Season 1 (Spring 2022)

Supplemental Materials (PDF)

Producers:
David Thurmaier and Jennifer Beavers.

Music Credits:
SMT-Pod Theme music by Zhangcheng Lu;
Closing music "hnna" by David Voss.
Other original compositions by Anthony Esland, Jamie Allen, and Liam Hynes-Tawa.

Bio: Scott Murphy is a professor of music theory at the University of Kansas, where he has taught undergraduate- and graduate-level music theory for twenty years. He has received both the Emerging Scholar Award and the Outstanding Multi-Author Collection Award from the Society for Music Theory, both for publications on the music of Brahms. Beyond Brahms, the subjects of his publications range from melodic expectation in the music of Penderecki to stretto in the music of J.S. Bach and Clara Schumann, and particularly include music for mainstream films and television programs of the past half century, about which he has written many essays for journals and books.

Keywords: Bach, Buxtehude, canon, historiography, firsts

Supplemental Materials (PDF)

Producer: Katrina Roush.

Music Credits:
SMT-Pod Theme music by Zhangcheng Lu;
Closing music "hnna" by David Voss.
Other performances by Han Chen.

This is the first episode of a five-part series that will be released throughout Season 1.

Bio: Joseph Straus is Distinguished Professor of Music Theory at the CUNY Graduate Center. He has written numerous articles and scholarly monographs on a variety of topics in modernist music. He has also written a series of articles and books that engage disability as a cultural practice, most recently Broken Beauty: Musical Modernism and the Representation of Disability (Oxford University Press 2018), which received the Wallace Berry Award from the Society for Music Theory. He was President of SMT from 1997–99.

Keywords: Old age, age studies, old characters, old composers, old performers, old listeners

Website

Supplemental Materials (PDF)
Supplemental Materials (Google Docs)

Producer: Jennifer Beavers.

Music Credits:
SMT-Pod Theme music by Zhangcheng Lu;
Closing music "hnna" by David Voss.

Bio: A young composer whose compositional work has been described as “a great spiritual experience,” John Baxter explores the tense and mercurial chasm between musician and listener. After his time as an undergrad at Yale University, John pursued a Masters degree in Theory and Composition at NYU. He is currently a DMA candidate in composition at the Frost School of Music (ABD), studying with Dr. Lansing McLoskey. In addition to composition, John is also an active conductor of orchestras and choirs, studying with Maestro Gerard Schwarz. Current projects include compositions for the Richmond Pops Band, the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra, Apply Triangle, and a cello concerto for cellist Qianci Liu. His string orchestra piece "The Color of Rain" was recently named a semi-finalist in the O/Modernt International Composition Competition as well as the Schnittke International Composition Competition. John was also recently named the winner of The American Prize in orchestral composition (pops/student division). John strives to stay an active member of the new music community, exploring the pathos of the late romantic period through the paradigm of innovative modernist techniques and complexity.

Keywords: Harmony, film music, pop music, storytelling, modal mixture

Supplemental Materials (PDF)

Producer: Katrina Roush.

Music Credits:
SMT-Pod Theme music by Zhangcheng Lu
Closing music "hnna" by David Voss
Other performances by Han Chen

This is the second episode of a five-part series that will be released throughout Season 1.

See author information and supplemental materials for the first episode of the series.

Keywords: Old age, opera, old characters

Supplemental Materials (PDF)

Producer: Megan Lyons.

Music Credits:
SMT-Pod Theme music by Zhangcheng Lu;
Closing music "hnna" by David Voss
Other original compositions by Nate Crowe, Ljudevit Laušin, and Jacob Thiede.

Bio: Matthew Ferrandino is currently a part-time lecturer at Ottawa University (in Ottawa, KS) where he teaches courses in music theory and popular music. Matthew holds a PhD in music theory from the University of Kansas where he completed his dissertation A Narratology of Music Video in 2021. His research focuses on the analysis of popular music and has been published in Music Theory Online, SMT-V, and Intégral.

Keywords: Popular music, listening, timbre, culture, sound studies

Supplemental Materials (PDF)

Producer: David Thurmaier.

Music Credits:
SMT-Pod Theme music by Zhangcheng Lu;
Closing music "hnna" by David Voss.

This episode appears in 2 Parts.

Bio: Elizabeth Newton is a writer, editor, and musicologist whose research focuses on the intellectual history of poetry, song, recordings, and writing about music. She holds degrees in musicology from Indiana University and the CUNY Graduate Center. Visit her website at musicalwork.info.

Bio: Franklin Bruno is an interdisciplinary writer working at the intersection of philosophy, musicology, and cultural criticism. He is the author of a monograph of Elvis Costello’s album Armed Forces (Bloomsbury, 33 1/3 series) and the poetry collection The Accordion Repertoire (Edge Books). His scholarly and critical writing on music has appeared in Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Popular Music and Society, The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music, The Nation, Oxford American, and two installments of Best Music Writing (Da Capo). As a musician and songwriter, he has released 20 albums as a solo artist and leader of Nothing Painted Blue and, currently, The Human Hearts; and has written, recorded, and/or performed with The Mountain Goats, Laura Cantrell, Jenny Toomey, and the Schramms. He is currently writing The Inside of the Tune: The Bridge in Pop from “St. Louis Blues” to “Single Ladies” for Wesleyan University Press.

Keywords: Bridge, popular music, song form, songwriting, music theory, popular musicology
Part 1 Keywords: Taylor Swift, Smokey Robinson
Part 2 Keywords: Hank Williams, Bessie Smith, Fats Waller, Marion Harris, Adorno

Supplemental Materials (PDF)
Author's Website
Twitter: @dollchristopher

Producer: Megan Lyons.

Music Credits:
SMT-Pod Theme music by Zhangcheng Lu;
Closing music "hnna" by David Voss

Bio: Christopher Doll is Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director of Music in the Mason Gross School of the Arts, and the School of Graduate Studies, at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. He is the author of the monograph Hearing Harmony: Toward a Tonal Theory for the Rock Era (University of Michigan Press, 2017) and articles on a range of topics, from Bach to Babbitt to Hans Zimmer to “Louie Louie.”

Keywords: Key, tonality induction, tonal center, scale, mode, functional harmony

Producer: Katrina Roush.

Music Credits:
SMT-Pod Theme music by Zhangcheng Lu
Closing music "hnna" by David Voss
Other performances by Han Chen

This is the third episode of a five-part series that will be released throughout Season 1.

See author information and supplemental materials for the first episode of the series.

Keywords: Old age, age studies, old composers

Supplemental Materials (PDF)

Producer: Jennifer Beavers.

Music Credits:
SMT-Pod Theme music by Zhangcheng Lu;
Closing music "hnna" by David Voss
Other original compositions by Reverend Feedback, AJ Harbison,
Michael Hudson-Casanova,
and David Jason Snow.

Music Theory Reddit Channel (r/musictheory)

Bios

Dr. Nathaniel Mitchell (reddit: u/nmitchell076) is a Philadelphia-based music theorist who specializes in schema theory, opera, bluegrass, ludomusicology, and public music theory. His research has appeared in Music Theory Spectrum and the Oxford Handbook of Public Music Theory.
Twitter: @nmitchell076

Dr. Tim Byron (reddit: u/hillsonghoods) is a lecturer at the School of Psychology, University of Wollongong, Australia, whose academic interests include music psychology and the history of psychology. He also plays music semi-professionally and has had music journalism published in the Guardian and the Sydney Morning Herald.
Twitter: @drtimbyron

Dr. Sarah Gilbert (reddit: u/SarahAGilbert) is a postdoctoral associate at Cornell University who studies online communities and community moderation.
Twitter: @_sgilbert_

Justice Srisuk (reddit: u/JustinJSrisuk) is an entrepreneur and an undergraduate student at Maricopa Community College.

Keywords: Internet, Reddit, Subreddit, online, public

Supplemental Materials (PDF)

Producer: Megan Lyons.

Music Credits:
SMT-Pod Theme music by Zhangcheng Lu;
Closing music "hnna" by David Voss.
Music performed by Rocco Tuzio and Alexis Tapia.

Bio: Lucia Pasini is a graduate student in French literature at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, where she is a member of the CRP19 laboratory. Her doctoral studies are conducted in a joint degree with the Dottorato in Lettere of the University of Turin. Her dissertation focuses on French art song and the musical reception of French poets in the period between 1870 and 1914. It is supervised by Cécile Leblanc and Andrea Malvano. Her article “La mélodie française comme témoignage d’une réception. Le cas d’Invocation” is currently being published in the journal Criação & Critica of the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. She has participated in several international conferences, and since June 2021, she is part of the team of the Revue Traits-d’Union, the journal of the early-career researchers at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle. Her research is supported by De Sono Associazione per la Musica.

Keywords: Jaëll, Chaminade, Holmès, women composers, Paris

Supplemental Materials (PDF)

Producer: David Thurmaier with technical assistance by Kaitlyn Norman.

Music Credits:
SMT-Pod Theme music by Zhangcheng Lu
Closing music "hnna" by David Voss

This is a two-episode series.

Bios

Tyler Howie is a PhD candidate in music theory at the University of Texas at Austin. Tyler is interested in post-punk aesthetics and the interactions of schema theory, topic theory and genre theory. He has presented research at regional and international conferences, including at the Sixth International Conference on Music and Minimalism (in 2017) and the Punk Scholars Network Global Punk Conference (in 2020). Tyler has also published a paper on Steve Reich’s Mallet Quartet with Matt Chiu for 50th anniversary of Reich’s Drumming. Though this is their first time recording it, this is not the first time Tyler and Matt have talked for almost an hour about emo.

Matt Chiu is a PhD candidate in music theory at the Eastman School of Music. Matt primarily researches early 20th century tonal repertoires and contemporary indie punk genres with computational/probabilistic technologies. His recent publications and presentations develop machine-learning techniques for metric categorization, study microtiming deviations between genres, use audio engineering techniques to analyze timbre, and relate musical “macroharmonies” to large-scale formal structures. Outside of theory, Matt has enjoyed opportunities as a church organist, musical director, bar pianist, and circus accompanist/arranger. He lives happily with his piano four hands partner (and partner) Eron, and their 2 cats—all four of them enjoy birding in their own way.

Keywords: Punk, pop-punk, emo, genre, timbre, participatory functions, schema, vocal delivery.

Producer: Katrina Roush.

Music Credits:
SMT-Pod Theme music by Zhangcheng Lu
Closing music "hnna" by David Voss
Other performances by Han Chen

This is the fourth episode of a five-part series that will be released throughout Season 1.

See author information and supplemental materials for the first episode of the series.

Keywords: Old age, age studies, old performers

Supplemental Materials (PDF)

Producer: Landon Morrison with assistance from Megan Lyons.

Music Credits:
SMT-Pod Theme music by Zhangcheng Lu;
Closing music "hnna" by David Voss.
Music by Landon Morrison.

Bio: Landon Morrison is a Lecturer in the Music Department at Harvard University, where he teaches courses on a wide range of topics, including timbre, popular music analysis, and sound studies. More broadly, his research aims to draw theories of music and media into a cross-disciplinary dialogue that examines technocultural mediation in contemporary sonic practices. He has presented his work at many (inter)national conferences and published in leading journals, including Music Theory Online (2021, 2015), Circuit (2019, 2018), Nuove Musiche (2018), and Kalfou (forthcoming). Most recently, he contributed a chapter to the Oxford Handbook of Time in Music (2021), where he sketches a history of rhythm quantization, examining its attendant technologies and reception within the context of various popular music genres. Outside of academic life, he enjoys playing piano, violin, and guitar, as well as noodling on synthesizers—a hobby put to use in creating a soundtrack for his SMT-Pod episode.

Acknowledgements: This episode includes interviews with Carmine Emanuele Cella (UC Berkeley), Mehak Sawhney (McGill), and Jonathan Sterne (McGill University). The author would like to thank them for their participation.

Keywords: Vocal timbre, machine listening, instrumental synthesis, computer-assisted orchestration, Jonathan Harvey

Supplemental Materials (PDF)

Producer: Aaron Hynds and Jennifer Beavers.

Music Credits:
SMT-Pod Theme music by Zhangcheng Lu;
Closing music "hnna" by David Voss.
Other music performed by Jeno Jando and Nicholas Walker (from Naxos).

Bio: Jennifer L. Campbell is Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the University of Kentucky, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate theory courses and serves as the acting Director for the Certificate in Music Theory Pedagogy. Her research interests include nineteenth-century harmony; music, dance, and politics in the twentieth century; and twenty-first century music theory pedagogy. She has presented her work nationally and internationally, some of her most recent contributions being the Third and Fourth Transnational Opera Studies Conference (2019, 2022), the IV and V Colloquiums of the International Musicological Society’s “Early Music and the New World” Study Group (2020, 2021), the 21st Quinquennial IMS Congress, Athens, Greece (2022), and for the Society of Music Analysis Study Day on Teaching Music Theory in the Digital Age (2021). She has published a variety of articles and book chapters on a range of topics and is delighted to contribute this podcast segment for SMT-Pod.

Acknowledgements: Thank you to Kaitlyn Norman for recording the intro and outro messages, and finalizing the transcript.

Keywords: Nineteenth-century music, Romantic harmony, pedagogy, public musicology, entertainment, academic paper.

Producer: Katrina Roush.

Music Credits:
SMT-Pod Theme music by Zhangcheng Lu
Closing music "hnna" by David Voss
Other performances by Han Chen

This is the fifth and last episode of a five-part series released throughout Season 1.

See author information and supplemental materials for the first episode of the series.

Keywords: Old age, age studies, old listeners