Musicology

[teajay]

hoh! I use tuxguitar now ;D

read a bit now through the history of western music, some 15 pages more. It's really complicated, but interesting nonetheless.

[Xiphias]

tj do you ever write music down? e.g guitar pro or standard notation? like write licks or nice riffs dawn

[teajay]

no never.. I hardly create music, like chords or stuff. I should be doing more with chords. Starting off with some basic progression, then replacing it with alterated chords or alternate ones, then trying to come up with nice melodies to go with it, then reharmonising; such stuff is really intensive studying.

I was thinking about it just an hour ago. I just practised some chop exercises, and realised I hardly practise those chords I try to learn. I get so dizzy with all the different stuff I could practise that I end up noodling away. I wrote this on my todo list: make a good training schedule for guitar practise.

[DaFred]

hey tj, I send you a pm a few days ago :)

[A.K.B.]

Personally, I have Sibelius 5, it's really really awesome, does pretty much everything; but I want Finale 2009, because I think it's faster to input notes with teh. My friend has guitar pro 5, which I think its fine for guitar, but ofcoarse, sibelius does everything.

[Xiphias]

Personally, I have Sibelius 5, it's really really awesome, does pretty much everything; but I want Finale 2009, because I think it's faster to input notes with teh. My friend has guitar pro 5, which I think its fine for guitar, but ofcoarse, sibelius does everything.

Do you then have a keyboard connected to the computer? Thought about buying a keyboard soon. Orka write with comp mouse. These days I just use guitar pro to write down sketches.

[DaFred]

I use Sibelius 4 and have a keyboard to put notes but I dont like it much. Its imo faster to drop notes by hand or maybe to practice this 'fast' numpad system.
If I put notes with the keyboard it looks quite ugly and the notes are imprecise...
But a keyboard is imo really useful for real samplers like Logic Audio, Cubase or Reason

[Grace]

i have Sibelius installed on my comp, but i only really use it for listening to pieces on the sibelius music library bit.

i do however have this program 'noteworthy' which is kinda useful, just wish i could plug my keyb in so i didn't have to input every note individually.

[A.K.B.]

Personally, I have Sibelius 5, it's really really awesome, does pretty much everything; but I want Finale 2009, because I think it's faster to input notes with teh. My friend has guitar pro 5, which I think its fine for guitar, but ofcoarse, sibelius does everything.

Do you then have a keyboard connected to the computer? Thought about buying a keyboard soon. Orka write with comp mouse. These days I just use guitar pro to write down sketches.

nah, at school we have keyboards for teh, but sax. Really takes time, unless you're transcribing pieces with constant notes of the same length (flight of the bumblebee etc)

In finale I could input notes so much quicker, and I actually transcribed Alkan's entire Grande Sonata, all 50 pages of it!

It's also fun to practise writing little pieces imo, just throw a few chords around and make something, I made a few craps for other people (including a theme song) only took bout an hour each.

[teajay]

heh, this morning I suddenly realised I still had to make this exercise for webdesign/word/psp course, it was all about kill bill, really weird. Check out what I made for 'em:

http://www.students.let.uu.nl/3362612/k ... lbill.html

WOW EH?

[Uncle Milty]

don't get the joke there, tj :/

btw
I dont think, that you really suck at playing guitar, you just need more exercise in different kinds of music.
ez playing more skilled then. I really recommend some tabs of songs by Children of Bodom. Not teh very nice music though (i think some kind of melodic doodle metal stuff), but in different songs, they use different difficulties (and quite good solos at all), maybe you should check this out, if not already known to you :>
At least those tabs/songs helped some good friends of mine in becoming quite skilled guitarists

ty, note that Guitar Pro is almost only bought (legal) program on my comp

on mine too o.O
but gp4; gp5 sucks for writing stuff imho. but the real-perc-stuff is nice ^^ but in some way, it made the synthie to come to late, so i never opened gp5 again, but work on gp4 til now :/

[teajay]

Well, maybe I should check that out. I did repair my electric, but now it's detuned again; the wood stop block to make it hard tail method didn't work, and it's a beast to intonate (allen's wrench right below the strings). My acoustic is my dad's acoustic and it's close to 40 years old, still not too bad, but not great either. Those solos are not going to get easy on it, that's what I mean. I'm trying to get my dad to a guitar shop on some saturday soon, to buy some of these babies perhaps:

http://www.ibanez.com/hollow/guitar.aspx?m=AS103
http://www.ibanez.com/hollow/guitar.aspx?m=AS93

The second one I think he should really buy, is like ES-335, but quite good for its price; close to 400e. Until then; doodling bluegrass on the western =)

[A.K.B.]

fakin xiph, pasta some of your dad's compositions, or some recordings at least.

NOAW

[Xiphias]

fakin xiph, pasta some of your dad's compositions, or some recordings at least.

NOAW

waj?

[A.K.B.]

healoh, you once pasted some recording of you (or ya dad) playing a waltz or something, you said it was your dad's composition.

[Xiphias]

healoh, you once pasted some recording of you (or ya dad) playing a waltz or something, you said it was your dad's composition.

true.. my dad has very many thousand compositions, but i don't have hier and orka play music which is impy for one instrument xD or nab music

[A.K.B.]

is it really hard stuffs?

[teajay]

So a little update; I was away from musicology for almost 2 months, so had to make up for it during past few weeks. I can tell you this: very hard, especially music theory. We're doing basso continuo exercises, you need to harmonise according to special rules like no parallel fifths or octaves, no direct ones and more stuff in the same vain. It's very hard and it takes a lot of time.

But I've learned a lot, yes. This is no study for pussies, as it turns out. Sure, you can make it as hard as you want, but to do the minimum you still have to be busy quite a lot. I find no time that I'm boring myself to death, so to speak.

In another course we had some stuff about 19th century music. Now we're dealing with Debussy and Schönberg, and we have to make our own composition of serial music. Wonder how that turns out. If it's any good, I'll post it here.

[Grace]

i'm seriously thinking about doing some music studies nao, i've never done any so far except like skimming over it in music class in year 7. I'd like to learn some more Classical musics as well.

eh,kay,bee do you do this shiaz?

seems your enjoying musicology a lot so far, are you thinking it's the right path for you?

[teajay]

Yes, sure, it's the right path. Though I'm planning to do auditions for conservatorium in two years also.

[A.K.B.]

I am getting A+ for the respective part in music. (along with A+ for composition and performance)

So no, not musicology for me.

I think composing, I would really like to be a film composer.

[zebra]

So a little update; I was away from musicology for almost 2 months, so had to make up for it during past few weeks. I can tell you this: very hard, especially music theory. We're doing basso continuo exercises, you need to harmonise according to special rules like no parallel fifths or octaves, no direct ones and more stuff in the same vain. It's very hard and it takes a lot of time.

I remember practising those harmonising things few years ago. Yep it was quite hard and time consuming but I think I managed them quite well and didn't have any problems passing the course. Later we had to make the same thing directly by playing them on piano. Only bassline was given and the chords and we had to harmonize them while playing.

[A.K.B.]

Annoying was checking for doubled thirds when writing for a string quartet. I managed it fine, but gaddame just another rule to waste more time. (OMG PEOPLE WILL THINK ITS A DIFFERENT CHORD)

I'm at least developing some sort of inner ear, so I can now compose without the aid of a computer or piano etc.

[teajay]

hieah, well doubling have some very funny rules ye0. Sometimes you have to double thirds if not whane have direct octaves/fifths or worse, parallel ones.

[A.K.B.]

parallell bajs can be auto-checked in sibelius. such max tool

[teajay]

that's nice. Does it check for direct octaves/fifths too?

[A.K.B.]

Oh yeah.

Check this screencap...

[teajay]

You obviously repeated your answer, thanks for that clarity. Now let me illustrate what I mean.



1: bass says G, soprano d''.
2: bass says c, soprano c''.

does it look for those too?

and check for other errors, if you're interested. I tried to make a bunch

[teajay]

I just made an epic fail in some assignment. Was voiceleading a ii6 - vii°6 - I6 progression A flat. Somehow I got into thinking the second chord was a 7th instead of triad. So, constantly bugging myself with the Fes to resolve, I could never find the solution, because I also forgot I had an E flat instead of E. Dimished intervals (Fes to Es is a diminished second) are not allowed unless resolved upwards by step. Then, after about 15 minutes of mangoing it finally dawned to me that Fes to E is perfectly fine. I was happy and continued the exercise. But then my eye fell on vii°6. There was no fucking Fes present in that chord.

[A.K.B.]

All it checks with included plugins are what I had posted.

If I look online I may be able to find an appropriate plugin to sort out your problem.

also- I am studying choral music next term in senior music, should be interesting to see what comes out!

[teajay]

It might be interesting to try it yourself though.

the errors in those are mainly the direct octaves, doubling of leading tone, wrong resolution of the seventh in soprano (4th scale degree going to 5 instead of 3.)

[A.K.B.]

For a bit of fun (knowledge of piano?) Can you tell me what is wrong with this passage from Scriabin's 6th piano sonata?



Hint: it's not the 2-8/4-8 time signatures.

[teajay]

I had to do a little research here, but I believe that d''''' would be the 89th key on the piano.

[Grace]

you'd need an extended piano? =P

[Xiphias]

wtf tj?

i got no idea what the error is .. but i see some unnecessary Neutral signs .. and I find it weird that there is flats everywhere.. ez just change key signature.. but i don't know the piece.. so no idea

the 2/8 vs 3/8 time signature through that section seems max =P

[A.K.B.]

Completely accurate, good work there tj!

In the footnotes it acknowledges that that note "does not exist on pianos yet" but doesn't give an alternate playing note, personally I'd just play the note an octave lower or as a high C.

What was your method for finding that error? Was it simply- "look, that note seems too high" or did you look through the whole passage for incorrect material?

[teajay]

Well, I first went looking for wrong note values, like those in messiaen's work. Then I went looking for the chords, what their harmonic function would be. I saw the high notes and I asked myself the question if that would fit on the piano, with the octaved shite. So yeah, pretty intuitive error checking there.

Oh, and those neutral accidentals are strictly unnecessary, but they do that a lot for convenient and comfortable playing.

[A.K.B.]

Yeah, courtesy accidentals are pretty useful for reading, most pianists will thank you for them.

[teajay]

yup. And I by the way actually made this subject music theory albeit not with a very glamorous grade. About 40% of all 1st year guys (who still haven't quit heah) succeeded for this tough one. I should've read the book better though. And I will, since I am planning on taking the non-compulsory subject music theory (part III) aswell, next year. More solfège, more harmonising, and a counterpoint.

[A.K.B.]

You're certainly culminating some knowledge there tj. Keep it up.

Just found out it's not choral I'm studying but rather musical theater. Close, but no coconut pie.

[teajay]

A.K.B., I think we finally found some way to understanding. You're even making compliments as we discuss, how awesome is that?!

Of a whole different order is this piece, subject of a class tomorrow. It's about the different types of form in music. On the one hand you have pheno-text, which articulates emotions and events, on the other hand there's geno-text, a kind of non-meaning to the piece which does not articulate emotions but does evoke them at the listener. Something like that, I just read the article and it's blistering vague.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2FzJDXXG-A

Luckily, the class will also consider the misogyny in music and through means of Monteverdi's Lamento della ninfa, a piece probably more easy to cycle through. The musical score of Sequenza III looks very complicated..

[Grace]

when you do the class, can you explain how music can be misogynistic? sounds interesting.

the pheno and geno text types sound like your studying Biology rather than music

[teajay]

I will. I was thinking of the same thing by the way heah.

[Bismuth]

but doesn't give an alternate playing note, personally I'd just play the note an octave lower or as a high C.

Wtf? Did you just say you would play a C instead of a D?!

[A.K.B.]

Yeah bismith, actually I think that's how it is performed, hit the top note on the piano in short staccatto and there really won't be much of a controversy, but do whatever you like.

[teajay]

If he wasn't dead I would kill scarlatti for creating controversy around this. Sick old fuck.

smax, I haven't quite made out a proper conclusion out of that class. The idea is that geno-text has no form, but actually resides in pheno-text and only is seen through speech mistakes, uncontrolled gestures and more unconscious behaviour. In sequenza iii a form of pheno-text is given in that way that geno-text will show much of its 'face'. The guy who coined this term explains it with by comparing two types of singer; one smooth, completely in control of his voice, but without some sort of character. The other type is russian, voluptuous, and you can hear the very bodily movements in the vocals; the throat, and all those body parts involved in producing voice I can't name in english.

Vague? Yes!

Misogyny in music then..... next time when I feel like typing text.

[Grace]

=] thanks, it makes a little more sense now, the distinction between ways of expressing emotion and feeling through music. it certainly is vague, but knowing a little Biology i knew somewhat what it would be (what with the Pheno and Geno) =]

[A.K.B.]

Scarlatti made unbelievably awesome sonatas for the simple harpsichord. Lucky to be doing one for my 6th grade.

I however love his L449 in b minor (49 I think, dunno) michaelangeli plays it fast, but slow versions rock also, such good emotion in that one.

[teajay]

I was ofcourse just making fun with you man :*

I'm doing ear training now, it's very interesting and entertaining to do once you get the drill of using rote melodies for ascending or descending intervals. it gets a little harder with harmonic intervals, though I'm sure I will be able to do that too in a short while (I just started but I'm quite fool proof in making out descending/ascending minor/major seconds/thirds and perfect fifths/fourths). It may seem strange, but I was before never really able to hear intervals in such a conscious manner.

[A.K.B.]

It may seem funny but recently over the past few months I have been able to recognize absolute pitches. When a note is played on the piano I associate it with a corresponding note (or even chord!) that I have played in a piece I have learnt. I'm not sure if it's possible but I could be relearning perfect pitch.

A very old music captain came back to ferny starting from last week. He knew my older brother. What a mad dude he is! He got his aMus in piano and has quite a developed ear, able to improvise any tune he hears, in two hands; I had to correct him when he played mozart's first piano sonata in C because he played it in D and I recognized it.

anyways, basically we got a new electric piano and we split the voices, having synth sounds on top and bass guitar on bottom, and he improv'd the dr. who theme first go. MADNESS.