Possum Playlist

A story from my "studio".

While recording music for my 2nd CD "Waking the Devas", which was all recorded outdoors, I went out to play under a Meteor shower. Nighttime nature sounds being different from daytime and besides it seemed like a great way to watch for shooting stars. 
I spread out a blanket, got all set up and turned off my flashlight so my eyes would adjust. I watched the stars and listened to the tree frogs. Then I played several different tunes and re-worked some. All the usual recording activity.
After some time, I heard some odd quiet little noises and rustlings (cat? small dog? giant nocturnal rabbit late for a tea party?) just past my blanket. They stopped and started, got closer but I could only see vague movement. I turned on the light and saw long pointed face, dark wild eyes, fur sticking out in all directions and a long fur-less tail.
Now let me say I love Possums. They are sweet and helpful little guys and girls. They do not generally live long enough to even be at risk of having rabies let alone spread it and they eat ticks so they are most welcome as far as I'm concerned. But they are surprising when they emerge from the darkness and fearlessly sit down next to you. Asking you to play some more tunes on that odd silver tube. Just for them.

Which is why one of the tracks recorded that night but not included in the album stops rather abruptly and includes me vocalizing various “heys” and finally clapping at the end.

The Truth About Time Signatures

This post is about a pet peeve of mine; what time signatures really mean.
First, let me go over what a time signature is for the non-musicians reading this. At the beginning of a piece of music, there are several different symbols including a couple of numbers stacked on top of each other like a fraction. Sometimes there is a large letter C or a C with a line through it instead. This is the time signature.

C with a line means the same as 2/2.

C and 4/4 are also the same. Don't worry about why, they just are.

It is sadly common for people to say the time signature tells you which note gets the beat and how many beats are in a measure or even worse, that it tells you what meter (pattern of strong and weak beats) the piece uses. The trouble is, these ideas are only right some of the time, not all. And they are right just often enough that people don't always notice how wrong they really are.
What the time signature really tells us is what the musical note values in one measure will add up to. That's it, nothing else.

Simply put, the numbers are the fraction of a whole note within each measure. So 3/4 means there is three fourths of a whole note in a measure which is the same as 3 quarter notes. However, a 3/4 time signature is more likely to use the dotted half note for the beat than the quarter note. Another example is 6/8 which means there are six eighths of a whole note in one measure which is the same as 6 eighth notes. And the 6/8 time signature rarely uses the eighth note for the beat; the dotted quarter note is a much more common choice with this time signature.
A more complex way to say this is: The bottom number represents a note value. This means 2 is a half note, 4 is a quarter note, 8 is an eighth note, 16 is a sixteenth note and so on. The top number tells you how many of the note values represented by the bottom number are in one measure. So 4/4 means there are 4 quarter notes in one measure and 3/16 means there are 3 sixteenth notes in one measure. Now 4/4 sometimes uses quarter notes for the beat but just as often uses the half note or the sixteenth note depending on how fast or slow the piece is overall. In 3/16 the sixteenth note, the dotted eighth note or even the 32nd note can be counted as the beat. There is simply no way to tell from the time signature. It also doesn't tell you what rhythm patterns or meter will be used. These things are often implied by the time signature but there is no absolute relation between time signature and which note you count or the meter used. The music itself is a much better guide for figuring out the meter. And the speed (with the meter in mind) most often determines what note will be counted. It is a good idea to match a time signature with the meter in some way that people can understand but it is quite possible to impose unexpected time signatures on any meter if you are stubborn enough and don't mind making your music very difficult to play. Stravinsky did this at times, apparently in an attempt to drive his orchestra to distraction. But in general, we like our meter and time signature to work together in some way.

In a sense, the only thing the time signature reliably tells us is where to place the bar lines between each measure. This is very important for keeping your place in the music, especially when there is more than one musical part in a piece. Keeping a musical group together without a time signature or bar lines is a much more complicated process!

The Notes "In Between"

Micro-tones. These are all my personal observations and not a complete survey or study and may be quite wrong.

Micro-tones are notes that are smaller than one half-step apart. If you look at a keyboard, each note is one half-step so we are talking about notes that "fall in between the cracks" on the keyboard. The human ear can discern them, however, and even hear them as independent notes rather as sharp or flat versions of Western music’s half-step system. Easily. Many cultures use micro-tones. (There’s a case to be made for Western music using them, too. Some say they fell out of use and others say they are still in use but not acknowledged.) 
Middle Eastern music is the most commonly cited example but most other cultures have them somewhere. I have noticed that cultures with vocal music that is somewhat independent from instruments almost always use micro-tones though they aren’t always called that. Think about sean nós singing in Ireland, Blues pitch bends, Native American music and on and on. These “small” notes are often called ornaments or decoration but they are critical to the melody. 

Some instruments can play these notes easily (are even designed to) and others face a few challenges trying to use them (though there is almost always a way.) Cultures that focused on those micro-tones tend to have more instruments that play them easily. Cultures that did not pay much attention to the notes "in between" in song tend to have instruments that play notes with more clear cut divisions that make it tricky to get to the micro-tones.

Cultures that did not use much or any notation before Western colonization hit them are more likely to call the micro-tones ornaments or decoration rather than calling them notes that are part of the tune. And yet, if you leave those “ornaments” out, you are not preforming the music accurately. I am fascinated by how Irish music has taken the grace note system from Western music and started to expand it to show all those “little” notes that are so critical to this music. Though some say this is too rigid and limits the “ornament” notes. (Mind you, these grace notes and ornaments in Western music originally represented an improvisation system for Classical music that fell out of use and is only now being revived itself. They weren’t always strict notes but rather suggestions of places and ways to add something. So you could say they are returning to something like their original use in non-Western music.)

Cultures that used a notation system of their own that incorporated micro-tones kept on calling them notes, not ornaments, even after the Western music notation system got thrown at them. What’s more, they began adapting the Western notation to show those micro-tones. This is still a work in progress and some say it won’t ever really show those notes properly. But they used to say rhythm couldn’t be shown by the Western notation at all so it will be interesting to see just how things change.

In all these cases, the Western notation system, which was often forced onto other cultures, is now being changed and expanded by the very music it was meant to replace or "civilize".

My take away from all this is not new. Music doesn’t exist in a vacuum and it crosses boundaries with ease. Language, country, class and notation style. Music is constantly changing and transforming and each different style or twist creates something beautiful that is worthwhile.

Musical Languages

Many people say music is a language. I agree. Except I would go further; Music is not just one language. It is a polyglot of many languages that all enrich each other. 

Music has a listening language which requires no performing or formal training to learn and delight in. Audiences round the world know this. This is why music is often so public; by listening we are communicating with the performers and other people who are listening. Performers spend at least the same amount of time learning to listen as learning to play. It is essential for playing in groups, for making choices in your own music and for being able to understand what the audience has to say. Listening allows the musician to adapt to the moment and how the audience completes the performance. The listening language is how we continue learning, growing, expanding in music. Listening seems passive but it is, in fact, a skill that takes practice and exercise to develop. Fortunately, listening is usually a fun and pleasant experience!

There is the language of making music, the basics of which are wired into our brains yet can take years to refine. We move to music or tap a beat or hum a tune and begin to learn new techniques for making music the day we are born. We can learn this language casually, in our “down time” or for recreation. Or we may devote large sections of our lives to study and lessons and practicing. Either way, the language of making music is a lifelong activity with no end to the new and delightful things we can learn.

Then there is the language of analysis. This can be a tricky one to learn since it is essentially about translating music into actual spoken or written language. And no matter how we try, there will always be something that won’t translate exactly. Still, the attempt to describe music opens up worlds of understanding that can transform both how we listen and how we make music. And again, this language is not exclusive to college trained performers. Anyone can speak about music, how it sounds, how it moves, how it makes us feel and what it makes us think.

Every genre and style of music is also a language, expanding the possible languages to the infinite. Listening to or making music in a different style can transform how we experienced music in the past as well as the future. We may add new ideas or “accents” inspired by other genres. We may even find some styles we don’t like but that too will add to our understanding; what we like and don’t like and why.
 

We all have the ability to learn and enjoy each and every one of these languages, with or without formal training. They combine and transform each other in a constant swirling dance. The meaning of all these languages is intangible, instantly understood and changes endlessly with each new musical experience.

Greensleeves - History and Theory

“Greensleeves” is one of the most famous English folk songs. It dates from the Renaissance and has picked up a lot of stories and speculation. It is one of several songs that are so popular, some musicians only play them by request. It has a good melody and some rather interesting harmonies that keep people listening to it over and over. It has been used as the basis for many Classical and Jazz pieces and has even been given Christmas lyrics ("What Child is This") in 1865 (over 200 years after the tune was written).

Publication and Attribution
It is generally accepted that the first printed version of “Greensleeves” dates from 1580 as a broadside ballad but that almost certainly means it existed for at least a little bit before this. (The publication history of this tune is pretty crowded; lots of versions, lots of different lyrics and lots of titles. I'm not even going to try to trace that since it can be found elsewhere.) But it is still not likely old enough to have been written by King Henry VIII in spite of the persistent rumor and unfortunate attributions on sheet music. He did write music and lyrics for existing music but he didn’t write this tune or any of its lyrics. Anonymous should get all the credit for this little song.

Meaning of Lyrics
The color green had a number of associations in the Renaissance. Sleeves in this era could be detached and switched out for a colorful splash if you had the money for that sort of thing. Green skirts, on the other hand, was a slang reference to grass stains acquired from "rolling around" on the ground and generally misbehaving. But green was also used to represent fidelity and is still very much a color associated with the fairy-folk. All of this has been used to claim the green sleeves in the folksong lyrics refer to an upper-class lady, a virtuous woman wrongly suspected of being a prostitute, an actual prostitute, a fairy or just a someone who liked the color green. Most likely, we won't ever know.

Melody and Meter
There are several versions of this melody in natural minor, melodic minor, Dorian mode and major. I’ve even run into someone claiming this tune was Eastern European in origin. This last theory could possibly explain why there are so many competing versions since when tunes travel that far, they are often shoehorned into different musical systems. But there was no musical analysis offered to support this idea so that particular theory must be left in the entirely unproven category. And of course, folk songs often develop many different versions over the centuries even when they don't travel quite so far.
Most people I know play this tune in A minor-ish but G minor-ish is fairly common and of course it can be transposed to any starting note you like. One more thing to remember is this song can be written in different meters. Some form of triple meter (6/8 or 3/4 usually) is more common in my experience but plenty of people have shifted it into duple or even odder time signatures.

A Bit of Musical Theory
Here is what I have observed about this tune.
Musically, what sounds “right” to a society changes over time. During the European Renaissance, the musical sound was shifting away from modes (scales that sound odd to modern ears) and towards the major-minor system (what Western listeners are most used to today). “Greensleeves” uses both systems and therefore shows that transition as it was happening. This is true of all the minor versions of the melody; they constantly switch back and forth from one system to the other at regular intervals, rather like a kid on a swing.
(The earliest version was printed in minor and since major just sounds wrong to me, I won’t examine that version.)

Aeolian / Natural Minor
This version starts out in the older Aeolian mode but uses the more recent melodic minor scale for the cadences at the end of phrases.

The following sound bite demonstrates the Aeolian mode, the ascending melodic minor scale and a simple version of the melody.



Aeolian (same as natural minor) uses lowered 6^th and 7^th scale steps. This scale is used at the start of and in the middle of phrases. The chorus actually starts on the lowered 7^th scale step, a distinctly modal sound.
The ascending melodic minor scale raises both the 6^th and 7^th scale steps. This scale is used exclusively at the end of phrases.

Dorian Mode
Now, the Dorian version follows the same basic pattern as the Aeolian version - the tune starts in the older Dorian mode and switches to the more recent melodic minor for the ends of phrases. Dorian is almost the same as Aeolian (natural minor) but has a raised 6th. Melodic minor is actually closer to Dorian than Aeolian in some ways.
(For a more complete explanation of the different modes see my earlier post Modern Modes.)

This sound clip demonstrates the Dorian mode, melodic minor and a short run through of a Dorian version of this song.
(You may notice that this version is one whole note lower than the Aeolian version. This can create the impression that this version is darker or sadder when played right after the other one. It is an auditory illusion created purely by the contrasting starting notes. I chose to play it in the same key as the sheet music for those who find mismatches between notation and performance disconcerting.)



Both Aeolian and Dorian are modes that work well on whistles and keyless flutes with the main difference being how high or low they sound. It isn't uncommon for folktunes to shift between the two, likely for the convenience of the instrumentalist's or the vocalist's range. In this tune, the lowest notes fall outside the Dorian range on keyless flutes unless you choose to play in the upper two octaves (making the top notes of the chorus challenging) or jump the those low notes up the octave (or just use other notes). But that raised 6th in Dorian also creates a different mood than Aeolian. It is well worth considering both versions.

Perhaps one reason this 400 year old melody remains so popular is that it gives us a small sweet taste of the different variations in music when the collective musical ear was shifting between different scale patterns, creating variegated melodies and harmonies that shimmer and shift with each hearing.

Wandering in the MIM

I went to the Musical Instrument Museum in AZ earlier this summer. After 4 hours, I was dragged out by my hair. Mostly, I wandered about, happily drooling on the pretty instruments, listening to the musical clips and noticing odd little relations between different instruments/music/dance from wildly different areas (compare hula and flamenco dancing sometime!) But I also had fun taking a few pics. Sadly, the flutes usually don't have much information included in their display (a common symptom of string instruments getting more respect than winds) but there is still a wonderful range of flutes; end-blown, rim-blown, vessel, transverse, block and duct types and more. I did not even attempt to take pictures of all of them since that would have been too distracting from the thinking and dreaming I was doing. Nor did I take pics of only flutes.
Here are a few to share.
Enjoy.

Drum Skirt Honoring Yemaja

A Few South American Flutes

Flute from the Andes

Extremely Tall Drums

African Flutes and Whistles-Worn as status symbols

Flutes and whistles from the Balkans

Animal Shaped Whistles

Spanish Chiflo (duct flute) and Salterio (string drum)

Welsh Crwth

Real Musicians

Recently, I had some interesting experiences involving the idea of a "real musician." First, some performers (who should have known better and likely didn't mean it this way) asked me to sing. When I said I wasn't a trained singer, they dismissed the idea and said I must be able to sing. After I broke down and sang a tune or two, they nodded and said "nice job, we knew you were a real musician." This sort of thing drives me a little crazy since it implies instrumentalists aren't musicians. I am a trained instrumentalist but an amateur singer. A fair amount of the training for the flute transfers to the voice with ease so I can sing well if not brilliantly. But my singing is not up to the standards I expect of myself, as a musicians, when performing for others and I chafe at the idea that "real" musicians always sing.
Now the reverse assumption also happens all the time. I know several vocalists who, when they say they are musicians, are consistently asked what instrument they play. When they answer "voice," the disappointment on the other person's face is almost shocking. It is as if they are saying "you tricked me." And other musicians do this to singers too by asking them what instrument they play in addition to singing.
Of course, it is not uncommon for instrumentalists to sing and singers to play instruments. Musicians get curious about different ways to make music and learn different skills all the time. But I think it is important to remember that this is a form of doubling, that is, learning more than one instrument. Doubling is a skill that not all musicians choose to tackle and this in no way makes them less of a musician.
Finally and just to make my point one more time, there is another group of musicians who get this treatment even more often than singers and instrumentalists; percussionists. They are often dismissed as "the ones with all the toys" or "the people who hang out with the orchestra." This is wildly unfair for a couple of reasons. One is that there is a tremendous amount music that depends on the percussion section. If the rhythm is wrong, no amount of musical skill from the other instruments will fix the piece. Another reason is that playing percussion is just as difficult as any other musical activity. Just listen to what happens when someone picks up a drum for the first time and compare it to a trained percussionist if you doubt me. Or watch a marimba player during a concerto solo (do this anyway; the flying mallets are amazing to see.) Or take a good look at the lone percussionist in a pit orchestra and the vast array of instruments they are expected to play, often all at once!
Many people, musicians included, have very firm and limited assumptions about what the term musician means and are thrown for a loop when they are reminded that their assumptions ARE limited. Learning to make music, any music, reshapes the brain. Voice, wind, brass or percussion. It is the study of music in any form that expands the language and fine motor control centers of the brain, not the choice of musical production.
There is no set way to define all musicians. Except that we make music. All the different terms for musicians (guitarist, harpist, vocalist, percussionist) really define the type of music we make. The sheer variety of those terms shows just how creative we humans are about our music. There will always be a new form of music, a new instrument, a new style of singing out there. And those who use them will still be musicians even if we have never heard or imagined that music can be made this way.

The 14 Hour Conducting Final

Everyone has a class final disaster story. Mine is from Intro to Conducting. It took over 14 hours to complete a 10 minute assignment, several different pieces of video equipment were broken and it showed me how Aikido relates to conducting. Please note; the names in this story have been changed to protect the embarrassed.

Music majors all had to take Intro to Conducting. This had two basic points. One was to perhaps inspire one or two of us to take up the career or at least let us know the basics if we ever had to be substitute teachers in a high school band class (I've got a story about that too). The other was to help us follow conductors better; you can follow most conductors pretty easily but it does help to know what they THINK they are doing.
Our grade was based on both practical conducting exercises and paper assignments and tests. For our last assignment, we had to record ourselves conducting several different short pieces and turn in the video tape at the in-class final which was at 8 am on the last day of finals. Incomplete assignments would be tossed out and because of how this assignment was weighted, not turning it in meant failing the class.
We worked in groups of at least three, each taking turns conducting the other two. My group was made up of Mike (tuba), Nicole (marimba) and myself (flute), an odd set of instruments but not a problem since only the conducting was being graded. There was a room in the library set up for the class to use (this was before everyone had video recorders on their cell phones) but Mike owned a video camera so we figured we could get together outside of library hours which was good since our schedules kept not matching up. We finally got together in the afternoon the day before the video was due, thinking we had plenty of time since we each just needed to get about 10 minutes of conducting on video. Mike set up his camera and then discovered it wasn’t working. He tried to fix it for a while but eventually borrowed another one from a friend and spent an hour or so making that one work. We finally got the equipment working around 9:30 pm and got started. I count this as the actual start time and the earlier stuff as merely preliminary aggravation.

Nicole went first. She was very picky and redid all her pieces several times trying to get the best one. Understandable since this was for a final but it kept getting later and later. After an hour and a half, she finished. Then I took my turn. I was determined to finish as fast as possible since after all, I wasn't a conducting major and I was still hoping to study for the in-class final (a dream that never was realized). The first take of my first piece went ok (meaning I made no major mistakes and we all got to the end together) so I decided not to redo it. Before I started on the second piece, I put my hair up since it had been getting in the way. (Remember this! It matters a lot later in the story!) After one or two fumbles, I finished all my pieces and we moved on to Mike. He was also picky and took about an hour to finish. It was much later than we expected but we still needed to get our videos onto separate tapes to turn in to the teacher. (I forget why we couldn't simply record directly onto our own tapes but we couldn't.) So we trooped off to Mike’s room since he had the equipment to handle that. But the VCR machine wouldn’t work. He smacked it around for a bit but couldn’t get it to cooperate. We knew we could do this in the library but by this time it was after 2 am, the in-class test was at 8 am and the library wouldn’t open till 9 am. Since we were out of options, we decided to beg the teacher for some extra time to use the library’s equipment to transfer our finished videos onto our own tapes. We all crawled off to sleep for a couple of minutes.

Nicole and I got to the final about 10 minutes early (rather bleary) and threw ourselves on the teacher’s mercy. He said as long as we got the tapes turned in before he left campus at noon, he’d take them. We thanked him profusely, breathed a sigh of relief and waited for Mike to get to class. And waited. And waited. The teacher handed out the test and Mike still wasn’t there. We began plotting how to break into Mike’s room to get the video after the test or something. Just as we were finishing the test around 9, Mike came RUNNING into the room with his hair standing on end and looking like he was about to cry. He had slept through his alarm and had had a rather rude awakening. I think he hurt his knees hitting the floor to beg to take the test but luckily our teacher was a nice guy and technically, there were two hours blocked out for the test anyway. Mike got to take as much of the test as he could in the slightly less than one hour left. Nicole and I got the video tape from him (along with many apologies and variations on "I'm getting a new alarm clock this afternoon") and headed off to the library, thinking the worst was behind us.
We got into the video-audio room and set things up to transfer our recordings to our tapes. And the VCR machines stopped working. This was clearly Nicole's breaking point; she sort of slid out of her chair and collapsed under the desk, softly mumbling "we're all gonna fail" over and over. Now, I am one of those people who walks into a room and all the electronics stop working right. This means I was very familiar with all the ways the equipment in the audio-visual center broke. I could even fix quite a few of the most common break downs and knew who could fix the others. This particular issue could only be fixed by one person; the head of the audio-visual department. So I made sure Nicole wasn't going to hurl herself out of the window or anything and went hunting for him. He was in a meeting so I waved at him through the window till he came out and got him to fix the machines. Nicole emerged from the depths and started babbling happily in relief to anyone within 3 feet of her which was oddly even less helpful than hiding under the desk had been. But we got her video transferred without further incident.

Then we set up for mine. Now remember what I said about putting my hair up AFTER finishing the first piece while we were recording this? First I appeared on camera with my hair down. Then there was a blip in the film and I was standing there with my hair up. Mike had recorded over the first piece by mistake. (I should mention that normally, Mike was a pretty responsible person-this final just did him in.) After some initial panic, I realized the teacher had given us some time and we were in the library thus making it possible to re-record that piece. The trick was that these pieces had to be in the specified order meaning I couldn’t transfer the other pieces and tack the missing one on at the end. I had to re-record first. And just to complicate things, we realized Nicole’s marimba couldn’t be transported to the library, so she couldn’t play the music for me. My one hope was to find another student from our conducting class who had their instrument with them and would help me out. After going up and down all four floors (while courting a fine case of denial), I ran into Louisa, another flute player. I told her a highly abbreviated version of what was happening and she dropped everything and came to my rescue. With Louisa in tow, I planned on grabbing Mike when he finished taking his in-class test and quickly cranking out a fast, sloppy, version of the missing piece.
By now, it was almost time for me to go to work so getting that time restraint out of the way was the next issue. My work-study job was one building over, so I went to talk to them. They asked how my conducting final had gone (they were really nice people) and why I looked so stressed. I told them I'd been working on it for almost 12 hours (at that point) and wasn't done yet and could I have the time off to finish? They commiserated and made me promise to tell them the whole story later. I crossed my fingers and hoped nothing else would go wrong.

Back to the library I went. Mike had gotten there and was getting his video transferred. But then he revealed that he couldn’t stay to re-record my missing piece. He had to go to work. I think I stared at him for about 5 minutes in shock. Nicole and Louisa suggested I go through the whole library floor by floor (for a third time) looking for yet ANOTHER student from our class. On the last day of finals when most students had finished all their classes. At 11 am when most people LEFT the library for lunch. This is when I sat down on the floor and began to cry, thinking “this will be a funny story if I pass. Maybe even if I don't.” Fortunately, Nicole came out of her I’m-so-happy-to-have-finished trance at this point and realized I needed some help. Somehow, she found another student from our class, Guy, at HIS work-study job in the library stacks and dragged him into the video room at baton point. Then she ran to the rehearsal hall next door to get his trumpet so he wouldn’t technically be leaving work. I pulled myself back together, thanked everyone and took over the recording room.
I yanked out my (very battered) music and tried to lead them through the missing piece. And it fell apart. We were all so tired no one could follow me. Or find the beat. Or remember which way was up. We could not get through the piece without stopping and we weren’t allowed to have any “breaks” in the pieces themselves. Out of desperation (and after five or six tries), I decided to use an Aikido technique; extending ki and one-point. The idea is that you send your energy and intent throughout your whole body and out into the space around you. This makes your body move in precise and controlled ways, which works great for throwing people in a martial arts class. I was hoping that I could somehow take control of Guy’s and Louisa’s instruments with my mind and little baton and at least get through the wretched piece once without having them stop. And it worked! To my absolute amazement, we made it through the whole piece in one go. They played with better tone and technique than all the earlier attempts and Louisa even commented that my conducting was suddenly better than anything I’d done in the class up to that point. She then suggested I re-record the other pieces doing "whatever that was" again. I said I didn't think there was time (since who knew how long it would take to drag them through the other pieces) and I just wanted to turn in a complete assignment, never mind what grade I got. So she and Guy wished me luck and left.

First piece done, I went to transfer the other pieces to my tape. And the VCR machine stopped working again. (Yeah, I know, I should have expected THAT!) I whimpered and headed off to drag the head of the audio-visual center out of his meeting again (it really was his job and there really wasn’t anyone else capable of dealing with this glitch), and he fixed it. Again. And FINALLY, completed tape in hand, I bolted off to the faculty mailroom, double checked that the teacher hadn’t left early (which I WAS expecting but my luck had finally changed) and turned it in with 15 minutes to spare.
Then I crawled back up to my room, where my roommate was just getting up. She had last seen me heading off to start the recording the previous afternoon and naturally asked how my final went. I said it would take too long to explain or even sum up and I would tell her about it after I slept. And that I just might, after the end of class, have figured out how to handle a baton effectively.

And yes, I passed. With an A.

What Do You Hear?

I teach a music history class for non-music majors. One of the first things I make my students do is talk about music. I play musical examples for them and say "tell me what you thought". And silence falls.
After about five minutes of gentle encouragement someone finally gets up the courage to say "I liked it" or "I didn't like it" and I breathe a sigh of relief. If I can get them to admit they have an opinion, there is a chance they will develop some ability to talk about the music. This works even better when one student says they like a piece and another says they don't like the same one. With a little careful assistance in finding the words to describe what they heard, the class often realizes that the exact same musical moments caused both opinions. That is when they realize this class is not about right and wrong answers but about experiencing new music and learning to express their own thoughts.
Quite a few students drop at this point. The idea that their grade is at least partly based on their own opinions and observations seems to be overwhelming for them. They can't just read the book and parrot it back to me or express the same thing another student does because I ask them "why didn't you like this, because of the choppy rhythm or the dissonance?" or "what made you like this piece, the instrument sound or the melody?" The fact that there is no wrong answer to these questions doesn't help them much at first. They may have spent years in school but they have almost never had to express their own opinions. The realization that opinions are exactly what I am after startles most of them and the lack of absolute right answers appears to be terrifying to many.
 Once they get this far, they nervously ask for tips and ways to start talking about music "right". I tell them to start with the obvious, all the things that seem too blinding clear to bother describing; is the piece fast or slow, smooth or choppy, loud or quiet, consistent or changeable, name the instruments you hear and when they change to other instruments. Because when you are talking about music, you aren't actually listening to it anymore. All those musical sounds that are obvious in the sounding music aren't obvious at all once the music stops.
Words and music are two different languages and learning to translate one to the other can be tricky. Music says some things with such ease and grace that the complexity of what they are saying vanishes into simple sound. Those same ideas can take an entire paragraph to describe properly in words and even then, we often have only described the bare surface of the musical sound, not the depth of meaning (for lack of a better term) within the music.
The secret, I think, is that the meaning of the music is at least partly created by our own minds and therefore changes subtly (or less subtly at times) from moment to moment, hearing to hearing and even in retrospect. It is entirely possible to experience a piece one way while listening to it and while writing about it, experience it differently in our own memories. This can make writing about a piece seem like a fantasy or a made up answer. Which it is, of course, since we are talking about what we think about music. We are the ones creating those thoughts and therefore we are making it up as we go. And there is no wrong answer.

I Don't Know That Song

"I know that one but I can't do it". This quote from a book about improvisation got me thinking; What is the difference between knowing and being able to perform something? And how does that difference shift based on if the performer reads music or plays by ear?

I was trained to read music so for me, knowing a piece means I can play it reliably well when the music is in front of me. But take that music away and I am suddenly at sea even with simple tunes that can turn into ear-worms. I can often fake a harmony line or even stumble through the tune (after a few false tries) if it is a simple song but I won't really retain it based on that alone. The interesting thing is that I clearly "know" the tune because I recognize whenever I hit a wrong note, flub a rhythm or miss an entrance. For that matter, I also recognize when I get it right! 
I find that learning a piece by ear, even a short repetitive folk tune, can take a startlingly long time compared to reading the sheet music. Having to recognize when a note is right or wrong AND work out the technical details of playing it AND commit the song to memory all at the same time doubles or quadruples the time required to learn the piece. I often get wildly frustrated and say, "just find me some sheet music, it will be faster". But the tunes I have learned by ear I KNOW. They are in my head, my fingers and sometimes simply spring out of the flute without any conscious plan to play them. Even the music I have memorized after learning to play them from sheet music don't take up quite the same space in my mind.

So here are some of the conclusions I have come to; 
Those who habitually play by ear can recognize a tune without knowing it well enough to play by themselves. This doesn't mean they can't play along with a group since they often can come up with something reasonably close based on knowing similar tunes or simply having absorbed the style of music (much easier to do when you spend such intensive amounts of time on every single song). 
Those who usually read music can play a tune with the notation in front of them but may have trouble jumping in with a group that is playing from memory. On the other hand, they can play a wide range of tunes using the sheet music with relatively little prep time. They can even switch styles with reasonable accuracy based on having studied so many different styles (much easier to do if you aren't spending quite as much time learning every single song). 
Additionally, musicians in both groups may develop the ability to fake a tune or a harmony line based on what others are doing. Oddly, this skill is not generally taught in spite of how useful it is in almost all musical situations. Maybe because it feels like cheating to so many musicians, hence the term "fake". What we are actually doing is improvising, often at a very skilled level.

It seems to me that there is a wide range of "knowing" music, ranging from simply recognizing a familiar melody to having each turn and twist committed to soul deep memory. And somewhere in-between, each musician comes up with a sweet spot that let's them know, perform, teach or ornament a tune to the audience's (and their own) satisfaction.

Playing a piece I have halfway memorized and the odd faces I make in the process.

Acoustic Revolution

I don't like amplified music. At least not as much as acoustic music. Generally speaking, instruments sound fuller and richer and meld with other instruments better when they are not amplified. Voices likewise sound more human and individual when there is no mic in-between the singer and the audience.
Now there are times when amplification is an absolute necessity; the audience can be so large there is no other way to make the show work or an instrument just may not be able to play loud enough to fill the space being used for the concert. Outdoor concerts can be especially problematic for guitars and singers. And since most of our favorite music today is centered around guitars and singers, it is no wonder we assume that music must be amplified. But this is not always the case.
I have played shows in small art galleries that a single singer could easily have filled that still used massive sound systems. The result tends to be a tinny sound, lots of feed back and volume so high that the audience leaves after two songs just to give their ears a rest. Many instruments actually carry an extremely long way when played well. Flutes are famous for this and have been used historically for long distance communication. Brass instruments are so loud that when I see them amplified, I often flee the location before they can even begin to play and damage my hearing.
It startles me how often people assume I will need amps and mics when I am playing an indoor show. Walls in my experience are more than enough amplification on their own. Even (or sometimes especially) in big rooms. This is why cathedrals were used for music so often. Everyone could hear the music no matter how quiet the instruments or how far from the musicians you were. And the reverb in large halls is an entirely different sound than the sound engineered reverb done in audio labs. It holds onto the tiny nuances of sound while echoing out into silence. Some of my favorite places to play with no mics are simple rooms with high ceilings where the flute can take off and fly from corner to corner without any fetters.
Then of course there is playing outdoors without electrical support. This frightens many musicians because their sound seems to be swallowed up or vanish into the horizon. All the little "flaws" in their playing become more noticeable, especially any tone issues, when there are no walls to throw the echos around. One of my teachers actually encouraged me to play outside for exactly this reason; to hear precisely what I sounded like with no interference or distortion. It is something of a humbling experience at first if you have only played in rooms with generous acoustics. But the more you play in settings that allow you to hear your true sound, the easier it is to both improve your sound and to MATCH your sound to your environment.

Music in the Green

I suspect one reason people overuse amplification is they don't take the time to hear and work with the sounds of the space they are playing in. If you sit and listen to the sounds in the place for 5 or 10 minutes and THEN play, you actually will sound different than if you just start playing the moment you have your instrument put together. The changes are subtle but highly informative. Can this be done with amps and mics? Of course! But if you depend on amplification all the time, it is much harder to learn this listening skill. And if you use the amps primarily to be "loud enough," you likely will have a terrible time hearing the natural sounds. And worse, so will your audience. So if you are going to use amps, I'd suggest setting them as low as you can at first and listening to how the amped sound interacts with the world's sounds. Only once you have a feel for that mixing and cooperation of sounds should you increase the volume. And be careful about how loud you go! Loud doesn't equal good and in fact can make something that once was good, very unpleasant and painful.
The trick is maintaining that level of listening to the sounds of the world around you while you are playing your show. It does take practice to stay aware of the many layers of auditory reality at once. It's a little like listening to three different conversations at a long lunch table at once; you won't always catch everything but with patience, you can stay in touch with each one with relative ease.
Taking the time to understand how your sound will interact with other sounds is what creates a performance that works in the space. This, rather than volume, is what makes a show worth attending for me; a musical sound that doesn't destroy other sounds but instead works with what is available and adapts to changes. This creates a live show that will be different and personal for every audience which is, to my mind, the magic of live music.

Ionian and Locrian Modes

This post is the last of a series about the modes.

Ionian is the same as the major scale or the same as playing all the white keys from C to C. All major scales are Ionian scales, just starting on different notes than C.
Locrian is the same as a minor scale with a lowered 2nd step and a lowered 5th step or the white keys from B to B. To start on a different note, play the minor scale and lower the 2nd and 5th steps. For example, B minor has two sharps, F and C. Since C is the 2nd step and F is the 5th, both are lowered to natural.

I'm breaking my pattern and discussing two modes at once (gasp!) in this post. The reason is simple; I don't have a lot to say about either of them.
Ionian is major. Major is Ionian. There just isn't much else to say on the subject. It is possible to argue that since in modes, you don't modulate much (except from mode to mode) that the lack of shifting key signatures is what makes a piece modal Ionian rather than major. But this is a weak argument since there are plenty of major pieces that don't change keys much. It is also possible to argue that how Ionian is used with the OTHER modes makes it Ionian but this doesn't really change how melodies and harmonies in Ionian itself work.

Now on to Locrian. Locrian is the one mode I don't get. At all. Not even a little. It starts and stops on the 7th step of the major scale which is one of the most unresolved sounds possible. In addition, moving both the 2nd and the 5th takes away any sense of center this mode might have had. To me, it always sounds wrong, unfinished, like the composer is messing with the audience or possibly trying (and failing) to impress a theory teacher. Speaking of which, I did have a theory teacher who claimed Locrian was her favorite mode and played it at the end of class regularly. It almost always caused us to run to the nearest piano and play the note after the last note of the Locrian mode just to get some sense of resolution. We may have been too steeped in the Western scales to adapt, I don't know. I have considered adjusting this scale to see if that made it more palatable to me (and I may very well do this) but the simple truth is that it won't be Locrian any more. It would become a scale outside of the modal system. Of course, there are many scales that don't fit into the modal system and they are well worth exploring. Generally, just like the modes, they all work differently and different people like different ones.
So if you enjoy that empty, tension filled feeling of a musical line hanging in mid-air, run with it! It could possibly fit in with some Jazz styles which end on non-tonic chords. But you will have to figure out how to work this mode without help from me!