Ethan Hein, a music educator with a jazz background, writes about music theory, tuning, rhythm, and popular music.
HN commenters link his explanations of jazz and chord progressions and his J Dilla writing, though one calls conventional music theory too narrow.
Here’s a better answer, in my opinion: https://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2020/so-what/
> If you have never listened to jazz before, Miles Davis’ Kind Of Blue is a great place to start. The heart of the album is its first track, “So What.”
> “So What” is famous for being one of the first modal jazz tunes. This just means that it doesn’t have a lot of chord changes compared to the fast harmonic rhythms of bebop. The A sections use the D Dorian mode. This scale is especially easy to play on the piano; just play the white keys. The B section is up a half step, on E-flat Dorian. If you play the black keys on the piano, you get five of the seven notes in this scale. I had a complete beginner pianist improvise a solo over “So What” in class. I called out when she needed to switch between the white and black keys. It worked!
> “So What” occupies a similar place in jazz pedagogy to the blues: it’s simple enough for beginners to play, but you can devote a lifetime to practicing and never get to the bottom of it. If you want to learn how to improvise jazz, you should definitely learn Miles’ solo.
> Black American music uses lots of call and response as a structuring element. “So What” has many call-and-response pairs at different scales. Here are all the layers I can detect, ranging from micro to macro … (7)
> I would bet that this fractal-like self-similarity across different levels is a major reason for the tune’s appeal. Any tune this immediately catchy yet also structurally deep is…
It's worth noting that GP's example was about non-quantized rhythmic patterns, which are poorly understand by music theory.
'There are two reasons why my fellow academics should be engaging closely with J Dilla’s music. The first is just cultural literacy; Dilla was influential and is more widely imitated with every passing year. The second is maybe more important: there are not widely used analytical tools for studying this music, and there is a whole world of microrhythm and groove out there that the music academy has been neglecting. Right now, “music theory” classes are mostly harmony and voice-leading classes, and that harmony is too often limited to the historical practices of the Western European aristocracy. But rhythm is at least as important as harmony, and in some musics, significantly more so. There is a persistent belief that rhythm is “less intellectual” or “more instinctive” than harmony and therefore less worthy of serious study. That is pure atavistic racist nonsense, but it also means that it’s hard to do better, because we don’t have the vocabulary or the methods to study rhythm in the depth that it deserves. If we can figure out how to talk about Dilla time, then that will open up a lot of other kinds of time as well.'
https://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2022/dilla-time/
Jacob Collier has tricks like using how many cents out of tune certain chords are in equal temperament from just intonation to find a sequence of chords that modulate to a half-sharp key without it ever sounding out of tune:
https://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2019/jacob-colliers-four-magical-chords/
That's just the beginning. He posts long breakdowns of his tracks on YouTube explaining everything he does in detail. He's not only a musical virtuoso, but he's incredibly adept at recording and Apple's Logic/tech in general, so he's able to blend those skills seamlessly.
With Jacob and others getting people interested in tunings and unusual harmony, there are now lots of people on YouTube creating music that exploits shifting tunings or alternate systems like 24TET, etc. So to the grandparent post, don't worry - there has never been a time when so many young people are playing with and exploiting tuning systems to create interesting music.
There's a music teacher at NYU, Ethan Hein, that seems to be working on this exactly in the context of groove pedagogy. For example, he recently picked apart the amen break in a blog post [0] and tried to replicate it in ableton from scratch, methodically. He first lies out the basic pieces or the groove, then builds up the groove adding and removing elements, gradually complexifying it.
As someone who has trouble with drum patterns as well I really liked the idea.
[0] https://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2023/building-the-amen-break/
Amazing, hearing it played sends chills down my spine.
It's not as old, but in Wernor Herzog's documentary "Cave of Forgotten Dreams", an archeologist plays a 30,000 year old vulture bone flute. It even uses the pentatonic scale!
Some links about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUCBBDV2Tzk
https://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2011/flute-of-forgotten-dreams/
https://www.npr.org/2009/06/24/105823127/a-little-flute-music-to-warm-the-cave
I recall that he said something like: "I don't play a lot of notes. I just try to play the right ones".
I think that if a guitarist plays a lot of notes real fast, it often sounds like he or she is rapidly searching for the right one. Instead, BB played the right note at the right time -- with the right lead-in (slide up or bend).
http://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2015/bb-king-gives-us-a-guitar-lesson/