By Tim on December 31, 2018
While I’m sure my musical diet becomes less and less relevant with each passing year, irrelevancy never stopped me before. So here goes. (And if you want to listen while you read, here’s a Spotify playlist.) I’m going to start with Boygenius, the EP that represents the theme of much of the music I listened […]
Posted in music | Tagged 2018, anna burch, boygenius, Elvis Costello, Haley Heynderickx, Jane Gowan, Laura Gibson, Lucy Dacus, Mitski, music, Neko Case, The Beths, The Real Shade, Wye Oak
By Tim on December 30, 2017
The Music I Loved in 2017 The older I get, the harder it is for me to keep up with all the new music that comes out. Both parts of that sentence are hard for me to admit. Fortunately, I’m practiced at denial. So, with that caveat, here’s a look back at my year […]
Posted in music | Tagged Aimee Mann, Alison Crutchfield, Alvvays, best of 2017, Big Thief, Cigarettes After Sex, Craig Finn, Hurray for the Riff Raff, Jason Isbell, Jay Som, Molly Burch, music, Sharon Jones, The Mountain Goats, The National, The War on Drugs, Valerie June, Waxahatchee |
By Tim on December 30, 2016
Since I devoted most of the year to promoting my new book, Bad Singer, perhaps I could be forgiven for thinking I spent more time talking about music than actually listening to it. But it only felt that way. In fact, when I look back, I listened to a lot of great music this year. […]
Posted in music | Tagged 2016, Angel Olsen, Basia Bulat, Bon Iver, car seat headrest, David Bowie, Esme Patterson, Garbage, Hamilton Leithauser, k.d. lang, Kevin Morby, Laura Gibson, Laura Veirs, Leonard Cohen, Lucy Dacus, Margaret Glasby, Mitski, music, Neko Case, Nick Cave, Tanya Tagaq, Thao, Tindersticks, Wilco
By Tim on December 30, 2016
Bad Singer is still popping up in the media so here’s another round-up as 2016 comes to a close. Year-end Lists “A music fan who can’t carry a tune to save his life, Falconer digs into the science of singing, offering himself up as a guinea pig along the way. He might be a terrible […]
Posted in Bad Singer, books, music | Tagged amusia, bad singer, books, how we hear music, music, music and the brain, music science, tone deafness
By Tim on May 3, 2016
A Bad Singer Playlist “Writing about music,” Martin Mull quipped, “is like dancing about architecture.” Part of the problem, of course, is that the reader wants to hear what the writer is going on about. And, inevitably, I refer to many, many songs in Bad Singer: The Surprising Science of Tone Deafness and How We […]
Posted in Bad Singer, music | Tagged bad singer, Elvis Costello, isobel campbell, Joe Strummer, Johnny cash, Mark Lanegan, music, Neko Case, Otis Redding, rolling stones, Shuggie Otis, timbre, tone deafness, Wagner
By Tim on April 16, 2016
The terroir of sound Timbre — the terroir of sound — is crucial to how we hear music. But we don’t talk about it much because, unlike pitch, it has so far proven to be immune to measurement. The fine folks at Hazlitt, the excellent digital publication, have posted a Bad Singer excerpt that explains timbre’s role in music.
Posted in Bad Singer, music | Tagged bad singer, how we hear music, music, music cognition, music science, terroir of sound, timbre
By Tim on January 11, 2016
The music I loved in 2015 I spent 2015 finishing up a book called Bad Singer: The Surprising Science of Tone Deafness and How We Hear Music. So while I thought a lot about how we listen to music, I didn’t have as much free time to actually listen to it as I usually do. Sure, I […]
Posted in Bad Singer, music | Tagged Courtney Barnett, how we hear music, music, Wilco
By Tim on January 10, 2016
The Globe and Mail names Bad Singer to “most anticipated books” list
Posted in Bad Singer, books, music, writing | Tagged amusia, bad singer, how we hear music, music, music and the brain, music science, singing, tone deafness
By Tim on January 10, 2016
My next book, Bad Singer: The Surprising Science of Tone Deafness and How We Hear Music, will be out May 14, 2016. Here’s the cover.
Posted in Bad Singer, books, music, writing | Tagged amusia, bad singer, how we hear music, music, music and the brain, music science, science of music, tone deafness
By Tim on December 31, 2014
What I loved listening to in 2014 I’ve been doing an annual “middle-aged teenager picks his best music of the year” post for a while now. It’s always been a list, though I haven’t ranked my choices and the number of albums I picked varied. It wasn’t that I like lists so much — I don’t — […]
Posted in music | Tagged 2014, Allo Darlin, Angel Olsen, Beck, Courtney Barnett, Dum Dum Girls, First Aid Kit, Lost in the Dream, Lucinda Williams, music, Ought, Sharon Jones, Sharon Van Etten, Spoon, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, St. Vincent, War on Drugs