Tim Hughes is a popular music scholar and course leader for the BMus (Hons) in Songwriting and Recording. His teaching and research interests include the theory and analysis of popular music, African-American music, harmony, songwriting, repetition and rhythm, ludomusicology, and the museology of music. He has focused in particular on the music of Stevie Wonder and Jimi Hendrix, as well as Prince, Nirvana, and Sleater-Kinney, and on the subjects of the history of recorded sound, quotation and cultural memory in hip-hop, and developing new ways to analyse and teach popular music.
Tim was a songwriter and guitarist in Nashville and Austin in the 1980s before studying composition and theory at North Texas and writing his PhD on the music of Stevie Wonder at the University of Washington. He also designed and edited multimedia exhibits at Experience Music Project in Seattle (now the Museum of Popular Culture) on the music of Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, and Eric Clapton and the history of recorded sound. His exhibits won major international awards from HOW, International Design, and Communication Arts and appeared in Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and Smithsonian, and on MTV, VH-1, MSNBC, and NBC’s Today.
Tim also founded MoPop’s international popular music conference (held every spring from 2002 to the present). He has appeared on KEXP online, BBC Southern Counties Radio, Kane FM, Dutch Radio 2, curated the African-American Music exhibit at the Lewis Elton Gallery in Guildford, and curated music film series in 2011 and 2013 for the Guildford International Music Festival.
Tim is from San Antonio, Texas. He previously taught at the University of Washington, the University of the Incarnate Word, San Antonio College, and St. Mary's University in the US and at the University of Surrey in England. He lives with his family in Chichester, West Sussex.
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Qualifications
BSc (Vanderbilt University)
PGCAP (University of Surrey)
MMus (University of North Texas)
PhD (University of Washington)
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Memberships
Fellow of the Mannes Institute for Advanced Studies in Music TheoryFellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA)Member of the Society for Music Theory (SMT)Member of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM)
Teaching
I am a popular music scholar with interests including the theory and analysis of popular music, African-American music, harmony, songwriting, repetition and rhythm, ludomusicology and the museology of music. I have focused on the music of Stevie Wonder, Jimi Hendrix, Prince, Nirvana and Sleater-Kinney, and on the history of recorded sound, quotation and cultural memory in hip-hop, along with new ways to analyse and teach popular music.
Research
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Research and publications
Books
Everett, W. (2007) Expression in Pop-Rock Music, 2nd ed. ‘Trapped within the Wheels: Flow and Repetition, Modernism and Tradition in Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City”.’ 241-68 Routledge. ISBN 978-0-41597-958-7.Inglis, I. (2006) Performance And Popular Music: History, Place And Time. ‘Nirvana: The University of Washington HUB Ballroom, Seattle, 6 January 1990.’ 155-71 Ashgate. ISBN 978-0-75464-056-1.Covach, J. (2006) What’s That Sound? An Introduction to Rock and Its History. Norton. ISBN 978-0-39397-575-8• Journal ArticlesHughes, T. (2000) Review of Understanding Rock: Essays in Music Analysis. Indiana Theory Review 21: 197-222.Hughes, T. (2000) Review of Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes. Contemporary Music Review 18/4: 159-69.
Exhibitions and Curatorships
African-American Music for the Lewis Elton Gallery, Guildford (19 Jan 2015 – 6 Feb 2015).‘What Does It Sound Like, Baby?’: The Quest for Sound in Music Creation for the 2013 Guildford International Music Festival (18 Jan 2013 – 19 Mar 2013).Signifyin(g) the Times: African-American Musical Performance on Film for the 2011 Guildford International Music Festival (18 Jan 2011 – 22 Mar 2011).The Jimi Hendrix Lyric Notebook Electronic Kiosk for Experience Music Project (23 Jun 2000).The Next Rock Record Electronic Kiosk for Experience Music Project (23 Jun 2000).The History of Recorded Sound Electronic Kiosk for Experience Music Project (23 Jun 2000). -
Conferences
17 Apr 2015 - The State We’re In: Directions in Researching Post-1900 British Music. ‘“Is He Really That Good?”: Jimi Hendrix and English Music’, Guildford.
3 Nov 2012 – Annual Meeting of the Society for Music Theory. ‘What Does It Mean to Analyze Popular Music? Approaches and Methodologies to Analyzing Popular Music’, New Orleans.
10 Apr 2010 - Annual Meeting of the IASPM-US. ‘“Musical Crimes” and “Latter Day Sins”: The Declining Image of Stevie Wonder’s Music in the 1980s’, New Orleans.
15 Mar 2010 - Postgraduate Research Training Day. ‘Sounds: Performance Studies, Analysis of Recordings, and Popular Music in Performance’, Institute for Music Research, London.
1 Dec 2009 - Music Research Seminar Series. ‘“The Riff of the Century”: The Paradoxical Story and Nature of Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition”’, The University of Nottingham.
27 and 31 Mar 2009 – Research Training Roadshow. ‘Studying Popular Music’, Institute for Music Research, Liverpool and London.
8 Nov 2008 - Annual Meeting of the Society for Music Theory. ‘Career Issues in Popular Music Theory’, Nashville.
14 October 2008 – The Bird Seminars. ‘The Fulcrum: Radical Changes in North American Music and Society in 1968’, Cardiff University.
13 and 20 Mar 2007 –Research Training Roadshow. ‘Parts of the Elephant: Approaches to Analysing Popular Music’, Institute for Music Research, Manchester and London.
21 Apr 2007 - Waking Up From History: Music, Time, and Place. ‘“Show Me Your Riffs!”: Punk-Rock Groove Complexes in the Music of Sleater-Kinney,’ Experience Music Project, Seattle.
4 Nov 2006 - Annual Meeting of the Society for Music Theory. ‘Popular Music Pedagogy’, Los Angeles.
13 Nov 2004 - Annual Meeting of the Society for Music Theory. ‘The Autotelic Groove: Self-Generating, Repeated Figures in the Music of Stevie Wonder’, Seattle.
12 Apr 2002 - Crafting Sounds, Creating Meaning: Making Popular Music in the US. ‘Will the Real Song Please Stand Up? The Multiple Original Versions of Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition”’, Experience Music Project, Seattle.
5 Nov 2000 – Analysis of Popular Music. ‘Repetition, Pop Music, and Stevie Wonder’, Toronto 2000: Musical Intersections, Toronto.
11 Nov 1999 - Timbre and Technology in Rock and Rap, a Special Session at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Music Theory. ‘“Now Sandwiches”: The Use of Quotation in Rap Music’, Atlanta.
23 Oct 1997 - Annual Meeting of the IASPM-US. ‘Bottled Lightning: An Attempt to Develop an Analytical Notation for Slide Guitar’, Pittsburgh.
11 July 1997 – The Ethnic in Music, a Conference. ‘“A NEW Negro Spiritual”: The Musical Transformation of Stevie Wonder’s “Pastime Paradise” into Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise”’, Leeds.
26 September 1996 - Cross(over) Relations: Scholarship, Popular Music, and the Canon. ‘“Living for the City”: Structural Integrity and Detail in the Music of Stevie Wonder’, Rochester, NY.
