Shows
The Theory Behind ItSession Two: TTBI Meets Carla Salas-Ruiz!Adam, Livi, and Seth interview pianist Caral Salas-Ruiz. Their conversation includes how she journeyed into the music world and her thoughts on piano pedagogy.
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Contact: thetheorybehindit@interludepodcasts.com
Follow: @TTBIpod on Twitter
Intro Music: Jazzy Abstract Beat by Coma-Media
Transition Music: Old Vintage Bass and Two Octave Piano by JuliusH
Outro Music: Chill Funk Theme by undruground
2022-09-251h 18The Theory Behind ItSession One: Music Theory and The Imposter SyndromeAdam, Livi, and Seth tackle how the imposter syndrome affects one going through undergraduate and graduate studies in music.
01:00 Helpful or Not: Chrome Music Lab
12:30 Main Topic: Music Theory and The Imposter Syndrome
38:50 Closing Segment
Contact: thetheorybehindit@interludepodcasts.com
Follow: @TTBIpod on Twitter
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Intro Music: Jazzy Abstract Beat by Coma-Media
Transition Music: Old Vintage Bass and Two Octave Piano by JuliusH
Outro Music: Chill Funk Theme by undruground
2022-08-3047 minThe Theory Behind ItTTBI Meets Dan Elphick (Cult of Musicology)This week we are thrilled to share our conversation with musicologist Dr. Daniel Elphick. Dan is a faculty member at Royal Holloway, University of London, as well as the man behind the Cult of Musicology Youtube channel. Check out our discussion about his research, writing in music theory, and the distinctions between analysis and musicology.
(We had some minor internet hiccups during this recording, mostly on Adam's end. Some slight glitches and distortion, apologies all around.)
Cult of Musicology - Youtube
2021-10-2257 minThe Theory Behind ItTTBI Meets DJ A.D.Oh hey, we're not dead!
TTBI is back with a brand new season of music theory and theory adjacent content (oftentimes very adjacent). Back in July, we had the chance to interview Memphis' own DJ A.D. We spoke with A.D. about the musical skills a DJ needs to possess, the worst wedding DJ ever, and how to melt faces with a killer mix.
Check back next week for another episode, with another special guest!
(Excuse the scuffed audio on this one, Zoom records can be a coinflip.)
2021-10-081h 09The Theory Behind ItTTBI Recaps RedditWelcome to the first ever edition of Reddit Recap! The gang takes a peek at the top of the month on r/musictheory to see if they can answer any questions or have anything to add to the conversation. Plus, some questionable Jeopardy clues from the week: what's the most colorful scale?
2021-05-0252 minThe Theory Behind ItLet's Argue: Music NotationWelcome back to another edition of Let's Argue! This week, Livi's questions about music notation nearly bring Seth and Adam to fisticuffs. Are double dotted notes good? Should we notate timbres? Modes bad? Listen and find out!
2021-04-261h 58The Theory Behind ItAgency in Music, with Aubrey LeamanAs Seth calls it, welcome to narrative-land. This week, TTBI welcomes Aubrey Leaman, a Music Theory and Cognition PhD student at Northwestern University, to discuss her work with subjectivity and agency in music. Check out her SCSMT 2021 paper at the link below to see where our conversation begins, and listen to find out where it ends!
Huge thanks to Aubrey for joining us and for the wonderful discussion. Feel free to email her at aubreyleaman2021@u.northwestern.edu with any questions you might have!
Empathic Identification: A Theory of Subjective Agency in...
2021-04-091h 08The Theory Behind ItAdam and Taylor Pick The 7 Best Kanye AlbumsSpecial guest and friend of the show, Taylor Burks, returns to draft the top 7 best Kanye West albums with Adam. Listen back to the previous episode with Taylor for some non-mandatory backstory, and then check out his new website and upcoming EP!
https://www.tjbpercussion.com/
2021-04-021h 12The Theory Behind ItTTBI Talks Race, Music Theory, and SchenkerThis 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, Ewell
2021-03-281h 56The Theory Behind ItTTBI 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
2021-03-121h 32The Theory Behind ItTTBI Drafts the Best Christmas Songs of All TimeIt'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!
2020-12-231h 19The Theory Behind It2020 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?
2020-12-1847 minThe Theory Behind ItLet's Argue: The Land Before CollegeComing 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!
2020-11-151h 13The Theory Behind ItAdam Introduces TTBI to DOOMAs 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!
2020-10-301h 11The Theory Behind ItTTBI 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...
2020-10-2956 minThe Theory Behind ItThe Theses We Didn't WriteIn 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)
2020-10-101h 10The Theory Behind ItAdam Finally Makes a U2 EpisodeYes, it's true. Time has caught up with the podcast and Adam has enforced his will against the show. In this week's episode, Adam and special guest his father draft the top 9 U2 albums of all time. It's another Screendrafts rip-off for the ages!
2020-10-021h 06The Theory Behind ItLet's Argue: r/musictheory, Part 2Seth and Adam's battle to not lose every Let's Argue they've debated in comes to a close! Find out who takes home the gold (or the silver or something, I dunno, It's not a great metaphor). We answer more of your questions from r/musictheory, and hopefully come out as friends.
2020-09-2753 minThe Theory Behind ItOursatz Rebrands!Just announcing the new name for the podcast, The Theory Behind It. We feel it's a much better name for actually sharing and talking about the podcast, and we're excited to see what comes next!
2020-09-2302 minThe Theory Behind ItLet's Argue: r/musictheory, Part 1After a break last week (oops), Livi has prepared a Let's Argue of her own, this time featuring questions gathered from the music theory subreddit. Will Adam maintain his sanity? Will Seth or Adam will break their Let's Argue curse? Will Livi somehow win another Let's Argue as moderator? All this and more in this week's episode of Oursatz!
2020-09-1852 minThe Theory Behind ItOursatz Recommends...Livi, Adam, and Seth talk about some of the stuff they've been listening to lately. This episode features a bad Joseph Gordon-Levitt joke, a follow up on Harry Potter from last week, and surely something that was on topic hopefully.
Here's the playlist with the favorites of our recommendations!
2020-09-0436 minThe Theory Behind ItOursatz Catches UpAfter all the higher concept episodes we've done recently, we thought it'd be a nice change of pace to relax and have a more laidback episode this week.
We meander through discussion of musical notation and graphic design, the Harry Potter books and movies, presenting at an online conference, and briefly touch on some of the problems with the recent Journal of Schenkerian Studies issue.
2020-08-2850 minThe Theory Behind ItOursatz Drafts the Best Chord of All TimeThis week we ripped off the podcast Screendrafts and competitively collaborated to find out what the best chord of all time is! The parameters were basic chords most students learn in their 2 years of music theory classes. Sevenths could be considered for each chord, but were not a separate category. The full list is below; we selected the top 11.
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Major diatonic scale: I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi, viio
Minor diatonic scale: i, iio, III, iv, v, VI, VII
Borrowed chords: iio, bIII, iv, v, bVI, bVII
Secondary dominants (as a whole)
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2020-08-211h 28The Theory Behind ItLet's Argue: Theory Pedagogy Edition, Part 2We round off the debate with the final 3 questions in this Music Pedagogy edition of Let's Argue. Talking points include borrowed chords, the importance of music history, snails, and incredulously even more Schenker talk. Who wins? How biased was the host?
(I would like to make an addendum that this debate was recorded about 2 months before the Schenker journal controversy, therefore we were not talking about it with knowledge or relation to that.)
2020-08-151h 02The Theory Behind ItLet's Argue: Theory Pedagogy Edition, Part 1In this two part episode, Adam pits Livi and Seth against each other in a new edition of Let's Argue. This time around we're discussing opinions on the teaching of music theory. Topics include cadential V chords, teaching Schenkerian analysis to undergrads, and a heck of a lot about modes.
2020-08-0756 minThe Theory Behind ItOursatz Meets Taylor Burks!Hey, everybody! Sorry for the delay, but we've got a very special episode for you today: our interview with percussionist Taylor Burks! In this episode, we talk about band pedagogy, a work Taylor commissioned and performed, Taylor's review of Ye, and the various impressions Adam can do.
Disclaimer: we recorded this before Kanye West's fresh appearance and public comments, otherwise we would not have brought it back up.
Expanse and Retrospect, by Caleb Pickering
Taylor's Instagram
2020-08-021h 17The Theory Behind ItThree Articles, Part 3 (Duinker)In this, the final part of the Three Articles series, Adam presents an article discussing chord progressions and tonality in pop music. Ben Duinker writes about how chordal loops can increase ambiguity when locating tonic and that we should consider bitonality or "hybrid tonics" when thinking about pop music.
https://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.19.25.4/mto.19.25.4.duinker.html
2020-07-2440 minThe Theory Behind ItSeth's HodgepodgeIn a thematic sequel to Borrowing in Pop Music, Seth returns with more examples of topics and allusions in pop music. After that...it gets a little weird. Hope you're prepared to hear our takes on things that stopped being relevant over 3 months ago when we recorded.
Talking points include Childish Gambino, the Modern Family Cinematic Universe, Tiger King, and Game of Thrones.
2020-07-1758 minThe Theory Behind ItThree Articles, Part 2 (Beavers)This week we discuss Jennifer Beavers' article "Beyond Mere Novelty: Timbre as Primary Structural Marker in Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major". We talk about timbre as formal quality, the place of timbre in analysis, and a bit about the music of Ravel. There is a brief shout-out to theremins.
https://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.19.25.4/mto.19.25.4.beavers.html
2020-07-1026 minThe Theory Behind ItOursatz Meets Ryan Connors!This week we got the opportunity to interview Ryan Connors from Dynamo. After we talked about their album in Three Albums, Part 2, we reached out and got the chance to talk to Ryan. We had lots of great discussion about Dynamo's album Celina, improvisation, and the differences between academically trained and self-taught musicians.
Please check out the episode where we talked about their album, as well as the album Celina itself before listening to get the most out of this episode!
Ryan's Instagram
Dynamo's Facebook
2020-07-031h 05The Theory Behind ItThree Articles, Part 1 (Bleij)We decided to each read an article from the Music Theory Online journal and discuss it with each other. This week Livi tells us about Barbara Bleij's article 'Three Multifaceted Compositions by Wayne Shorter: “E.S.P.,” “Infant Eyes,” and “Virgo”'. We talk about jazz theory, finding tonic, and a little about set theory too. There's a link to the article here in the description
We're going to space these article episodes out, so next week we hope you will be excited for our first ever interview!
Three Multifaceted Compositions by Wayne Shorter
2020-06-2657 minThe Theory Behind ItLet's Argue: Music Theory Edition, Part 2Alright, if you listened to last week's episode, you know that Seth's diabolical plan to use music theory to destroy a friendship likely didn't work, mostly because Adam and Livi generally agreed the whole time.
But that doesn't mean part 2 of the debate will be any less juicy. What is the most important element to analysis? Is minimalism anti-Schenker? Did we keep an accurate score of the points? Find out in part 2!
2020-06-1958 minThe Theory Behind ItLet's Argue: Music Theory Edition, Part 1In this episode, Seth attempts to destroy Adam and Livi's friendship by forcing them to argue about music theory topics as he sees fit. Will their bond overcome debates on German augmented sixth chords, Schenkerian analysis, and minimalism? Or will Seth's twisted game tear them apart?
Find out in this week's episode of Oursatz!
2020-06-1258 minThe Theory Behind ItThree Albums, Part 2In the thrilling conclusion to last week's discussion, Livi presents Dynamo's 2017 album Celina and Adam presents Kanye West's 2018 album Ye.
Is Ye a bad album? What does it mean for music to be authentic? Will we get to interview somebody from Dynamo?
Listen to find out!
(Once again, apologies for the poor audio, we're getting better all the time.)
2020-06-051h 08The Theory Behind ItThree Albums, Part 1This week we decided to each present an album to the other two, listen to it throughout the week, and then report back on what noticed, appreciated, and thought about it.
In part 1, we cover Seth's pick: Adele's 2008 album 19. But before that, since this is the first of the 2020 albums, we give a very distracted update on what has happened to us in the 2 years since last recording (we kept in touch, this is just for you guys).
2020-05-2946 minThe Theory Behind ItDeep Dive: Change My MindIn the inaugural appearance of the potentially recurring Deep Dive, we take a look at songs and albums that could change your opinion or view of a musician/band. We each pick a song that is either surprising or unique to a catalogue and discuss, and we do the same with chunks of albums we recommend listening to for the same experience.
Here is a Spotify playlist with each of our songs and chunks of albums put together for you to listen and keep up with us!
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3cHTQx1j...
2020-05-1531 minThe Theory Behind ItWhy Music Theory?In this episode, we discuss how and why we got into music theory. Plus, some Imagine Dragons!
2020-05-0842 minThe Theory Behind ItBorrowing in Pop MusicA much anticipated episode from a time nearly since forgotten...
It's the return of Oursatz! This is an episode that previously went unpublished after being recorded at the beginning of 2018. We're going to clear out the backlog and start getting new episodes posted soon.
In this episode, Seth leads us down a path of recent pop songs (for 2018) that share similar characteristics, and we discuss if these similarities are borrowed or coincidental.
2020-05-011h 07
The Theory Behind ItClassical Samples in Rap MusicAfter a "brief" hiatus, we're back with hard-hitting discussions about trap music, Busdriver, and hummus.
Oh, also we talk about rap songs that utilize classical music as samples and what it could mean.
2018-03-2700 minThe Theory Behind ItBonus Episode: More Album TalkWe started recording for next week's episode and realized we still had a bunch to say about albums! So we decided to chop it up and deliver it to you guys this week ahead of next week's episode.
Hop over to the Facebook to talk with us about how you prefer to listen and experience music. See you next week!
2017-12-0900 minThe Theory Behind ItAlbum vs. Playlist: Beefin' with DrakeWe start off this episode with a detailed discussion of types of stews.
But don't worry, we do eventually have a conversation about what makes an album great, what makes an album cohesive, and what the difference is between an album, a playlist, and a mixtape.
Let us know on our Facebook about some of your favorite albums that are thematically cohesive or albums that follow the dramatic contour we conjectured about.
2017-12-0100 minThe Theory Behind ItIsotopes Part 1: TopicsSorry for the delay! This was supposed to come out Thursday, but it didn't and we're sorry.
Anyway, in this episode we talk about our weeks, Seth brings some deep knowledge about topics and isotopes, and after a brief interruption we also bring you some recommendations of things we enjoy.
Tell what you think about isotopes or about our recommendations on our Facebook page!
2017-11-1900 minThe Theory Behind ItMicrotonality 11/1/17Episode 1: Seth, Livi, and Adam embark the podcast with a discussion of maybe the nichest thing possible: microtonality.
2017-11-0100 min