Alan Coady’s Musical Blog

One of the original intentions when beginning this blog was to upload resources which might be useful to others. As time went by I became engrossed in other aspects e.g. Guitar Group Midis or Pupil Performance mp3s and, to be honest, forgot about this intention. So I’ve attached a couple of pdf variations on some right hand exercises for finger-style guitar. The intention of both is the same - to measure the distance between strings by feeling the distance between thumb and fingers. The important thing is to use feeling rather than looking. What one is feeling for is, as far as I know, called radial abduction. 

Right Hand Exercises - No. 1          Right Hand Exercises - No. 2

N.B. the descriptions of Moving Bass Note - Stationary Top Note etc. apply within the confines of one bar.

…have been posted to the Guitar Group Midis page

In the spirit of stretching the East Lothian Guitar Ensemble to the limit, I put together a new, extremely syncopated salsa arrangement in 7 parts for the Showcase Concert.* The first pupils to try their hand at it did so during lessons at Musselburgh Grammar School yesterday, sight-reading their part while the laptop played out the complete arrangement. After a few lessons, I found myself wishing that we could have the same facility at our monthly rehearsal. Suddenly it struck me - why not? It took quite a bit more setting up than usual (laptop, speakers, extension cable, putting furniture in place) but it was definitely worth it. The pupils made a really good fist of their three pages. The optimum performance speed is 200 beats per minutes (bpm). We started at 130 bpm, which had quite a nice relaxed feel. For a bit of fun before the break we tried 180 bpm which wasn’t the disaster we’d imagined. During the break our coordinator, Peter Antonelli, popped in and we then played it to him at 150 bpm. Then, for pure comedy value, we tried 200 bpm - which turned out not to be quite the farce expected. Bearing in mind that 2/3 of the ensemble hadn’t seen the music before, it was an impressive performance.

Driving home towards a fantastic sky, with Mozart’s Symphony No 40 in Gm blasting from the radio, I began to wonder why the outcome had seemed even better than expected. Apart from the obvious opportunity for the pupils ears to contribute as much as (perhaps more than) their eyes, I think that the key ingredient is confidence. A newcomer to a piece or ensemble can benefit from the confidence of more seasoned players. Until a sufficient number of pupils in an ensemble exude enough confidence (i.e. accuracy & volume) for more timid members to follow, this is a role which can be filled by the computer.

Why not just use a CD? Even assuming that the work has been recorded, it will be at performance speed and that is something to aim for rather than the place to begin.

New files have been posted to the Guitar Group Midis page.

Over the festive period I played my first game of Cranium. I’m convinced that the time limit, provided by a cute little egg timer, watched hungrily by competitive opponents while inarticulate hands strive to depict the Millennium Dome in plasticine, adds that element of fun which friendly pressure can bring to bear. Over the remaining days of the holiday the idea, common in all sports, of exactly how long things take began to get a hold of me. How long it takes one to run or swim 100m is a very significant fact to a competitor or coach. Yet how long it takes one to perform a given calculation e.g. recite a multiplication table or conjugate a verb, seems to be entirely missing from many forms of learning.

I let the idea mature for a few days while heaving myself up and down my local swimming baths - thankfully no scrutinising coach, eyes glued to stopwatch, paced the poolside as I did so. I came up with a few games whose purpose is to speed up manipulation of aspects of theory of music which I then tried out over a few drinks with some colleagues towards the end of the holidays. Why not try this one out - mental calculation only - no writing!

Intervals (the distant between two notes) Go round the circle until you end up where you started - sharps and flats don’t matter - just letters. Here are a couple of examples:

• direction is ascending
• interval is 4ths
• starting point is D (start the stopwatch as you announce the letter)

Answer: D, G, C, F, B, E, A, D

another one

• direction is descending
• interval is 6ths
• starting point is F

Answer: F, A, C, E, G, B, D, F

I’d be very interested to hear, if anyone has the time and inclination to try these out, which parameters did you use and how long did it take? Where the descending ones significantly more challenging than the ascending?

Just in case anyone is wondering what use this type of thing is - rapid calculation of intervals is essential for speedy harmonic thinking. Bear in mind that alterations may also need to be made to some notes to differentiate between e.g. major, minor, augmented, diminished - so manipulation of the letters needs to be effortless. The comforting point, for me, is that the apparently endless range of options is, like most things, finite:

• 7 letters in the musical world
• 6 intervals inside the octave - unison and 8ve don’t count as this would simply amount to the following answer: A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A.
• 2 possible directions (plus there are cheats to get round this)

At first glance it seems like there must be 7 x 6 x 2 = 84 possibilities. But, when you bear in mind that these journeys are circular, then calculating any given interval is akin travelling on The Circle Line line (no matter where you get on you can predict what station is next) the road ahead seems a little less uncertain.

Thanks to tireless work on the part of David Gilmour, the tangled web of electronic confusion which lost us the Guitar Group Midi Files is at an end and order has been restored. Hip Hip…..

How many epiphanies are you allowed in a lifetime? Assuming that the answer is - as many as you’re prepared to let in - then, are they likely to have anything in common? I’d say that the common factor in all those moments when I was struck by something so meaningful that it should really have been obvious, is that they arrived when I wasn’t really looking for anything. I suppose that’s why people use the expression - it dawned on me. Dawn isn’t something you do. It comes in its own time and, if you’re awake, you get something out of it.

Ten years ago the MGS Guitar Group were rehearsing a medley of Scots songs for a concert. I noticed that the players, especially those on the melody part, were executing naturally a level of articulation which would have dozens of hours of rehearsal had the music been in another genre. It struck me that this music was in their bones and and they were hearing the articulation, not reading it and certainly not thinking about it. The only way that a similar attention to detail was going to be possible in other genres of ensemble music, would be if they could hear it much more frequently than a weekly rehearsal would allow. The age of affordable PCs and music software had also dawned and it seemed like play-along midi files was going to be the way ahead. The irony of this is that machines were going to result in pupils playing in a more human way. Knowing that the choice and amount of articulation applied to the written parts was going to affect the sound files raised my level of attention of this aspect of music to a level I had not foreseen and I’m convinced that this happy accident has had a beneficial impact on lesson content.

Initially distribution of play-along files was not easy and a number of less than watertight methods were tried:

• copying to floppy discs during lessons, break or lunchtime
• taking pupils’ discs home to return, laden with expressive content the following week
• depositing files on computers in school libraries
• emailing files to those families I knew and relying on their good nature to forward them to pals

You can imagine that compared to this, we seem to living in something of a golden age where they can be deposited in this blog for pupils to pick up in their own time.

So where does osmosis fit in? One of the pieces we are preparing for the East Lothian Showcase Concert* is Enrique Granados’s Córdoba. For some reason it struck me, after parts were printed and midi files created and posted, that one bar of repeated notes should be both more pronounced and more detached than initially stated. Without actually planning to experiment with this, I simply started playing it like that - demonstratively, but not forcibly. To date I have not singled out this bar for discussion of any kind although I had noticed that a few people have taken to articulating the bar in the same way. You can imagine how noticeable it was when, in this afternoon’s rehearsal, all those sharing that rhythm (20/40) hammered it out in like style despite there being no written, spoken or midi suggestion that they do so.

I should also mention here that this piece is extremely challenging and that the pupils, many of them noticeably weary, put in an exhausting shift this afternoon without complaint. They really achieved a great deal when they could have been out playing.

If you plan to attend the Showcase Concert, and would like to test your musical memory, the bar concerned contains three repeated notes and occurs at 1:27 - 1:28 in this midi file: Córdoba - Performance Speed

* Friday 7 March at 7:30 in Musselburgh Grammar School.

Sidebars

Whenever I come upon a good website I like to write a few words on why it might be useful for pupils, colleagues & enthusiasts of music, teaching or whatever else seems vaguely connected. I know that pupils access the sidebars for hands-on reasons and rarely read the central reflections. It struck me that there is even less chance of them stumbling upon these skill-honing sites when their mention disappears into the mists of time. So, I’ve updated the sidebars with links to many fun and instructive web pages - under the general heading of Lesson Support Pages. Go on - try them out.

A friend referred me to a very interesting site for guitar enthusiasts the other day called Chord Book

It has many features, the most immediately useful of which for pupils is an online tuner. The beauty of this is that you can click R (for repeat) for each string and hear the note for as long as you need. In addition to standard tuning, it also features 7 altered tunings and the option to create your own by altering the virtual pegs. At any point, you can click strum to hear how your creation will sound.

Other features include chords, scales and some backing tracks for jamming. These features are very well laid out and intuitive to use so I won’t go on at length. Let me just recommend exploring the inversions feature on the chord page and point out that the virtual guitar neck can be reoriented for left-hand players.

From the home page, you can access some video lessons. While I would never discourage anyone from enjoying these, I feel that they (and I am referring to the genre and not these specifically these lessons) have their limits. While affording a source of ideas and inspiration they are necessarily about someone else playing and not you. This type of situation has been summed up by a mind greater than mine:

“Tell me, and I will forget. Show me, and I may remember. Involve me, and I will understand.” - Chinese proverb, sometimes attributed to Confucius around 450 BC.

Test your ears on this Scale Ear Trainer which forms part of Ricci Adams excellent theory site.

There’s much more to the site than this but, for it to be really useful to pupils, I feel I need to prepare some introductory material to smooth over the differences in UK and US nomenclature.