Dr Tim Hughes

Biography

Educated at Vanderbilt University, The University of North Texas, and The University of Washington, Tim Hughes completed his PhD with Jonathan Bernard in 2003. His dissertation is "Groove and Flow: Six Analytical Essays on the Music of Stevie Wonder".

After spending his high school years in New York City, where he was an eyewitness to the early days of both punk and hip-hop, Tim moved to Nashville, Tennessee to study physics and astronomy at Vanderbilt. He spent the bulk of the 1980s as a songwriter and guitarist in local rock and punk scenes in Nashville and Austin, Texas. He returned to school to study music theory and composition at the University of North Texas, where he wrote his MMus thesis on the early serial music of Igor Stravinsky. While there he also studied guitar, euphonium, and tuba, jazz, and computer-based education; sang with the Men's Chorus and Grand Chorus, and played in the world's largest polka band.

Tim moved to Seattle, Washington for his PhD and also taught harmony, counterpoint, and aural skills at The University of Washington. In 1999 he took a position at Experience Music Project as Multimedia Editor for The Jimi Hendrix Gallery, The History of Recorded Sound, and The Next Rock Record (an exhibit on the music of Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and Janis Joplin). He created numerous audio, video, internet, and multimedia exhibits on these and other subjects. "The Jimi Hendrix Lyric Notebook" and "The History of Recorded Sound", a pair of touch-screen electronic kiosks that he created with the Portland design firm Second Story and producer Kara Costa, received numerous awards, including a Silver Medal in International Design's interactive media review, and were featured by Newsweek, Smithsonian, Rolling Stone, MTV, and VH1. He also created "The Next Rock Record" kiosk with the New York design firm Funny Garbage and producer Char Easter.

Tim has taught music in his native city of San Antonio, Texas at The University of the Incarnate Word, Saint Mary's University, and San Antonio College. He is the former chair of the Society for Music Theory's Popular Music Group and co-founded an annual popular music conference series, held each spring at Experience Music Project. His publications have appeared in Contemporary Music Review and Indiana Theory Review and he has made numerous conference presentations on R&B, soul, funk, punk, hip-hop, blues rock, the music of Stevie Wonder, the use of repetition and grooves, and the analysis of popular music. Among other projects, he is currently working on a monograph entitled Free, Like A River: The Music of Stevie Wonder. You can see a video presentation in which he discusses his research here: Meet Dr. Tim Hughes

He is currently serving as a member of the managing committee for PRIMO (Practice-as-Research in Music Online) for the University of London's Institute for Music Research. Tim also remains an active guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter.

Research Interests

• Music Analysis
• Popular Music
• African-American Music
• The History of Recorded Sound
• Cultural Theory and Music
• Screen Music
• The Music of:
  • Stevie Wonder
  • Jimi Hendrix
  • Prince
  • Sleater-Kinney
  • Nirvana
  • Igor Stravinsky

Publications

Books

• Editor, The Ashgate Library of Essays on Popular Music: Rap, Hip-Hop, Soul and R&B, in preparation (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2011).

Book chapters and journal articles

• "Kurt Cobain" in preparation for American National Biography, ed. by Mark C. Carnes (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
• “‘Two, three, many 1968s’ – Cultural Crossovers in North America”, with Sumanth Gopinath, in preparation for Beate Kutschke and Barley Norton, Dissenting Voices Across Borders: Music and Protest in 1968 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
• “Trapped within the Wheels: Flow and Repetition, Modernism and Tradition in Stevie Wonder’s ‘Living for the City’,” in Expression in Pop-Rock Music, ed. Walter Everett (New York: Routledge, 2007).
• 13 feature essays for the John Covach textbook Reelin’ In the Years (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2006):

“Bing Crosby and the Kraft Music Hall” (pp. 22-23)
“Ladies and Gentlemen: Elvis Presley!” (80-81)
“American Bandstand” (110-111)
“The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show” (162-163)
“Top 40 Radio” (206-207)
“Brown in Boston” (248-249)
“Woodstock” (296-297)
“The Growth of FM Rock Radio” (324-325)
“Soul Train” (378-379)
“Music on Saturday Night Live” (428-429)
“Motown 25” (448-449)
“The Parents Music Resource Center Hearings” (498-499)
“American Idol” (528-529)

• “Nirvana: The University of Washington HUB Ballroom, Seattle, 6 January 1990,” Performance And Popular Music: History, Place And Time, ed. Ian Inglis (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.,2006).

Reviews

• Review of Understanding Rock: Essays in Musical Analysis, ed. John Covach and Graeme M. Boone, Indiana Theory Review, 21 (Spring/Fall 2000), 197-222.
• Review of Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes (retitled for the second edition as The Old, Weird America) by Greil Marcus, Contemporary Music Review, 18/4 (2000): American Rock and the Classical Music Tradition, 159-69.

Multimedia Exhibits

• The History of Recorded Sound electronic kiosk, Experience Music Project, Seattle, WA, August 2000.
• The Next Rock Record electronic kiosk, Experience Music Project, Seattle, WA, June 2000.
• The Jimi Hendrix Lyric Notebook electronic kiosk, Experience Music Project, Seattle, WA, April 2000.
• 121 MEG (Multimedia Exhibit Guide) audio programs written and produced for the Hendrix Gallery, Experience Music Project, Seattle, WA, June 2000.
• 36 MEG (Multimedia Exhibit Guide) audio programs written and produced for the Next Rock Record Exhibit, Experience Music Project, Seattle, WA, June 2000.

Broadcast Appearances

• Appearance on BBC Southern Counties Radio on 19 February 2009 to discuss the 2009 Brit Awards.
• Interview on KEXP, Seattle, WA, 20 April 2007. A recording of this interview is available here.

Academic Presentations

• “‘Musical Crimes’ and ‘Latter Day Sins’: The Declining Image of Stevie Wonder’s Music in the 1980s”, 2010 Annual Meeting of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music-US, New Orleans, LA, 9-11 April 2010.
• “‘The Riff of the Century’”, University of Nottingham Music Research Seminar Series, 1 December 2009.
• “The Fulcrum: Radical Changes in North American Music and Society in 1968”, The John Bird Music Seminars, Cardiff University, 14 October 2008.
• “‘The Beautiful Ones Always Smash the Picture... Always, Every Time’: Analysing Prince’s Performances at the O2 Arena”, University of Surrey Dept. of Music & Sound Recording Research Seminar Series, Guildford, 4 December  2007.
• “Parts of the Elephant: Approaches to Analysing Popular Music,” Analysis for Non-Analysts, Research Training Roadshow, Institute for Music Research in association with the Society for Music Analysis, University of Manchester, 13 November 2007 and University of London, 20 November 2007.
• “‘Show Me Your Riffs!’: Punk-Rock Groove Complexes in the Music of Sleater-Kinney,” Waking Up From History: Music, Time, and Place, Sixth Annual Music Conference, Experience Music Project, Seattle, WA, 21 April 2007.
• Panel member for “Popular Music Pedagogy,” a panel discussion held by the SMT Popular Music Interest Group, 2007 Annual Meeting of the Society for Music Theory and the American Musicological Society in Los Angeles, CA, 4 November 2006.
• “‘It Means Something and It’s Intense as Hell’: Timbre in the Music of Janis Joplin, Neil Young, and Nirvana”, University of Surrey Dept. of Music & Sound Recording Research Seminar Series, Guildford, 17 January 2006.
• “The Autotelic Groove: Self-Generating, Repeated Figures in the Music of Stevie Wonder,” 2004 Annual Meeting of the Society for Music Theory and the American Musicological Society in Seattle, WA, 13 November 2004.
• Chair of the session “Activism and Ideology,” held at Skip a Beat: Rewriting the Story of Popular Music, Second Annual Music Conference, Experience Music Project, Seattle, WA, 11 April 2003.
• “Will the ‘Real’ Song Please Stand Up? The Multiple Original Versions of Stevie Wonder’s ‘Superstition’,” Crafting Sounds, Creating Meaning: Making Popular Music in the U.S., First Annual Music Conference, Experience Music Project, Seattle, WA, 12 April 2002.
• “Repetition, Pop Music, and Stevie Wonder,” presented at “Analysis of Popular Music,” a special joint session of the Society for American Music and IASPM-US at Toronto 2000: Musical Intersections, a meeting of music societies in Toronto, Ontario, 5 November 2000.
• “‘Now Sandwiches:’ The Use of Quotation in Rap Music,” presented at “Timbre and Technology in Rock and Rap,” a special session sponsored by the SMT Popular Music Interest Group, at the 1999 Annual Meeting of the Society for Music Theory in Atlanta, GA, 11 November 1999.
• “Bottled Lightning: An Attempt to Develop an Analytical Notation for Slide Guitar,” presented at the 1997 Annual Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology and IASPM-US, Pittsburgh, PA, 23 October 1997.
• “A NEW Negro Spiritual: The Musical Transformation of Stevie Wonder’s ‘Pastime Paradise’ into Coolio’s ‘Gangsta's Paradise’,” presented at The Ethnic in Music, a Conference, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK, 11 July 1997.
• “‘Living for the City’: Structural Integrity and Detail in the Music of Stevie Wonder,” presented at Cross(over) Relations: Scholarship, Popular Music, and the Canon, The Eastman School of Music, Rochester, NY, 26 September 1996.

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Public lectures

• “Jimi Hendrix and Soul Guitar,” a one-hour presentation made at Experience Music Project, 27 August 2000.
• “The Collaboration between Duane Allman and Eric Clapton,” Experience Music Project, 30 July 2000.
• “Behind the Screens: Kiosk Development at EMP,” Experience Music Project, 22 July 2000.

Teaching

At Surrey, Tim has taught HE1 Popular Music Harmony, HE1 Harmony (A/C), HE2 Advanced Popular Music Harmony, HE2 Popular Song Analysis, HE3 African-American Music, HE3 Oral Presentation, and the MMus module Cultural Theory and Music, as well as advising numerous undergraduate research projects and dissertations, MMus and MRes case studies and dissertations, and PhD dissertations. He also co-marks performances alongside Head of Performance Clive Williamson.

Departmental Duties

• Programme Director (2011), Creative Music Technology
• Programme Director (2008-10),  Music (3-year)
• Programme Director (2009-10),  Music (4-year)
• Convenor of the Music Research Seminar Series (2006-2009)
• Webmaster, Music Departmental website and Performance website (2005-2009)
• Departmental representative to SPAB-T (2008-09)

Affiliations

• Society for Music Theory
• College Music Society
• International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM)