The Theory Behind It

TTBI Talks Race, Music Theory, and Schenker

This is a heavy one. Building off our conversation with The Score last episode, we dig into Dr. Phillip Ewell's writing on music theory's white racial frame, how it applies to us, and some things we can do to help. We talk about the problems with Schenkerian analysis and break down the academic drama of the JSS from last summer, as well as some recent social media interactions. It's a serious conversation about issues facing the field today and where we can go from here.
 
Music Theory and the White Racial Frame, EwellJOURNAL OF SCHENKERIAN STUDIES: PROVING THE POINT, Lavengood

TTBI Meets The Score!

For the first new episode of our new season, we had the incredible pleasure of talking with Eric and Justin from The Score, an urban music education podcast.  We wanted to get their insight into building a more inclusive curriculum that connects with today's students, as well as the place of music theory in the public school band setting. Be sure to add The Score to your podcast rotation, and check back in soon for the rest of season 3 of TTBI!
 
The Score: An Urban Music Education Podcast

TTBI Drafts the Best Christmas Songs of All Time

It's the final episode of this season of TTBI! And what better than a holiday themed episode to close out the year. In this episode, Seth, Livi, and Adam collaborate to draft and rank the 11 best Christmas songs ever. It gets a little heated, but hopefully some of your favorites made it on. Let us know what got robbed and what we forgot to include! 
 
TTBI is gonna take some time off, but you'll hear from us soon in 2021. Happy Holidays!

2020 Spotify Wrapped (And Some Movies?)

Welcome back to our...music theory podcast? Where we spend an inordinate amount of time discussing early to mid 2000s Disney animated films? 
As we wrap up season 2 of the podcast, we investigate our Spotify Wrappeds to see what the algorithm decided we were into this year. Who spent the most time listening? Who found the most new artists? Can you name the second to last traditionally animated film made by Disney Animation Studios?

Let's Argue: The Land Before College

Coming at you, hot off the press: it's a new episode of Let's Argue! This week, Seth has devised questions about the role of music theory from elementary to high school music programs. Who will come out on top? Did those music ed degrees pay off? Find out this week!

Adam Introduces TTBI to DOOM

As promised in the last episode, Adam has prepared a brief introduction to the music of the masked madman himself, MF DOOM. Enjoy hearing about the twisty, overlapping personas, as well as Adam's incredulity at Seth and Livi's favorite tracks.
Follow along with the episode playlist!

TTBI Reads Kyle Adams' "Harmonic, Syntactic, and Motivic Parameters of Phrase in Hip-Hop"

Hey, everybody! Bit late on this one ("a bit"), but the good news is you get an episode on rap music today and another one tomorrow! This episode was supposed to come out last Friday, but kept getting delayed. Check here again tomorrow for this week's normally scheduled episode.
In this episode, TTBI reads and discusses Kyle Adams' recent Music Theory Online article on phrases in rap music. He describes various levels phrases can exist or be implied at, and develops discourse on what a phrase even is.
https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.20.26.2/mto.20.26.2.adams.html

The Theses We Didn't Write

In some form or another, each of us came up with a potential thesis idea for our master's that just didn't pan out. So today, we're talking about these ideas, what the complications or problems were, and how we ended up with what we did write!(Please don't steal any of our left behind ideas; there's still meat on these bones, TM TM TM)