If Chan Marshall's 11th album included all of Cat Power's songs in their original form, it would be a fantastic playlist. It would be genre-spanning, taking in everything from forgotten classics (country superstar Kitty Wells' It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels) to beloved classics (Nico's These Days), from obscure numbers by obscure artists […]

On the evening of August 9, 1956, a few hundred people crammed into a student union lounge at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, some 130 miles northwest of Chicago, for a musical recital. The launch of the Illiac Suite: String Quartet No 4, composed by a member of the chemistry department, Lejaren Hiller Jr, using […]

The road to Voyage, Abba's last studio album and their first in 40 years, started in August with a post from their gleaming new Twitter account, inviting fans to "join us." Billboards appeared all over London, depicting a solar eclipse and a glitter ball in a sci-fi shape. A week later, a 10-track album and […]

This article will discuss how to compose big band music and give some tips for composing big band music. Also known as marching band music, big band music can be utilized in any form of musical performance. You might be interested in knowing how to play your favorite music using your non-electric instrument. Here is […]

How are rock music and alternative music different? This article will discuss the differences between rock music and alternative music. There are two major and distinct types of music in the United States: mainstream and alternative. The term "alternative" has become more controversial lately. Some argue that some alternative music is less than rock and […]

The very first thing that comes to mind when a person thinks of jazz is drums. So what if you want to learn jazz? It is necessary to have a basic understanding of how drums work. In jazz drum sets, there is a bass drum, a high hat, two tom-toms, and a snare drum. There […]