Alan Coady’s Musical Blog

New Pupil Performance mp3s have been added to the North Berwick High School page.

Dates for your diary page updated.

The Music & Etymology page is beginning to take some sort of shape now and contains around 200 terms. The raison d’etre of the page is explained here.

Any suggestions for missing terms, organisation/layout etc. would be gratefully received.

New Pupil Performance mp3s have been posted on the Musselburgh Grammar School page

New pupil performance p3s have been posted on the Knox Academy page

What better way to start the day than to sail past your normal school, and enjoy the beautiful drive from Haddington to Gifford on a sunny morning? Senior moment? Wrong turning? In fact it was a Transition-based event featuring three S2 guitarists from Knox, returning to their old school to play for current Yester pupils.
 
They seemed delighted to be there, as was I – it’s a lovely, bright and welcoming school and it was clear from converstaions beforehand that Dorothy Hilsley, the Head Teacher, remembered not only these pupils well, but also their older siblings.
 
We played a selection of repertoire from lessons and finished with an ensemble piece - the three pupils involved were among the only five S2 pupils to take part in this year’s East Lothian Guitar Ensemble. The ensemble piece allowed us to demonstrate how pupils practise ensemble music at home using the Guitar Group Midis page. The class teacher, Mr Purves, was also very interested in this aspect as he is the technical brains behind Yester Primary’s very impressive blog.
 
In addition to having a fun hour out of school, we hoped that the audience will have a more vivid idea of what guitar instruction is all about when they arrive at Knox. The trio also racked up extra house points – a triple whammy as, by an amazing coincidence, all three are in Lammerlaw – as was I thirty-odd years ago.

Guess who got me into etymology. Perhaps surprisingly, it was Malcolm X, in his autobiography. Rather than looking up definitions, it soon seemed preferable to attempt to divine them through familiarity with the constituent parts of the word – making it nearly impossible to forget.

In a subject like music, the bulk of whose vocabulary consists in old and foreign words, an etymological outlook can offer a key to these baffling terms and associations. With this in mind, I’ve created a new Lesson Support Page entitled Music & Etymology. I must stress here that this is not really my own work but simply a series of links to a fantastic online etymological resource. At the moment the work is at the brain-storming stage and I feel that further developments (and perhaps suggestions from users) will help me decide which of the following options to choose:

• alphabetical – favouring those looking for a specific term
• thematic – grouping together related words e.g. interval; triad; chord – favouring browsing

I’ve also yet to decide what to do about words which do not appear on www.etymonline.com. Should I provide my own pointers? Leave them blank – encouraging reader research? Omit them from the list altogether?

Clearly, this will an ongoing project requiring constant updating. However, there’s no rush and it’s important to bear in mind the following proverb of Lao Tzu at the outset of a seemingly huge task:

“ A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

New Pupil Performance mp3s have been posted on the Knox Academy page

New Pupil Performance mp3s have been posted on the North Berwick High School page

New play-along midi files (for MGS Summer Concert - Thu 19 June) have been posted on the Guitar Group Midis page