LDT Posted August 5, 2009 Share Posted August 5, 2009 Back on topic. Why is music so hard?! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TomB-R Posted August 5, 2009 Share Posted August 5, 2009 (edited) Back on topic. Why is music so hard?! It's a conspiracy by a self-perpetuating elite oligarchy of course! The Sufi "Wise Fool" Nasreddin saw through it.... "Nasreddin the Saz player Someone asked Nasreddin if he knew how to play Saz (like a fiddle), -Yes, answered Nasreddin And they gave a Saz to him to prove it. He began to play. DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII.... Same note, same string, over and over. DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII.... After a few minutes, people stopped Nasreddin's playing, -This is not the correct way of playing the saz, you play the same note. The saz players move their fingers up and down, play on different strings! -Well, I know why they go up and down and try all different strings. -Why is that? -They're looking for *this* note that I allready found..." [Edit for spelling.] Edited August 5, 2009 by TomB-R Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Mansfield Posted August 5, 2009 Share Posted August 5, 2009 Back on topic. Why is music so hard?! Because if it was easy, it wouldn't mean so much to us, it wouldn't move and enthrall us the way it does, and it wouldn't still be intriguing and fascinating and frustrating us after all these years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drbones Posted August 5, 2009 Share Posted August 5, 2009 Back on topic. Why is music so hard?! I've always been told that music is like mathmatics. There's an order and rules to it which must be learned in stages. You start with the basics, 1+1=3, and advance to quantum physics, rocket surgery, or what have you. And there is the "theory" group who are always wanting to change or expand on the rules. There are geniuses like Bach writing symphonys at the age of 8 or so and there's kid sitting on the porch playing the banjo in Deliverance. I certainly never expect to get to the rocket surgery level since, as indicated by my ciphering skills, I'm still in the basics and just don't have either the time or aptitude (or both) to get to the top of the squeezebox before moving on to a harp.... hopefully. ... I'll be happy to make it to the porch! Does anyone here play a harp? is it harder then the concertina? I just want to know what to expect... just in case that is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterT Posted August 5, 2009 Share Posted August 5, 2009 Does anyone here play a harp? is it harder then the concertina? I just want to know what to expect... just in case that is. I thought that they were given out when promoted "upstairs", with plenty of time to practice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LDT Posted August 5, 2009 Share Posted August 5, 2009 Back on topic. Why is music so hard?! It's a conspiracy by a self-perpetuating elite oligarchy of course! The Sufi "Wise Fool" Nasreddin saw through it.... "Nasreddin the Saz player Someone asked Nasreddin if he knew how to play Saz (like a fiddle), -Yes, answered Nasreddin And they gave a Saz to him to prove it. He began to play. DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII.... Same note, same string, over and over. DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII.... After a few minutes, people stopped Nasreddin's playing, -This is not the correct way of playing the saz, you play the same note. The saz players move their fingers up and down, play on different strings! -Well, I know why they go up and down and try all different strings. -Why is that? -They're looking for *this* note that I allready found..." [Edit for spelling.] Who did 'invent' the way music is written and decided on the 'rules'? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Mansfield Posted August 5, 2009 Share Posted August 5, 2009 Who did 'invent' the way music is written and decided on the 'rules'? OTTOMH an Italian monk named Guido d'Azzerro is generally credited with the key invention in the evolution of written music, in that he effectively came up with the idea of positioning the notes in meaningful relation to horizontal lines. Up until then, plainsong and chant books were pretty much aide-memoires to an essentially oral tradition, indicating 'you go up here' and 'you go down here'. Guido's addition of horizontal lines introduced the effective concept of (a) a 'home' note, in that if the note was on the line it was (say) an A, and ( from that follows on the idea that the greater horizontal distance a particular note is from the 'home' note, the higher or lower that note is than the home note. Thus we got the first idea of a fixed relative pitch of one note to another. At first Guido only used two lines, then three, but as the idea spread more lines were added - it wasn't until the spread of music printing that we standardised on five lines to a staff, and the ledger lines for notes outside that range are the ghosts of many other extra lines. As for who decided on the 'rules' of music - well, how long have you got? Pythagoras described the octave and the fifth ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drbones Posted August 5, 2009 Share Posted August 5, 2009 I thought that they were given out when promoted "upstairs", with plenty of time to practice. Yes, that's what I've heard too. I guess I should be more worried about what they play downstairs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catty Posted August 5, 2009 Share Posted August 5, 2009 Does anyone here play a harp? is it harder then the concertina? I just want to know what to expect... just in case that is. It's as easy as concertina...but without buttons and bellows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drbones Posted August 5, 2009 Share Posted August 5, 2009 It's as easy as concertina...but without buttons and bellows. That sounds too easy, there must be strings attached! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LDT Posted August 5, 2009 Share Posted August 5, 2009 Who did 'invent' the way music is written and decided on the 'rules'? OTTOMH an Italian monk named Guido d'Azzerro is generally credited with the key invention in the evolution of written music, in that he effectively came up with the idea of positioning the notes in meaningful relation to horizontal lines. Up until then, plainsong and chant books were pretty much aide-memoires to an essentially oral tradition, indicating 'you go up here' and 'you go down here'. Guido's addition of horizontal lines introduced the effective concept of (a) a 'home' note, in that if the note was on the line it was (say) an A, and ( from that follows on the idea that the greater horizontal distance a particular note is from the 'home' note, the higher or lower that note is than the home note. Thus we got the first idea of a fixed relative pitch of one note to another. At first Guido only used two lines, then three, but as the idea spread more lines were added - it wasn't until the spread of music printing that we standardised on five lines to a staff, and the ledger lines for notes outside that range are the ghosts of many other extra lines. As for who decided on the 'rules' of music - well, how long have you got? Pythagoras described the octave and the fifth ... Sounds like it needs an update/rethink for the twitter generation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Wild Posted August 5, 2009 Share Posted August 5, 2009 Attach a bass drum to my back symbols to knees....rather like Bert from Mary Poppins. the cymbals are very symbolic!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LDT Posted August 6, 2009 Share Posted August 6, 2009 grrr...I'm now platauing on both instruments. Its not fair. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michael sam wild Posted August 6, 2009 Author Share Posted August 6, 2009 Back on topic. Why is music so hard?! It's a conspiracy by a self-perpetuating elite oligarchy of course! The Sufi "Wise Fool" Nasreddin saw through it.... "Nasreddin the Saz player Someone asked Nasreddin if he knew how to play Saz (like a fiddle), -Yes, answered Nasreddin And they gave a Saz to him to prove it. He began to play. DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII.... Same note, same string, over and over. DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII.... After a few minutes, people stopped Nasreddin's playing, -This is not the correct way of playing the saz, you play the same note. The saz players move their fingers up and down, play on different strings! -Well, I know why they go up and down and try all different strings. -Why is that? -They're looking for *this* note that I allready found..." [Edit for spelling.] Drones it is then, I'll just drone on as usual Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michael sam wild Posted August 6, 2009 Author Share Posted August 6, 2009 Does anyone here play a harp? is it harder then the concertina? I just want to know what to expect... just in case that is. I thought that they were given out when promoted "upstairs", with plenty of time to practice. John Kirkpatrick says they hand you an accordeon at the Gates of Hell ( must be a Piano Acc) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michael sam wild Posted August 6, 2009 Author Share Posted August 6, 2009 Who did 'invent' the way music is written and decided on the 'rules'? As for who decided on the 'rules' of music - well, how long have you got? Pythagoras described the octave and the fifth ... As I've posted elsewhere the recently discovered Neanderthal Flute made of a vulture's wing bone played a diatonic octave scale 45,000 years ago ( don't know what key unless it was a Clarkes in C, if Generation more likely to be in D like my Andean cane flute). Who decided to divide it into 8ths remains to be discovered you can divide it into smaller or larger intervals but we seem to have settled for 12 max on the piano keyboard although i use smaller intervals on whistle, flute or fiddle. Other fretless instruments could do that do I think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Mansfield Posted August 6, 2009 Share Posted August 6, 2009 Who decided to divide it into 8ths remains to be discovered you can divide it into smaller or larger intervals but we seem to have settled for 12 max on the piano keyboard although i use smaller intervals on whistle, flute or fiddle. The 12 tones in the octave of Western music is all down to ratios - there is a fairly eye-watering explanation at http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~mrubinst/tuning/12.html if you really want to know the ins and outs, but I lost the maths after the first screen-full or so. And as Michael says there are all the microtones in between, and then there's the issue of being able to play in more than one key through the application of temperament, and the whole can of worms that yawns open as soon as you start discussing issues of 'harmony' and 'dischord', and the different tonal decisions taken in Indian music compared to Western music ... Yeah, LDT's right. It's all far too complicated and in need of a thorough overhaul and simplification for the Twitter generation. Actually I think that's already happened - it's called techno! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Hersh Posted August 6, 2009 Share Posted August 6, 2009 I think you mean "Guido of Arezzo or Guido Aretinus or Guido da Arezzo or Guido Monaco or Guido d'Arezzo (991/992 – after 1033)" -- that's what Wikipedia calls him. Who did 'invent' the way music is written and decided on the 'rules'? OTTOMH an Italian monk named Guido d'Azzerro is generally credited with the key invention in the evolution of written music, in that he effectively came up with the idea of positioning the notes in meaningful relation to horizontal lines. Up until then, plainsong and chant books were pretty much aide-memoires to an essentially oral tradition, indicating 'you go up here' and 'you go down here'. Guido's addition of horizontal lines introduced the effective concept of (a) a 'home' note, in that if the note was on the line it was (say) an A, and ( from that follows on the idea that the greater horizontal distance a particular note is from the 'home' note, the higher or lower that note is than the home note. Thus we got the first idea of a fixed relative pitch of one note to another. At first Guido only used two lines, then three, but as the idea spread more lines were added - it wasn't until the spread of music printing that we standardised on five lines to a staff, and the ledger lines for notes outside that range are the ghosts of many other extra lines. As for who decided on the 'rules' of music - well, how long have you got? Pythagoras described the octave and the fifth ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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