15 August 2007

Music Brain (Ch1, Part 2)

So, I came back to this thinking that there wasn't very much left to the chapter, but actually there's quite a bit. Let's see what sort of trouble I can get into before my piano lessons start for the day, shall we? I believe we left off with the musicians at the back door.

Let's see. Semitones, Sharp & Flat as in A# and also playing sharp. Still defining what is music. A440. Relative vs. fixed pitch.

You know what I think my beef with this "defining" stuff is? He's says he's trying to explain music & it's jargon in layman's terms. But he can't seem to resist throwing every single name for every single thing in there, even when knowing that there are multiple names for stuff only creates confusion. For instance, on page 35 he's talking about the major scale. Gives the C-scale as an example. C D E F G A B C. Also mentions in passing that it's called "Ionian Mode." This adds nothing to the discussion, and in fact if I hadn't tagged along to one of my sister's college level theory classes once upon a time I'd have no idea what he was talking about. And he just mentions it. Nothing more. No "More on this in a later chapter." No explanation. Just randomly throws a term out there. High-level music jargon. For a guy that says that he's trying to demystify music's jargon, this seems like a sort of odd way to do it.

With that sort of crabbing out there, I think I'll just hush about how much that sort of jargon-y "demystification" irritates me. It's a good thing that the intro was good.