On Line Music Appreciation
Hi! Since I am new to you, we will do a bit of exploration - I, to find out more about what you "know"...... and then you...... to find out what I know.
Let's start with questions.
- How would you define music?
- How does it affect your life?
- How do you think it affected the lives of people in:
- a. the stone age
- b. closer history - agricultural society vs. hunt and gather
- c. "Big" society - Egypt, Greece, Rome
How do you use music?
Where did this all begin...
Elements:
rhythm and meter vocal sounds (animal sounds) musical media (additional to our bodies)
let's explore some of this stuff through listening and discussion-
Play a selection from a CD (any CD will do) (or use one of the selections below, if you like) [links are in blue]
What do you notice first about the piece
Anything else?
try an analysis -
Is the piece in a steady rhythm or is the rhythm random?
What about the "melody" - does it have one? If not what's going on.
Who's playing ( orchestra, bagpipes, drums, ....?
Does the piece contain musical sequences - little melodic fragments that "sort of" repeat
Are there rhythmic sequences?
Can you distinguish some sort of "form."
ABA, ABBA, AaBbACAa, .....etc.
(melody A, melody B) - like a pop song with verse, verse, bridge,verse and ending
Why bother?
Is there a "hook?" - What's a hook? Does it fit into a "style?" - What's a style? How do we recognize a style? Is rap music? What is jazz? Where is music going....if it is in motion at all.Things we'll use to make an analysis
Call and response - the simplest form - you can analyse almost any piece using this form.
Call and response is self explanatory
"Structural Hearing" - all music goes from the I chord to the V chord and back - that is, there is an arch in almost all musical phrases. More often than not, it begins in the primary note or key, goes up five notes and comes back. This is a VERY simplistic explanation, but you can use it when you feel the MELODY or the HARMONY follows generally in that sort of pattern!
Your attention span vs the attention span of a person 200 years ago.
A look at the harmonic series - it occurs naturally ( not invented, per se )
- dividing a string in half - each half will be one octave higher than the original
- using the air in a tube - those "whirley" tubes that kids used to spin around in the air making the harmonic series incrementally up one harmonic at a time, depending upon the speed of the "twirling."
- using the vocal mechanism
- Tuvan singers - on CD - check the website on my homepage under "Vocal Stuff" - the link is for "harmonic singing" ( or - do some web exploring on your own!)
- Tibetan Monks - Stimmung (a piece by Stockhausen) - see "Vocal Stuff" on my homepage
- the problem with the "natural scale" (it seems "out of tune" to our ears)
- How we have untuned our scales in order to play the keyboard in any key
- Vowels and speech vs. music and song
- Athletic vs intellectual
- Binary vs. analog
Here are some of the examples you can use to answer the questions above(if you like)
Where Is Yesterday by Joseph Byrd- performed by the group USA -
Words - Requiem - from where? What language?
Listen to the bass notes - what's going on? Is this a "scale?" Does it repeat? What happens to the bass after the pause? Are they the same notes? What other pieces can you think of in which this sort of thing happens? What is a scale.
In C- by Terry Reily - maybe the most annoying piece ever written - or is it?
- How does this work? (Does it work?)
- Why ? ( Why not ?)
- When was this written? ( you mean it's written out? )
- Very difficult to play ( really )
- Why might that be true?
Come out to show them-by Steve Reich - very slightly out of time with each other
- Is this music?
- When does it begin to sound like "music" (if it does?)
- Do you have the patience to listen? - Why? (Why not?)
You need Real Audio to hear this
Wolf Is Dead by Daniel Lentz
- This is the most difficult thing I ever recorded -
- Why do you think this might be the case?
- How does "minimalism" refer to ("rock n' roll")
- what sort of "chords" do you hear....what are chords?
- Where's the melody....is there one?
Ketchak - Balinese Monkey chant
- Is this a chant? (Is there a melody?)
- Let's do this in a simple form using the words "Mozart" and "Beethoven." as two syllabled and three syallbled words - the chant uses a two against three rhythmical setup - i.e. "KETjak, KETjak, KETjak (like MOzart, MOzart, MOzart) (three groups of two) and KETjak, ketJAK, ketjak - ( like BEEthoven, BEEthoven) ( two groups of three)
How "primitive music has influnced "western" music and vice versa.