not sugarcoat the horrors and pain of African enslavement through tense moments in the music via depictions of cruelty and physical violence. Even though Omar is presented to viewers primarily through Western orchestral and folk instruments and sung in the English language through rhyme schemes, Giddons and Abels still maintain cultural respect by incorporating chanted passages from the Quran in Arabic to stress the significance of Omar as an enslaved African, as a Muslim, and above all as a human being.


[1] The backlash, petitions, and boycotts behind the Mary D. Watkins opera Emmett Till, A New American Opera (2022) had more to do with the libretto by Clare Cross, which included a fictional character and suggested a "White Savior/Guilt" narrative in the work.  

Album: Bach/Glenn Gould/ The Well-Tempered Clavier: Preludes and Fugues, Book 1 (Preludes and Fugues 9-16)
Label: Columbia Records
Year Released: 1964
Composer/Artist: Johann Sebastian Bach (composer), Glenn Gould (pianist)  
Genre: Classical (Baroque), Piano

When I began this blog series about audio recordings in my collection, I initially planned to avoid featuring classical music albums. My reasoning for that stemmed from what I had discussed in previous blog posts: mainly, the glaring problems with classical music and cultural (mis)representation. I also had to consider that I would be severely limiting my audience if I only focused on that genre. Also, from my perspective as a composer, it helps to gain exposure to multiple popular music genres: many of which adhere to formal structures and break social stereotypes. It is with those contexts that I approach this current discussion. The music may derive from an older time period associated with "classical" music, but the unconventional way that it is performed links it to the twentieth century.

The Well-Tempered Clavier: Preludes and Fugues, Book 1 (Preludes and Fugues 9-16) serves as part of a multi-volume series of keyboard music by Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), as played by Canadian pianist Glenn Gould (1932-1982). This is not the first time that I have heard these pieces on audio recordings. I have heard these pieces on the 1984 Andras Schiff  double CD compilation (and and his interpretation of the second book of The Well-Tempered Clavier). Things take a markedly different turn with how Glenn Gould performs Bach when compared to other interpretations. Listening to "Prelude and Fugue 9-16" on the vinyl record, I noticed the following: 
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1) Choice of tempi—Gould takes certain preludes and fugues at either faster, or  slower tempo markings than initially prescribed in the scores.
 
2) Pianism—Gould takes some liberties with these pieces by preferring to use a detached style of playing: incorporating legato and staccato in unexpected areas.
 
3) Humming— Yes, humming. That characteristic can be found in many Glenn Gould piano recordings. This  Bach album is no exception. Upon first listen, the humming sounds like mistakes on the album that the recording engineer forgot to remove. That aspect of the album is intentional, though. Glenn Gould would frequently hum along with the music throughout his recorded performances. (I recommend using headphones when listening to his recordings, because people can get a better grasp of what I mean.). While traditionalists might scoff at that technique and allude to its distracting nature, it also demonstrates that Gould was able to break the strict rules of piano performance etiquette. By humming while playing, he was able to feel the music. In this respect, audiences do not just hear an interpretation of Bach. They get to experience it through the musical process by the performer. It should also be noted that the legacy of Glenn Gould and his recordings (which range from his interpretations of music by Bach, to the twentieth century with composers like Alban Berg and Paul Hindemith) are currently preserved online through a commemorative website and social media platforms.
 
I should also add one important detail concerning this specific Bach album and acoustics. The Glenn Gould recording of “Prelude and Fugue 9-16” from Book 1 of The Well-Tempered Clavier functions as a performance of music by Bach for more contemporary audiences. Gould plays the music on a modern piano that uses “equal temperament” tuning, where the octave is (theoretically) subdivided into twelve semitones. That approach might work well for  piano music from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but it does not work for keyboard music written before the twentieth century. The fault does not lie with Gould, but in the incorrect tuning system. Michael Rubenstein has illustrated through mathematics that “well temperament” signifies a completely different tuning system than “equal temperament.”  Well temperament (sometimes called "unequal temperament") tries to solve the glaring problems with certain intervallic divisions (thirds and fifths) and key limitations of “meantone temperament” by offering more sonic possibilities and musical key options based on the “Circle of Fifths”). Equal temperament subdues those sonic possibilities by (unsuccessfully) trying to evenly divide the octave. When it comes to interpreting older keyboard pieces (including repertoire from the Classical and Romantic eras), some musicians prefer more historical accuracy by applying the “Thomas Young” well temperament from 1799. While Michael Rubenstein does discuss this type of keyboard tuning, I find it more beneficial to hear the differences between this and equal temperament. Those looking for more information about different acoustical systems should consult How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (And Why You Should Care) by Ross W. Duffin.

Album: Children of Sanchez
Label: A&M Records
Year Released: 1978
Composer/Artist: Chuck Mangione  
Genre: Film Score Soundtrack


Today, we are going to take a look at Children of Sanchez (no relation) by jazz flugelhorn player, keyboardist, and composer Chuck Mangione (b. 1940). This album functions as music to the 1978 film adaptation of the Oscar Lewis anthropological novel The Children of Sanchez (1961), but with with a slight change in time period set in 1968 in the film version. Both the book and movie examine thematic materials concerning family relations, poverty, and class struggles in 1960s Mexico.
 
To offer some context regarding the film, directed by Hall Bartlet, The Children of Sanchez provides a series of glimpses into the daily lives of Jesús Sanchez (played by Anthony Quinn) and members of his family in Mexico City. At times the film can prove difficult to watch due to multiple factors: the slow pacing, strange lighting choices, and the frequent moments of palpable dramatic tension: especially scenes involving the strong-willed and independent-thinking Consuelo versus the belligerent nature of her father Jesús. Sympathizing with some of the characters also presents a challenge given that some of them express distasteful social behavior. Jesús, for instance, is presented as a father who tries to provide for his family as he struggles to win the Lottery so he can build a house and get his family out of poverty, At the same time, though, his physical abusiveness via machismo and philandering antics serve to diminish his sense of humanity.
 
Concerning the music that accompanies The Children of Sanchez, the soundtrack consists of fifteen tracks on two records (four sides) and lasting over eighty minutes (The digital version of the soundtrack, based on the CD reissue, features two "discs"). In terms of musical style, the album technically functions as jazz with Latin American elements. Listeners get treated to acoustic guitars with Spanish-sounding riffs, brass, percussion, and dotted rhythms: especially in the opening  “Children of Sanchez Overture.” Because Children of Sanchez also works as a Chuck Mangione album, the soundtrack showcases his improvisatory skill with the flugelhorn. Another component that also helps to complement the film stems from how Mangione incorporates religious symbolism. Some of the lyrics that appear on the album directly refer to Biblical passages or Christian Catholic  prayer, such as in the vocal opening to the “Children of Sanchez Overture,” Pilgrimage, Part I,” and “Pilgrimage, Part II.” This makes sense because the film also incorporates religious symbolism: not just as irony in character development, as with Jesús Sanchez.  The film presents viewers with scenes of sacred social customs (from the presence of the Catholic Church/Mass, to the incorporation of Indigenous-- and African-- Spiritism through root medicine ceremonies) and vitriolic commentary on religion from the perspective of the impoverished.
 
Based on the liner notes to the album, the music heard on Children of Sanchez took Chuck Mangione three weeks to complete at the request of Hall Bartlett. Bartlet contacted Mangione in 1977 right after his promotional tour for the Feels So Good album. Children of Sanchez presents an interesting approach to film scoring. There most certainly are themes included on the soundtrack, such as the slow and mellow “Consuelo’s Love Theme” to the more fast-paced Latin jazz tracks like “Hot Consuelo” and “Market Place.” What differentiates Children of Sanchez from other soundtracks, though, stems from how Mangione intentionally wanted the tracks included in their original forms. That means that the improvisational sections from Mangione include moments that some listeners could interpret as aural mistakes on the records. It also means that some of the album tracks extend well beyond the three-minute mark:

• “Children of Sanchez Overture”—14 min., 7 sec.
• “Consuelo's Love Theme”—17 min., 4 sec.
• “Medley”—8 min., 20 sec.
• “B’bye”—8 min. 27 sec

Children of Sanchez  has its share of positive and negative traits. Like the accompanying film, the soundtrack exposes people to Latin American music culture. Also like the film, it calls into question the frequent problems associated with representation and creative ownership. Even though the film does have Mexican American actors, like Anthony Quinn, some viewers might be perturbed by how all of the characters only speak English instead of speaking in Spanish or a bilingual format. The same could be said for parts of the soundtrack that incorporate lyrics, because they also only apply English. In critiquing the tense relations between Mexico and the United States, The Children of Sanchez also presents the possibility for expressing "Latinidad," which continues to be a problem in the entertainment industry. The way that the music gets incorporated into The Children of Sanchez gives the impression that some of the tracks feel slightly out of place. They often sound muffled or get used as background music. Some could also perceive the music in Children of Sanchez as promoting cultural appropriation or Exoticism, because the musical score was written by someone outside of Latin America. In that respect, some listeners might   take offense with how the music is presented and should approach the soundtrack with caution. Children of Sanchez is readily available on music streaming services, while the film is available through  the Tubi app. 

 Album: Blood, Sweat & Tears 
Year Released: 1968
Composer/Artist(s): Blood, Sweat & Tears
Record Label: Columbia  
Genre: Jazz-Rock

It has been awhile since I last wrote on here. Rest assured, I did not forget about my record collection. Let us continue this exploration with Blood, Sweat & Tears: a rock group based in New York City that incorporates multiple musical elements-- primarily, jazz and (occasionally) classical music. This band must be understood as a supergroup, active since the late 1960s and continuing into the 2020s, with different members over the decades. The 1968 Grammy-winning self-titled album featured the following nine members in the band at that time, many of whom also helped to arrange the ten tracks on this album:

• James Thomas Fielder: Bass
• Steve Katz: Guitar, Vocals
• Chuck Winfield: Trumpet, Flugelhorn
• Lew Soloff: Trumpet
• Bobby Colomby: Drums
• Dick Halligan: Keyboards, Flute
• Fred Lipsius: Saxophone
• Jerry Hyman: Trombone
• David Clayton-Thomas: Lead Vocals

• Of the tracks that stand out to me, let me begin with “Variations on a Theme by Eric Satie (1st and 2nd Movements)"—This track opens the album with an arrangement of the Gymnopedie No. 1 by French composer  Eric Satie (1866-1925)-- who also more commonly went by the name Erik Satie. In this case, Blood, Sweat & Tears focuses on using a fragment of the opening melody and expanding it with flutes brass, drums, and what sounds like a “flange” effect. This piece also serves as a cyclical end to the album, because the first movement reappears as the the final track… with the sound of footsteps (The album credits a Lucy Angle for providing that effect.)

• “And When I Die”—The band experiments on this track with what sounds like a combination between Gospel/Spiritual and Country Western music. The lyrics and thematic material, on the other hand, appear to contradict this musical backdrop and can come off as blasphemous for some listeners: specifically, the overall approach to not fearing death.
• “God Bless the Child”—This is a cover of the Billie Holiday jazz standard—a song which Holiday had recorded several times. The version by Blood, Sweat & Tears is radically different in terms of tempo, vocal delivery, and instrumentation. The pacing is slower in the beginning and the end, with a slight tempo increase at the “bridge” and David Clayton-Thomas sings the lyrics in a soulful manner. The real surprise with this cover comes in the instrumental middle section that unexpectedly incorporates Latin Jazz at a faster tempo. While that inclusion seems rather random and out of place, it somehow works.
• “Spinning Wheel”—I find this track interesting not just because of the incorporation of brass and drums. Like “God Bless the Child,” “Spinning Wheel” also changes the musical mood: specifically, towards the end where the ensemble imitates a carousel, followed by random banter and laughter.
• “Blues—Part II” This track is more like a long series of improvisations with solos for organ, drums, and saxophone. David Clayton-Thomas also sings towards the end, belting out vocalization reminiscent of soul music

Given all those details, can the self-titled album appeal to more contemporary audiences? That depends. This record functions like a snapshot of late 1960s rock music. Those who are unfamiliar with Blood, Sweat & Tears should check out their hit song “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy” (also on this album). There is also a recent documentary that explores the musical career of Blood, Sweat & Tears: both the good and bad moments. The band also has their music available via streaming services. One the other hand,  not everyone has liked their music. Some listeners today might also feel uneasy about instances on the album that could come off as cultural appropriation. Again, the best way to interpret the work is as a product of its time.  

Album: The Music from Peter Gunn
Year Released: 1959 (Recorded in 1958)
Composer/Artist: Henry Mancini (1924-1994)
Record Label: RCA Victor
Genre: Television Show Soundtrack

To kick things off with this record collection, let us go back several decades to the late 1950s to one of the most important soundtracks in both popular music and entertainment culture. This soundtrack became the first record to win the Grammy Award for “Album of the Year” in 1959. The opening theme music from this album has been covered by rock bands and featured in the 1983 arcade game Spy Hunter. The record that I am discussing today is The Music from Peter Gunn from 1959: composed and conducted by Heny Mancini.
 
Allow me to give some context before exploring the music. This album serves as the soundtrack to the television Crime Noir Drama Peter Gunn (1958-1961), which aired on both NBC and ABC through its three seasons. Created by Blake Edwards, also known for directing the original Pink Panther movies (which Mancini also scored, among any other films throughout his career), the plot for Peter Gunn is quite straightforward. A police officer and a detective team up to solve crimes. The show is currently available in syndication on the Tubi website and app. I should also note that Peter Gunn is an audacious program (for its time) because of the onscreen violence and mature thematic material permissible in the 1950s.
 
Jazz music serves as the central component to The Music from Peter Gunn. According to the album liner notes written by the show’s creator, Blake Edwards wanted jazz music reflective of modern times (the 1950s) that also complemented the mysterious atmosphere of his drama.  Another interesting aspect of the show stems from how Edwards also wanted the music featured in the program to be performed live instead prerecorded in a studio and dubbed. This point becomes very clear in the first episode (“The Kill.”), The orchestrated jazz heard on both the soundtrack and the show do not present neutered versions of the genre. In The Music from Peter Gunn, Henry Mancini uses the jazz formal structure in tracks that often span from two to four minutes. He applies a melodic theme (often called a “head” in jazz terminology) and moments of  shared improvisation in the ensemble mainly consisting of piano, bass, guitar, brass, solo saxophone, and percussion. The iconic theme music that opens the soundtrack and show prove an exception, because it based more on 1950s rock and roll idioms.
 
Does The Music from Peter Gunn still hold up in the 2020s? My answer to that question is both “Yes” and “No.” On the on the one hand, the album could serve as an introduction of sorts to jazz music for large ensembles through tracks like “Sorta Blue,” “Dreamsville,” and “Fallout!” Some musicians might be slightly annoyed by instances that sound like the pattern infamously known as “The Lick.” The also album functions as a sound artifact of 1950s pop culture and could be an acquired taste for a few people. Some parts of the album, like the title to the last track (“Not from Dixie”) would probably raise some eyebrows given recent social debates. I should add that More Music from Peter Gunn (1959), which I also have, functions a companion album that includes more tracks heard on the show. As of 2010, the Library of Congress archived The Music from Peter Gunn for its historical and cultural significance as popular music. Listeners can access The Music from Peter Gunn, which was re-released in 2019 under the Digital Gramophone label, through digital music streaming services. 

Over the past years, I have discussed audio archiving and preservation. I do that because it is a topic that piques my interest, especially when researching the different types of tangible audio recording materials versus digital restoration. Starting this month, I will add new content to this blog that will showcase the audio recording collection that I have amassed in my studio. For those who don’t know, I collect vinyl and shellac records. I became fascinated with that form of audio technology for several reasons. The first was that I listened to records while growing up and still have some of the albums from my parents’ collection from the 1960s and 70s, in addition to other albums that I found or had been donated to me. The second reason stems from reading books like Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music by Mark Katz (2004), which devote time to talking about the impact of records and their overall “warm” analog sound quality.
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Much of what you will see in this record collection covers myriad genres: everything from classical, to rock and pop, to film soundtracks, foreign language/international, electronic, spoken word, and more. Of course, categorizing the collection in such a subjective way is not all that simple. I have found that some of the albums that I currently possess illustrate different musical subgenres. I have many albums of twentieth-century classical pieces that represent different compositional approaches throughout the era (neoclassical, serialism, jazz-inspired, postmodern, etc.). In other instances,  multiple genres collide to form an unexpected aural experience. This has been the case for some 1960s and 70s rock and jazz albums in the collection that combine instances of classical or funk music. To make these posts more interesting (and to spare the audience from boredom), I will refrain from talking at length about categorizing all the records that I have—something that has become a daunting process. I more interested in providing “my take” on these albums, their possible rarity, and whether they are currently accessible to the public through digital formats.   

I have spent the past few days investigating several smartphone applications related to Music Theory. As a composer, I find this process necessary. Music Composition often requires having the capability to explain the theoretical and analytical processes behind writing a new piece of music: not just saying things like, “I wrote the music because it sounded good.” What I found in terms of Music Theory applications for smartphones has presented mixed results and demonstrates good (if, at times, imbalanced) approaches to the materials presented and the target audience. This post will present a short compilation of applications designed to teach concepts in Music Theory. It is not intended as a series of thorough product reviews. My goal here is to briefly address what these apps concentrate on and highlight possible problems. I will focus on apps that are currently available on Google Play via Android phones—apps that I have access to because I use Android. To avoid any future complaints and backlash from Apple users: Yes, I am aware of Music Theory apps on iOS.

Many of the apps that I located and tested tend to discuss Music Theory in basic terms for audiences who mostly have no experience in music, or for musicians who want to strengthen their skills in Music Theory. In this case, this refers to the tonal Music Theory of the “Common Practice Period” (before the rules changed and expanded in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries) through scales, key signatures, intervals, chords, and Ear Training. These concepts can be found in apps like Music Theory Helper, Perfect Ear, and Sonid among others. Perfect Ear and Sonid demonstrate intriguing approaches to Basic Music Theory through gamification: presenting courses and lessons to audiences in a way that feels more like a game instead of academic work. The formatting for Sonid also draw heavy inspiration from the Duolingo language learning app, complete with a mascot (a whale).

These are all fine attempts, but what about the more complex parts of Music Theory? Where are the apps that teach people about Neo-Riemannian Theory, Twelve-Tone Serialism, and other concepts? This is where Google Play could use some more work. While I was unable to find anything related to the chord transformations in Neo-Riemannian Theory, I did manage to find a few resources for post tonal music analyses. There is the DodecMatrix app, which I talked about in previous posts-- and had negatively reviewed the 2018 update. That app underwent another update in early 2021. Despite its flaws, that app allows people to create twelve-tone grids for serial music composition and offers the possibility to switch between the musical alphabet and pitch-class numbers, as well as play back each row in the grid. The Pitch Class Set Calculator and Set Class Calculator apps enable the creation of musical pitch-class sets. They indicate how to properly organize the sets, determine symmetry, and offer lists of lists of all combination of pitch-class sets by chord type, interval vectors, and Forte Number categorization. As many can probably tell from this complex description, those two apps assume that people know how to use the calculators and do not offer visual guides that physically show people what these sets look and sound like.

That last part is, perhaps, the biggest obstacle that I have encountered when looking for Music Theory apps that focus on contemporary analytical techniques. How can app developers present the information to the public in a way that is easy for people (especially, those outside of music) to understand? Granted, I am far from finished with discussing this topic. While the apps that I have seen represent a good start, there is still more that needs to be done. There are more concepts in Music Theory that need exploration in app form: concepts that are necessary to learn in a university or compositional setting. I will, however, discuss that in a later post.