Okay, World, there she be. It's only a small part of the revolutionary Red Book of Scales, but, with explanations, it should make a very good start. Who was it said that a picture is worth a thousand words? Perhaps. But, in my experience, if the picture is any good at all, it needs ten thousand words to explain why.
I've been talking about camera images for a while, but only now have we got one that is worth discussing. And that was virtually by accident, as MT had only taken the camera out to record the first crocus of 2009. A lovely shot. She showed it to me as I was at the keyboard with the above, very happy to have in A major what I had sketched out a month or more ago in C. I had jotted the first pair of staves at two a.m., then the second set toward noon after we came back from shopping. So I said, "See if you can get this!" And she did, and then she was able to get it on the computer and then on to the blog, and I could see that we really were in business, and also why I was in the last 24 hours incapable of either making bread or writing more of short story #3. In fact, I couldn't even go to early morning dance class, so anxious I was to get that first exercise on paper.
C is all right for starters, as it illustrates the scheme of how the major and minor intervals lie - all white keys get you the half-tones at the 3-4 and 7-8 spots - but it ain't the best key for this guy's voice, which hangs around best in the same range as those of Johnny Cash and the aforementioned Emmylou - adjusting for the gender difference of course - and I really do like rumbling along in A. It would be great fun gigging it up with the Dali Lama and his boys in northern India. And of course that range carries a certain authority. When it turns up, on the rare occasion of an acceptable hymn, it irks the nuns with authority problems no end. They like the male voice to sound as caponed as possible. Take that one to a shrink if you will.
That's right, A. Three bleedin' sharps. Totally defiant of the conservatories, who put A major in fourth place, and most definitely the sort of thing that used to scare me off any time I moved from an instrument to a sheet of paper.
That situation, of course, only existed because I hadn't figured out the numbers, and tried to follow the directions for using all ten fingers instead of the sensible beginner's two.
It's a Biblical principle that keeps turning up in these music investigations: God has ordered all things in number, measure, and weight. This means that you recognize that the orders of music are in the numbers rather than the letters. It also means that you cannot actually measure
intervals with multiple fingers, as this means relatively little to the brain's real sense of measurement, easily cultivated with the probing of one finger only - initially the middle digit. And it further means that only moving the entire forearm can give the student a true sense of the true weight involved in striking the note. Naturally, there is a place for the rest of the hand as the music becomes more complicated and true skill has developed to the point where speed as a merit. But, as with all things, the musician who starts off centred will remain centred.
I actually was making some pretty good use of the brown book, counting up and down the octaves and triads of A major with just the third finger and the numbers, sometimes with one hand, sometimes with two, but the schema there is so incomplete without the alternation of major and minor - plus the one diminished - arpeggios that are found in my second pair of staves.
The first set is the scale divided into its three logical parts, based on the natural division that comes with the three notes of the tonic triad. This is absolutely necessary to a comfortable assimiliation of the 2,3,4,5 left hand notes as harmony. No, those are not numbers of the fingers, they are numbers of the notes!
Some seasoned keyboard readers will no doubt instinctively plunk with all the digits, and that is all right if that is what it takes to experience the pleasure of truly musical studies for themselves. But sticking with this procedure will never reveal the freedom that comes with starting properly and will only encumber the student with mental lumber he or she doesn't need at the beginning, especially where there is an innate sense of rhythm just looking for a good little tune to boogie with.
I assume that the Ministry of Education in Ontario is still dragging its feet, and my CEO has just informed me that he knows all sorts of young pros back east discontented with the conservatories. Good timing on both our parts. Now concerned teachers and literate students can get down to work.
Let the Force be with you!
4 comments:
Ken, is your Kootenay Ranger about music? writing? It is really difficult to swim into the fundamentals of music. Few are born to be musicians. More can take up the task of writing. Just wondering. Music, that, in this age is not administered by the tools of techology and etc. I understand your individual thrust, but does anybody really care?
Irene,
This morning you strike me as a genius.with those questions. What a shame you never went to university, in a sense, because you would have become a legend among your professors. The beautiful pit bull from Wawa, not some mind-wandering sheep that sat there without asking a bloody thing.
But of course you did go to the university of Elwyn Street. The Elwyn Street Irregulars, by the way, are named after Sherlock Holmes' Baker Street Irregulars, the street arabs who brought him information.I've nevr forgotten your info on Doyle.
Of course it is difficult to swim into music if you were never taught right in the first place. But everyone sings a little bit, and no one can walk without a rhythm, whereas while everyone tells stories, few can write them down well. And now, thanks to the Ranger, music is being administered by the tools of technology. Becka told me yesterday she will try out the scales. All of her four have been much helped along the way by instruction I gave them when they were visitin here.
But to put your mind at rest about writing, wait just a little while for the first installment of something I'll probably call "Getting Along in the Bush",part of the Skinner Family Legends series.
Did you ever read Morley Callaghan's "That Summer in Paris", about his months with Hemingway and Fitzgerald?
Ken
oYes, I did. I have read so much. But Morley Callaghan, I remember. You often remember those who are gentlemen and scholars. I do not think that he forsake his life as did Hemingway. I still teach children that even spoken and written word has rhythm. A simple thank-you for a bit of food called snack can be an event for the dance of rhythm. "We softly say,(gentle) thank-you for our snack today." (dance with the sound of these words, express the music of gratitude.) Amen. Yet, music dives into the heart so quickly and with little intellect, guides one to valuable resolutions.Music guides one to peaceful shores quicker. Music absolves and releases one to move on. Achieving peace through the intellect is rigorous, rousing and difficult work. We need the balance of music and writing to sustain the soul. The work of the soul can be frightening.
Irene,
If you believe and feel that spoken and written language has rhythm,then you owe yourself a read or two in Hemingway. Hey, writer, have you heard of the "Red Berry Review"? It's a new venture,coming out of Fernie. On the recommendation of Jan McMurrary of the Valley Voice, I sent "The Filly" to the publisher, Randal Macnair, yesterday morning. He will let me know by April 30 if he is going to use it.
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