Monthly Archives: August 2018

Thoughts on Sight reading

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aASBNbeREEY

I just watched this video and was inspired! Margaret Fabrizio talks about how there is a difference between “decoding” and “reading”. She acted out what it was like to be a first grade student trying to read A Tale of Two Cities. “I..I..It..w..wa..was..the..be, be, best of tims, tim-es, times”. This brought back memories of what it was like when I took organ lessons in junior high and high school. The organ came with a box of graded sheet music that started with Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and continued through folk songs and popular music. After teaching chords in the left hand in a standard position and teaching the pedals for the bass notes, it went on to have the chord symbols written over the melody staff. I stopped reading the left hand and depended on the chord symbols. I still suffered through decoding the right hand, but after stumbling through the melody several times I would have it memorized and after that could play it by ear. I can still remember bumbling my way through some of these old songs and suddenly my parents would figure out what I was trying to play and would start singing. One time it was  “Casey would waltz with a strawberry blond”…

…except that my dad changed the lyrics to “Casey was hit with a bucket of sh–” (Mom interrupts “Larry! Larry!!”)…”and the band played on”.

When I reached highschool my mom found a new organ teacher, a young woman just out of college. She was very theoretical and taught me to play from fake books — how to do blocked chords and a walking bassline. She also finally figured out that I couldn’t really read! We agreed that I would also work on some very simple music along with arranging tunes from the fake books. I made some progress and have many good memories of working with her. She invited me to Wanamaker’s department store to see the famous organ there (the young man who was her boyfriend at the time was the organist, and he chatted with her while the music roared away, both hands and feet flying). She also invited me to her house. One whole room of the house was built around a pipe organ. She let me try it out. While I was playing, a key got stuck, so we went into the back room where many of the pipes and gadgetry was. It was a small Vox Humana pipe going “neeeeeeee”.

I stopped taking lessons my senior year. I wish I had kept going! But I was wrapped up in playing Cat Stevens on the guitar, and also taking calculus and physics. I was also in the choir. Choir was amazing (we learned the Faure Requiem and Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms) but again that was by memorization.

I did not take part in any form of music during the intervening years. I didn’t get back to music until I had turned 30 and was an undergraduate (in entomology!). My husband (a graduate student at the time) had the urge to have something piano-like in the house and we got our first synthesizer. I was frustrated with my inability to play from sheet music, and my husband, a computer guy, suggested that there was probably software that would help. We did not find software that helped with sight reading, but we did find software that would let you play music into the computer and then edit it, the way you could edit an essay in Word. The notes took the form of little rectangles of varying lengths, arranged with high notes at the top and low notes at the bottom — like the roll from a player piano. This is called sequencing software. With the help of the sequencing software I found that I could compose by ear. This was a life-changing discovery. When I was supposed to be working on my senior year classes I also created a little album of music (recording it on cassette tapes), drew album art and gave copies to all my friends.

When we moved to Maryland I joined a church and have been a member of the choir there for about 15 years. Our choir director is the sort of person who encourages you to stretch out of your comfort zone. She makes this possible by creating a supportive environment — building a sense of trust among the choir members. It’s OK to make mistakes. I have often had the experience of being the only alto at rehearsal and having to sight read new music . And it’s totally OK.

Now I am in my 60s and I have an opportunity to devote a lot of time to music. As someone who’s been musically…illiterate? for many years, I’m excited to see what progress I can make!

I would be thrilled to someday be able to play something like this!

Understanding the Fundamentals of Music lecture 1

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Dr. Greenberg defines music as “sound in time” or “time ordered by sound” — basing this on an earlier definition that included the word “purposeful”. Interesting that Greenberg took “purposeful” out.

The first unit of the course will be about the timbre of different instruments.

He begins by talking about the major classifications of instruments. The first instrument, he said, is the human voice; he won’t go on to discuss it, except to say that other instruments aspire to have its flexibility and expressiveness.

As a potential composer, that made me think about how the timbre of different instruments might remind the listener of different kinds of human voices. Childlike, wheezy-old, raging, crooning, howling at the moon. What kind of person is speaking in this composition? Do they have “friends” with them? Or an argumentative crowd?

“Anthromorphizing” the instrumentation.

Also in this lecture he talks about the bassoon and the contrabassoon; he asks “was there ever an instrument simply called the ‘oon’ ?” Unfortunately no, although at one time there was a tenoroon.

 

Robert Greenberg — Fundamentals

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Back in 2010, my son started attending a private high school which was 45 minutes away. This meant that frequently I was in the car about 3 hrs a day, 5 days a week. I found a great way of taking advantage of the driving time: listening to lectures from The Teaching Company. My favorite instructor was Dr. Robert Greenberg and over the span of 4 years I acquired and listened to many of his courses.

Since I’ll be taking classes at Howard Community College this fall, I thought it might be good to return to my Robert Greenberg lectures; I can listen to them while doing the dishes, cooking, etc.

Today I started with Understanding the Fundamentals of Music. This is a relatively short course, with just 16 lectures (unlike his very long music history course, How to Listen to and Understand Great Music).  The main things I remember from this course were: him telling a funny story about his wife (a piccolo player), making fun of oboeists (the high pressure affects their brains?); examples of solos that each instrument might dream of (ex. bassoon in the beginning of Stravinsksy’s Rite of Spring?), songs with strange meters like “Take Five”, and a very thorough discussion of tonic and dominant chords. I think he actually goes into the Greek experiment with the string and the proportions (Pythagorus?). Good stuff. Lecture 1 today!

It did happen!

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On July 24th I was waiting to see what happened when the No Man’s Sky universe was re-written. I had heard that the change would come at 9 am, so at 10 am I checked in. My beautiful home planet was still there! The graphics seemed more detailed, and there was more lag than usual, but that stormy golden world of Tempus Fugit continued to exist. I have to admit I was a tiny bit disappointed. How can you write an epic song cycle about THE LAST OF THE 300 WORLDS when they didn’t actually end?

On the other hand, I wasn’t quite sure “this was it”. After all, the universe rewrite was a new patch to the game, and those usually take longer to upload. I logged out of the game and started looking on the forums. There’s an active Reddit dedicated to No Man’s Sky. I found out, no, the patch had not yet been released. I was on pins and needles and kept checking back. Finally someone posted on Reddit that it was here — about 2 pm. At 3 I logged on to Steam and clicked on “No Man’s Sky”. There was in fact an update and it took about 45 minutes to download. I had promised myself that I would not get caught up playing the new version of the game (called “Next”), but I did want to see what the new world looked like. I clicked “play” and watched the loading screen, which I have seen so many times before — stars coming into view in the distance, drawing near and streaming past. The star-stream ended with white fog, which cleared to reveal….I’m no longer on Tempus Fugit. I’m on a space station. My ship has changed — it’s full of obsolete technology — and it runs on different fuel now. The star system has the same name as before, but I didn’t dare fly down to explore the planets for fear of running out of “gas”. The space station was much more extensive, with all kinds of aliens walking around instead of the usual half a dozen guys sitting around a table playing cards. In fact the new, improved space station reminded me a little of the space station in Mass Effect called The Citadel.

Meanwhile, the game went on sale and I got copies for several of my young friends. I’m hoping they will get started exploring this new universe and that later I can tag along with them. “What do we use for fuel now? How do I build a base? How do we do multiplayer?” etc. They seem to pick these things up much more quickly than I do.

In conclusion

It did happen! The universe changed. I can write The Last of the 300 Worlds, rather than My Home Planet Has Better Graphics Now.