Jeff Croft

I’m a digital product designer and developer in Seattle, WA. I currently work with nGen Works, and recently co-founded Lendle, a Kindle book sharing service.

Some of my clients include Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Copious, The New York Review of Books, The Lawrence Journal-World, and the University of Washington.

I’ve authored two books on web and interactive design and spoken at dozens of conferences around the world.

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Items tagged musictheory

  • Link // 02.27.2012 // 9:34 AM // 0 Comments

    Jam Tracks and Black Keys

    As a jazz student turned web designer, I’m a sucker for articles that draw parallels between music theory and our industry. This one is simple, but it makes a great point.

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  • Link // 01.18.2012 // 9:33 AM // 0 Comments

    Designing The Well-Tempered Web

    I get a little bit hard for any article that compares web design to music theory, and this one from Rob Flaherty certainly fits the bill.

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  • Link // 04.29.2010 // 11:32 PM // 0 Comments

    Syncopation in the Super Mario Bros. theme

    Nothing like a good music theory blog post to get me going.

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  • Link // 03.07.2007 // 6:57 PM // 0 Comments

    Zelda Music of Golden Proportions

    Discussion of the theory behind the Zelda music, which heavily incorporates the “Golden Ratio.” Although the article doesn’t mention it, this isn’t particularly novel. Composers like Bela Bartok used math principles like the Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci Series all the time in creating their music. Good stuff.

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  • Link // 12.14.2006 // 4:55 PM // 1 Comment

    Matrix Generator: Create your own 12-tone row

    A whole lot of fun for music theory nerds.

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  • Link // 05.24.2006 // 8:21 AM // 0 Comments

    Flash visualization of Giant Steps changes

    Interesting visualization of Coltrane’s Giant Steps, one of the more complex sets of changes amongst jazz standards. This shows, though, that it’s actually just layers of simplicity. The chords from three different ii-V-I patterns (a.k.a. “the turnaround,” and the most common progression in jazz) are combined to create the trinity of tonal centers in the tune. In that way, it’s like a standard 12-bar blues. The hard part of playing Giant Steps is really not the changes themselves — it’s how fast they go by in the first eight bars. And while I’m writing way too much about this little link, allow me to point out that much of the “Giant Steps” sound (and the Coltrane sound in general) is achieved by way of chord voicing. Make ‘em tall, and open ‘em up into quartal (rather than triadic) voicings, and you’ll be well on your way.

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