Alan Coady’s Musical Blog

New pupil performance mp3s have been posted on the NBHS page.

New pupil performace mp3s have been posted on the Knox and MGS pages.

The depth in which a new musical concept is explained varies greatly depending on the age of the pupils. Often, the first encounter of a concept contains little in the way of technical data, the main concern being to see whether or not the pupils can hear the concept.

One such concept is tonality – or the idea of a piece of music being in a certain key. In the first instance I mention no more than the fact that in most pieces have there exists one note which is the leader, the centre and the foundation of the piece. This seems to do the trick. I play a short extract and pupils then rummage around the fingerboard until they locate the centre of the piece. The gravitational pull is usually sufficiently strong to ensure that most will eventually get there. In fact, the pull is so strong that the key note does not even have to be present in the tune. If you play this extract, you will hear what the key note (aka tonic) should be and that, in fact, should have been present as the final note: click

This fact bewilders most pupils. An implied planet cannot exert a gravitational pull, so how can a note do it? Normally an analogy would be pulled out here to illustrate the point. The problem is that I can’t think of a convincing one. The nearest I can get is that in certain sentences, a missing verb is so obvious that it feels more or less present:

He ****** the ball so hard that it broke the crossbar

But even this sentence has room for doubt.

Can anyone out there think of a parallel situation in another subject?

New fingering guide video footage has been posted on the Video Page. Don’t forget to enjoy the 4-second long, deafening blast of Eb which serves as a bell at 2:24 in the Lower Part video - it adds so much to our lessons…..

Close up video of (suggested) left hand fingerings for Leo Brouwer’s Estudio No. 1 posted at bottom of Video Page.

New pupil performance mp3s have been posted on the Campie PS and NBHS pages.

New pupil performance mp3s have been posted on the North Berwick High School page.

New pupil performance mp3s have been posted on the Campie PS page

Continuing to experiment with video…here is a hurriedly shot, and appallingly lit, rendition of Now Westlin’ Winds. This is basically an instrumental version of what Dick Gaughan does with Burns’ original on his excellent Handful of Earth album. I did this arrangement a few years ago and a couple of pupils played it their Advanced Higher programmes. The tuning is DADGAD i.e. strings 1, 2 & 6 tuned down a tone (2 fret’s worth).

Just after writing this, I discovered that this is Dick Gaughan’s “favourite song of all time.”

New Pupil Performance mp3s have been posted on the North Bewick High School Page