Music Theory

What if the music-analytical tools you use daily come with a hidden political manual? Scholar Stephen Lett uses Madeleine Akrich's "script" theory to examine Schenkerian analysis as a technology—designed for a specific worldview, yet constantly redeployed. By dissecting Carl Schachter's influential defense of Schenker, this article reveals how a discipline's silence on politics may perpetuate colonial logics. Is merely de-scripting enough, or should music theory rethink its basic promise?

The term "music" carries Eurocentric and political baggage that often escapes scrutiny. Building on Gaztambide-Fernandez's critique and R. Murray Schafer's sound experiments, this article contends that centering "sound" instead of "music" can open up more emancipatory, inclusive, and critical classroom practices. Discover how educators can move beyond music's hegemonic discourse by embracing listening and sound-making as core pedagogical tools.

What if a musical work were not a fixed score but a web? This eye-opening study reframes compositions as virtual assemblages — tangled networks of printed notes, digital files, human memory, live performances, audio recordings, social contexts, economic value, and even AI collaborators. Following decades of inquiry from the Orpheus Institute, the book *Decentralized Music* argues that the old work-concept is too static for an age of blockchain, NFTs, and generative art. Whether or not you see yo

Is Western terminology missing a key concept? Examining the inseparable bond between dance and music we discuss how language constraints shapes thinking and why borrowing words from other languages — like Swahili “ngoma“ — could finally name the phenomenon practitioners already experience first-hand. An essential read for decolonising the language of the arts.

Today’s students already stream K-pop, trap, and global fusion daily. Does an "Intro to World Music" course still matter? Yes—if it pivots from mere exposure to critical dialogue about difference, power, and Eurocentric frameworks. This article unpacks three core pedagogical challenges—engagement crisis, colonial origins, perceived expertise gaps—and offers transferable strategies for teaching music relationally in the age of globalization, streaming, and political crisis.

For decades, non-Western pop from the 1960s–80s languished in attics and basements until Western collectors and labels went digging — then pronounced it valuable. From Turkish psychedelic grooves to Brazilian disco-boogie, this abroad appraisal funnel changed local attitudes and even kicked off new archival labels. Yet the decision-making power never really left hands outside the region it comes from. Here, artist and curator Holger Lund dissects his own entanglement in those tensions and lays t

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari declare war on representation. For them, music is the ultimate nomadic escape hatch from all constraints—idealist philosophies, taxonomic categories, repressive conceptual thought. But when they try to explain how music works outside those categories, what comes next? A surprising, messy return to old-fashioned mimesis—at odds with their anti-representational foundations. This essay takes you close to that pivot point where music rewrites the script.

Professional musicians and students both want better results from practice. Routine repetition won't get you there — but deliberate practice will. Rooted in the work of psychologist K. Anders Ericsson, this focused, goal-oriented method transforms ordinary practice into *productive, measurable improvement*. Learn what deliberate practice really means, how it applies to music, and the practical steps for unlocking dramatic gains in your performance.

Music is everywhere we turn — on TV, in shopping malls, plugging products we haven’t thought to want. But does this constant stream of pre-packaged sound disconnect us from the democratic potential of making music itself? In his book "Democracy and Music Education" Paul Woodford draws on John Dewey to argue hard that the classroom is a training ground for democratic citizenship. But not everyone agrees — whether about Dewey, about "abstract reason," or about what a living, breathing democratic p

The 2000s gave us works like OutKast's Speakerboxxx, Prince's Musicology, and Kanye West's College Dropout right before the industry pivoted to hollow profits. Behind the platinum sales, the Jamaican dancehall scene and pop offer mostly derivations that will never reach Marvin Gaye—this is how true talent can break through predictable hype.