At 9:13 AM -0400 6/1/10, Christopher Smith wrote:
The thing that drives me nuts (well, about my students and young composers who bring works in for reading, so maybe I get exposed to it more) is when a perfectly conventional gesture is written in a way that makes it incomprehensible. They haven't played enough music themselves or had enough musical experience in general to "get" how a performer's brain works.
Same thing in my arranging class. And it happens most often with a transcription assignment, when they take a melody down one note at a time and fit it in with CORRECT but incomprehensible note values. So what they want--are you ready?!!--is "RULES" for how to do it. And "rules" is a good start, but there's no substitute for experience, in the same sense that the only way to learn to write language is to spend a LOT of time reading.
I guess I want all my students to have jef chippewa's brain, even in their first year. Is that asking too much? 8-)
Yes! But we can start nudging them on the right track. John -- John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music Virginia Tech Department of Music College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:john.how...@vt.edu) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html "We never play anything the same way once." Shelly Manne's definition of jazz musicians. _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
