CataDo...
Thank you very much for honoring my efforts on your behalf.
In order to make this answer official, and of some value
to the GA archives, I will repeat the question and answer:
Question:
I am interested in learning more about music. I feel a need to
"figure it out."
I have a very basic understanding of how to read sheet music (from 5th
grade), but I don't like looking at it and it makes me grimace to
think of looking at notes. However, I feel a need to visualize and
understand what is happening within a piece of music.
For example, there is a piece in 'The Marriage of Figaro' (don't know
the name of song), which is simply perfection to me. I want to be
able to look at it and analyze it. What notes are being played and
sung? How do the notes affect each other and what is the distance
between them. How does it work?! But, I don't want to look at sheet
music! I want to be able to view it via computer, or visually w/
color or with numbers or 3-dimentionally. I want to compare notes and
see what they do. I sincerely don't know if this is music theory 101
or a complicated application which would be an overwhelming task to
undertake. I am not interested in getting into any sort of "chat
room" for music appreciation. I just want to figure it out, but I
don't know how.
http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=271790
Answer:
Sounds like you would enjoy an approach based on an understanding
of harmonics. Harmonics is to music what phonetics is to spelling.
Intuitive vs memorized.
I play by ear, having been shown by the older brother of a next
door neighbor, in a half-hour, how to make every chord which can
be named - forty years ago. Seriously.
Of course, I also have a great ear for music, which is to say
if you played any note on the piano with my back turned to you,
I could turn around and find it within a few tickles of the ivories.
You can test your own abilities in a similar fashion.
Even without that gift, you can utilize a method of learning
such as my neighbor's brother taught me. Fortunately, there are
now resources available which allow you to learn in this much
simpler, intuitive manner - whether in addition to, or in place
of, reading music.
Meet Mark Almond, and read the story of how he came to develop
the harmonic approach he uses in his two best-selling videos,
'Piano for Quitters' and 'Piano for Life':
http://www.pianoforlife.com/Article.html
I urge you to consider the method I'm suggesting, which
will allow you to understand these relationships intuitively,
with your ears and heart, in such a way that you can reproduce
what you hear, and, even better, translate your own feelings
into musical expressions all your own.
For example, I can not only reproduce any note which is
played, I can also tell you whether the chord being played
is major, minor, augmented, diminished, etc. This is due
to an easily learned comprehension of the intervals (spaces)
between the notes (3rds, 4ths, 5ths, etc) and the way
these combine in chords to produce particular sounds,
and feelings.
and...
Since I'm such a music (and technology) lover, over the years
I've come across some wonderful programs.
ArtSong is a musical toy that assigns musical properties to colors
in an image, and uses a fractal overlay to move its sampling
cursor around the image. At least that's how it worked in version
3, which I still have. You can select any image of your choice,
and can also modify the fractal overlays. Version 5 is now available
at the site:
http://www.artsong.org/
Another delightful toy is Musinum, which creates fractal evolutions
of numbers and lets you assign musical properties to the results.
There's an online java-applet version on this page:
http://www.fluxury.com/munisum.htm
...but the author's page and the program are here:
http://www.mns.brain.riken.go.jp/~kinderma/musinum/musinum.html
Both of these programs seem simplistic and/or awkward at first,
but, trust me, they can produce some very interesting music.
Check out the midi file 'johnsjoy' on this page of user
submissions on the Musinum site. It's mine... : )
http://reglos.de/musinum/examples.html
Warmest regards...
sublime1-ga |
