Alan Coady’s Musical Blog

The latest edition of The Guardian’s podcast, Science Weekly deals with the evolution of music. For those who won’t get round to listening to it before the week is out, it can be downloaded as an mp3 to listen to in your own time.

One of my favourite games, called into play to allay the tedium of supermarket shopping, is to guess the origin of foreign languages before I’m near enough to hear the words. What’s this nonsense, I hear you read. But really, you can tell from the tunes. However this becomes more difficult when foreign nationals are speaking English, as the mixture of our words to their tunes tends to hide the traces. Try out your ear on this online spot the accent quiz.

Thanks to Omniglot for the link.

Slightly more than one year after the idea was mooted, I managed to visit Robert Jones class in NBHS to observe a whiteboard in action*. A Credit Maths class was tightening its grip on the law of indices. Not only was I impressed with the effortless and effective use of the many functions of the whiteboard, but also with the Activote apparatus. This handheld, wireless tool enabled the class to vote on a multiple choice answer – the results being instantly called up in bar-chart form. My first thought on seeing this was that it would encourage uncertain pupils to engage, as it seemed anonymous. I say seemed as the stats are available to the teacher, enabling him/her to see if anyone is struggling or excelling. They are, it turns out, also available to the class if they so vote.

All the observation I’ve done to date has been serendipitous and usually takes the form of over-hearing/eavesdropping while printing from a computer in a Music classroom. What I tend to notice, possibly more than content, is language – not only the words but the tune. What appears to me to be best practice involves simple language**, quietly expressed. And this seems as true of classroom management as of delivery of lesson content. And it was certainly true yesterday. Drifting individuals were swiftly spotted and nudged back on task - sotto voce; the balance of praise, encouragement and prompting felt just right.

There is no formal mechanism for instrumental instructors to engage in observation. As far as I know, there is no formal mechanism for teachers to observe one another once probationary years have passed. However, based on yesterday’s experience, I feel it to be valuable for several reasons:

• there seem to me to be more common principles than significant differences across the curriculum - any primary teacher would tell you that teaching is teaching
• when you’ve taught your own subject for some years, there is perhaps more to be learned from observing the teaching of other subjects – any inspired moments I’ve experienced in the last few years have had their origins in fields other than music
• it’s unusual to see your pupils in another learning situation and, given our in loco parentis status, this strikes me as a little odd

* What was nice about this visit was that the idea came round again after we’d played through a few mandolin and guitar tunes at lunchtime

** While the pupils were engaged in a few exercises, I took the opportunity to pick up a book I’d spotted on Robert’s desk entitled The Physics of Sailing Explained, and read a few pages of the chapter on the weather and why it exists. This impressive read was the perfect compliment to the situation – concise, unambiguous sentences in the right order. It seemed so easy you felt you could have written it yourself.

What constitutes the perfect voice? Is it totally subjective or can the ingredients be isolated and described objectively?

According to research carried out on behalf of Post Office Telecom it is possible to be very precise about this. Perhaps not surprisingly, the research was carried by two people who can count music among the many strings on their bows:

• Andrew Linn – lecturer in linguistics and phonetics at Sheffield University, and accomplished organist
• Shannon Harris -sound engineer and keyboard player with, among others, Lily Allen and Rod Stewart.

Shannon Harris, speaking to James Naughtie on Radio 4’s Today described the research procedure. Fifty unknown voices were played to participants and the common traits of favoured voices noted:

1. good bass frequency response – between 35.5Hz and 12.2 KHz
2. a delivery speed 160 words per minute – with a gap of 0.5 sec between phrases
3. an intonation contour which goes downwards! (take note, fans of AQI/HRT – no not that one, the other one*)

This information proved sufficient to synthesise the perfect male and female voice, both of which can be heard here.

Presumably to give these findings some popular meaning, well known voices featuring some or all of these were listed. They included:

• Judi Dench
• Michael Gambon
• Mariella Frostrup
• Alan Rickman
• Jeremy Irons

You’ll note the complete absence of national/regional accents and also of context. Would dozens of orators using RP or SBS be suitable in the Scottish Parliament or Welsh Assembly? Would Alan Rickman make a convincing drill sergeant? Could Juni Dench comfortably MC a Hip-Hop festival?

James Naughtie asserted - correctly in my view - that what people were looking for was a voice, reading with understanding and meaning. In the context of teaching, an individual teacher’s delivery would surely change depending on where in the 3-18 continuum they were placed.

It seems clear that the voice was being regarded as an de-contextualised instrument. No composer would cite any single instrument as the perfect one without knowing the setting and the emotional intention. The harpsichord is not a great instrument for marching to war and bagpipes are rarely booked for dinner jazz.

*Stephen Fry consigned Australian Questioning Intonation aka High Rising Terminal to Room 101 on BBC 2. Interestingly the researchers report that this sound suggests a lack of confidence. Viewed thus, it is not surprising that is is mainly the domain of teenagers for whom fitting in and confidence are big issues. Contrastingly, David Crystal, a prolific writer on language, considers that AQI is favoured by young people as it sounds inviting and inclusive and because, generally, young people are more interested in meeting new people and making new friends than older people whose family and social networks are perhaps happily in place.

Everyone in Scottish education will now be aware of the four capacities of A Curriculum for Excellence. The thing is barely off the ground yet but today, having seen it in action, I felt the need for a fifth – Ambassadors.

I was invited by Erika MacLaughlan, DHT of Musselburgh Burgh PS, to bring a couple of guitarists from Wallyford PS to provide a support act for the Krakow Youth Jazz Band who were visiting their school. The KYJB comprised students and staff from Krakowska Szkoła Jazzu i Muzyki Rozrywkowej (Krakow School of Jazz and Contemporary Music).

Being a hands across the sea event, the pupils, Andrew & Connor, bravely agreed to bi-lingual introductions and took turns at announcing and translating in Polish and English. They played a morning and afternoon concert to pupils from Burgh, Wallyford, Pinkie, Campie & Stoneyhill and also some Polish pupils from Musselburgh Grammar School. I think it’s not stretching things to say that the boys were great ambassadors for their school, their town and their country. They really enjoyed being around the band. It was a stroke of luck that their guitarist, Arek, was a live wire, a virtuoso player and a friendly guy.

I received a gift from Poland as a gesture of thanks from the band and it was nice to be able to offer them something in return – mp3 recordings of this afternoon’s concert which I have emailed to the Dyrektor of the Krakowska Szkoła, Grzegorz Motyka – another guitarist! I hope the recordings will bring back memories of their trip to Scotland. Unfortunately there was no-one to hand to record Connor & Andrew but you can hear them here.

Before returning to Krakow, the band will making an appearance at The Jazz Bar, Chambers St., Edinburgh, this Sunday at 3.00. This event is free of charge and I’d recommend anyone keen on jazz to get along if they can. Accompanied 14-18 yr old young people are welcome. Here’s a little taster of what you can expect: Sample

A combination of Activities Week, Study Leave and several trips allowed me time to get wired in about reports for one of two primary schools. The format of these is more like free prose than your online Filemaker/Freemis set-up. As they were to be emailed to the school for proof-reading (by the fastest proof-reader I’ve ever met) I merged 22 of them into one attached document. This allowed me to have an idea of the total word count. Allowing for headings, sub-headings etc. it weighed in at 5,040.

When I was a student, that would have been considered a dissertation and would have been the work of a term - or longer. Writing, merging, formatting and emailing was more a matter of hours. It’s funny how technology, combined with the simple fact of getting older can raise your game.

What’s also interesting is how problematic situations can help to hone your prose style. Praise can be quick and compact. It seems to me that highlighting a problem requires you to describe: problem; consequence; solution – in less than three times the space.

Stravinsky put it much better. (you may need to opt for full screen if you are using a feed reader)

How good is your ear for accents? How different do you think one word could sound in a variety of accents? A new interactive site entitled Sound Comparisons by Edinburgh University in conjunction with the Arts & Humanities Research Council allows you to hear the same word uttered in dozens of accents. I tried out the word “brother” and was amazed at the differences.

Some of the pages are slow to load and using Firefox over Internet Explorer is recommended – but not as highly as downloading the entire site – which I’ve just done.

I’d say it’s impossible to cultivate a musical ear without being sensitive to the subtle changes in pitch and timbre which distinguish accents. Perhaps that’s why so many impressionists are musical.

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.

Interested in language? Shouldn’t every teacher be? Got a spare 8 minutes? Ever wondered what Forensic Linguistics is all about? You can hear a very interesting interview from Radio 4’s Word of Mouth about how language (including texting style) can betray incongruities with the claimed age, gender, social class & native language of the user and how evidence for real life cases (much more serious than copying homework) was gathered. Dr. Tim Grant, Senior Lecturer in Forensic Linguistics at Aston University explains how here (until Tue 13th at 16:00).

Very similar skills and processes are used to determine the composer of an unidentified instrumental piece of music. Details of instrumentation, national style, harmonic & rhythmic language, division of octave etc. are often unconsciously processed, allowing the listener to pin down the historical period, country of origin and, in many cases, the individual musical signature(s).

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.”