I recently got involved in some music theory pedagogy discourse on Twitter, about which you do not care. There was some discussion of the fact that I’m planning to write a teaching resource for groove-based popular music, particularly blues, funk, hip-hop and dance music. I thought it would be a good idea to post what I’m planning for it. Note that the title is a placeholder until I think of something better. Unfortunately, Groove Theory is taken. Building Grooves is taken too, by something else that I’m working on. Maybe Shaping Grooves?
I am not a music theorist by training, and I have no ambition to present a coherent theory of this music. It’s more of a set of heuristics and patterns, with a focus on aspects of the music that are not explained well by Western tonal theory or jazz theory. I don’t have a plan for publication. Maybe I’ll pitch it to an academic press, or to a commercial press, or do a subscriber thing on Substack. I’m open to suggestions on this. Here’s the outline.
Introduction
- What is groove?
- Pieces vs songs vs grooves
- Groove structures and attention
- Repetition legitimizes, funk beautifies
- Why Groove Harmony
- Afrofuturism and the Black Electronic
- Types of groove harmony
- The politics is in the drums
- Blues, funk, and hip-hop
- The white racial frame of music theory
Groove
- Loop structures
- Binary structures and hypermeter
- Harmonic rhythm
- Longer-form grooves
- Odd-length grooves
- Deep listen: Miles Davis, “So What”
- The metrical grid
- Counting and subdivisions
- Time signatures
- Tempo: “How fast” vs “how dense”
- Basic drum programming
- Time-unit box systems and drum machines
- Radial grids and the Groove Pizza
- Strong beats and weak beats
- Syncopation and the backbeat
- Deep listen: Parliament, “Mothership Connection”
- Polymeter and polyrhythm
- Polymeter and hemiola
- Basic polyrhythm: duple vs triple
- Advanced polyrhythm
- Deep listen: Kendrick Lamar, “DUCKWORTH”
- Swing
- Onbeats and offbeats
- Swing ratio
- Eighth note swing vs sixteenth note swing
- Straight and late
- Deep listen: Ray Charles, “You Are My Sunshine”
- Dilla time
- Unquantized time vs Dilla time
- Overlapping grids
- Warped grids
- Deep listen: Slum Village, “Get Dis Money”
Harmony
- One note
- Pitch and frequency
- Harmonics and tuning
- Drones and pedals
- Creative challenge: One-Note Groove
- Two notes
- Consonance and dissonance
- Octaves
- Fifths
- Thirds
- Sevenths
- Other intervals
- Creative challenge: Two-Note Groove
- Three notes
- Trichords
- Triads
- Creative challenge: Three-Note Groove
- Four Notes
- Tetrachords
- Dominant seventh chords
- Other seventh chords
- Creative challenge: Seventh Chord Groove
- Five notes
- Pentatonic scales and the black keys
- Deep listen: Sonny Rollins, “Sonnymoon for Two”
- The Lick
- Creative challenge: Pentatonic Groove
- Six notes
- The blues scale(s)
- Minor blues and major blues
- Creative challenge: Blues Melody
- Seven Notes
- The diatonic necklace and the white keys
- The circle of fifths and the diatonic modes
- The harmonic minor necklace
- The melodic minor necklace
- Deep listen: John Coltrane, “My Favorite Things”
- Creative challenge: Modal Groove
- Making chords from scales
- Stacking thirds
- Voice leading and inversion
- Modal interchange
- Stacking fourths
Going Further
- Twelve-tone equal temperament
- Between the piano keys
- Pitch bends and cents
- Blue notes
- Is the blues based on just intonation?
- Deep listen: Prince, “Starfish and Coffee”
- Blues tonality
- The blues scale as chord roots
- The blues diminished chord
- Deep listen: Deee-Lite, “Groove is in the Heart”
- Deep listen: Aretha Franklin, “Chain of Fools”
- Establishing key centers in a groove
- Loop structures in Everyday Tonality
- Dual tonicity
- What if there is no key center?
- Deep Listen: Mary J Blige, “Family Affair”
I want feedback on this from musicians, teachers, students, music theorists, and anyone else who knows or wants to know about groove-oriented Black American music. Let me know what you think.