music education

The trumpet was my first instrument and I enjoyed it. But once I started playing guitar the trumpet took a back seat. And by the time I went to high school I decided not to continue to play trumpet in the band. I recounted this experience to someone the other day who asked "Why did you quit?" Assuming that it was because I wasn't any good. I was mediocre, and certainly not so passionate about it. It was hard for playing trumpet in the band to compete with learning rock and blues on the electric guitar. Not only because the latter is more socially 'relevant' (i.e. more people go out to clubs and buy music on cd, etc that is rock/blues than is marching band) but also because it's more fun and creative to me -- or at least works more actively a different part of the creative musical brain.

To me this is an oversight of music educators in schools. I know that there are places where improvisation is taught, but it strikes me that overall learning music in school presents only the tiniest slice of what music is. Why no rock band classes instead of just marching band and orchestra? I do teach one class in an elementary school (an afterschool, no grade situation) where, in addition to learning to read music we really do focus on trying to learn songs. Let's face it: popular music culture is not music-score driven, so the need to teach people to read music is less (there, I said it). Just like in 'real life' songs have to be learned by hook or crook: by ear, by tab, by watching someone play.

It's really a shame that this isn't done: teaching AC/DC's Back in Black, Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water, and so on, would definitely bring a lot more people into the fold of music.

manen's fantasia-sonata

Perhaps the most under-rated, under-known and (consequently) under-performed piece of the 20th century "Segovia" repertoire for the classical guitar is the Fantasia-Sonata of Joan Manen (1883 - 1971).

The work is both reflective and very lively (nearly virtuosic). Harmonically it's modal/tonal, and it's lyrical. Overall it isn't a difficult piece to listen to. But one reason a piece like this can suffer is that, even though it is played without pausing, there really are 5 movements to the work. When we hear it presented as one 19 minute track without knowing that it is in fact a multi-movement work it can be hard to keep one's bearings. Here are the movements:

Largo
Allegro
Adagio cantabile, quasi in modo di un recitativo, ma in tempo
A tempo (Allegro Assai)
Tempo primo (Largo)

Really it doesn't vary that much from the traditional sonata one might expect even of Schubert, except that the introductory Largo reappears at the end.

The piece's title Fantasia is not without cause: done in the tradition of Berlioz, etc, it's opening theme reappears (transformed) throughout the work:


I don't know on what album Segovia's recording originally appeared (which album might be difficult to track down these days, anyway). It's currently available on the cd compilation simply called Dedication (which I highly recommend because it contains many, many awesome pieces and the recording quality is very good -- i.e. you can really hear Segovia's vast tonal palette).

vinnie moore lick

I love Vinnie Moore. This comes from a tune of his called "Pieces of a Picture" from his great 1988 album Time Odyssey. It occurs at 2:48 in the tune.

I transcribed this lick because:
1. it's cool,
2. it makes a great exercise,
3. the ending I consider a signature Vinnie lick.

(Clicking on the images will make them slightly -- ever so slightly -- larger.)






Some notes:

He plays it over F#minor, but it would work over anything from the key of A major. Of course you can transpose it to wherever...

It really is around a quarter = 132, so getting it up to tempo may (or may not) be challenging for you.

There's a little bit of rhythmic displacement: the motive that starts with the triplet sixteenths followed by 4 sixteenths begins the first time on the and of the beat then it begins on the downbeat...unity and diversity...

xenakis

"Music is how feelings sound." (anonymous)

Iannis Xenakis' Orient-Occident (1960) is not really a hard piece to experience. It's really visceral. This is not the sort of music that has a melody -- and perhaps to many, many [most] people it is on the fringes or beyond of music.

I think on the contrary that it is music (duh), and that it's mainstream music. If we reflect for a moment on the anonymous quote above we should recognize that there are many, many feelings, and that they cannot all be expressed by tonal harmonies as organized by 19th century composers, or by bop lines or wonderful J-pop melodies. In fact every time music 'expands' we will be ever closer to expressing the full range of human emotions.

scott henderson lesson

I don't really like putting up youtube clips cuz you never know when they might vanish. But I can't resist pointing you to this one: a fabulous short lesson from Scott Henderson, one of my all time faves. Even if you don't dig on fusion I'd recommend playing through these (on any instrument).



very cool, very colorful, and very useful ideas!

tetrachords iii

So here's another post concerning tetrachords (for the earlier posts: part i, part ii). This time we're going to work with the lydian tetrachord:

This tetrachord is different from all the others we've dealt with because it outlines an augmented fourth (the famed tritone) as opposed to a perfect fourth. This has some implications that we'll get to in a minute.

Our other tetrachords up to this point are as follows: major, minor, phrygian, harmonic. With the lydian tetrachord we have a pool of 5, meaning that we should be able to come up with 25 pairs altogether. We've accrued 16, meaning that the lydian will give us an additional 9. But not really...

Let's start with the lydian tetrachord as the lower tetrachord. We'll base these on C, but it could be any tone:

lyd tet + maj tet = c d e f# g a b c = Lydian mode
lyd tet + min tet = c d e f# g a bb c = Overtone aka Lydian b7 (mode IV of harmonic minor)
lyd tet + phryg tet = c d e f# g ab bb c
lyd tet + harm tet = c d e f# g ab b c

So let's put the lydian tetrachord on top now. Since it outlines an aug 4th we'll have to adjust the tetrachord's position if we want the last tone to be an octave of the first tone (in this case a c). We can do this by starting the lydian tetrachord a semitone (or half-step or minor second) above the lower tetrachord, as opposed to a full tone.

maj tet + lyd tet = c d e f gb ab bb c
min tet + lyd tet = c d eb f gb ab bb c = Aeolian b5 [mode III of melodic minor]
phryg tet + lyd tet = c db eb f gb ab bb c = Locrian mode
harm tet + lyd tet = c db e f gb ab bb c

There's one more combination: lyd tet + lyd tet. BUT there's a problem here.

lyd tet + lyd tet = c d e f# g a b c#

The last tone is an issue. It takes us into the realm of octatonic scales: 8 tone scales as opposed to the 7 note scales we've been dealing with. There's no easy fix in this situation, because if we lower the upper tetrachord's position by a semitone we'll simply duplicate the f#, and technically we'd end up with a hexatonic scale. Though this hexatonic scale is famous...see if you know it:

c d e f# ab bb c.

If we rename this enharmonically it's much more obvious:

c d e f# g# a# c, aka the whole tone scale.

Hopefully you'll find that tetrachords are somewhat helpful or at least interesting, as opposed to being unduly complicated. Play them and see...

mixing music + $$$

Look, I'm basically very distrustful of people who only play music when money is involved -- it strikes me that there is a decided lack of passion in such instances. And art after all is about passion (according to me, anyway). But those people have a point: not only should they be allowed to make a living (this is a largely a capitalist system, after all) but also there is a huge tendency in our culture to expect things like music to be free. Always expecting money, then, will help counterbalance this tendency.

It's amazing how often I meet doctors, lawyers, architects, business people who feel that any lesson or fee for doing a gig which isn't free is really overpriced. They don't, notice, think that the services that they offer should be free. Again, this isn't totally unfair: we don't live in a society where economic worth is determined from some governmental agency and handed down to us: we bargain, each party attempting to get the best possible deal for itself. The pernicious aspect is, again, the expectation that music (art in general) should be free. I suppose because it should, after all, be 'fun'.

I don't argue with that last point. In fact I think that equally pernicious for art (especially 'serious' music -- serious said with rolling eyes) is the lack of awareness that art has an entertainment component. Nevertheless if people expect there to be music there have to be musicians making that music. And if they expect that music to soar as high as is possible it will have to be done based upon the model of doctors: we don't expect surgeons to be hobbyists. Music is not so life and death, obviously, but the principle is the same. There have to be some full timers out there practicing their craft if we have high expectations. And not only that, those who labor (and it is work) after a day gig -- effectively a second job -- also should of course be rewarded economically. If you consider all the time, money for lessons, money for instruments and rehearsal spaces, and outlay for advertising it's really rare that there's a real economic profit.