I didn't have time to read and analyze anything today. I had a little relaxation time after classes finished (noon, awesome), but other than that it was go time all the time today. Fortunately, the ethnomusicology came to me today in the form of the global rhythms concert.
Let me just start by saying UNT is a pretty sweet place for diversity and covering all your bases as a percussionist. Not only do we have a drumline and three classical ensembles, but we also have two steel drum bands, beginning and advanced South Indian, African, and Afro-Cuban ensembles, Brazilian, Gamelan, and the indoor drumline. And a plethora of jazz bands, concert bands, and solo opportunities. I believe that is quite literally all of the bases to be covered.
But, on top of all of this beautiful madness, Valerie Naranjo, an expert gyil player and percussionist of SNL, came and performed with most of the ensembles.
The concert started with Gamelan, and they played a very traditional piece. The ensemble consisted of a gong ageng and siyem player, a kethuk player, a full bonang barung, a 5 gender and 5 saron, and the leader played a hand drum, probably a kendhang. There was also a dude playing something similar to finger cymbals but with a buzzy sound, in fast rhythms on the ground. They had Valerie play her gyil with them on their next piece, which isn't traditional at all, but it sounded great.
Then Valerie played a gyil solo on marimba. I guess I should probably explain what a gyil is.
A gyil (say jeel or jeeli) is the main instrument of the Dagara and Lobi people from Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire. It's very similar to a marimba, but the bars are in the pentatonic scale and spans three octaves. It's low to the ground and uses gourds for resonators. The distinctive part of this instrument is its buzz sound, which is created by drilling little holes in the sides of the resonator gourds and fastening dry spider eggs, which rattle around. Traditional gyil music is very polyrhythmic, polymetric, and a brilliant display of right and left hand independence. I'll put a link up:
Valerie has studied with Leigh Howard Stevens, Gordon Stout, and lots of other big name marimba players, and most importantly Kakraba Lobi. Kakraba was a gyil master, and he was Valerie's gyil mentor. Her study intense study of the gyil led to a chiefly declaration in Ghana that women could be allowed to play the gyil in Ghana for the first time.
So, generally, she's the cream of the crop.
The marimba solo was her mentor Kakraba Lobi's favorite tune, Banda Jel, which means lizard's egg. Whenever Kakraba got sick of practicing or couldn't understand, he would think of how the lizard's egg can't be cut or smashed because of its thick shell, and it can't be broken when thrown or dropped because it will bounce right back. A good philosophy, I think.
Then she played and improvised on the Fra Fra Song with Jose Aponte and the Brazilian Ensemble, and led the Afro-Cuban Ensemble in Kaang Kuon Kpar (The Oil has Spilled). The Fra Fra Song is the Baiao people of N.E. Brazil making fun of the Fra Fra people, their next door neighbors. Kaang Kuon Kpar's moral essentially states "don't cry over spilled oil;" if you're carrying oil to light your fire in your bucket, and you trip and fall, don't cry because you lost your oil, you can't do anything about it, just keep going about your day and something good will happen.
She took a break while The Bridge, UNT's Advanced South Indian Ensemble, played two songs. The Bridge currently consists of two drummers, two guitar players, and another percussionist, today he played vibraphone. They played a song Sriji wrote that was in some ridiculous time signature with easy audible mora and tihai, and then performed a song the ensemble wrote as a whole. It was in 105/8, or 52 1/2 / 4, because the two drumset players, Colin (from lessons) and Zack (plays in Singers), kept different patterns of 3, 5, and 7 going.
Colin's bass drum played X - X X -, common khandatala subdivision.
Zach's bass drum played XX - X -, not khandatala.
Ride cymbals
C: X - X - X - X X - X - X - X
Z: X - X X- X - X - X X - X -
And Colin's hi hat played X - X, Zack's played X X -
Since 3 5 and 7 don't have any LCM's lower that 105, that was when they all lined up, that was the measure. It was pretty crazy.
Valerie came back on and played a little solo with some call and response stuff for the audience to enjoy. So I sang in some crazy African language today, Mom.
Her last piece was with the African Ensemble, called Kpanlogo, which had more call and response stuff. It was cool to see the kaganu and kidi strokes still played, even though the song was from a different tribe in Ghana, the Ga people. It was pretty awesome. That's all I have to say. It's indescribable.
After she received a well-deserved standing ovation, the Indoor Drumline came on and played the music they'll be playing when the go on tour to Belgium in March. It's not typical indoor music either, it was Alberto Ginastera, Debussy and Bartok, so maybe they're doing a clinic on classical music applied to the percussion ensemble. But it was perhaps the cleanest I've ever heard a percussion ensemble play before. All of the mallet runs, the tenor solo, the bass splits, and the impacts were spot on, even through tempo changes and funky meters. I wish I made it so I could go to Belgium, but I see why I didn't make it.
Indoor was an excellent conclusion to an very diverse concert. I made sure I came home ASAP so I wouldn't forget anything.
I hope this suffices for what I was supposed to be doing today. Except you don't even know what I was supposed to be writing about today. ...muahahaha.
M
Thursday, October 28, 2010
10/27 - The Music-Culture of Japan
I told Zoe I'd be writing about South Indian or Navajo music today, but I couldn't find enough about Navajo music and you already know all the South Indian stuff. Even though it is a Wednesday. Sorry Zoe.
I'll bet that she will like this topic more, though.
Japan may seem like a pretty intimidating place. Don't let it be that way. Think of them as excited.
Japan was a pretty isolated place for a while. People have been living there since 30,000 BC, learning how to grow rice and make pottery and make music without help from the outside world which may have figured it out first, who's to say. But for over 30,000 years, Japanese people didn't have any influences but themselves. So they made their own style of music, which is truly uninfluenced Japanese classical music. Around 400 AD, Japan met China, and they fell in love and spoke each others languages and made each other porcelain and fancy silks and sang each others love songs to each other, and that's where Chinese influence trickles in. Soon after, some Koreans came over, and some other SE Asians, and some Mongolians, and brought their musical styles with them, and the Japanese people were really excited to play with their new toys. Japanese classical music history really revolves around when people arrived from different parts of Asia with new instruments and practices, and when they picked up on it.
Even today, when Western pop is going strong, the Japanese have put Western ideas to work for themselves. Japanese pop is similar to today's American pop, but in my opinion, overdone, which I guess is what makes it popular? If it were in English, American kids would eat it up and sit around all day listening to it. But they still play their folk music, our classical music, our country music (why?!), and even jazz. We learned about Toshiko Akiyoshi, a Chinese-born, Japanese-raised American citizen who arranges jazz charts and has her own big band, and some of them certainly have Japanese textures, melodies or tones in the music.
They're not just copycats though. They appreciate the music of the cultures surrounding them AND learn about their own musical heritage. Japanese children learn to play recorder (which is pretty similar to the shakuhachi, we'll get there) and sing Japanese, American, and European songs, and most of them also take private lessons on another classical instrument. No wonder they're all geniuses. They're being told to have a broad focus, and to take as much in as possible, as much as they can stand, while we just make sure our kids are meeting the standards.
Wow. Sorry this blog is kinda judgmental today.
Fortunately, the Japanese learned their scales from the Chinese, who used the 12 tone system like Europe did. So nothing like slendro or pelog today. But, sometimes the exact frequency intervals differ in traditional music depending on the genre and who you learn it from.
It is widely believed that there are three scales commonly used in Japanese traditional music, two for folk songs and one for koto and shamisen music, all three pentatonic.
In/or/Miyako-bushi - C Db F G Ab C (Eb and Bb rarely played)
Yo - C D F G A C (Eb and Bb rare)
Minyo - C Eb F G Bb C
I don't know why people always think of music played solely on notes in the Western pentatonic scale sounds Japanese; I guess Yo is close, but it's not C D E G A C, it C D F.
Japanese musicians often recreate the sounds of nature while playing melodies since, in Shinto (the indigenous Japanese religion), rocks and trees and mountains and rivers also have spirits that can be communicated with. So whether it's the shakuhachi player sounding breathy to imitate wind in the trees or the twang of the shamisen, they're doing it on purpose, remember that.
By the way, the shakuhachi is a bamboo flute, held like a recorder; it's known to be a more spiritual and meditative instrument. The shamisen is a lute, and it is emotional and dramatic. A koto is a 13 stringed zither, and it is graceful.
Japanese melodies are kinda hard to briefly generalize. They often contain short little themes that are often repeated, like a theme in a classical work or a raga in Indian music, and they use these quotes to inform audiences of the kabuki theatre of the thoughts of a character, or perhaps to foreshadow. Sometimes the melodies may seem to change rather slowly, while, to the trained ear, the dynamic and timbre changes very rapidly. Japanese music has little harmony before being exposed to Western music, and if there are leaps, they prefer to use perfect 4ths.
Japanese music usually has a very flexible pulse. Western music, which has dynamically accented, even notes in groups of two, three, four, or even six, tends to lend itself to having a time signature, and the patterns of accent dictate which one. Since Japanese music has more irregular intervals between beats, it would be hard to describe a time signature, so they don't use one, therefore there's little need for a pulse.
- If it does have a pulse though, it will be in duple meter. Triple meter is most commonly found in children's songs. The pulse ranges from very slow to very fast, and in kabuki music, tempo builds when excitement or tension builds.
Common Japanese musical form is Jo-ha-kyu.
Jo "introduction", slow beginning section.
Ha "breaking apart", the falling apart of the beginning slow tempo, tempo escalates
Kyu "rushing", tempo reaches its peak, then slows to the end of the piece.
Here's a little example:
Then the book talks about the music of the main three instruments for twenty pages. I don't have time for that, and neither do you.
Kabuki theatre music is traditionally performed by a shamisen player and a tayu, a singer-narrator, and if other instruments are needed, they sit on a smaller stage and appear from behind a rotating wall when they need to play. It's dramatic. The shamisen and tayu try to fill the puppets with life and human emotion so that the audience is moved by the performance. They don't use microphones, so full fortes are only achieved with years of practice, training, and stamina.
Japanese folk song is similar to any other place's folk songs. They are songs of the people, for the people by the people, in the past used to accompany daily tasks while in the present used as a romantic vision of what it would be like to get out of a desk job; Japan is a very desk job-y place, to be honest. Folk songs sound different according to region of the country, and can be categorized as such, but no matter where they're from, they're still enjoyable today because they were traditionally sung by workers, not professionals, and Japanese people can still easily learn and appreciate them. They have a version of American Idol where the panel of experts judges a singers rendition of a folk song and tells them if their vibrato is too broad or if they're being too dramatic. It's funny to think about.
Japanese pop fits these five characteristics, which could probably sum up all pop music:
1. It has a set time limit (3 to 5 minutes). The longest Ke$ha song I can find is 3:57, and you're still making me pay $1.29 for it? I should be paid to listen to Ke$ha.
2. It focuses on themes relevant to a broad public, see "You Belong With Me" (though sometimes regions or specific groups are targeted, see "California Girls")
3. Stanza form and a steady beat, making the music more accessible. See "Golddigger"
4. Performers' attempts in live performance to duplicate recorded performance so as to fulfill audience expectations. (Usher might want to look into that, actually...)
5. Dramatic rise and fall in popularity in time. Side note, Justin Bieber doesn't have a song in the iTunes Top 100. Not even close.
Karaoke is a Japanese style of music, since it was invented by a Japanese man. Karaoke songs were originally and still are predominantly "enka" in Japan. Enka were political songs about the tyrannies of other parties at the start but it slowly progressed to nostalgic, longing tunes. So I guess those old people you see singing on cruise ships are doing it right. Traditionally, of course.
Fortunately, the chapter has run out of information important to us at approximately the same time that my patience and energy have worn out, if you can't already tell in my writing, hehe.
I'm going to bed. I hope you enjoyed your little break from South Indian Wednesdays. This was a lot of info to read though. Dang. Congratulations, you intelligent, charming character.
Oh man.
M
I'll bet that she will like this topic more, though.
Japan may seem like a pretty intimidating place. Don't let it be that way. Think of them as excited.
Japan was a pretty isolated place for a while. People have been living there since 30,000 BC, learning how to grow rice and make pottery and make music without help from the outside world which may have figured it out first, who's to say. But for over 30,000 years, Japanese people didn't have any influences but themselves. So they made their own style of music, which is truly uninfluenced Japanese classical music. Around 400 AD, Japan met China, and they fell in love and spoke each others languages and made each other porcelain and fancy silks and sang each others love songs to each other, and that's where Chinese influence trickles in. Soon after, some Koreans came over, and some other SE Asians, and some Mongolians, and brought their musical styles with them, and the Japanese people were really excited to play with their new toys. Japanese classical music history really revolves around when people arrived from different parts of Asia with new instruments and practices, and when they picked up on it.
Even today, when Western pop is going strong, the Japanese have put Western ideas to work for themselves. Japanese pop is similar to today's American pop, but in my opinion, overdone, which I guess is what makes it popular? If it were in English, American kids would eat it up and sit around all day listening to it. But they still play their folk music, our classical music, our country music (why?!), and even jazz. We learned about Toshiko Akiyoshi, a Chinese-born, Japanese-raised American citizen who arranges jazz charts and has her own big band, and some of them certainly have Japanese textures, melodies or tones in the music.
They're not just copycats though. They appreciate the music of the cultures surrounding them AND learn about their own musical heritage. Japanese children learn to play recorder (which is pretty similar to the shakuhachi, we'll get there) and sing Japanese, American, and European songs, and most of them also take private lessons on another classical instrument. No wonder they're all geniuses. They're being told to have a broad focus, and to take as much in as possible, as much as they can stand, while we just make sure our kids are meeting the standards.
Wow. Sorry this blog is kinda judgmental today.
Fortunately, the Japanese learned their scales from the Chinese, who used the 12 tone system like Europe did. So nothing like slendro or pelog today. But, sometimes the exact frequency intervals differ in traditional music depending on the genre and who you learn it from.
It is widely believed that there are three scales commonly used in Japanese traditional music, two for folk songs and one for koto and shamisen music, all three pentatonic.
In/or/Miyako-bushi - C Db F G Ab C (Eb and Bb rarely played)
Yo - C D F G A C (Eb and Bb rare)
Minyo - C Eb F G Bb C
I don't know why people always think of music played solely on notes in the Western pentatonic scale sounds Japanese; I guess Yo is close, but it's not C D E G A C, it C D F.
Japanese musicians often recreate the sounds of nature while playing melodies since, in Shinto (the indigenous Japanese religion), rocks and trees and mountains and rivers also have spirits that can be communicated with. So whether it's the shakuhachi player sounding breathy to imitate wind in the trees or the twang of the shamisen, they're doing it on purpose, remember that.
By the way, the shakuhachi is a bamboo flute, held like a recorder; it's known to be a more spiritual and meditative instrument. The shamisen is a lute, and it is emotional and dramatic. A koto is a 13 stringed zither, and it is graceful.
Japanese melodies are kinda hard to briefly generalize. They often contain short little themes that are often repeated, like a theme in a classical work or a raga in Indian music, and they use these quotes to inform audiences of the kabuki theatre of the thoughts of a character, or perhaps to foreshadow. Sometimes the melodies may seem to change rather slowly, while, to the trained ear, the dynamic and timbre changes very rapidly. Japanese music has little harmony before being exposed to Western music, and if there are leaps, they prefer to use perfect 4ths.
Japanese music usually has a very flexible pulse. Western music, which has dynamically accented, even notes in groups of two, three, four, or even six, tends to lend itself to having a time signature, and the patterns of accent dictate which one. Since Japanese music has more irregular intervals between beats, it would be hard to describe a time signature, so they don't use one, therefore there's little need for a pulse.
- If it does have a pulse though, it will be in duple meter. Triple meter is most commonly found in children's songs. The pulse ranges from very slow to very fast, and in kabuki music, tempo builds when excitement or tension builds.
Common Japanese musical form is Jo-ha-kyu.
Jo "introduction", slow beginning section.
Ha "breaking apart", the falling apart of the beginning slow tempo, tempo escalates
Kyu "rushing", tempo reaches its peak, then slows to the end of the piece.
Here's a little example:
Then the book talks about the music of the main three instruments for twenty pages. I don't have time for that, and neither do you.
Kabuki theatre music is traditionally performed by a shamisen player and a tayu, a singer-narrator, and if other instruments are needed, they sit on a smaller stage and appear from behind a rotating wall when they need to play. It's dramatic. The shamisen and tayu try to fill the puppets with life and human emotion so that the audience is moved by the performance. They don't use microphones, so full fortes are only achieved with years of practice, training, and stamina.
Japanese folk song is similar to any other place's folk songs. They are songs of the people, for the people by the people, in the past used to accompany daily tasks while in the present used as a romantic vision of what it would be like to get out of a desk job; Japan is a very desk job-y place, to be honest. Folk songs sound different according to region of the country, and can be categorized as such, but no matter where they're from, they're still enjoyable today because they were traditionally sung by workers, not professionals, and Japanese people can still easily learn and appreciate them. They have a version of American Idol where the panel of experts judges a singers rendition of a folk song and tells them if their vibrato is too broad or if they're being too dramatic. It's funny to think about.
Japanese pop fits these five characteristics, which could probably sum up all pop music:
1. It has a set time limit (3 to 5 minutes). The longest Ke$ha song I can find is 3:57, and you're still making me pay $1.29 for it? I should be paid to listen to Ke$ha.
2. It focuses on themes relevant to a broad public, see "You Belong With Me" (though sometimes regions or specific groups are targeted, see "California Girls")
3. Stanza form and a steady beat, making the music more accessible. See "Golddigger"
4. Performers' attempts in live performance to duplicate recorded performance so as to fulfill audience expectations. (Usher might want to look into that, actually...)
5. Dramatic rise and fall in popularity in time. Side note, Justin Bieber doesn't have a song in the iTunes Top 100. Not even close.
Karaoke is a Japanese style of music, since it was invented by a Japanese man. Karaoke songs were originally and still are predominantly "enka" in Japan. Enka were political songs about the tyrannies of other parties at the start but it slowly progressed to nostalgic, longing tunes. So I guess those old people you see singing on cruise ships are doing it right. Traditionally, of course.
Fortunately, the chapter has run out of information important to us at approximately the same time that my patience and energy have worn out, if you can't already tell in my writing, hehe.
I'm going to bed. I hope you enjoyed your little break from South Indian Wednesdays. This was a lot of info to read though. Dang. Congratulations, you intelligent, charming character.
Oh man.
M
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
10/26 - Indonesian Gamelan (ooooh....)
Caution: heavy reading forecast for today.
Indonesia is a pretty diverse place. They have more than 200 different languages, spoken on a whole lot of islands, with a lot of different cultures from island to island, sometimes a few on the same large island. Why is it such a diverse place? Well, the Dutch had to go colonize that whole region and when they left, they were like "okay, you guys are pretty close, you can be a country now," even though they were not only spread out across a huge body of water, but also had different languages, arts, belief systems and conceptions of the world. Really, Dutch people?
The music of Indonesia certainly reflects this crazy diversity. Most people are familiar with not only Indonesian pop music, but also Western pop (my textbook says "such Western stars as Britney Spears and NSync, haha) and their own regional "classical" music traditions. This reflects both the diversity of the population but also the receptiveness, probably because of centuries of outside influences. The city of Jakarta at night overflows with the sounds of nightclubs and discos, gamelan percussion ensembles of all sizes, traveling theatre troupes and even ridiculous 8-hour puppet theatre shows. I'll explain later.
Outside of Jakarta, in Yogyakarta, a smaller city, is where the indigenous, uninfluenced classical music is predominant; home to the gamelan, the ultimate percussion ensemble.
Gamelan refers to a set of instruments unified by their tuning and usually their decoration. The gamelan usually consists of metallophones, which are kinda similar to vibraphones, and tuned knobbed gongs, often with at least one drum and sometimes including wind, string, or wooden percussion instruments (think xylophone).
Gong is truly an Indonesian word.
Trivia real fast: what are the other two English words derived from Indonesian?
ketchup and amok.
Gongs in the gamelan are large, always hung. Not like a little tam-tam or the "gongs" we'll talk about later.
The two scale systems used in the Javanese gamelan are "slendro" and "pelog". Most ensembles have enough instruments to have a full sound on either scale.
Do - Re - Mi Fa - So - La - Ti Do
Slendro: 1 2 | 3 | | 4 5| 6 | 7 | 1
Pelog: 1 |2 | 3 | |5 | 6 | 1
So slendro is essentially C, sharp C#, D~D#, F~F#, flat G, flat G#, A~Bb, C
And pelog is 5 equally spaced notes, C, sharp D, flat F, sharp G, flat Bb, C
Sharp D is not D#, it's just barely off, maybe a quarter of a semitone, and D~D# is the quarter tone between D and D#.
It sounds like it would hurt, but it's actually kind of cool. The scale systems were most likely developed this way because no one knew about the 12 tone scale or the Pythagorean method, they hadn't heard of anything like it yet.
Instruments:
Gong ageng: big gong, hanging
Siyem: middle gong, hanging
Kempul: smaller gong, hanging
Kenong: largest kettle gong, in sets of 2 to 12 (kettle gongs are smaller than hanging gongs)
Kethuk: small kettle gong, one for each scale system
Kempyang: two small kettle gongs for pelog.
Bonang barung: 10, 12, or 14 kettle gongs in two parallel rows, one set for each scale system.
Bonang panerus: Same as bonang barung but tuned an octave higher.
Saron demung: 6 or 7 metal keys resting over a resonator
Saron barung: "" an octave higher
Saron panerus: "" another octave higher
Gender slenthem: 6 or 7 metal keys strung over cylindrical resonators, like a vibraphone.
Gender barung: 13 or 14 keys, more octaves available.
Gender panerus: "" an octave higher
Gambang: A an extended range version of the gender.
Celempung: a zither, with 20-26 strings playing 10-13 notes (two strings per note)
Siter: smaller zither, 10-26 strings
Suling: bamboo flute
Rebab: two-stringed fiddle.
Kendhang: hand drums of various sizes
Bedhug: Stick-beaten drum.
These instruments require a great deal of work to produce; large gongs can take a month to make and can be ruined with just one poor strike.
Wow.
There's no standard arrangement of all of these on stage, but players almost always sit at right angles. The ensembles often perform with singers, like a men's chorus or female soloists, and they sing tunes to Javanese poetry. Most everything is sung instead of read in Java, even letters to nobles were written poetry style and sung.
Each gamelan has its own unique sound, since all of the instruments are handmade and probably aren't tuned exactly the same. It's not that the craftsmen are lazy though; they just have their own sense of the sound they want to produce, and tune precisely to it. The great gamelan are highly respected, given a proper name, and given offerings every Thursday evening, the beginning of the Muslim holy day.
Performances of the gamelan are traditionally not focused on the gamelan. The ensemble usually accompanies other performers (dancers, puppet shows, etc.) or plays at a social setting, like a funeral or a wedding, or to mark important events like birth.
Shadow puppet theatre is the bee's knees in Java. In the early evening, the gamelan plays an overture, and afterwards they accompany the puppeteer (yes, just one) in an 8 hour performance. The puppeteer controls the puppets, provides all of the narration and the dialogue, and "conducts" the gamelan with various signals for a third of an entire day with no intermission. Dang. The play the puppeteer produces is his own rendition of a basic story, so it's related to versions from other puppeteers, but with its own quirks. The music performed by the gamelan during the show is drawn from a repertoire of hundreds of songs, none of which are specific to a single play, and many of which are not fixed to a specific rhythm or precise melody.
I'm not even going to go into the actual written out music. It would probably take me into the wee hours of the night, and I don't really get it yet anyways.
I hope this was a little mind opening. UNT has a Gamelan and I think I'll join it next year.
M
Indonesia is a pretty diverse place. They have more than 200 different languages, spoken on a whole lot of islands, with a lot of different cultures from island to island, sometimes a few on the same large island. Why is it such a diverse place? Well, the Dutch had to go colonize that whole region and when they left, they were like "okay, you guys are pretty close, you can be a country now," even though they were not only spread out across a huge body of water, but also had different languages, arts, belief systems and conceptions of the world. Really, Dutch people?
The music of Indonesia certainly reflects this crazy diversity. Most people are familiar with not only Indonesian pop music, but also Western pop (my textbook says "such Western stars as Britney Spears and NSync, haha) and their own regional "classical" music traditions. This reflects both the diversity of the population but also the receptiveness, probably because of centuries of outside influences. The city of Jakarta at night overflows with the sounds of nightclubs and discos, gamelan percussion ensembles of all sizes, traveling theatre troupes and even ridiculous 8-hour puppet theatre shows. I'll explain later.
Outside of Jakarta, in Yogyakarta, a smaller city, is where the indigenous, uninfluenced classical music is predominant; home to the gamelan, the ultimate percussion ensemble.
Gamelan refers to a set of instruments unified by their tuning and usually their decoration. The gamelan usually consists of metallophones, which are kinda similar to vibraphones, and tuned knobbed gongs, often with at least one drum and sometimes including wind, string, or wooden percussion instruments (think xylophone).
Gong is truly an Indonesian word.
Trivia real fast: what are the other two English words derived from Indonesian?
ketchup and amok.
Gongs in the gamelan are large, always hung. Not like a little tam-tam or the "gongs" we'll talk about later.
The two scale systems used in the Javanese gamelan are "slendro" and "pelog". Most ensembles have enough instruments to have a full sound on either scale.
Do - Re - Mi Fa - So - La - Ti Do
Slendro: 1 2 | 3 | | 4 5| 6 | 7 | 1
Pelog: 1 |2 | 3 | |5 | 6 | 1
So slendro is essentially C, sharp C#, D~D#, F~F#, flat G, flat G#, A~Bb, C
And pelog is 5 equally spaced notes, C, sharp D, flat F, sharp G, flat Bb, C
Sharp D is not D#, it's just barely off, maybe a quarter of a semitone, and D~D# is the quarter tone between D and D#.
It sounds like it would hurt, but it's actually kind of cool. The scale systems were most likely developed this way because no one knew about the 12 tone scale or the Pythagorean method, they hadn't heard of anything like it yet.
Instruments:
Gong ageng: big gong, hanging
Siyem: middle gong, hanging
Kempul: smaller gong, hanging
Kenong: largest kettle gong, in sets of 2 to 12 (kettle gongs are smaller than hanging gongs)
Kethuk: small kettle gong, one for each scale system
Kempyang: two small kettle gongs for pelog.
Bonang barung: 10, 12, or 14 kettle gongs in two parallel rows, one set for each scale system.
Bonang panerus: Same as bonang barung but tuned an octave higher.
Saron demung: 6 or 7 metal keys resting over a resonator
Saron barung: "" an octave higher
Saron panerus: "" another octave higher
Gender slenthem: 6 or 7 metal keys strung over cylindrical resonators, like a vibraphone.
Gender barung: 13 or 14 keys, more octaves available.
Gender panerus: "" an octave higher
Gambang: A an extended range version of the gender.
Celempung: a zither, with 20-26 strings playing 10-13 notes (two strings per note)
Siter: smaller zither, 10-26 strings
Suling: bamboo flute
Rebab: two-stringed fiddle.
Kendhang: hand drums of various sizes
Bedhug: Stick-beaten drum.
These instruments require a great deal of work to produce; large gongs can take a month to make and can be ruined with just one poor strike.
Wow.
There's no standard arrangement of all of these on stage, but players almost always sit at right angles. The ensembles often perform with singers, like a men's chorus or female soloists, and they sing tunes to Javanese poetry. Most everything is sung instead of read in Java, even letters to nobles were written poetry style and sung.
Each gamelan has its own unique sound, since all of the instruments are handmade and probably aren't tuned exactly the same. It's not that the craftsmen are lazy though; they just have their own sense of the sound they want to produce, and tune precisely to it. The great gamelan are highly respected, given a proper name, and given offerings every Thursday evening, the beginning of the Muslim holy day.
Performances of the gamelan are traditionally not focused on the gamelan. The ensemble usually accompanies other performers (dancers, puppet shows, etc.) or plays at a social setting, like a funeral or a wedding, or to mark important events like birth.
Shadow puppet theatre is the bee's knees in Java. In the early evening, the gamelan plays an overture, and afterwards they accompany the puppeteer (yes, just one) in an 8 hour performance. The puppeteer controls the puppets, provides all of the narration and the dialogue, and "conducts" the gamelan with various signals for a third of an entire day with no intermission. Dang. The play the puppeteer produces is his own rendition of a basic story, so it's related to versions from other puppeteers, but with its own quirks. The music performed by the gamelan during the show is drawn from a repertoire of hundreds of songs, none of which are specific to a single play, and many of which are not fixed to a specific rhythm or precise melody.
I'm not even going to go into the actual written out music. It would probably take me into the wee hours of the night, and I don't really get it yet anyways.
I hope this was a little mind opening. UNT has a Gamelan and I think I'll join it next year.
M
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
10/25 - Africa, the sounds of the Ewe people
It's Monday, the first day of my (or our) adventures through this book I found at the library called "Worlds of Music." I started reading it to see if I really did want to get into ethnomusicology, and it turns out it's a pretty sweet book and a potentially awesome career.
We're starting with Africa, what most people think of when they think of ethnic or cultural.
The best part of this section is about the Ewe people and their music. The Ewe are from the coast of West Africa, in Ghana and Togo. These people were originally very spread out through West African kingdoms around the 1600's, but eventually they all moved and settled near the mouth of the Volta River. Family is a very important thing to the Ewe people; you're considered more powerful the farther back you can trace your ancestry, and their social life is spent most often with their extended families. They believe that their supreme being, Mawu, is separate from human affairs, but lesser gods not only are present on Earth but interact with people.
Ewe people believe that before a spirit enters a fetus, it knows how its life on Earth will be and how its body will die. The musicians believe that their source of their talent was the spirit of an ancestor that they inherited, and they believe it's their destiny to be a musician.
They have a style of song, dance, and drumming called Agbekor. It was originally used as a pump-up jam to motivate warriors before a battle, but since there aren't really any more tribal wars, it's more commonly used as a funeral dance, to celebrate the life of the deceased individual and the passing on of the spirit.
Agbekor is learned without formal training; if you wish to learn how to play the patterns, you have to trust your own eyes and ears to match what other people are playing. So, the great drummers are the people who can play extended passages after listening only once or twice.
Now, on to the music.
The backbone of the Agbekor is the bell, the gankogui. "Listen to the bell," they always say. It's the time keeper. It always stays constant.
The gankogui is similar to agogo bells, kinda like mini cowbells, one high and one low. They play a pattern commonly known to afro-cuban drummers:
X - X - X X - X - X - X|X - X - X X - X - X - X :||
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
Once you've got that down, make sure you can feel the pattern in four beats AND six beats. The key to Ewe music is polyrhythm, and having these two feels overlap and feel natural together.
The axatse is a dried gourd with a net of strings with seeds tied around it, a typical loud African shaker. It plays the gankogui part on the thigh, while filling in the spaces with a strike of the palm:
T - T P T T P T P T P T|T
The kaganu, a high pitched drum, similar to a conga, plays the off-beats when felt in 4. This instrument fills in the spaces and makes the ensemble balanced.
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
- X X - X X - X X - X X|- X X - X X - X X - X X :||
The kidi, kloboto, and totodzi are the three other drums in the ensemble (from high to low). They each add their own flavor to the ensemble.
Kidi: X is stroke, Z is press
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
Z X X X Z Z Z X X X Z Z|Z X X X Z Z Z X X X Z Z :||
alternate sticking
Kloboto:
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
Z - X Z xxX Z - X Z - X|Z - X Z xxX Z - X Z - X
Totodzi:
Z - X - X - Z - - Z - -|Z - X - X - Z - - Z - - :||
So, all together, it looks kinda like this...
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
X - X - X X - X - X - X|X - X - X X - X - X - X :|| gankogui
T - T P T T P T P T P T|T - T P T T P T P T P T :|| axatse
- X X - X X - X X - X X|- X X - X X - X X - X X :|| kaganu
Z X X X Z Z Z X X X Z Z|Z X X X Z Z Z X X X Z Z :|| kidi
Z - X Z xx X Z - X Z - X|Z - X Z xx X Z - X Z - X :|| kloboto
Z - X - X - Z - - Z - -|Z - X - X - Z - - Z - - :|| totodzi
It's pretty cool. Most of the drums play on the bell pattern, except on beat 3, where the bell doesn't play but the drums do. Keeping the beat on 1 and 3 keeps the dance feel, even while all of the crazy syncopation is going on underneath.
They are all war songs, and yes, they have lyrics, but they're all about fighting and being champs.
Here you can hear the girl standing and singing (?) playing the atsimevu, more of a solo, leader drum. The man in the back is playing the gankogui. The man on the right is playing axatse, the person next to him kaganu, then I think kidi, and then the man next to the standing lady is playing a variation on the kloboto pattern.
This is the best example I've found of the beat described. The drumming society is called Agbekor, they call the beat Adjogbo. I don't really know who to trust. I'll ask our African adjunct professor, Gideon Alorwoyie, he's specifically mentioned in my book :)
This is what it probably looks like though:
It's pretty B.A.
I hope that wasn't too much of a brain melter. It didn't have any time shifting or quintuplets or anything, so it couldn't be too bad.
I hope you enjoy this ethnic, groovy week!
M
We're starting with Africa, what most people think of when they think of ethnic or cultural.
The best part of this section is about the Ewe people and their music. The Ewe are from the coast of West Africa, in Ghana and Togo. These people were originally very spread out through West African kingdoms around the 1600's, but eventually they all moved and settled near the mouth of the Volta River. Family is a very important thing to the Ewe people; you're considered more powerful the farther back you can trace your ancestry, and their social life is spent most often with their extended families. They believe that their supreme being, Mawu, is separate from human affairs, but lesser gods not only are present on Earth but interact with people.
Ewe people believe that before a spirit enters a fetus, it knows how its life on Earth will be and how its body will die. The musicians believe that their source of their talent was the spirit of an ancestor that they inherited, and they believe it's their destiny to be a musician.
They have a style of song, dance, and drumming called Agbekor. It was originally used as a pump-up jam to motivate warriors before a battle, but since there aren't really any more tribal wars, it's more commonly used as a funeral dance, to celebrate the life of the deceased individual and the passing on of the spirit.
Agbekor is learned without formal training; if you wish to learn how to play the patterns, you have to trust your own eyes and ears to match what other people are playing. So, the great drummers are the people who can play extended passages after listening only once or twice.
Now, on to the music.
The backbone of the Agbekor is the bell, the gankogui. "Listen to the bell," they always say. It's the time keeper. It always stays constant.
The gankogui is similar to agogo bells, kinda like mini cowbells, one high and one low. They play a pattern commonly known to afro-cuban drummers:
X - X - X X - X - X - X|X - X - X X - X - X - X :||
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
Once you've got that down, make sure you can feel the pattern in four beats AND six beats. The key to Ewe music is polyrhythm, and having these two feels overlap and feel natural together.
The axatse is a dried gourd with a net of strings with seeds tied around it, a typical loud African shaker. It plays the gankogui part on the thigh, while filling in the spaces with a strike of the palm:
T - T P T T P T P T P T|T
The kaganu, a high pitched drum, similar to a conga, plays the off-beats when felt in 4. This instrument fills in the spaces and makes the ensemble balanced.
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
- X X - X X - X X - X X|- X X - X X - X X - X X :||
The kidi, kloboto, and totodzi are the three other drums in the ensemble (from high to low). They each add their own flavor to the ensemble.
Kidi: X is stroke, Z is press
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
Z X X X Z Z Z X X X Z Z|Z X X X Z Z Z X X X Z Z :||
alternate sticking
Kloboto:
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
Z - X Z xxX Z - X Z - X|Z - X Z xxX Z - X Z - X
Totodzi:
Z - X - X - Z - - Z - -|Z - X - X - Z - - Z - - :||
So, all together, it looks kinda like this...
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
X - X - X X - X - X - X|X - X - X X - X - X - X :|| gankogui
T - T P T T P T P T P T|T - T P T T P T P T P T :|| axatse
- X X - X X - X X - X X|- X X - X X - X X - X X :|| kaganu
Z X X X Z Z Z X X X Z Z|Z X X X Z Z Z X X X Z Z :|| kidi
Z - X Z xx X Z - X Z - X|Z - X Z xx X Z - X Z - X :|| kloboto
Z - X - X - Z - - Z - -|Z - X - X - Z - - Z - - :|| totodzi
It's pretty cool. Most of the drums play on the bell pattern, except on beat 3, where the bell doesn't play but the drums do. Keeping the beat on 1 and 3 keeps the dance feel, even while all of the crazy syncopation is going on underneath.
They are all war songs, and yes, they have lyrics, but they're all about fighting and being champs.
Here you can hear the girl standing and singing (?) playing the atsimevu, more of a solo, leader drum. The man in the back is playing the gankogui. The man on the right is playing axatse, the person next to him kaganu, then I think kidi, and then the man next to the standing lady is playing a variation on the kloboto pattern.
This is the best example I've found of the beat described. The drumming society is called Agbekor, they call the beat Adjogbo. I don't really know who to trust. I'll ask our African adjunct professor, Gideon Alorwoyie, he's specifically mentioned in my book :)
This is what it probably looks like though:
It's pretty B.A.
I hope that wasn't too much of a brain melter. It didn't have any time shifting or quintuplets or anything, so it couldn't be too bad.
I hope you enjoy this ethnic, groovy week!
M
Saturday, October 23, 2010
10/22 - Tell someone you appreciate them
I don't really know who reads this blog. I've put the little map thingy up on the side to see where people keep reading this from, but it doesn't help too much.
Today, unexpectedly, I sat down and thought of all of the people that do things for me that I don't really notice, or people that never get credit for making my life awesome.
- Fellow students at UNT, thank you for being very open and nice and not awkward, or just the right kind of awkward. It's nice having a lot of new friends that keep you company and keep you sane.
- Teachers, thanks for dealing with the hundreds of crazy, clueless, sleep-deprived students you do your best to teach everyday. I wouldn't want to be you. They should pay you more.
- Lunch ladies, front desk people, R.A.'s, librarians, custodians, advisors, you guys rock. Seriously.
- I try to call my family every other day, but I get pretty busy, or just sleepy, and sometimes they don't get to hear how much I love them and I miss them. I'm pretty dang excited to see you guys.
- Friends back home, I miss you. What we had was something special. Please keep writing me letters and telling me about your lives, I really do enjoy reading them. And can we please see each other when I get home? Yes? Okay.
- Family in Texas! There already isn't a way to repay you for all the laundry and food and concert tickets and gas money and state fair entertainment you've provided for me. I'll think of a way, though, just wait.
- Mr. Andrew Nester, from Floyd, Virginia, 100 dollars is a lot of money to a college student. It'll probably be gone quickly, but not as quickly as I hope to write back to you with cool stories and such. I'm sad that you guys can't come to Texas for Thanksgiving, but I'll see you very soon, I can tell.
- Zoe. I love you a lot. When you wake up in the morning and read this, remember it's cute when you fall asleep on me. Haha.
- People that read this blog just for the fun of it: This entry is kind of different from the others, I hope you don't mind. If you have any suggestions or comments, I would love to hear them, and I appreciate the time you give to read this.
Thanks everyone, for making my life rock.
M
Today, unexpectedly, I sat down and thought of all of the people that do things for me that I don't really notice, or people that never get credit for making my life awesome.
- Fellow students at UNT, thank you for being very open and nice and not awkward, or just the right kind of awkward. It's nice having a lot of new friends that keep you company and keep you sane.
- Teachers, thanks for dealing with the hundreds of crazy, clueless, sleep-deprived students you do your best to teach everyday. I wouldn't want to be you. They should pay you more.
- Lunch ladies, front desk people, R.A.'s, librarians, custodians, advisors, you guys rock. Seriously.
- I try to call my family every other day, but I get pretty busy, or just sleepy, and sometimes they don't get to hear how much I love them and I miss them. I'm pretty dang excited to see you guys.
- Friends back home, I miss you. What we had was something special. Please keep writing me letters and telling me about your lives, I really do enjoy reading them. And can we please see each other when I get home? Yes? Okay.
- Family in Texas! There already isn't a way to repay you for all the laundry and food and concert tickets and gas money and state fair entertainment you've provided for me. I'll think of a way, though, just wait.
- Mr. Andrew Nester, from Floyd, Virginia, 100 dollars is a lot of money to a college student. It'll probably be gone quickly, but not as quickly as I hope to write back to you with cool stories and such. I'm sad that you guys can't come to Texas for Thanksgiving, but I'll see you very soon, I can tell.
- Zoe. I love you a lot. When you wake up in the morning and read this, remember it's cute when you fall asleep on me. Haha.
- People that read this blog just for the fun of it: This entry is kind of different from the others, I hope you don't mind. If you have any suggestions or comments, I would love to hear them, and I appreciate the time you give to read this.
Thanks everyone, for making my life rock.
M
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
10/20 - South Indian Day!
Today in South Indian we analyzed some music, to find the themes and the korwai/tihai
On rhapsody.com, look up Shankar - Pancha Nadai Pallavi, and click on the one in 9 1/2 beats.
Unfortunately it's L. Shankar, and not Ravi.
To count 9 1/2 beats, count double aditala. Clap clap 2 2 3 3 4 4 clap clap 6 6 clap clap 8 8.
Then, like 3 beat cycle, clap clap rest.
The main theme, which is played like this and with more complex rhythms, follows:
Ta-ta-ki-ta-Ta-ta-ki-ta-Ta-Di-ta-ki-ta-Ta-Di-ta-ki-ta-Ta.-Ki.-Ta.-Ta-Ki-Ta-ta-ki-ta-
5 5 7 7 9 6 3
TA-KA-DI-MI-Ta.-Di.-Ta.-Di.-Ta.-Di.
4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 = 76, /4 = 19.
And, now that I can't remember the korwai since it doesn't let me play the full song, I guess I'm kinda outta luck. I apologize.
My concert was excellent. We were loud, but eh, it worked. Super funky and tight.
Singers three was really good. Dang, ladies.
Singers one was pretty awesome as well, to be expected. The guys were all coordinated, it was cute.
All in all, a good Wednesday.
M
10/19 (really) - Some great songs.
It's Tuesday. I took a test in class and talked about another today. So I didn't learn very much. Bummer.
But I did find a couple of little awesome tidbits of musical... things.
First, I transcribed a Bela Fleck banjo solo today. Part of it is in B major, and part is in D, and it switches between them. I think what he's done is record it twice, in two different tunings and settings or environments, and put them together. It sounds pretty cool. So if you can find the bonus track version, not the original, of "Throw Down Your Heart," check it out.
I knew there was no way he had a low b and a low d string.
How many second sopranos does it take to change a light bulb?
None of them can reach that high.
And I heard some pretty great songs today, just out and about.
I went to the Jazz Repertory Ensemble concert today, and they played a bunch of donated charts from a radio program back in the 50's. There was much trumpet squealing and trombone blaring and clarinet...ing and good times to be had all around.
They played a swung Flight of the Bumblebee. It was silly.
But they also played a crazy trumpet duet called "Well, Git It!" and a great bari solo called "Cook's Tour". And they played Hey Ba-Ba-Re-Bop. Yes.
Finally, turn your bass up a little bit and put on Stevie Wonder's "Do I Do". Mmmm. Toasty.
Most of these things you can youtube, except Cook's Tour.
Concert tomorrow! Come if you can, if you read this. 9 at the Syndicate (in the Union), bring a little cash (just a little). I'm singing all sorts of smooth stuff. Definitely worth being at.
M
But I did find a couple of little awesome tidbits of musical... things.
First, I transcribed a Bela Fleck banjo solo today. Part of it is in B major, and part is in D, and it switches between them. I think what he's done is record it twice, in two different tunings and settings or environments, and put them together. It sounds pretty cool. So if you can find the bonus track version, not the original, of "Throw Down Your Heart," check it out.
I knew there was no way he had a low b and a low d string.
How many second sopranos does it take to change a light bulb?
None of them can reach that high.
And I heard some pretty great songs today, just out and about.
I went to the Jazz Repertory Ensemble concert today, and they played a bunch of donated charts from a radio program back in the 50's. There was much trumpet squealing and trombone blaring and clarinet...ing and good times to be had all around.
They played a swung Flight of the Bumblebee. It was silly.
But they also played a crazy trumpet duet called "Well, Git It!" and a great bari solo called "Cook's Tour". And they played Hey Ba-Ba-Re-Bop. Yes.
Finally, turn your bass up a little bit and put on Stevie Wonder's "Do I Do". Mmmm. Toasty.
Most of these things you can youtube, except Cook's Tour.
Concert tomorrow! Come if you can, if you read this. 9 at the Syndicate (in the Union), bring a little cash (just a little). I'm singing all sorts of smooth stuff. Definitely worth being at.
M
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
10/19 - Know what not to do
Certain areas of life are best left unexplored. Scientology.. skip it. Celebrities... you could be studying better things. Ice Road Truckers... really Discovery Channel?
Now, I guess that tv show is probably just capitalizing on the southern U.S., the people that really care about truckers, and it's exploiting their fear of the cold and turning it into a horror story nightmare. But maybe it's interesting, I wouldn't know, it's not worth my time to me.
When playing music, know when not to play. Do not miss breaks in the music. Don't play a loud cymbal crash during an oboe solo. Don't come in a measure early after counting 200 bars of rest. There's nothing more embarrassing in an ensemble setting than being that one guy that missed the caesura in the fast part of the piece, and hitting the cymbal while everyone else watched the conductor.
We practice the notes and rhythms that we need to play much, much more than the notes and rhythms we need not play, when they are really equally important. What is music without silence? It's really just a bunch of loud sound, that would get really annoying after a while. Take the time to count the rest and know when to come back in, but always remember that you can listen just as well as you can play if you work on it.
This goes for all of you. We will all have jobs, with job requirements, and they'll have certain tasks that we have to get done each day, or certain special things to get done, places to be, etc. But it's just as important to know what not to wear, what not to say, when to not say something, because the most embarrassing mistakes aren't when you can't do what they ask you to, it's when you stop doing what you've always been doing.
I'm really tired and mostly running on coffee right now. I hope this makes sense in the morning when I get up.
M
Now, I guess that tv show is probably just capitalizing on the southern U.S., the people that really care about truckers, and it's exploiting their fear of the cold and turning it into a horror story nightmare. But maybe it's interesting, I wouldn't know, it's not worth my time to me.
When playing music, know when not to play. Do not miss breaks in the music. Don't play a loud cymbal crash during an oboe solo. Don't come in a measure early after counting 200 bars of rest. There's nothing more embarrassing in an ensemble setting than being that one guy that missed the caesura in the fast part of the piece, and hitting the cymbal while everyone else watched the conductor.
We practice the notes and rhythms that we need to play much, much more than the notes and rhythms we need not play, when they are really equally important. What is music without silence? It's really just a bunch of loud sound, that would get really annoying after a while. Take the time to count the rest and know when to come back in, but always remember that you can listen just as well as you can play if you work on it.
This goes for all of you. We will all have jobs, with job requirements, and they'll have certain tasks that we have to get done each day, or certain special things to get done, places to be, etc. But it's just as important to know what not to wear, what not to say, when to not say something, because the most embarrassing mistakes aren't when you can't do what they ask you to, it's when you stop doing what you've always been doing.
I'm really tired and mostly running on coffee right now. I hope this makes sense in the morning when I get up.
M
Friday, October 15, 2010
10/14 - Mind Stretches, part 2
Let's talk about korwai.
Korwai are exteneded tihai, or, in basic terms, a tihai comprised of tihai.
Let's refresh a little bit. Tihai are three series of notes with a rest splitting each series. For example, five 16th notes, 8th rest, 5 16ths, 8th rest, 5 16ths, which equals 19 16ths, or 4 and 3/4 beats, so to end on one start on the "e" of four:
1 e + a 2 e + a 3 e + a 4 1 2 3 4 1
Ta ka ta ki ta Tum, Ta ka ta ki ta Tum, Ta ka ta ki ta Tum
So korwai are 3 tihai, back to back, a tihai of tihai. We'll start with a new tihai (first letter capitalized is an eighth, all letters caps is quarter, none is 16th)
DUM (8th) ta-ka-ta-ka-di-mi DUM (8th) ta-ka-ta-ka-di-mi DUM (8th) ta-ka-ta-ka-di-mi = 9 beats
4 4 (3) = 2 3/4 beats
TA KA ta-ki-ta,
(6) (6) (4) = 4 beats
ta-di-ghe-na-Dm, ta-di-ghe-na-Dm, ta-di-ghe-na / DUM (restart)
And 9 and 2 3/4 and 4 is 15.75 beats, x3 is 47.25 beats, so, in 8 beat cycle, we start on the "uh" of the 1st beat for it to end on 1.
Yes, it's complicated. Try it.
That's not even all of it. That's the first part. That's the "A' part of the korwai, the notes part of the tihai comprised of "notes" and "rest". During the rest period, the musicians play for a certain amount of time and then do the pattern again. The first time is simpler, the second more difficult, and the third absolutely crazy. It's amazing to watch.
So. There you go. Good luck. Happy friday!
Korwai are exteneded tihai, or, in basic terms, a tihai comprised of tihai.
Let's refresh a little bit. Tihai are three series of notes with a rest splitting each series. For example, five 16th notes, 8th rest, 5 16ths, 8th rest, 5 16ths, which equals 19 16ths, or 4 and 3/4 beats, so to end on one start on the "e" of four:
1 e + a 2 e + a 3 e + a 4 1 2 3 4 1
Ta ka ta ki ta Tum, Ta ka ta ki ta Tum, Ta ka ta ki ta Tum
So korwai are 3 tihai, back to back, a tihai of tihai. We'll start with a new tihai (first letter capitalized is an eighth, all letters caps is quarter, none is 16th)
DUM (8th) ta-ka-ta-ka-di-mi DUM (8th) ta-ka-ta-ka-di-mi DUM (8th) ta-ka-ta-ka-di-mi = 9 beats
4 4 (3) = 2 3/4 beats
TA KA ta-ki-ta,
(6) (6) (4) = 4 beats
ta-di-ghe-na-Dm, ta-di-ghe-na-Dm, ta-di-ghe-na / DUM (restart)
And 9 and 2 3/4 and 4 is 15.75 beats, x3 is 47.25 beats, so, in 8 beat cycle, we start on the "uh" of the 1st beat for it to end on 1.
Yes, it's complicated. Try it.
That's not even all of it. That's the first part. That's the "A' part of the korwai, the notes part of the tihai comprised of "notes" and "rest". During the rest period, the musicians play for a certain amount of time and then do the pattern again. The first time is simpler, the second more difficult, and the third absolutely crazy. It's amazing to watch.
So. There you go. Good luck. Happy friday!
Thursday, October 14, 2010
10/13 - A South Indian Exercise
It's Wednesday, so you know what's about to go down.
A mindsplosion. That's what's about to go down.
Remember the displacement thing from the first day?
If you do that in 11 beat cycle, and make a teensy little change, it works.
Instead of changing the last part to 6 takadimis, keep it at 7. That makes it a total of 33 quarter notes, which is exactly 3 11 beat cycles.
11 beat cycle is counted as such:
X - - - - - - X - X - :||
So clap on 1, 8 and 10, finger count the rest.
This really helps to get familiar with compound time signatures, and to get yourself away from 4/4 and 3/4.
We also did quintuplets today. To figure out quintuplets, practice. A lot. That's the most important thing; it's certainly not something that comes naturally, it was pretty tough for me.
If you're doing a 16th note quintuplet, I don't really have a trick for you.
If your'e doing an 8th note one, try doing this at Q = 60: One two three + four five
Clap on the one and the + (and), and make sure all of the numbers are evenly spaced, that's the key.
Quarter note 5lets are even tougher:
X X X X |X
1 2 3 + 4 5 |1
So just think of the 'and' in between notes 2 and 3. It helps.
Once you've got that down solid, try this: Pick different combinations of numbers that add up to 20. The easiest to start with is basic 5lets, 4 beats.
5 5 5 5
Ta ka ta ki ta Ta ka ta ki ta Ta ka ta ki ta Ta ka ta ki ta
X X X X
Then you can go crazy and add different combinations of smaller numbers in that frame, still keeping the 5let feel:
A mindsplosion. That's what's about to go down.
Remember the displacement thing from the first day?
If you do that in 11 beat cycle, and make a teensy little change, it works.
Instead of changing the last part to 6 takadimis, keep it at 7. That makes it a total of 33 quarter notes, which is exactly 3 11 beat cycles.
11 beat cycle is counted as such:
X - - - - - - X - X - :||
So clap on 1, 8 and 10, finger count the rest.
This really helps to get familiar with compound time signatures, and to get yourself away from 4/4 and 3/4.
We also did quintuplets today. To figure out quintuplets, practice. A lot. That's the most important thing; it's certainly not something that comes naturally, it was pretty tough for me.
If you're doing a 16th note quintuplet, I don't really have a trick for you.
If your'e doing an 8th note one, try doing this at Q = 60: One two three + four five
Clap on the one and the + (and), and make sure all of the numbers are evenly spaced, that's the key.
Quarter note 5lets are even tougher:
X X X X |X
1 2 3 + 4 5 |1
So just think of the 'and' in between notes 2 and 3. It helps.
Once you've got that down solid, try this: Pick different combinations of numbers that add up to 20. The easiest to start with is basic 5lets, 4 beats.
5 5 5 5
Ta ka ta ki ta Ta ka ta ki ta Ta ka ta ki ta Ta ka ta ki ta
X X X X
Then you can go crazy and add different combinations of smaller numbers in that frame, still keeping the 5let feel:
4 4 4 4 4
Ta ka di mi Ta ka di mi Ta ka di mi Ta ka di mi Ta ka di mi
X X X X
4 3 3 4 3 3
Ta ka di mi Ta ki ta Ta ki ta Ta ka di mi Ta ki ta Ta ki ta
X X X X
4 4 3 3 2 2 2
Ta ka di mi Ta ka di mi Ta ki ta Ta ki ta Ta ka Ta ka Ta ka
X X X X
You get the picture, I hope.
That seems like enough for today. I have more for tomorrow.
I heard a really good concert band concert today. Good job concert band!
It's almost the weekend!
M
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
10/12 - And now for something completely different...
So yesterday was Columbus Day. We'll blame that on why I didn't write yesterday.
Have a good Wednesday.
But, don't tell anyone, I really just forgot.
I'm the kind of person that can't do something forever. I figured this out yesterday when I was talking to my asian friend Hillary, who is totally in love with her boyfriend. She loves the word always, and how much it means without sounding clingy or aggressive. She could settle down and be a set person for the rest of her life. And I don't think I could do that.
No matter what job I end up with or who I end up with or where I am, even if I was in a perfect situation, if my perfect situation forced me to stay in that perfect situation, I couldn't take it. I have to keep moving, that's just who I am.
I'm sorry Hillary. I really am.
So today I took a break from all of the normally musical things I do on Tuesdays. Instead of learning about piano sonatas of Schubert and Schumann (I still listened to them), I drew a pretty picture. And it took some artistic ability. And it means something. And it was pretty difficult, cuz I haven't really drawn in a long time. But it's pretty good, and I didn't think I could draw that well. But I guess I can.
So after doing nothing in theory (again, ugh) and eating lunch, I took a crazy nap instead of practicing. I feel great, and I still have time to practice tonight. And after my nap I rode my bike down to the square and window shopped, and I didn't spend any money, which is certainly unusual.
And I go to tango every Tuesday at five, perhaps to impress Zoe when she gets home, perhaps to get a little workout, perhaps to take a break from my crazy life. But it's a lot of fun and we're getting into the crazy stuff now so it looks pretty legit.
Today I focused on the part of me that doesn't show much now that I'm a music student. Just because I'm a musician doesn't mean all of my creativity flows into playing, I can still kinda draw and I'm learning to dance. So tomorrow, try something you haven't done in a while. Be something you enjoyed being but haven't been for a while. Learn something new about yourself, discover a hidden talent. There's a lot of talent in everyone, some people keep finding more everyday and I wonder where they keep it.
M
Friday, October 8, 2010
10/08 - Make It Your Own
Today Janis Potter came to the percussion departmental. She played in the President's Own U.S. Marine Band as a soloist for five years and got both of her degrees at Juilliard, she knows her stuff. She came in and played some pretty crazy stuff and made it look easy, just like everyone else.
But her message was a little different from the first two master classes I went to. Kenny Washington, a set player, told us to study and listen to the drumset players of the past to understand why they played so you can use their knowledge in your own playing, since improv is mostly pulled licks, rudiments and transitions anyways. Brian del Signore, an orchestral percussionist, well, his life is listen to the people of the past and mimicking their sound, he has to be meticulous and precise to achieve his perfect sound and to get paid.
Janis talked about adding yourself into the music you play. Sometimes what's on the page is the composer being lazy or rushed, or sometimes the composer can't express the proper way to play a note with a certain notehead or technique. She taught us more advanced marimba techniques to communicate or express ideas differently than with normal marimba technique.
- The Piano Roll - Striking a note and letting it resonate before rolling, catching a certain overtone like on a timpani roll. The effect we're striving for is the sound of a piano; struck once but sustained for a while.
- The mallet shaft - You can play with the shaft of the mallets on the bars. The farther up the shaft towards the mallet head creates a fuller, more bodied sound with more of the fundamental, while the closer to the shaft makes a brighter, lighter, less bodies sound. Try it.
- The marimshot - Like a snare drum rim shot just on a mallet instrument. Much more difficult with two mallets in a hand.
- The gravity stroke - Completely relax your arms and let the mallets fall as if they were just falling, not even in your hands. This is normal, mezzo forte.
- The power stroke - Utilize your body while using the gravity stroke, lower your hips instead of straining your wrists.
- Dampening - pressing the mallets on the bar as part of the stroke for a full dampen, leaving the mallets on the bar for a half dampen, and lightly pushing on the bar after for a quarter.
So. Even though composers don't really write these things in solos, they're still useful for creating effects. The piano roll really does sound like a piano, and the mallet shaft sounds like playing wood or bamboo, power stroke can sound like bombs or cannons, and dampening can give more clarity than usual on a marimba. Use the creative tools you discover to enhance your playing, even if no one tells you to.
Okay, back with me non-percussionists. That's the beautiful thing about a solo. It doesn't always have to be specifically the phrasing or dynamic stated, you're more than welcome to phrase for yourself, it's music. Make the piece your own. Add a slide, a fall, a grace note, mix up articulations, play around with harmonics, anything and everything. Get to know everything you can do on your instrument, and make all the possibilities sound good.
For all of the non-musical people out there, you can still be expressive and make something your own. Give the paper you write a voice that sounds like you, not a computer or an average person. Cook without a recipe. There are plenty of things in life that don't have specific, explicit instructions, and it's then that we as human beings can truly exploit our gifts to their fullest potential.
M
But her message was a little different from the first two master classes I went to. Kenny Washington, a set player, told us to study and listen to the drumset players of the past to understand why they played so you can use their knowledge in your own playing, since improv is mostly pulled licks, rudiments and transitions anyways. Brian del Signore, an orchestral percussionist, well, his life is listen to the people of the past and mimicking their sound, he has to be meticulous and precise to achieve his perfect sound and to get paid.
Janis talked about adding yourself into the music you play. Sometimes what's on the page is the composer being lazy or rushed, or sometimes the composer can't express the proper way to play a note with a certain notehead or technique. She taught us more advanced marimba techniques to communicate or express ideas differently than with normal marimba technique.
- The Piano Roll - Striking a note and letting it resonate before rolling, catching a certain overtone like on a timpani roll. The effect we're striving for is the sound of a piano; struck once but sustained for a while.
- The mallet shaft - You can play with the shaft of the mallets on the bars. The farther up the shaft towards the mallet head creates a fuller, more bodied sound with more of the fundamental, while the closer to the shaft makes a brighter, lighter, less bodies sound. Try it.
- The marimshot - Like a snare drum rim shot just on a mallet instrument. Much more difficult with two mallets in a hand.
- The gravity stroke - Completely relax your arms and let the mallets fall as if they were just falling, not even in your hands. This is normal, mezzo forte.
- The power stroke - Utilize your body while using the gravity stroke, lower your hips instead of straining your wrists.
- Dampening - pressing the mallets on the bar as part of the stroke for a full dampen, leaving the mallets on the bar for a half dampen, and lightly pushing on the bar after for a quarter.
So. Even though composers don't really write these things in solos, they're still useful for creating effects. The piano roll really does sound like a piano, and the mallet shaft sounds like playing wood or bamboo, power stroke can sound like bombs or cannons, and dampening can give more clarity than usual on a marimba. Use the creative tools you discover to enhance your playing, even if no one tells you to.
Okay, back with me non-percussionists. That's the beautiful thing about a solo. It doesn't always have to be specifically the phrasing or dynamic stated, you're more than welcome to phrase for yourself, it's music. Make the piece your own. Add a slide, a fall, a grace note, mix up articulations, play around with harmonics, anything and everything. Get to know everything you can do on your instrument, and make all the possibilities sound good.
For all of the non-musical people out there, you can still be expressive and make something your own. Give the paper you write a voice that sounds like you, not a computer or an average person. Cook without a recipe. There are plenty of things in life that don't have specific, explicit instructions, and it's then that we as human beings can truly exploit our gifts to their fullest potential.
M
Thursday, October 7, 2010
10/07 - Why You Rock
October is the month where the freshmen in college say, "is my major really right for me? I mean, what if I'm not really that good?" Happy October, everyone!
See, October is the month where your lessons teachers get sick of you falling behind and your professors get sick of you not knowing the assignments or not turning something in, and they get really scary when they get mad. Also, October's the month when you lose the privilege of dropping a class without it showing up on your transcript, and we don't really consider how screwed we could be in a class until we don't have any options.
Fortunately I'm only barely in one of those situations, so it's not too bad. But I still question if I should really be doing what I'm doing. At UNT, all of the music students have passed a pretty tough audition, and they're all pretty incredible at what they do. So I'm surrounded by people that totally rock, and I guess I don't feel as awesome as I used to feel.
But remember you didn't just pick your major out of the blue, most of you. It was probably something you were really passionate about, or something you were good at, something you understand. Just remember, you couldn't have gotten into college in your major standing where you are without being pretty good stuff. So, without being cocky, make a list of all of the stuff that makes you totally the bees knees:
- I can sing, and I'm a drummer
- I can count, and I'm a singer. (Ha!)
- I can play piano, at least pretty well.
- I have perfect pitch, which is cheating just as much using a more expensive car that you payed for in a race. (It's not. Stop complaining.)
- I understand theory! YAY!
- I'm pretty decent at timpani, which isn't true across the board here yet.
- I can sight read pretty well.
- When I find a piece I enjoy, I can sit and practice it for hours.
- I can play some world music, and I love it a lot. I have a cajon, and those are legit.
- I also have a freaking clay pot drum.
- What I lack in chops, I make up for in smarts. Typically.
- I'm pretty quick to change if I'm told to correct something.
So, sure, I'm not the typical percussionist, or vocal jazz singer, or set player, but I've somehow found a way to combine all three with reasonable success.
Find the things that set you apart from all of the other people you're competing with. You're pretty sweet.
And remember, for most majors, you don't really have to know specific classes to take or have a strict plan until, like, your sophomore year. So you've still got a while, everyone. Well. People my age.
You rock. The end.
M
See, October is the month where your lessons teachers get sick of you falling behind and your professors get sick of you not knowing the assignments or not turning something in, and they get really scary when they get mad. Also, October's the month when you lose the privilege of dropping a class without it showing up on your transcript, and we don't really consider how screwed we could be in a class until we don't have any options.
Fortunately I'm only barely in one of those situations, so it's not too bad. But I still question if I should really be doing what I'm doing. At UNT, all of the music students have passed a pretty tough audition, and they're all pretty incredible at what they do. So I'm surrounded by people that totally rock, and I guess I don't feel as awesome as I used to feel.
But remember you didn't just pick your major out of the blue, most of you. It was probably something you were really passionate about, or something you were good at, something you understand. Just remember, you couldn't have gotten into college in your major standing where you are without being pretty good stuff. So, without being cocky, make a list of all of the stuff that makes you totally the bees knees:
- I can sing, and I'm a drummer
- I can count, and I'm a singer. (Ha!)
- I can play piano, at least pretty well.
- I have perfect pitch, which is cheating just as much using a more expensive car that you payed for in a race. (It's not. Stop complaining.)
- I understand theory! YAY!
- I'm pretty decent at timpani, which isn't true across the board here yet.
- I can sight read pretty well.
- When I find a piece I enjoy, I can sit and practice it for hours.
- I can play some world music, and I love it a lot. I have a cajon, and those are legit.
- I also have a freaking clay pot drum.
- What I lack in chops, I make up for in smarts. Typically.
- I'm pretty quick to change if I'm told to correct something.
So, sure, I'm not the typical percussionist, or vocal jazz singer, or set player, but I've somehow found a way to combine all three with reasonable success.
Find the things that set you apart from all of the other people you're competing with. You're pretty sweet.
And remember, for most majors, you don't really have to know specific classes to take or have a strict plan until, like, your sophomore year. So you've still got a while, everyone. Well. People my age.
You rock. The end.
M
10/06 - The first step to success
The first step to success is motivation. You can't succeed without it, and if somehow you end up successful without it, it was worthless.
Anything that drives you to do something is motivation. And motivation can be anything, your parents, your friends, your family, your peers, your rivals, your teachers, your idols, anything. But the best motivation is ultimately yourself. You'll push hardest when you and you alone are the only one who cares to push you.
So find your motivation. Start improving yourself in areas you want to be better, even if it's not in your "career" or your major. No one is holding you back, no one is pushing against you, and no one ever will. Learn to cook, write a song, learn statistics, write a poem, learn to tango, take a biology class, go to Spain. Whatever you want to do to make yourself better. That's the ultimate goal, and you have to have motivation to get yourself there.
In my mallets lessons recently, I had to learn a two mallet solo. Maybe it was a little hard for me, but most of my roadblock was I didn't really enjoy it. I wasn't learning it because I wanted to, I was learning it because Jake wanted me to, and it just didn't feel the same as motivating myself. But today I told myself, I'm going to learn that famous Bach prelude in C major, and it's going to pretty freakin good. And after a while it was. I barely even took a break in an hour and a half. And I did learn it, and it felt great, because I learned something on my own accord.
Sorry this one's kinda short.
M
So find your motivation. Start improving yourself in areas you want to be better, even if it's not in your "career" or your major. No one is holding you back, no one is pushing against you, and no one ever will. Learn to cook, write a song, learn statistics, write a poem, learn to tango, take a biology class, go to Spain. Whatever you want to do to make yourself better. That's the ultimate goal, and you have to have motivation to get yourself there.
In my mallets lessons recently, I had to learn a two mallet solo. Maybe it was a little hard for me, but most of my roadblock was I didn't really enjoy it. I wasn't learning it because I wanted to, I was learning it because Jake wanted me to, and it just didn't feel the same as motivating myself. But today I told myself, I'm going to learn that famous Bach prelude in C major, and it's going to pretty freakin good. And after a while it was. I barely even took a break in an hour and a half. And I did learn it, and it felt great, because I learned something on my own accord.
Sorry this one's kinda short.
M
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
10/05 - The Purpose of Music
Why do we have music?
Let's start with a little philosophy, I guess. I believe everything has a purpose, or else it has no reason to exist, and it ceases to exist. So all music has a purpose. We have to search and find out what that purpose is.
Think of ancient cultures... Egypt or China... music that we have record of today was played in honor of people that had power. Playing music was a sign of respect, praise, or adoration. In Africa, in the tribal period, beating on drums was a form of communication from tribe to tribe, and the same beating of drums, though they used different rhythms, was one of the key forms of communication in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars and throughout European wars.
Many African cultures also sing when working, to pass time or to make the work seem a little less like work. This tradition continued in the slave trade, which led to gospel music and the roots of jazz. Now people can play jazz, and when I play jazz, I know I don't feel like I'm working at all.
Brazil and other Latin American countries bang on monstrous drums with complex patterns and techniques when it's time for Carnaval or any other festive celebration. I know a girl who's been to one, she said it really did make the festival for her.
Even pop songs have a purpose, they make life more enjoyable, and country songs pull at heartstrings, and techno makes you dance, and rock makes you go crazy. When you need to do these things, those genres are perfect aides. Like a subconscious action pill. Ooh that's scary.
Let's see... Indian cultures use music as a form of meditation, but also to honor and respect those who played music and lived before them. Indian music has such an established and strict set of rules to follow, for example, some ragas are only played at certain times of day, some notes in ragas can only be followed by specific other notes, some ragas are happy and some are sad, and all of India can tell you which raga is a sad one (Sriji says he doesn't like the music in Bollywood movies because all of the heartbreaking moments use the same raga, and the audience is so used to hearing that raga that even if they couldn't understand the language, they'd still get teary). But within this elaborate code there is still so much room for improvisation, so much, in fact, that improvisation makes up about 95% of their playing. They know scales and patterns and tihai, but there is never any planning before they walk on stage, it just flows out.
That's the beautiful thing about improv, by the way. If you're any good at it, you can create surprisingly beautiful music, maybe even music more genuinely from yourself. If that makes sense.
So, music has plenty of purposes. They can all be summed up into this: ...well. I don't know. Maybe they can't be. Music is beautiful because, though it can't be translated in to English or Spanish, it explains and portrays things that words alone cannot: beauty, power, elegance, grace, emotion, and soul.
Mysore Manjunath told us a story at a workshop I went to today, it goes like this:
--One day, a student asked his teacher, "Teacher, can music tell me exactly where to go, or what I am eating, or what 2+5 equals? Do you have a word in the musical language for your name? Can you play on your instrument the address I should send this letter to?"
--The student was being a snarky fool. So the next day the teacher the student to the ocean, which the little student was yet to see, and he said, "tell me, little one, how would you describe this place in words?"
--"It's amazing!"
--"Amazing, okay."
--"Fantastic, spectacular, magical, awesome, wonderful, beautiful!"
--"Alright," said the teacher. "Is that all the ocean is?"
--The boy was confused. So the teacher tried again. "Boy. How would you describe your mother?"
--"Sweet, caring."
--"Okay, keep going..."
--"Sensitive, loving, compassionate, beautiful..."
--"Okay. Now tell me, boy, are those six adjectives the sum of all of what your mother is?"
--The boy was shocked. He didn't really know that he was doing his mother a disservice. So he asked how he could further explain how great his mother was.
--The teacher said, "Write a song about her. If each note and each rhythm is a color, pick and choose them wisely to create a beautiful painting of her portrait. Tell me a story an example of her compassion on your fiddle. It is much easier and more honorable to portray living things and emotions and feelings and the world around you through music than through words."
M
Let's start with a little philosophy, I guess. I believe everything has a purpose, or else it has no reason to exist, and it ceases to exist. So all music has a purpose. We have to search and find out what that purpose is.
Think of ancient cultures... Egypt or China... music that we have record of today was played in honor of people that had power. Playing music was a sign of respect, praise, or adoration. In Africa, in the tribal period, beating on drums was a form of communication from tribe to tribe, and the same beating of drums, though they used different rhythms, was one of the key forms of communication in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars and throughout European wars.
Many African cultures also sing when working, to pass time or to make the work seem a little less like work. This tradition continued in the slave trade, which led to gospel music and the roots of jazz. Now people can play jazz, and when I play jazz, I know I don't feel like I'm working at all.
Brazil and other Latin American countries bang on monstrous drums with complex patterns and techniques when it's time for Carnaval or any other festive celebration. I know a girl who's been to one, she said it really did make the festival for her.
Even pop songs have a purpose, they make life more enjoyable, and country songs pull at heartstrings, and techno makes you dance, and rock makes you go crazy. When you need to do these things, those genres are perfect aides. Like a subconscious action pill. Ooh that's scary.
Let's see... Indian cultures use music as a form of meditation, but also to honor and respect those who played music and lived before them. Indian music has such an established and strict set of rules to follow, for example, some ragas are only played at certain times of day, some notes in ragas can only be followed by specific other notes, some ragas are happy and some are sad, and all of India can tell you which raga is a sad one (Sriji says he doesn't like the music in Bollywood movies because all of the heartbreaking moments use the same raga, and the audience is so used to hearing that raga that even if they couldn't understand the language, they'd still get teary). But within this elaborate code there is still so much room for improvisation, so much, in fact, that improvisation makes up about 95% of their playing. They know scales and patterns and tihai, but there is never any planning before they walk on stage, it just flows out.
That's the beautiful thing about improv, by the way. If you're any good at it, you can create surprisingly beautiful music, maybe even music more genuinely from yourself. If that makes sense.
So, music has plenty of purposes. They can all be summed up into this: ...well. I don't know. Maybe they can't be. Music is beautiful because, though it can't be translated in to English or Spanish, it explains and portrays things that words alone cannot: beauty, power, elegance, grace, emotion, and soul.
Mysore Manjunath told us a story at a workshop I went to today, it goes like this:
--One day, a student asked his teacher, "Teacher, can music tell me exactly where to go, or what I am eating, or what 2+5 equals? Do you have a word in the musical language for your name? Can you play on your instrument the address I should send this letter to?"
--The student was being a snarky fool. So the next day the teacher the student to the ocean, which the little student was yet to see, and he said, "tell me, little one, how would you describe this place in words?"
--"It's amazing!"
--"Amazing, okay."
--"Fantastic, spectacular, magical, awesome, wonderful, beautiful!"
--"Alright," said the teacher. "Is that all the ocean is?"
--The boy was confused. So the teacher tried again. "Boy. How would you describe your mother?"
--"Sweet, caring."
--"Okay, keep going..."
--"Sensitive, loving, compassionate, beautiful..."
--"Okay. Now tell me, boy, are those six adjectives the sum of all of what your mother is?"
--The boy was shocked. He didn't really know that he was doing his mother a disservice. So he asked how he could further explain how great his mother was.
--The teacher said, "Write a song about her. If each note and each rhythm is a color, pick and choose them wisely to create a beautiful painting of her portrait. Tell me a story an example of her compassion on your fiddle. It is much easier and more honorable to portray living things and emotions and feelings and the world around you through music than through words."
M
Monday, October 4, 2010
10/04 - A lot of random things. I apologize.
First order of business, my mom makes marimba and other yarn mallets now, how freakin cool is that? So any of you UNT friends, I have 20 dollar mallets for sale. Well, she does.
Hm...
You don't have to figure out who you're going to be for your whole life when you're in college. Example A, my mom. She went to med school and totally rocked it, and now she's a pharmacist and works way too many weird hours and 12 hour days. I don't know if she thought it was going to be glamorous, probably not, cuz that's not who my mom is, but it certainly wouldn't be something I would get into for personal reasons... personal reasons including I wouldn't survive and I'm not really that interested.
But now, while holding a job and working crazy hours, she still teaches etiquette classes, designs costumes and stage sets, helps choreograph, sings with a church youth choir, plays more piano and mallet stuff than I've heard in a long time, and hey, now she's making mallets. Somehow this creative side that was hiding when she was in medical school just blossomed into a whole new part of who she is, or maybe it was just hiding or being put off the whole time. Either way, she's enjoying it, and I'm getting free mallets, and it's all good.
I just really hope she explores her creativity in cooking so I can get some cookies some time soon.
Today I had a pretty bad mallets lesson, mostly my fault. I don't practice nearly as much as I should, but I don't know that I could practice for three hours a day. I don't have the mental capacity to focus through classes and homework and ensemble rehearsals and practicing 2 hours of each instrument already. Three hours of marimba a day!? That's 6 hours of practice a day, not including homework, not including vocal stuff or piano stuff I need for my classes. That's a lot of time I'm not capable of enforcing myself to do something with yet. But does that mean I shouldn't be a performance major if I can't do that?
I still don't really know what I want to be. I don't think I could get a performance degree and perform for the rest of my life. I still have a side of me that likes to teach, and likes to travel, and likes to explore other cultures and styles of this huge freaking planet we live on.
And it's really comforting to know that whatever I end up doing, somehow in all the chaos of my future life, I can still pick things up that I've lost or explore new areas of myself I never really knew I had any potential with. As long as I've got strength like my mom :) but that's a lot of strength, so we'll see.
M
Hm...
You don't have to figure out who you're going to be for your whole life when you're in college. Example A, my mom. She went to med school and totally rocked it, and now she's a pharmacist and works way too many weird hours and 12 hour days. I don't know if she thought it was going to be glamorous, probably not, cuz that's not who my mom is, but it certainly wouldn't be something I would get into for personal reasons... personal reasons including I wouldn't survive and I'm not really that interested.
But now, while holding a job and working crazy hours, she still teaches etiquette classes, designs costumes and stage sets, helps choreograph, sings with a church youth choir, plays more piano and mallet stuff than I've heard in a long time, and hey, now she's making mallets. Somehow this creative side that was hiding when she was in medical school just blossomed into a whole new part of who she is, or maybe it was just hiding or being put off the whole time. Either way, she's enjoying it, and I'm getting free mallets, and it's all good.
I just really hope she explores her creativity in cooking so I can get some cookies some time soon.
Today I had a pretty bad mallets lesson, mostly my fault. I don't practice nearly as much as I should, but I don't know that I could practice for three hours a day. I don't have the mental capacity to focus through classes and homework and ensemble rehearsals and practicing 2 hours of each instrument already. Three hours of marimba a day!? That's 6 hours of practice a day, not including homework, not including vocal stuff or piano stuff I need for my classes. That's a lot of time I'm not capable of enforcing myself to do something with yet. But does that mean I shouldn't be a performance major if I can't do that?
I still don't really know what I want to be. I don't think I could get a performance degree and perform for the rest of my life. I still have a side of me that likes to teach, and likes to travel, and likes to explore other cultures and styles of this huge freaking planet we live on.
And it's really comforting to know that whatever I end up doing, somehow in all the chaos of my future life, I can still pick things up that I've lost or explore new areas of myself I never really knew I had any potential with. As long as I've got strength like my mom :) but that's a lot of strength, so we'll see.
M
Sunday, October 3, 2010
10/02 - Know your roots.
History is probably not your favorite subject. It certainly wasn't mine. To me, it was too much memorization and spitting out facts and learning about places and specific people I didn't really care about. But it was the central ideas that counted: the beginning of humanism, the Enlightenment, the American Revolution; and what these events meant, how they changed the world.
If you take the time to learn about the people who lived and the events that occurred before you, you won't have to waste time exploring on your own things that are already common knowledge for the rest of the world. Imagine if you worked for twenty years to establish a common twelve-tone scale that really worked, and the next day found out that everyone had already been using it for hundreds of years! That's a lot of wasted time that could've been put to use focusing on truly unexplored territory.
Whatever you want to be, learn about the people who did what you want to do first. In my case, learn about the difference between concert and rudimental snare drumming, different mallet techniques, theory 101, and great composers from centuries ago. Listen to how Elvin Jones, "Philly Jo", Buddy Rich, Max Roach, and Art Blakey got precisely the right sound out of their drumsets; how Ella, Billie, Louis and Mel Torme improved the vocal jazz scene; how Buster Bailey and Al Payson rocked the orchestral scene, and Sanford Moeller made drumming all around a little less tense. And there's a lot more out there for me to know.
If you're a chef, learn the difference between a dice and a chop and a julienne, how to blanche and cure and poach and broil, and how to do it all beautifully. If you're a mechanic, learn all about engines and carburetors and intake valves and fan belts and that stuff. If you're an astrophysicist, I pray for your sanity. And your bank account after all that school.
The people who lived before you are just as important as the people living today. They are the only reason you can make the progress you're bound to make. Appreciate them, study them, and take everything they lived to give. You'll thank yourself later.
M
If you take the time to learn about the people who lived and the events that occurred before you, you won't have to waste time exploring on your own things that are already common knowledge for the rest of the world. Imagine if you worked for twenty years to establish a common twelve-tone scale that really worked, and the next day found out that everyone had already been using it for hundreds of years! That's a lot of wasted time that could've been put to use focusing on truly unexplored territory.
Whatever you want to be, learn about the people who did what you want to do first. In my case, learn about the difference between concert and rudimental snare drumming, different mallet techniques, theory 101, and great composers from centuries ago. Listen to how Elvin Jones, "Philly Jo", Buddy Rich, Max Roach, and Art Blakey got precisely the right sound out of their drumsets; how Ella, Billie, Louis and Mel Torme improved the vocal jazz scene; how Buster Bailey and Al Payson rocked the orchestral scene, and Sanford Moeller made drumming all around a little less tense. And there's a lot more out there for me to know.
If you're a chef, learn the difference between a dice and a chop and a julienne, how to blanche and cure and poach and broil, and how to do it all beautifully. If you're a mechanic, learn all about engines and carburetors and intake valves and fan belts and that stuff. If you're an astrophysicist, I pray for your sanity. And your bank account after all that school.
The people who lived before you are just as important as the people living today. They are the only reason you can make the progress you're bound to make. Appreciate them, study them, and take everything they lived to give. You'll thank yourself later.
M
Friday, October 1, 2010
10/01 - Setting Goals
Hey. Sorry I didn't post yesterday. I already got called out by my mom on it. Haha. So I'll do an extra one today.
Everyone makes goals. When it's crunch time, you say, I'm going to get this and this and this done, and those count as goals. If you do those things, you accomplish your goal, and if you don't, you fall short.
Well, I've come to realize that college is crunch time almost all the time. These are the four (or more) years you're paying for your education, and it's your duty to get the most you possibly can with your money. And once you get out with your degree, you have to pay bills and sign papers and have a job and live a real life, even if you're in grad school; I really have these four years to grow the most.
So I've started setting daily goals, for almost everything I need to improve upon. For snare drum, I need to sight read, learn an etude, play through another, and work on inverted flam taps, cheese fives, and flamacues. Those are pretty simple; if I do them, that's all there is to it. For mallets, I need to sight read, learn an etude, learn another five measures in my solo, and practice my technique a lot. Probably an hour and a half.
The more specific your goals are, the more you will improve. If you say, I need to learn some of my solo today, how much will you learn? A couple bars? But when you say, I need to learn measures A-B, not only are you more likely to improve, but you'll probably improve a lot more than if you don't specify a quantity.
The best thing about goals is that when you don't meet them, you still improve, as long as you gave an honest effort. If you try to make a light bulb and you try ten times and don't succeed, you now know ten ways that don't work. If you don't make it to measure B in that solo, you fell a couple measures short, at least you learned some and you now know more than what you knew before.
So don't underestimate the power of self motivation. You are your best motivation. You are the best at pushing yourself to become better. And when you define what you need to improve, when, and how, it's hard not to succeed.
Everyone makes goals. When it's crunch time, you say, I'm going to get this and this and this done, and those count as goals. If you do those things, you accomplish your goal, and if you don't, you fall short.
Well, I've come to realize that college is crunch time almost all the time. These are the four (or more) years you're paying for your education, and it's your duty to get the most you possibly can with your money. And once you get out with your degree, you have to pay bills and sign papers and have a job and live a real life, even if you're in grad school; I really have these four years to grow the most.
So I've started setting daily goals, for almost everything I need to improve upon. For snare drum, I need to sight read, learn an etude, play through another, and work on inverted flam taps, cheese fives, and flamacues. Those are pretty simple; if I do them, that's all there is to it. For mallets, I need to sight read, learn an etude, learn another five measures in my solo, and practice my technique a lot. Probably an hour and a half.
The more specific your goals are, the more you will improve. If you say, I need to learn some of my solo today, how much will you learn? A couple bars? But when you say, I need to learn measures A-B, not only are you more likely to improve, but you'll probably improve a lot more than if you don't specify a quantity.
The best thing about goals is that when you don't meet them, you still improve, as long as you gave an honest effort. If you try to make a light bulb and you try ten times and don't succeed, you now know ten ways that don't work. If you don't make it to measure B in that solo, you fell a couple measures short, at least you learned some and you now know more than what you knew before.
So don't underestimate the power of self motivation. You are your best motivation. You are the best at pushing yourself to become better. And when you define what you need to improve, when, and how, it's hard not to succeed.
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