Tim Thulson - Blog

Category: Music

Core Library: Music Theory

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On May 24, 2021

In Music

I have a kind of core music theory library that I keep revisiting, a few books on key topics–not mostly from my student days, as it happens, but things I’ve heard recommended and picked up along the way.

My perspective on these is probably a little different from, say, a theory professor’s–and, I’ll admit, less sophisticated. I’m a cellist and a cello teacher, so I’m focused primarily on, you know, making good sounds with the cello. But…but! Theory is critical to artistry and interpretation, so we have to work it in alongside technique and repertoire. And when I’m arranging or composing, theory is critical.

So these are my core references:

[I’ve linked to Amazon so it’s easy to identify each book, but you can find most of these books much cheaper if you look for used copies. Old editions are totally fine! I like thriftbooks.com, or abebooks.com, for example, or anywhere you can find used books.]

  • Aldwell and Schachter, Harmony and Voice Leading. Start here! Great exposition of the basics, and then a great, in-depth treatment of harmony.
  • Green, Form in Tonal Music. Musical form/structure is probably the area that I continue to think about most consciously from my music theory studies; it’s critical for interpretative decisions as a performer, and of course it’s vital to arranging/composing. Green moves fast and covers a lot of ground, but he’s easy to follow if you’ve got a good grounding in the basics (like from Aldwell and Schachter).
  • Kennan, Counterpoint. Kennan takes a practical approach that, from my seat, makes his the most useful of the counterpoint books I’ve seen.
  • Adler, The Study of Orchestration. This is really the key text on orchestration. Magnificent and comprehensive for thinking about how composers construct sound in the orchestral world (and for thinking about how we fit into the bigger picture from our cello desks).
  • Gould, Behind Bars. THE critical reference on music notation. Don’t leave home without it.
  • Baker, Arranging and Composing for the Small Ensemble: Jazz, R&B, Jazz-Rock. David Baker is absolutely amazing (I mean, c’mon, he was a cellist! of course he was amazing), and I’ve found this book particularly helpful as a serious reference for non-classical approaches to music theory, notation, and performance.

Tempo/Beat Mapping in REAPER

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On May 10, 2021

In Music

Here’s a quick way to map REAPER‘s tempo track to an existing recording…

Credit due: this writeup–my daily process–is based on posts from several others in REAPER’s (y’know, amazing) user community: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ryz7BfQnzg | https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/tempo-mapping | https://forums.cockos.com/showthread.php?p=1966295

1. Set a couple of things up in REAPER

  • Get the SWS Extensions for REAPER
  • Set up a keyboard shortcut for the Action “SWS/BR: Move closest grid line to mouse cursor (perform until shortcut released)”
    • Actions menu | Show action list
    • type the action name into the Filter box
    • click the action in the list
    • Below, in the Shortcuts for selected action area, click “Add”
    • type the key you want to run this Action (I’m using comma: “,” )
    • Hit Close.

2. Map Those Beats

  • Pull your recorded track into REAPER.
  • Listen and pick an approximate baseline tempo (you could use these scripts, but I feel like it’s faster to just tap into a metronome).
  • Add a tempo marker at the beginning of the track in this baseline tempo.
  • Set gridlines to something sensible that you want to map — I mean, quarter notes, probably. (Right-click on REAPER’s Grid Lines button, then hit the “…line spacing” dropdown.
  • Play the track; pause and hold the mouse over the beat in the waveform, then hit your keyboard shortcut to snap gridlines into place. aren’t lined up with the track.

I’m often able to do this only for downbeats (or even less often for tracks recorded with click), but it’s crazy fast and flexible even if I have to do all the beats within a measure. Part of the magic of this SWS action is that it will preserve the position of later markers, so you can tweak beats within a measure without ruining everything down the line.

Like magic. Happy beatmapping!

Music Mentioned in Matt Haig’s How to Stop Time

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On October 21, 2020

In Music

I’m keeping a running list, as I reread How to Stop Time, of every time Matt Haig references music. I love how woven it is into the story, and how he writes about it.

Fair warning! There are likely to be some spoilers here, so, y’know, read the book first.

Will update (and clean this up) as I go:

  • Dowland, “Come again, sweet love doth now invite”
  • “lute music” in general
  • Sweet Georgia Brown (on piano, specifically)
  • Tchaikovsky 6th Symphony
  • Billie Holiday
  • Tom references “my sea shanty Spotify playlist”
  • Don Henley, “The Boys of Summer”
  • References to do with Tom’s mother:
    • “the poignant French chansons Maman used to sing…the sad, nostalgic ones”
    • “an air de cour” (singing while playing lute, “her fingers running fast across the strings as if escaping something”)
    • she was “as comforted by singing a secular chanson as by a prayer”
  • “Eighteen ninety-one. Tchaikovsky. Harlem. Hot Dogs. Champagne. Ragtime”
  • Tom mentions the electric keyboard as an invention that’s simultaneously good and bad
  • Hendrich lists the piano as a key invention within their lifetimes, and music as one of life’s key pleasures
  • Hendrich gives Tom tickets to “Tchaikovsky. Tonight. The Music Hall. Hottest ticket in town,” and of course they go, noting Carnegie in the audience. Tchaikovsky (“a frail-looking man with an intense expression and thinning hair”) conducts. [I love this scene so much…Haig goes on to imagine Tchaik 4…I don’t think 4 was performed on the real programs Tchaikovsky presented in Carnegie Hall, but it is SO perfect for the moment in the book, and so lovely in Haig’s description both of the music and of what it does to Tom…I won’t spoil all that description here, but it’s amazing and you need to read it. Now. Even if you’ve read it before. Go read it again and come back.] (Incidentally and a little off-topic–though it gets at the way Haig describes Tchaikovsky–I like real-life Tchaikovsky’s diary entries about how nervous he was in these New York concerts…)
  • Hendrich on Tchaikovsky, “‘He pisses over Brahms from a mountain, don’t you think?'”
  • Tom’s heart beats “a frenzied jazz rhythm” while teaching
  • Tom runs with his mother’s lute
  • “Pipes. Singing. Mayhem” in 1599 London, then “A fiddler. A piper. A flautist…playing ‘Three Ravens’.”
  • Rose: “‘You have no food but you are worried about a lute.'” and “‘A boy playing the lute! They will rain pennies on you.'”
  • Tom playing in Bankside: “some French chansons,” then “English songs and ballads.” “I played best when I closed my eyes.” Later “singing a madrigal to a large pre-theatre crowd.”
  • Tom giving Grace lute lessons: Greensleeves, The Sweet and Merry Month of May. Then teaching Rose: “‘Music is about time…it is about controlling time.'” Rose: “‘We are all the strings, aren’t we?'” and “‘A kiss is like music. It stops time…'”
  • [to be continued!]

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