Jue's Blog

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Just saw this old (but fun) post on the blog Mental Floss, “6 pop songs that rip off classical music.” Some aren’t so surprising–for example, the several rap songs with samples of dramatic orchestral pieces. If the combination of rap and orchestral backdrops and doesn’t ring a bell, see exhibits one, two, three, and four. Rappers (or more likely, their producers) are second only to late-19th-century romantics in their love of dramatic string music.

My favorite classical/pop hybrids, though, are the more creative–Connor Oberst of Bright Eyes channeling Beethoven via a stripped-down guitar riff; Janet Jackson taking inspiration from the avante-garde French modernism of Erik Satie (this one is awesome). As a side note, these clips confirm my suspicion that the minor V⁷-i is pretty much every human being’s favorite chord progression.

Obviously, musical quotation (when classical composers copy from each other) and sampling (the same thing, but in pop) happens all the time–purists might even say it happens in every single piece of music ever. But cross-contamination of recognizable motifs between different genres of music is much less common, and I like to play a game with myself to find the most obscure, surprising, or just plain incongruous example of this.

For example, Rachmaninov’s 2nd piano concerto (“Rach 2″) immediately comes to mind as possibly the single most fruitful source of pop songs in all of 20th century classical music. Some of the derivations were famous in their time, but later forgotten, like this song:

You might recognize the vocal melody of this (which is even in the same key as the original) from the first movement of Rach 2:

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Here’s another song in the same style, this time based on the 3rd movement of the same piece:

The original snippet from Rach 2, movement III:

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Just to show what a melody-writing badass Rachmaninov is, here is a clip from the second movement of Rach 2. Before scrolling further, try to guess what song ended up using this.

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(more…)

What is systems biology? I’ve been asked this 10² times in the last few weeks, and if you are my friend or classmate you may find yourself having to answer this question as well, so here is how you respond, depending on who asked the question.

To your friends:
“Systems biology is the study of living things, but it’s cooler than non-systems biology.”

To your parents: (more…)

Today was my first day of grad school (orientation). What was it like? Imagine a lanky, stubbled, Englishman declaiming the following:

Here’s the difference between your undergrad studies and what you are about to embark on for your PhD. Undergrad is like being in a hurdles race. It’s 4 years, you know how many hurdles you have to jump over and how high they are, and the goal is to clear them as quickly and as well as you can, while knocking down as few as possible.

Grad school is more like a one-way plane ticket to a Transylvanian castle, and when you get inside the doors shut behind you and you’re left in total darkness holding onto nothing but a single matchbook. You light the first match and discover that you are in a room full of objects covered by white sheets. Before the light from your match goes out you have time to uncover only one object. If you’re lucky, before you run out of matches you’ll uncover a sheet that has another box of matches under it. If you’re really lucky eventually you’ll find the key to the door so you can get out of the damn place.

…to which a fellow grad student responded, can’t we just set fire to all the sheets?

In my previous post I showed you a piece of piano music based on a Shepard Scale–it seems to go up and up forever. Listen to it (it’s at the bottom on this link), and then ask yourself: 1. Was that interesting? 2. Was that aesthetically pleasing or beautiful? 3. Was that music?

Most people would probably answer “no” to questions 2 and 3 after listening to that. It actually sounds stressful, even unpleasant. This, incidentally, is the general response of most people when they encounter contemporary classical music, especially the avant-garde stuff. However, if you are a modern composer, you are not most people.

Some people might ask, in response to question 1, what’s so interesting about a piece that sounds like it’s going up/down forever? It’s a cheap trick for nerds. To these people, if you are a modern composer, you should say “Uh, no!” after stammering a little. Then walk away, knowing in your heart that your tricks actually rather expensive, which is why you’re unemployed.

Part 2: Overtone Series

Now listen to this »