My year in pop music theory teaching

It was an adventure

This year I taught my first theory class in NYU's new popular music sequence. It was not my first music theory class, or my first pop music class, but it was the first one in a university-level sequence dedicated specifically to pop. I think it mostly went great, and certainly the feedback from the students has been positive, but there are some rough edges remaining to smooth out.

Like the rest of the theory adjuncts in the department, I was given a syllabus to follow, but I had broad discretion in how I addressed each topic. Here's the topic list:

• Review of chord notation

• Form & vocabulary

• Extended chord notation

• Modes (nice and early in the sequence!)

• Voice leading (the quick and dirty pop version)

• Functional harmony (meaning, the Western European major-minor key system with tonic, subdominant and dominant)

• Pop harmony & blues

• Descending 4ths/5ths progressions

• Stepwise basslines (w/ inversions)

• Modal harmony

• Schemata & other combinations

• Review of phrase structure

• AABA and strophic

• Embellishing tones

• Melody & motive

• Blues melody & scale (I wish we wouldn't talk about the "blues scale", but it's great that there's space dedicated to blues in the syllabus at all)

• Reharmonization

• Melodic-harmonic relationships (that is, melodic/harmonic divorce)

• Secondary dominants

• ii-V-I progressions

• Abrupt modulation

• Pivot modulation

• Chord substitutions (meaning tritone subs)

• Embellishing chords (meaning augmented and diminished)

• Chromatic mediants

There were a few sessions at the end left to the instructor's choice. Per students' requests, I used those sessions to cover microphone technique and aesthetics of recorded sound; sampling and copyright; and digital signal theory.

We gave regular weekly assignments using Musition, drilling things like key signatures, intervals, chord symbols and so on. I was handed assignments, but could change or edit them if I wanted. I just assigned them as given because I didn't have the bandwidth to customize them more, but I will be curating them more assertively next time. The class schedule also included four quizzes, a midterm and a final, and I was free to handle those as I saw fit.

My most radical pedagogical belief is that exams are harmful to learning. My experience has been that anything I learned for a test was gone six weeks later, whereas anything I learned in order to make something stayed with me forever. So I turned all the quizzes and exams into composition/arrangement projects. I love project-based learning; I co-wrote a whole book about it. Projects have the added advantage of having low floors and high ceilings, which is important when the students have a wide range of prior music theoretic knowledge and ability. Here are the projects I assigned:

Prince bassline

"When Doves Cry" by Prince famously has no bassline, so you will add one. Use this template.

When Doves Cry – bassline template

This went very well, though I could definitely have spent more time on the conventions of funk bass in class beforehand. The students who come in from musical theater or classical particularly need that foundation laid for them.

Harmonize a bassline

Add chords to an R&B bassline that I composed.

Harmonize a Bassline

This was a good idea in concept, but it was too hard and came too early in the semester. Next time, I'll either stick more closely to a diatonic key, or impose more guardrails. I wanted to center the project around blues harmony, but we had to blow through that topic really fast, and it wasn't enough time for the kids who don't play blues-based music in real life to absorb it all.

Björk acapella

Add chords, a bassline and a beat to the acapella from "Hidden Place" by Björk.

Hidden Place project template

I chose this song because it follows the standard pop verse/prechorus/chorus form, but it's also harmonically ambiguous, so it admits many possible approaches. Also, I wanted a song that no one would be familiar with, so they couldn't just look up the chords on Ultimate Guitar. However, "Hidden Place" turned out to be too weird and unconventional. The kids didn't experience its ambiguity as freedom so much as just lack of structure and direction. Next time I'll find a song that's more "normal".

I wanted people to write drum parts for this and for the final project, and I spent some class time on the conventions of rock and pop drums. However, because there was no time devoted to it in the syllabus, I had to do it too fast and didn't give any regular homework on it. You will notice that everything in the topic list is about melody and harmony, with a sprinkling of form. That was a deliberate choice on the department's part. The idea is that this class does harmony, and then you do rhythm in the advanced class. I don't love this approach, because the advanced class is optional and people won't necessarily take it. I would prefer we spent a month of class on rhythm. I think it's way more important that a theory student be able to program a simple house or hip-hop beat than that they know what a tritone substitution is.

Depeche Mode harmony

Add two vocal harmony parts to "Enjoy the Silence" by Depeche Mode.

Enjoy the Silence – harmonization project template

This went great, and I will for sure be doing it again. In class, I walked through the process of adding vocal harmony to "Shout" by Tears For Fears, but I should have done several more examples, and had people sing their ideas. I could group lots of different harmony topics under the "arranging vocal harmonies" umbrella.

The Saddest Chord Progression Ever

Write a melody over 16 bars of a looped chord progression: Cm7, F7, Abm7, Ebmaj7.

The Saddest Chord Progression Ever project template

This assignment also went well, I got some highly creative responses. Melody came at the very end of the syllabus, because melody is the most complex and multidimensional aspect of music. I recognize the wisdom of this, but I still think melody should go earlier, because it's so much more familiar and intuitive than harmony and voice leading. Theory students might not be able to articulate what is going on in a melody, but that doesn't stop them from being able to write one. I would ideally like to do a melody writing project first, and then keep coming back to it as we backfill all the theory concepts. But then, I secretly think that every theory class should be a songwriting and arranging class.

Final project: Structured songwriting

Write a complete composition/song that includes the following features:

• a single-note melody line, chords/countermelody/harmony, a bassline, and drums/percussion

• at least two extended chords

• a phrase, section or passage using one of the diatonic modes

• at least one phrase using blues harmony

• at least three consecutive chords with roots moving around the circle of fifths

• at least one chord that is not in root position

• a melody that is mostly chord tones but that also uses some embellishing tones, suspensions, non-chord tones, appoggiatura, etc.

• at least one repeated phrase or motive

• at least one secondary dominant (V/ii, V/IV, V/V, V/vi)

• at least one ii-V-I progression (major or minor)

• at least one instance of modulation and/or mode mixture

Rather than give a final exam, I assigned a songwriting task that covered all the concepts that would have been on my final exam. In a perfect world, I would break this up into a series of etudes: write a short melody full of embellishing tones; write a melody over a chord progression full of secondary dominants; write a melody that uses mode mixture. That would be hard to do in a one semester class, though. Maybe next time, I'll ditch a bunch of the weekly Musition assignments and do lots more quick songwriting projects instead. The virtue of Musition is that it drills all the tedious material and grades itself automatically. The downside is that it doesn't have the real-world feel or emotional investment of writing actual music.

The department provided us with plenty of teaching materials and examples, but I also produced a lot of my own, to reflect my own tastes, priorities and knowledge. I tried out some of my music theory songs on the class too, they went over well and I will draw on them more heavily in the future.

I don't have any theory sections next semester, just aural skills, but maybe I'll eventually get to do the advanced pop class, or some other topic. As an adjunct, I have no authority whatsoever, but I can make suggestions, and there are a couple of things I would love to teach if the department would be up for it: a semester on blues tonality; a class on the aesthetics, morality and legality of sampling; maybe a semester on drum programming and breakbeats. We'll see what happens.