Shaugn O'Donnell

Deputy Dean

Popular Music Studies Faculty

(he / they)

Additional Departments/Affiliated Programs

Music

Areas of Expertise/Research

  • Guitar
  • Music Analysis
  • Music Theory

Building

North Academic Center (NAC)

Office

5/225

Phone

212-650-8166

O'Donnell backstage before a gig at My Father's Place

Shaugn O'Donnell

Profile

Guitarist and analytical musicologist specializing in twentieth-century music. Research interests include post-tonal theory, formal analysis, and rock music, particularly improvisation and psychedelia.

Scholarship

Papers and Publications

“Weir(d) Rhythm Guitar.” Popular/American Culture Association Annual Conference. San Antonio, TX. April 7, 2023.

“Rambling and Wandering: Grateful Dead Harmonic Progressions.” In The Grateful Dead Studies Association Proceedings, Volume 2 (2022): 46–61. Originally presented at the Popular/American Culture Association Conference. Virtual Conference (Seattle, WA). April 15, 2022.

Workingman’s Dead?” Southwest Popular/American Culture Association Annual Conference. Albuquerque, NM. February 21, 2020.

“‘Silence in the Studio!’: Collage as Retransition in Pink Floyd’s ‘Atom Heart Mother Suite’.” The Routledge Companion to Popular Music: Expanding Approaches, edited by Ciro Scotto, Kenneth Smith, and John Brackett. Routledge, 2018. An earlier version was presented as “‘Mind Your Throats Please’: Collage as Retransition in Pink Floyd's ‘Atom Heart Mother Suite’.” Timbre and Technology in Rock and Rap, special session, Society for Music Theory Annual Conference, Atlanta, GA. November 11, 1999.

“Psychedelic Masquerade: Sgt. Pepper and the Summer of Love.” Revisiting the Summer of Love, Rethinking the Counterculture. San Francisco, CA. July 29, 2017. Also presented at the Summit of Creativity: A Celebration of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Ann Arbor, MI. June 1, 2017.

“There’s Nothing Like A Grateful Dead Analysis.” “All Graceful Instruments,” The Grateful Dead in Context – An Interdisciplinary Symposium. New York, NY. June 23, 2017.

“The Road[s] Not Taken.” Southwest Popular/American Culture Association Annual Conference. Albuquerque, NM. February 16, 2017.

“Formal Design in a ‘Playing’ Palindrome.” “So Many Roads”: The World in the Grateful Dead, San Jose State University, CA. November 6, 2014. An earlier version was presented as “Harmonic Relations in a 1973 Palindrome.” Southwest Popular/American Culture Association Annual Conference, Albuquerque, NM. February 9, 2012.

Pink Floyd’s Interstellar Journey to The Dark Side of the Moon.” Institute for Popular Music Virtual Conference, University of Rochester, NY. May 27, 2014. Also presented as part of the Institute for Popular Music Lecture Series, University of Rochester, NY. September 18, 2013.

“Pink Floyd and the Academy.” Pink Floyd: Sight, Sound, and Structure Interdisciplinary Conference. Princeton University. April 12, 2014.

“A Preliminary Taxonomy of Garcia’s Solos.” Southwest Popular/American Culture Association Annual Conference. Albuquerque, NM. February 21, 2014.

“The Big Bang and the Formation of ‘Space’.” Popular/American Culture Association Annual Conference, San Antonio, TX. April 21, 2011.

“American Chaos: Charles Ives and the Grateful Dead.” In The Grateful Dead in Concert: Essays on Live Improvisation, edited by Jim Tuedio and Stan Spector, 58–70. Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publishers, 2010. Earlier versions were presented as: “Uncle Charles’s Band: More on Charles Ives and the Grateful Dead.” Southwest/Texas Popular/American Culture Association Annual Conference, Albuquerque, NM. February 14, 2008; “American Chaos: Charles Ives and the Grateful Dead.” Unbroken Chain: The Grateful Dead in Music, Culture, and Memory, Amherst, MA. November 17, 2007.

Embracing Relational Abundance.” Music Theory Online 13.3 (2007).

“Bobby, Béla, and Borrowing in ‘Victim or the Crime’.” In All Graceful Instruments: The Contexts of the Grateful Dead Phenomenon, edited by Nicholas Meriwether, 38–51. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007. An earlier version was presented as “Bobby, Béla, and Igor: Musical Borrowings in ‘Victim or the Crime’.” Southwest/Texas Popular/American Culture Association Annual Conference, Albuquerque, NM. February 26, 1999.

Review of What to Listen for in Rock: A Stylistic Analysis by Ken Stephenson (Yale University Press, 2002).” Music Theory Spectrum 28.1 (2006): 132–140.

“‘On the Path’: Tracing Tonal Coherence in Dark Side of the Moon.” In “Speak to Me”: The Legacy of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, edited by Russell Reising, 87–103. Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2005. Originally presented as the keynote at the “Intra-Disciplinary Approaches to Popular Music Studies” conference, New York, NY. April 24, 2004.

“If-Only Networks and Analytical Desire.” Dublin International Conference on Music Analysis, Dublin, Ireland. June 24, 2005.

“Sailing to the Sun: Revolver's Influence on Pink Floyd.” In Every Sound There Is”: The Beatles' Revolver and the Transformation of Rock and Roll, edited by Russell Reising, 69–86. Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing. 2002. An earlier version was presented as “The Band Next Door: The Beatles and Early Pink Floyd.” Beatles 2000, Jyväskylä, Finland. June 17, 2000.

“K-Nets, Voice Leading, and Recursion.” Louisiana State University Music Theory Colloquium Series, Baton Rouge, LA. April 23, 1999.

“Space, Motion, and Other Musical Metaphors.” In Perspectives on the Grateful Dead: Critical Writings, edited by Robert G. Weiner, 127–135, 1999. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Originally presented at the Southwest/Texas Popular/American Culture Association Annual Conference, Lubbock, TX. January 29, 1998.

“Klumpenhouwer Networks, Isography, and the Molecular Metaphor.” Intégral 12 (1998): 53–80. Originally presented as part of the University of Iowa Music Theory and Musicology Lecture Series, Iowa City, IA. April 17, 1998.

“Computer Technology in Making Music.” Technology-Enhanced Education at Tulane: Present and Future, New Orleans, LA. April 5, 1997.

“Transformational Voice Leading in Two Songs by Charles Ives.” Society for Music Theory Annual Conference, Baton Rouge, LA. November 3, 1996. Also presented at the Music Theory Midwest Annual Conference, Kalamazoo, MI. May 17, 1996.

“An Intuitive Approach to Klumpenhouwer Networks.” University of Wisconsin Musicology Colloquium Series, Madison, WI. March 22, 1996.

“Linear Ordering of the Chromatic Aggregate in Classical Symphonic Music,” co-authored with Henry Burnett. Music Theory Spectrum 18.1 (1996): 22–50.

“Cybermusic: Exploring the World of Music-Related Lists.” Musicology via Modem: Potentials and Pitfalls, Joint Meeting of the Greater New York Chapter of the American Musicological Society and the Northeast Association for Computing in the Humanities, New York City, NY. September 23, 1994.

“Harmonic Progression and Voice Leading in the First of Stravinsky’s Movements for Piano and Orchestra.” Music Theory Society of New York State Annual Conference, Flushing, NY. October 10, 1993.

Courses

  • Pink Floyd
  • Fretboard Skills
  • Rock Analysis
  • Post-Tonal Theory
  • Tonal Harmony

Education

Ph.D., Music Theory  (1997)
Graduate Center, The City University of New York