This article addresses the analytical fault line between Schenkerian and Salzerian approaches to tonal jazz through an analysis of a Brad Mehldau improvisation on “All the Things You Are.” Special attention is given to the usage of common tones, which often work against the resolving tendencies of unstable chord tones but create their own lar…[Read more]

This article considers the counterpoint in jazz between the implied, underlying form and what is actually played in a given performance. My observations are framed within a model for jazz listening called “Stable Norms and Salient Deviations” (SNSD). Detailed analysis of an improvisation by jazz/R&B musician Robert Glasper demonstrates how my ide…[Read more]

This chapter discusses music theory’s neglect of EDM as it relates to the dominant methodologies of the field and Philip Ewell’s concept of the white racial frame, arguing that EDM is overlooked due to implicit biases against racial Otherness and against technological mediation, biases that runs deep enough in US culture to have impacted the tra…[Read more]

This chapter provides a detailed study of /r/musictheory, a large forum (“subreddit”) for music theory discussion hosted on the platform Reddit.com. Writing as two of the subreddit’s moderators, the authors outline the culture and structure of this public forum and examine the mixed realities of conducting music-theoretical discourse in such a spa…[Read more]

Following the reclamatory work of Black feminist scholars in anthropology and folklore, this brief article reimagines Zora Neale Hurston’s work as presaging the postmodern turn in ethnomusicology before pointing to the lessons we can learn form Hurston’s example in ethnomusicology today.