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Posts tagged ‘Bach’

Sep 26

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Making it melodic

Thinking about melody, there are a few components that are common to all music – pitch and rhythm. None of the topics in #MUS654 deal distinctly with rhythm, but it is interwoven into everything. Yesterday in my made-up melody example, I used different rhythms to give meaning to the notes. It made me think. There are some pieces of music where the notes are constant, and then what? It is not always the rhythm that points to the melodic line. The components of music can be shuffled so that one comes to the foreground while something else, that maybe more constant, fades more into the background. Read more

Aug 10

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Learning in Public: Part 3

This is a critical post about performing. I take you inside my mind to illustrate the good and the challenges of performance. Going from the practice room to the public platform is something that all musicians do. In school, at university, or with a teacher this is something that is trained into you and facilitated. There is performance class, there are opportunities to ‘air’ the music first, but what happens when you leave that environment and are on your own? Do you keep it going? Do you still push yourself? Few graduating musicians are likely to play the same concerti they prepared for their final recitals as recital material and certainly not as regular ‘gig’ material. And what of the learning opportunities? When you leave your teacher’s studio, there are no more regular performance classes, and depending on what you do there may not be any peers to play for….unless you create the opportunities. This is the story of the opportunity I created, my thought processes, and the results. I’m learning in public. (Featured image CC-BY-NC by C Steele) Read more