Music Theory Songs with David Newman

David Newman shares his music theory and aural skills teaching songs, as well as some of the stories behind them, in this laughter-filled episode of Notes from the Staff.

Links:

The Well Trained Ear on BandCamp

David Newman on YouTube

Show notes:

0:00:20 Introductions

0:02:03 How did you begin writing teaching songs?

0:03:48 David's most popular song: The Periodic Table Rap

0:11:00 Greg and Leah's favorite songs of David

0:11:46 The Dominant Seventh Song

0:14:13 Hinting at future topics in songs about more basic topics

0:15:57 Sophie Lay on My Sofa

0:20:00 Collaborators on the songs

0:23:47 Third Away song

0:26:22 Navigating singing Bach professionally, and recording these popular style theory songs

0:30:25 Intervals in Inversions song

0:34:00 David's favorite song: Second Inversions

0:38:45 The Chord Spelling Song

0:42:51 How teaching songs can help students hear and recognize things as they're happening.

0:46:41 Where can listeners find your songs?

0:49:30 The Notes from the Staff theme song

Transcript:

[music]

0:00:20.0 Leah Sheldon: Welcome to Notes From The Staff, a podcast from the creators of uTheory, where we dive into conversations about music theory, ear training, and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education.

0:00:33.9 Greg Ristow: Hi, I'm Greg Ristow, founder of uTheory and associate professor of conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory.

0:00:40.6 LS: Hi, I'm Leah Sheldon, head of teacher engagement for uTheory.

0:00:44.6 David Newman: Hi, I'm David Newman. I teach at James Madison University and I write code and create content for uTheory. A quick thanks to listeners for all your comments and episode suggestions. We love to read them. Send them our way by email at [e-mail] and remember to like us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

0:01:03.7 GR: In our second to last episode for the season, we're turning the tables one more time. And Leah and I will be interviewing our co-host Baritone David Newman. David teaches aural skills, music theory and voice on the faculty of James Madison University. He's famous for his teaching songs, which have millions of views on YouTube. He released his music theory songs in a 2019 album, The Well Trained Ear. They're widely used by elementary, middle, high school and college teachers. Previously, David taught at the University of California Davis, San Jose State University, University of Virginia and Shenandoah Conservatory. He maintains an active performing career as a classical singer and can be heard on the Philips, Dorian, Analecta, K617, and Nexus Labels. Despite COVID-19 precautions, David continued to make music and inspire others to join in the harmony with his innovative drive and choir concept profiled in both the LA Times and New York Times. David thanks for joining us.

0:02:01.5 DN: I'm so glad to be here.

[chuckle]

0:02:03.6 GR: So, we're gonna talk about your teaching songs which are just utterly delightful. I think this is a lovely follow up to our episode a couple of weeks ago with Jed Dearybury about The Playful Classroom. How did you get started writing teaching songs? 

0:02:16.6 DN: Oh, wow. I mean, I could go really far back and say that I initially went to music school with the thought of that being a backup for my great career as a singer-songwriter, but really it started when my daughter was in third grade and she brought me a study packet for science and asked me if I would help her study for a test. And we looked at the... I looked at the packet and there was a lot of stuff to memorize. And I said, "You know, we could probably turn some of this into a song." And so I wrote a quick little ditty about soil, [chuckle] and its components and recorded it. And I threw it out on YouTube just to share it that night and got such a positive response that I wrote another song the next day. And I wrote four songs in four days and then I completely burnt out.

[laughter]

0:03:25.2 DN: But then I did it again several times, and this was also in the first year that I was teaching aural skills. And so, later in that year, I just thought, "If I can do this for my third grade daughter, why can't I do this for my aural skills students?" And then I wrote a few songs for them and it just kept going from there.

0:03:48.8 GR: What's your most popular song? Is it one of your music theory songs or is it one of your songs for other... [laughter] A uTheory advantage of having YouTube statistics, right? So.

0:04:00.6 DN: You know, I know... And it's... I don't know if I should be embarrassed a