Description:
Getting inside the creative process of musicmaking
37 Podcasts:
 1. melodic-construction.mp3 (played 40 times)
2. types-metal.mp3 (played 40 times)
3. drum-feels.mp3 (played 38 times)
4. metric-modulation.mp3 (played 42 times)
5. building-song.mp3 (played 42 times)
6. Strings-show.mp3 (played 36 times)
7. the-trumpet.mp3 (played 35 times)
8. holiday-music.mp3 (played 40 times)
9. word-choice.mp3 (played 39 times)
10. singing-intervals.mp3 (played 38 times)
11. edm-two.mp3 (played 37 times)
12. time-signatures.mp3 (played 42 times)
13. synthe-sis.mp3 (played 39 times)
14. quiet-loud.mp3 (played 40 times)
15. three-chords.mp3 (played 35 times)
16. hip-hop.mp3 (played 31 times)
17. guitar-riff.mp3 (played 28 times)
18. percussion-without.mp3 (played 38 times)
19. electronic-dance.mp3 (played 25 times)
20. mixing-vocals.mp3 (played 29 times)
21. major-minor.mp3 (played 28 times)
22. song-lyric2.mp3 (played 28 times)
23. upright-bass.mp3 (played 27 times)
24. reggae-ska.mp3 (played 27 times)
25. pedal-point.mp3 (played 26 times)
26. drumming-part-two.mp3 (played 30 times)
27. elements-of-salsa.mp3 (played 40 times)
28. recording-vocals.mp3 (played 41 times)
29. electric-guitar-effects.mp3 (played 42 times)
30. drums-and-drumming.mp3 (played 43 times)
31. the-basics-of-vocal-harmony.mp3 (played 43 times)
32. drum-cymbals.mp3 (played 41 times)
33. dissonance-one.mp3 (played 37 times)
34. gypsy-jazz.mp3 (played 37 times)
35. pandora-musicology-idm.mp3 (played 32 times)
36. blues-scale.mp3 (played 25 times)
37. pandora-musicology-country.mp3 (played 10 times)
Content:
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Country Songwriting
  
From the lonesome lakes of Wisconsin to California's fields and orchards, JJ Schultz has been traveling and writing country-folk ballads. As we hear here, one of the main tensions in classic country songwriting is the balance between sweet, major-key melodies and melancholy words. It's a tradition of songcraft that places value on specific imagery, concrete visual descriptions, and identifiable situations. Those lyrical scenes are key. This episode explores the tradition, and extols the virtues of great songwriters like Townes Van Zandt, Kenny Rogers and Willie Nelson. (12 mins.)
That link above is to JJ's site, but this one is to his Pandora artist profile.
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IDM and Glitch
When he's not analyzing industrial and metal albums for the Music Genome Project, Will Redmond is often out on tour as BlipVert, performing his twisted and hyper-intense take on IDM. This is electronic music at its most challenging, where samples and microsamples are arranged like chips in a mosaic or dots in a pointillistic painting. Standard beats are thrown out entirely, discarded in favor of fractured chunks, bits of signal, and electronically damaged sound. IDM can be exquisitely beautiful, disturbingly jarring, or beautiful and jarring at once. Here is the website featuring Will's work as BlipVert, called Synapse Compound; he dubs this site "a nice place for noise." (9 mins.)
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Gypsy Jazz
If you are familiar with the films of Woody Allen, you've heard examples of gypsy jazz, a French variant on American jazz begun by Django Reinhardt and others in the 1930s. Pandora engineer and lead guitarist Vic Wong brings in other hot club players to demonstrate how gypsy jazz is played: bassist Ari Munkres, rhythm guitarist Jack Fields, and violinist Benito Cortez. Hear how this drummerless swing style is presented with rhythmic flourishes, shorter upright bass tones, and heroic guitar work. (10 mins.)
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Dissonance
Classical music enthusiasts, this one's for you. Pandora classical music analyst Russell Johnson drops by to investigate the onward march toward atonality throughout the history of Western art music. From Renaissance times through Classical and Romantic periods onto Stravinsky and Schoenberg, the slider on the consonant-to-dissonant spectrum has edged ever more toward the dissonant. He plays examples on guitar and piano of different intervals, and talks about the frequency ratios attached to those intervals as well. (9 mins.)
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Drum Feels (With Hi-Hat and Snare)
Tiny changes in a drummer's playing can create dramatic shifts in a song's feel. Pandora dance music analyst and session drummer Jeff Anthony gets into his trick bag to show some of the little variations he throws in to boost a song's energy going into the chorus. He also breaks down the difference between the two-handed Britpop hi-hat style and the looser, one-handed Yankee hi-hat style. The audio on the outro, by the way, is from a session Jeff played on -- an album for singer-songwriter Stephen Ashbrook. (8 mins.)
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Melodic Construction: Pitch and Contour
Melody is so central to much of the music we love. This week, singer and composer Melody Parker stops by to describe how pitches can be strung together to form a melody, and the ways in which a melody can quickly burst out, slowly develop, or gradually expand over the course of a whole section. There's a delicate art at play in the placement of pitches, from the use of motives in a sequence to the deployment of broad leaps and arpeggi. (10 mins.)
On the next page, check out clips from brilliantly composed songs that employ different melodic techniques, and hear for yourself how scalar motion can increase catchiness, how a line can be monotonous without being boring, and how simple motives can sound rich and full.
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Types of Metal
WARNING: this episode is not for the faint of heart. We tear into the gristle, meat and grisly bones of Metal on this one. Our guests are guitarist Ava Mendoza, bassist Kurt Kotheimer and drummer Weasel Walter, and they show us the musical components of various metal genres: grindcore, metalcore, black metal, death metal, thrash, hair metal, and more. If you've ever wondered about the dark side but were too afraid to ask, dive in here and get your hands dirty. (12 mins.)
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Drum Feels (With Toms and Kick)
When it comes to arranging a song, the drum parts selected for verses, choruses and bridges are crucial. Session drummer and Pandora music analyst Jeff Anthony shows us ways that he uses his toms and kick drum to create these variations. Among the styles he gets into: a kick-heavy sixteenth note part; a spacious, rolling pattern meant to accompany a guitar drone; a syncopated and anticipated style suitable for a lively R&B track in the vein of Earth Wind & Fire; a track that accelerates to push the chorus. (10 mins.)
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Metric Modulation
Don't let the technical name throw you off -- metric modulation is something you will be able to hear very clearly. Pandora dance music captain Chris Horgan from Beatropolis comes by to show how tempos (tempi) can change on a dime, with the use of subdivided beats. Speeding up and slowing down are not the only ways to jump from BPM to BPM, as you will soon hear. (10 mins.)
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Building A Song From The Ground Up
It's been said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. If that is true, then let's look at the recording studio as if it's an architect's drafting table. Pandora music analyst Scott Pinkmountain pulls apart a song brick by brick, and we hear the thought processes that informed his decisions. From the drummer's British-style swing to the method they used to alter the piano's tone with a tissue box, we hear how "You Gave Me This" was constructed, layer by layer. (10 mins.)
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Strings
Johnny, rosin up your bow. Guest host Samantha Grant welcomes Pandora music analysts Alan L. Lin and Yair Evnine. Alan, a violinist, and Yair, a cellist, give us a primer on string theory as it relates to legato and staccato, arco and pizzicato, and other aspects of bowing and plucking in both the classical and pop (singer-songwriter) realms. (9 mins.)
In addition to their work as performing musicians, Alan and Yair have both spent a lot of time analyzing music for the Music Genome Project. You can hear songs that both of them have analyzed on your Pandora stations.
Index of Musical Terms
We had a recent listener request for an index of terms. As the old saying goes, your wish is our command: Here it is. It's an alphabetized index, built to let you scroll through and select episodes based on the musical concepts addressed. This is an ever-evolving site, so please remember that your suggestions are always welcome, and always listened to.
Elsewhere on Pandora, you can see our video coverage of the South By Southwest music festival in Austin, TX. That main video site will feature a new video every Wednesday, so keep tuning in and we'll keep showing you intriguing corners of the music universe. Thanks for spending time with us.
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The Trumpet
Time to warm up your mouthpieces, empty your spit valves, and get your brass on. Composer and Pandora music analyst Gene V. Baker shows the ranges, tones and techniques of trumpet and cornet. We look at how partials allow multiple notes to come from the same finger position, and show ways to get different timbres and effects. Jen Baker, Gene's bandmate in the R&B Freejazz Gospel Supreme 80, drops in to play some trombone for us as well. (10 mins.)
Our New Season Begins Wednesday, March 5th
I am pleased to announce that the new season of "Pandora Presents..." begins on Wednesday, the 5th of March.
In the meantime, we really need to build up our subscriber numbers. These are FREE subscriptions, and will continue to be free, but our sponsors need to see that there is interest in these original shows.
Please encourage your friends to subscribe, eh? It costs them nothing, but justifies our production budget.
In the meantime, the 30 shows from 2007 are all available for streaming or for download.
And while I have your attention:
What would you like to see me do differently? How can I improve our shows?
Peace,
Kevin
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The Blues Scale
Modern American popular music all traces back to the blues in one way or another. Guitarist and Pandora senior music analyst Bob Coons swings by the studio to talk about the blues scale, a six-note (heptonic) sequence of tones that appears in countless tracks. It's a scale that changes the feel of any song in which it appears. We show how the scale is fluid, with bending pitches and blue notes, and Bob plays some blues-inspired passages to show this scale in action.
Hop onto this link here to see images of string bends, to hear examples of songs that feature the scale, and for some great blues stations.
2008 Topics for the Musicology Show
We are gearing up for a new season of the Musicology Show. Thanks again for subscribing and supporting the show. Each fortnight in 2008, host Kevin Seal will welcome a new guest and tackle a different aspect of music production and composition. New shows will continue to pop up every other Wednesday.
We would love to hear which of these topics are of the most interest to you. Over the course of the year, we won't have time to hit even half of these 63 concepts. We bring this question to you, our beloved listener: what would you like to dive into with us? We are all ears.
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Holiday Music
'Tis the season: snow, jingling bells in swing time, and choirs aplenty. Acoustic guitarist and Pandora music analyst Todd Haemmerle comes in to talk about holiday music with host Kevin Seal. They look at the swing origin of much modern Christmas music, talk about minor and major tonality in carols, and get into word painting and vocalizing. Did you realize that the "NFL on Fox" theme is really a line from "Sleigh Ride"?
Click here to hear and see more, and for some Holiday Music stations.
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Word Choice In Lyrics
Why do those specific words in the song move you so much? What is it about that turn of phrase or that one vivid image that speaks directly to you? Pandora music curator Michael Zapruder and host Kevin Seal talk about touch, smell, and taste imagery in songs -- there's more out there than just "Savoy Truffle," "Incense and Peppermints," and "Lips Like Sugar." They also get into the idea of timeless language vs. time-specific language, and look at the ways in which new and modern words can alter a song's feel.
On the next page, hear the songs themselves.
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Singing Intervals
More about singing! Picture this: you're sitting on a plane, and a melody pops into your head. You want to remember this melody, but you have no instrument on which to pluck out the pitches. Your piano, unfortunately, exceeded the size limitations for carry-on luggage. What do you do? How do you keep from forgetting the melody? If you know your intervals, then you can write melodies anywhere, spilling those lovely songs directly from your brain to the cocktail napkin. Pandora music analyst and songwriter Melody Parker joins host Kevin Seal to sing intervals for you, and they give you a cheat sheet of well-known songs that use those intervals. (10 mins.)
On the next page, see a list of the intervals, with handy song references to help you remember those spans. We've also drawn on a photo of a piano keyboard, to show you how far these intervals range from a C.
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Electronic Dance Music, Part II
Pandora's Dance Music Genome teacher Chris Horgan continues his talk about electronica with host Kevin Seal. (If you haven't heard Part I of this show, you should start there.) This time, the DJs are spinning Breakbeat, Drum and Bass, and Downtempo. Chris and Kevin count out the tempos and beat patterns used in these styles, discuss the chill-room settings that helped Trip Hop flourish, and shine a light on the beat pioneers who innovated in these genres. (10 mins.)
Click the "Continue reading" button below to hear examples of these specific styles, and to see the musical terms we discuss in the episode.
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Meters & Time Signatures
Much of the music we love exists in four-beat measures. Why is this? Why is 4/4 so natural? What happens when you don't have four beats in each bar? Host Kevin Seal and Pandora music analyst Adam Blum talk about signatures and meter, with musical illustrations played by drummer Jeff Anthony. They visit the land of the waltz, and look at ways that a smartly-written drum part can make 5/4 and 7/4 feel natural and inconspicuous. (11 mins.)
Click the "Continue reading" button below to see illustrations of odd-metered measures, and to hear examples of different time signatures in songs by the Beatles, R.E.M., Pink Floyd, Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails.
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Synthesis
How does a synthesizer shape soundwaves to emulate the sounds of bells or helicopters or organs? Pandora's Music Operations Manager Steve Hogan joins host Kevin Seal to look at how a basic square wave or sine wave can twist and morph. They break down the Attack-Decay-Sustain-Release model of synthesis, and show how to sculpt some sounds that go from beeping to birdsong, and from white noise to whistling. (10 mins.)
Click the "Continue reading" button below to see the shapes of the actual soundwaves, and to hear clips of analog synths being used in everything from the Monkees to Kraftwerk to the Killers and the Rapture to Dr. Dre's productions.
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Quiet & Loud
Marimbist Matt Cannon meets up with host Kevin Seal to dive into quiet and loud, soft to screaming, gentle to gigantic, whispered to wailing, and the other ways one can describe the spectrum of dynamics. Matt shows how marimba is especially well-suited to dynamic playing, and the two gents show how pianissimo, fortissimo, and all points in between are employed in different kinds of music. (11 mins.)
Click the "Continue reading" button below to hear examples of dynamics in the works of Radiohead, Bjork, Shirley Bassey, Sinead O'Connor, Sunny Day Real Estate and more, and to see photos of Matt at the marimba.
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Three Chords
Classical Music Analyst Russell Johnson and host Kevin Seal talk about the harmonic primary colors. The chordal holy trinity. The triad of triads. In other words, they break down the three chords you hear most in blues, rock, country, and folk, which are the I-IV-V: the tonic, the subdominant, and the dominant. Find out why the rock mantra of "three chords and the truth" is so prevalent (and yep, it's these three chords they're talking about), and hear how these chords work together to create tension and resolution. (10 mins.)
On the continuation page, listen to songs that share these chords, and see a list of the musical terms defined in this podcast.
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Hip Hop Rhyme Schemes
When he's not at Pandora analyzing songs for the Music Genome Project, Darian Gray is performing with his live hip-hop band, Dynamic, and at those shows he drums and raps at the same time. In this episode, Darian and I discuss the ways that rhyming cadences have evolved from the early days of old-school hip hop to today. We show how rappers have developed greater complexity and irregular line breaks, and give credit to some of the great lyricists who innovated with their unique approaches to rhythm. (11 min.)
On the next page, listen to samples of different flows that hit these cadences, and see a list of the musical terms defined in this podcast.
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The Guitar Riff
There is a science at work in the construction of a riff, and in this episode we peer over the shoulder of guitar shredder Will Redmond as he designs some blueprints for guitarchitecture. Will and Kevin go into the subtle distinctions that have given great riffs to the legendary guitarists -- the anticipation of Angus Young, the patience and pull of Tony Iommi, the chromaticism of Jimmy Page, the muted riffing of Tool's Adam Jones, and more. (11 min.)
Click the "Continue reading" button below to hear both classic and modern riffs in these styles, and to see Will demonstrate natural harmonics, tapping techniques and more.
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Percussion Without Borders
We look at the global cross-pollination of rhythm, as percussionist Sameer Gupta joins host Kevin Seal in the studio. They look at different ways in which percussion instruments and their beat patterns can evoke cultural references -- from tabla in Indian classical music, to a Brazilian samba beat, to gongs in Indonesian gamelan, to a swinging drumset sound in African-American jazz. (9 mins.)
Click the "Continue reading" button below to hear examples of these specific styles, and to see the musical terms we discuss in the episode.
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