Slate’s Fred Kaplan explains why Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue is so great. (Maybe he should’ve said so cool? So what.) Here’s a hint: it’s modal. More on the history of Kind of Blue here on Kurt Anderson’s Studio 360’s American Icons series. Flaminco Sketches—consisting of only five scales, played for “as long as the soloist wishes until he has completed the series”—continues to be one of the most hauntingly beautiful things I’ve ever heard.