Pat Metheny (Jazz Piano Solos, v. 57)

Another volume of solo piano arrangements, this time of tunes by Pat Metheny (and in some cases Lyle Mays).

Quite a few people of my generation seem to know of Metheny only from the Pat Metheny Group recordings. I happen to think those are amazing, but I know they do not always appeal to jazz purists. But it would be a huge mistake to think Metheny is defined by those recordings. Check out albums like 80/81, Question and Answer, Day Trip, and the recent solo acoustic recordings, such as Moon Dial. Metheny does straight jazz, too. And he writes incredible ballads!

Duke Ellington (Jazz Piano Solos, v. 9)

I am a HUGE Duke Ellington fan. He wrote so much great music, and his band, at its peak, was just incredibly powerful. The great classic is Ellington at Newport, from 1956, which relaunched his career and contains one of the greatest sax solos ever. And there are Jazz Party in Stereo and the great suite Black, Brown and Beige. Not to mention the Concert of Sacred Music, which still blows me away.

I was reading a book about jazz music theory a little while ago. Repeatedly, it would say things like: Jazz musicians didn't relaly start using suspended chords until the 1960s. Except Duke, who was using them in the 30s. He was so far ahead of everyone else that it is ridiculous. 

And if you don't know albums like Money Jungle (with Charles Mingus and Max Roach), then you are in for a real treat: Duke could play 'outside', too. And don't forget the amazing album he made with Coltrane in the early 60s.

This book contains arrangements of some of Duke's music. The links below are to 'official' scores on Musescore, meaning you can't download them without paying, but the complete sheet music is there, and you could play them off a tablet or something. Most helpfully, you can listen to at least some of them (played via MIDI), which is great for getting the rhythms right.

Miles Davis (Jazz Piano Solos, v. 1)

Another post of links to Musescore versions of arrangements of jazz standards. This one is of Miles Davis tunes---mostly ones he wrote, and others he recorded. The difficulty ranges from things I can play (intermediate level) to things it'll be a while until I can play. 

These are 'official' scores, meaning you can't download these 'official' scores without paying (and I've already paid for the books, thank you), but the complete sheet music is there, and you could play them off a tablet or something. Most helpfully, you can listen to them (played via MIDI), which is great for getting the rhythms right.

Jazz Fusion (Jazz Piano Solos, v. 54)

Hal Leonard publishes some really great collections of piano solo arrangements of jazz standards. The difficulty ranges from things I can play (intermediate level) to things it'll be a while until I can play. The tunes in this particular book are definitely on the harder side.

These do not come with recordings, even online. Fortunately, they have started putting them on MuseScore. Not all the songs are there, presumably due to issues around who owns the copyright. You can't download these 'official' scores without paying (and I've already paid for the books, thank you), but the complete sheet music is there, and you could play them off a tablet or something. Most helpfully, you can listen to them (played via MIDI), which is great for getting the rhythms right.

Jazz Ballads (Jazz Piano Solos, v. 10)

Most of these are on MuseScore, as 'official' scores. That means they cannot be printed or downloaded without paying. But the full sheet music is there, so you could play them off a tablet or something. And many of them, at least, can be listened to. It's nice to be able to hear them when trying to learn the arrangement (and before deciding whether to bother).

Burgmüller, 25 Easy and Progressive Studies, Op. 100

These are nice pieces for someone at my level: They get more difficult as they go, and they're not boring. You can download the music from IMSLP. There are lots of YouTube videos about these, too.

Schirmer's Giant Book of Intermediate Classical Piano Music

This book contains 269 pieces by 3 composers, covering early intermediate and, I guess, just 'intermediate'. (There is a separate book of 'upper' intermediate pieces.) Some of these are also in the Early Intermediate book.

The links below are to scores on MuseScore.com, which you can both download and play, in most cases, so you can hear the piece while trying to learn it. The 'official scores' cannot be downloaded or printed, without payment, and cannot always be listened to, at this time, though my sense is that more and more of them can be. I've also included links, in some cases, to IMSLP.org, the Petrucci Music Library.

George Gershwin (Jazz Piano Solos v. 26)

Hal Leonard publishes some really great collections of piano solo arrangements of jazz standards. The difficulty ranges from things I can play (intermediate level) to things it'll be a while until I can play. But these do not come with recordings, even online. Fortunately, they have started putting them on MuseScore. You can't download them without paying (I've already paid for the books!), but you can listen to them (played via MIDI), which can be very helpful, especially for getting the rhythms right. 

New Paper: Are 'Facials' Misogynistic?

Find it here.

Abstract:

So-called ‘facial’ cumshots, when a man ejaculates onto a woman’s face, are very common in pornography.  While they are frequently said to be degrading and misogynistic, the fact that women are usually shown as enjoying this act should make us think again. Facials are instead rooted in male insecurity: of a fear that an aspect of how men orgasm—semen—is disgusting to women. By contrast, the fantasy, which pornography makes vivid, is that women might not just tolerate but celebrate and eroticize both ejaculation and its product. The way mainstream pornography presents facials may often be misogynistic, but it does not have to be, and it is not always. 

NOTE: This may not be a philosophy paper. My intention is to submit it to a sexuality studies journal. 

Published: "Does Pornography Presuppose Rape Myths?"

Abstract:

Rae Langton and Caroline West argue that pornography silences women by presupposing misogynistic attitudes, such as that women enjoy being raped. More precisely, they claim that a somewhat infamous pictorial, ‘Dirty Pool’, makes such presuppositions, and that it is typical in this respect. I argue for four claims. (1) There are empirical reasons to doubt that women are silenced in the way that Langton and West claim they are. (2) There is no evidence that very much pornography makes the sorts of presuppositions that Langton and West's explanation of silencing requires it to make. (3) Even ‘Dirty Pool’, for all its other problems, does not make such presuppositions. (4) Langton and West misread ‘Dirty Pool’ because they do not take proper account of the fact that pornography often traffics in sexual fantasy. The broader lesson is that we need to read pornography more sensitively if we are to understand its capacity to shape socio-sexual norms (for good or for ill).

Find it here.

Porn Reviews Site

Whenever I go somewhere to talk about my work on pornography, I have at least a few people ask me whether there really is decent porn out there. Well, there is, if you know where to look. Even then, though, it may hard to find the really good stuff. So I've started a new blog, "Sexually Explicit Visual Media", where I'm going to post short reviews of that sort of thing. I'll be watching quite a few such films in the next few months, since I'll be teaching my course on pornography this spring.

At the moment, the only things there are a mission statement and an annotated list of links to websites that have 'better' porn. But I'm intending to post the first review within a day or two. I'll link to those reviews from this blog.