At university, our aural training was based around solfege. I can see the beauty of solfege in teaching others, but I must admit I sucked at it. My brain was wired to solve puzzles a different way, and solfege was just something I had to fake to answer certain questions in aural tests. In that sense it reminded me of being forced to draw apples in first grade to represent addition of numbers: even once you had a clear notion of 4+3, we still HAD to draw those bloody seven apples. Okay, maybe the comparison is unfair, since arithmetic abstractions have a clear symbolic representation, and without solfege or a similar system, diatonic music doesn't - notation doesn't really count, because the abstraction doesn't really gel with what you hear, except perhaps in C major.
But yeah, I admire anybody who can think clearly in solfege. My mental model is a mix of 100% internalised intervals (e.g. major/minor thirds) and ones that require a smidgen of conscious effort to think about. I have a clear mental/aural image of note abstractions like "the chord D-F sharp-G sharp-A sharp" directly, but have to translate those back into interval names if challenged to.
Oh man - I am eating this up and want to continue tomorrow - must sleep now ..........zzzzzzzzzzzz
In the mean time, could someone please tell me 2 things that I have not been able to figure out: 1. how do you edit your own stuff once you have posted? and 2. How do you get that neat blue thingy around quotes from previous posts? I am sorry to bother you with this but I am not finding the answers to these questions even on the FAQ page.
P.S. If you are out there, JoCo - I still think that you are Mr. Cool and your music is constantly playing even though no one has mentioned your name in quite some time . . .
Sigh. Most of those didn't work. I downloaded a couple, but the entire premise was "look, we'll play intervals for you so you don't have to mess around with a piano," you know? Like, there wasn't any actual instruction involved. I dunno if there was supposed to be or not, but it seemed less than optimal. Plus I think it was only a fifteen-day-trial, or something.
ETA: @LaDeDa, there should be an "edit" button in the top-right corner of each of your posts. And if you surround text with the tags [blockquote][/blockquote], but with angle brackets, it does the blue thing. Hope that helps!
1. To the far right of any post you've made, you should see an "edit" link, in gray. 2. Put the text you want to quote in between <blockquote> and </blockquote> tags, like so: But yeah, I admire anybody who can think clearly in solfege. That produces this:
But yeah, I admire anybody who can think clearly in solfege.
(or what Shruti said.)
I think clearly in solfege, but it's the only thing I think clearly in. I'm very melodically minded, to the detriment of everything else -- I have a good melodic memory but I'm godawful at harmony especially. I would much rather be able to hear all the complexity of a piece, but instead all I get is, "gee, that sounded nice."
@Borba: I was going to say, "I feel your pain," but I realize I can't possibly. During ear-training, our theory prof would purposefully transpose the exercises to thwart the poor kid with perfect pitch. Also, I've seen my choral brethren with perfect pitch suffer as the pitch slips and their brains have to scramble to quickly transpose in their heads so they can sing the right notes. Actually, as a person with good pitch memory, going horribly out of tune scrambles my brain a bit too, because I know what it's supposed to sound like.
You may admire us folks who think tonally, but I admire you folks who think chordally. Someday, I will brush up on my piano skills again (that kick in the butt you mentioned earlier). In college, I could play through simple Bach chorales with practice, but not now. Also, our prof inflicted a special kind of torture on us called "sing and play," where we had to sight-sing a melody while simultaneously sight-reading a simple two-hand accompaniment. At any rate, I definitely think of pieces differently when I play them versus when I sing them versus when I conduct them. I can't really articulate the difference though. Each facet just expands my understanding of the whole, y'know?
@Bry: I believe I also think melodically. When I transcribe, I start with the melody, then the bass line. Then I fill in the inner voices, partly melodically, partly by chord quality (maj, min, dom, etc) and partly by making educated guesses at the harmonic progression. Out of curiosity, would you please remind me of your musical training again?
Back to Borba: You're a pretty mathy fellow. How would you describe the similarities between math and music? I have had non-math/non-music people use that as sort of a conversational gambit with me when they find out that I'm a musician, and I'm at a loss. I mean, rhythms are straight-up fractions, but for me, the similarities are pretty abstract: ratio, proportion, patterns. And there's the overtone series, I suppose, but I've never gotten much into the physics of acoustics.
Out of curiosity, would you please remind me of your musical training again?
About five years piano, a little violin ("to play the world's saddest song"), while growing up -- haven't played either seriously in ages. One music theory class in high school (although I got a little from piano lessons or grade-school music teachers, none of whom were anywhere near as good as Miz Kennedy).
none of whom were anywhere near as good as Miz Kennedy
Meh. For all my talk of pedagogy, I don't get to spend nearly as much time as I would like doing theory with the choir kids, since our primary focus is performance. Consequently, they're not great sight-readers.
Oh, we did a lot of solfege / Kodaly hand signs in those grade-school music classes, although I'm not sure anyone else ever really figured out what was going on. (Alternate answer: "The Sound of Music.")
Thanks for pointing out the "edit" sign. I didn't see it with my old lady eyes. (new glasses arriving this week)
ETA: Hey I did it! The blue thingy and an edit too!
I've been following the latest and have this observation: The grass is always greener, isn't it? How we "think" about music, depending upon our perceived strengths and weaknesses is a common discussion in my studio. If one just begins to metacognate, that is half the battle to opening up our brains to new possibilities. You can't solve a problem if you don't know what or where the problem is. In other words, if we limit ourselves to learning only in our self-described learning-style, we're missing a lot.
I have an adult student who has been studying with me for about 7 years. She is not a natural visual learner. She shared with me that when she reads (eg, novels) she cannot "see" the setting, action, etc. Once I discovered this, I helped her to start thinking more abstractly and she is a new woman. She was making no connection from note to note on the staff even though she understood (in theory) intervals. She also had a problem abstracting the keyboard set up - things that most people would take for granted. The glory of one on one lessons is to get deeply into students' heads. For example, yesterday I was teaching a student who was struggling with a new and complicated piano technique which required playing a series of chords with some notes tied, some not, legato on top, etc. "Walking" him through this, slowly, one finger instruction at a time, he finally got it right. Eureka! What happened? What was he thinking about? Can he recreate the neural pathways again? Can he send the same exact message again?
Of course we have all heard this: "Wow! That guy has great coordination, finger control . . ." Yeah, but it ALL starts in the head. Ear training is crucial, too and directly relates to the ease with which the fingers or voice "finds" that next note.
@Shruti: I once heard that 80% of brain activity is used for the visual. Little did I know that the hours a day I practiced the piano in complete darkness (piano was in the basement) was providing me with an enhanced ear AND kinetic stability on the keyboard. I highly recommend for those of you who are concerned about developing your ear to close your eyes when you are training to hear intervals, chord quality, etc. Even with tempered tuning, the piano (or any decent digital keyboard) will also help make sense of all of this. There is a good reason that all music majors, regardless of their intrument (vocalists too) are required to take several semesters of piano. It is the universal musical tool for studying theory.
Sorry if this is one big "duh" for everyone. You have all offered so much here and I am enjoying this discussion immensely! Thank You!
Oh, it was my idea of a joke -- taking "a little violin" to mean "a small violin" rather than "a little instruction in violin."
(I can't source it, but there's a saying in common usage, something about "the world's smallest violin playing the world's saddest song for you," usually accompanied by sarcastic miming of the tiny violin, to express mock sympathy for someone else's complaints. For example: BOB: I have perfect pitch, so it's hard for me to sing with
other people because they're always out of tune.
TOM: Listen carefully. Hear that? That's the world's smallest violin.)
@LaDeDa: I'm so with you on doing things with eyes closed. It seems that one "sees" sounds in a different "light" once vision stops interfering. Maybe the abstractions get purer? I particularly like playing with eyes closed when learning something. For one thing, one focuses so much better. And as you alluded, learning the sheer kinetics of pieces involving awkward leaps becomes so much easier when you start internalising where the notes are instead of looking at the keyboard - at some tempos, once you need to look, it's just too late!
@Colleenky: I'll have to think hard about a good answer to your challenge about maths and music. Fact is, I'm not at all a "mathy fellow". About the best I can do is nod along when people talk about the beauty of mathematics without being able to follow the details. I suspect most people on this forum will beat me in a game of no-holds-barred Math any day. I do have some computer background plus some knowledge of electronics, acoustics etc, so there are a few dots I can connect. Mostly I'm just your typical dilettante: in a debate on any given subject, I can be perceived as being primarily a specialist in another, but chances are you'll never pin me down as an expert on anything ;-) But I'll think about an answer on the "maths and music" question. A few years ago I actually was asked to do a talk on the subject at a school (one of those "let's stimulate the Gifted" things), and I can state with no fear of contradiction that I dazed and confused a bunch of schoolgirls. No idea what else I achieved.
and I can state with no fear of contradiction that I dazed and confused a bunch of schoolgirls.
Hmmm May we assume that they were not already in said condition before you gave your talk?
Yes - Eyes wide shut. I miss my old beater upright in my childhood basement. No one would bother me there; my secret music cave where I could take the piano apart and bang on the strings with rubber-tipped bell mallots (dampers off please) My parents knew what they were doing, though, and encouraged this type of antisocial behavior. "Where's Laura?" "Playing piano in the dark again." "Do you think she's . . . well . . . you know . . . a little off?" "Oh yes - and that's a good thing."
Yeah - good roll models. If my own sons find what makes them the happiest and they treat people well, what more can matter? (Other than "showing some grace if they should fall")
Some of the subject areas of this discussion resurfaced on the Parenting thread, and I created a new thread for those who like to get all technical on each other.
So tell me what you want, what you really really want!
I wanna really really really wanna zig-a-zig ahhh!
Spice Girls made lots of money with lyrics like that.....Oy. Sure were pretty though.
'Course, I've always loved Manfred Mann's "Blinded be the Light" and the lyrics make no sense to me whatsoever. They're supposed to mean something, but sounds like pleasant gibberish to me, as I sing along loudly.
That's where the fun iiiiiiiiiiiissssssssss !!!
I'd like JoCo's songs just for the music alone, but I wouldn't LOVE them as much as I do if not for his wonderful quirky lyrics. The fact that he has buttloads of both is just beautimous.
I know I've already replied to this thread, but I've been talking to my brother about this lately and I'd like to expand my thoughts.
Rather than say "I come for the music, and stay for the lyrics" (which would imply that horrible lyrics can get me interested in a song - quite the opposite, if a song's lyrics annoy me initially I'll find a way to get rid of it ASAP), I will make the following statements:
1. A song that gets me interested must meet a minimum threshhold of quality both in music and lyrics for me to get initially interested in. My threshholds are quite low, actually, and a catchy pop song with decent lyrics would fall into this category.
2. If the song exceeds my minimum threshhold on the music (but not lyrics) front, my interest will increase, but falter after a while. There's only so long that I can stay interested in a catchy tune. If it's particularly passionate or emotional I might think of it if someone asked me about a passionate or emotional song, but that's about it. Examples: A lot of the old-school Dance Dance Revolution soundtrack, some of Hendrix's stuff.
3. If the song exceeds my minimum threshhold on the lyrics (but not music) front, I will have the song stuck in my head for a couple of days and sing it under my breath, often without realizing what I'm doing. If I'll ever hear it on the radio, even years after it stopped being popular, I will sing along unabashedly, in front of others or alone. Examples: too many to count, but one of them is Eminem.
4. If the song exceeds my minimum threshhold on both fronts, well, I'm in trouble. I will obsess over the songs for an extended period of time, memorizing them, watching Youtube videos of performances, participating in fan forums, trying to get my friends into it. I have a bit of an addictive personality when it comes to music and videogames. Examples: JoCo, Dr. Horrible soundtrack are the most recent.
So there you have it folks. Did this post answer the initial question? (Not really)
i'm kind of the reverse of what bry said in his first post in this thread. the first thing i'm attracted to, or not, is the music. generally i find that in the long run lyrics carry more weight, but i can almost never make them out the first time i hear a song. so i get hooked in by the music and then listen to it a bunch and once i decipher the lyrics i will either keep listening to it or not.
i feel like i've discussed my feelings about "flashing lights" by mr. k. west in this forum before but either i am wrong or my search-fu is inadequate. in any case, it is a very catchy little number, moreso if you are familiar with the bizarre music video, but then i noticed that he described the collapse of his relationship with the implied woman as being "like Katrina with no FEMA". he goes on to say of the paparazzi, "I hate these n****z more than a Nazi". yes, i do understand that hyperbole is a dramatic device used to express intensity, but this is just irresponsible. it is Aggravating.
so, i don't like that song or particularly mr west anymore.
incidentally i feel like this orientation may be one of the factors in my historical aversion to hip-hop. the music is often very basic, so it fails to catch my interest long enough to get to the lyrics comprehension stage. in support of this theory is the fact that after playing gta: san andreas, i developed somewhat more of an interest in the genre. when you are being pursued by 30 ballas with submachine guns, you don't always have time to change the radio station when you jack a car, and in any case if i'd only listened to one radio station for the entirety of the 80+ hours i played of that game, i'd of lost whatever remnants of my goddamned mind are still clinging desperately to the insides of my skull.
Side note #2: I always think this song is one of the best sources of character names. When I was playing Everquest, I wanted to have a Bard named "Gocart Mozart" and a Monk named "Calliope Crashed".
My main 70 priest in WOW is Calliopetora on the Scarlet Crusade server...my Dranei Shammy is Callimari and my belf priest over on Shadow Council is Calleyeopee... I have used Calliope as a nick for years and as a clown name.
I'm definitely a lyrics person, but a good catchy melody can go a long way sometimes. One example for me is Ricky Lee Jones. I can hardly make out a word she sings sometimes, but I thoroughly enjoy her style. One singer I really like both lyrically and musically is John Mayer. He has some of the best guitar work out there, and his songs have some meaning to them. Good stuff.
The lyrics will make me want to stay, but the music will get me through the door first... There are a few songs I can think of that have crap lyrics but I do love humming away to the tune or even get down and boogie (geez, didn't think I would say that before hitting 50...) but the songs I really love and enjoy singing along to have good lyrics...
I Think Lyrics are very important, music too but for me, the music is not the most important... If the music is bad, I am annoyed, of course, but, if the lyrics are bad too, I DON'T LISTEN to the song...
Lyrics are very important to me, and really help to keep an ongoing interest in the song, but I will never hear them in the first place if the music turns me off will I? That said, in quieter, softer music, lyrics are pretty much all that matters, so long as they're sang well...but maybe the melodic quality of them goes back to the music side :/
For me lyrics in a song are more important than music. While good music is important, good lyrics are what catch my attention and generate interest. For me, lyrics are what got me into Jonathan Coulton - I heard Code Monkey somewhere on youtube and got interested. I ended up listening to some of the other songs and am now a big fan.
I went for Lyrics... Look, when your listening to a song you dont just listen to instrumentals do you? and you dont listen to incorherent Screaming... well some of us don't. The Lyrics make the song, if Jonathan Coulton just played the guitar we might not like him as much as we do, but he has incredibly, awesome lyrical skills that make us love him. A love song is not a love song without words expressing that love(sorry bach, beethoven, and Mozart...) i listen to a song for a story but i still love when that guitar is a wailin'!
I'd have to agree with LaDeDa, for me personally, it's always been a matter of how good the music is first, then if the lyrics are good too, that's just a bonus.
I'd rather have a nice melody with ridiculous lyrics, than have good lyrics and a horrible melody.
Good choice of thread to bump, Kriss. I just started reading a book today that made me rethink this issue, and I'm still in your camp. A particular problem I have with the distinction, though, is that language already has rhythm, timbre and - to a limited degree - melody. I'm a reasonably analytical person, but I don't think I have the ability to hear words purely as syntax, semantics etc. [Witness the previous sentence: for better or worse, it ends with way too much sibilance, and it's hard not to perceive it.]
ETA: Whoah. I did the responsible thing and reread the thread from the beginning. Now I'm missing the heady days of 2008, and wondering what I've been doing with my life since then. Maybe it's a new year thing. Slightly ironically, the book referred to in the second sentence above is "The World in Six Songs..." by Daniel Levitin, the author of "This is your brain on music..." that Colleenky mentioned. The other book that I got from this particular shopping trip involves tuning and intervals. Maybe 2011 will be a musical year for me.
Sometimes there'll just be a tune playing and I zone in on the music other times it will be lyrics I pick up on.
What makes a song great is when both go together, with JoCo it was the music first as the first tune of his I heard was shop vac, totally in a way unrelated to the music as well. A film maker friend showed me a you tube video for Shop Vac that he felt demonstrated dynamic text very well, I was straight away taken with the music and the song was kind of cool but not lyrically in my opinion one of the best (as a side note 'not one of JoCo's best' is typically a good 12 parsecs above the usual stuff I am subjected to by the radio). Regardless it was enough to get me listening and get me hooked and that owed everything to the music.
There are other songs though where I would not have been anywhere near as impressed if the lyrics weren't so cracking and in general I will pull out a lyric I like rather than a riff.
So there is my inconclusive answer, take from it what you will...
It is a music-first situation for me. In pop & rock, I don't think there are too many music-firster composers. Randy Newman is obviously at the top of the late 20th-century/early 21st-century pile with stinky little Franz Schubert being the all-time (Western music) champ.
Of course, the lyrics and the music must, eventually, mesh. In my very favorite tunes, the music tells one story while the lyrics tell another. Or, even better the music tells multiple stories while the lyrics also tell multiple stories, all related! Yum!
One simple example of the above would be TMBG's "Can't Keep Johnny Down." On first hearing, many interpret this ditty as an upbeat ode to feisty American individualism. In reality, it is a song about an overbearing asshole. Yum!
It really depends on the type of music. I don't expect much lyrical brilliance from Daft Punk, for instance, but I love their creativity with electronica. If it's a song with actual lyrics that are supposed to mean something, then the lyrics are the most important thing. A nice hook and lick can keep me interested for a while, but it takes something akin to Now I Am An Arsonist or Paul Simon's Jonah to keep me coming back for years. Lyrics are why I love JoCo, because there's almost always more than one layer going on. You can almost always think about what he's singing - even silly stuff like Gambler's Prayer, which on the surface is just a joke-song, carries a scent of social satire.
On the other hand, when we're talking pop music, I am a fountain of malignant, cancerous loathing for "love-songs" that aren't about anything remotely LIKE love - they're about banal infatuation and one-sided, sexist objectification and I hate them I hate them I hate them! I don't hate all pop-music, of course (I quite enjoy some of the stuff Lady Gaga does, bizarrely), but useless songwriters without a shred of poetry in their souls, playing at depth and substance that they cannot even begin to realize, that gets my goat in a major way and I refuse to torment myself with their noises. It almost physically pains me to be forced through bad songwriting, regardless of the musical qualities of a piece.
tl;dr: If there are lyrics there that are supposed to mean something, are MEANT to be a major part of the song, and they suck harder than a vacuum-cleaner in a tornado, then I don't give two carps how good the music is, I will hate it. If there are no lyrics, of the lyrics are just there so the singer can use their voice as an instrument or a part of the rythm, then the music takes precedence.
On the other hand, when we're talking pop music, I am a fountain of malignant, cancerous loathing for "love-songs" that aren't about anything remotely LIKE love - they're about banal infatuation and one-sided, sexist objectification and I hate them I hate them I hate them!
It's interesting, for the sake of contrast, how many JoCo songs are breakup songs. This raises interesting questions. What, exactly, is the relationship between love songs and breakup songs?
Of course, lots of other JoCo songs are untraditional love songs, effectively parodies of formulaic love songs. "Millionaire Girlfriend" and "Under the Pines" come to mind, especially the manner in which the fundamental weirdness of the song isn't immediately apparent, taking sharp turns away from initial expectations... which is itself another major theme in JoCo songs, with "First of May" being perhaps the best example.
For the most part, outside of extreme cases, I'm on the music side. Much of what I add to my music library these days isn't even in English. I think the most common extreme case is comedy, which of course includes a number of JoCo songs. But as funny as Je Suis Rick Springfield is, it's in my library because it's ridiculously catchy. As it turns out, I don't know French. Who knew? I think Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind is the classic example. I think I listened to that song for over 5 years before I realized it was about getting high on meth.
Semi-Charmed Life is about something? Whoa. I'm going to have to track that one down and listen again.
@mtgordon, a month or so ago I went to a few concerts by a band that specialises in breakup songs, and I got to thinking of cover songs they could do. The first I thought of were Fly by Moxy Früvous (I was too busy listening to the pretty music to realise what that one was about until I heard them introduce it in a concert recording, and then I fell in love with the lyrics, but the lyrics eventually realised they didn't feel the same way, and they broke up with me.) and Make You Cry. Then I thought of Not About You, and Down Today, and that's when I noticed how long the Break-ups page of JoCoPedia was without even including Make You Cry (which is a broke up, getting back together and breaking up song.) He really does do a lot of breakup songs.
@thalandor46 I love it when people don't realise what a song is about. So many people I have met were blithely unaware that Under The Bridge by the Red Hot Chilis is about heroine addiction. There are loads of JoCo songs where I haven't had a clue until I read a post here or there that 'enlightened' me.
@angelastic I haven't heard of Moxy Fruvous for years, are they still on the go? Mark Radcliffe used to play them a lot on his Radio 1 evening show. I'm fairly certain I saw them live sometime in the 90's but I saw a lot of bands. Seeing that name immediately made me think of The Pizzicato 5 who I also loved at the time.
Note to self, must invent flux capacitor and go back and get my old music collection... Any one got a Mr Fusion I can borrow.
Moxy Früvous broke up about ten years ago. To put them in their proper historical context, Da Vinci's Notebook opened for them a few times. Small world, isn't it?
On the plus side, Jian, Mike (do people call him Forty? I never knew about them while they were together, so I don't really know these things, but they said they called him that in an improvised song once…) and Dave (they called him that in the same song) have all put out great solo albums, and Murray's on some of the other guys' albums and in Great Big Sea, and Dave's on Mike Evin's album 'I'll Bring the Stereo', and Mike's on David Francey's album 'Seaway', (ETA: whoa, it's as if Mike and Dave are two quarks being pulled apart, and when they get too far apart, another Mike and Dave appear in between so that you get two Mike-Dave mesons, like this) and they've probably been involved in other music that I don't know about. I wish Jian would release another six songs; I really like the first six.
See what happens when bands break up? You get even more music! Imagine what'll happen when JoCo (whom I like to describe as, 'like Moxy Früvous, but there's only one of him and he's still pretty much together') explodes.
EATA:
Figure 1. An animation of Moxy confinement, showing the fruvon tube in a Mike-David pair being supplied energy until it splits in two, creating Mike Evin and David Francey between David Matheson and Mike Ford. (illustration by Manishearth)
Does anyone else hear that right hand pair go "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" as it flies of the page?
In my mind quantum physics would always have sound effects. Every day I walked into CERN I would have Also Sprach Zarathustra going through my head, well that, the Imperial March or the theme from Bod
I'm almost 100% in the music first camp- if the music doesn't do it for me, the song can have stunning lyrics but chances are I'm still not going to like it but if the lyrics are crappy there's still a good chance that the music can save the song for me. I've also got a terrible ear for lyrics but not as bad as my sister's infamous "Goodness gracious Grampa's on fire!" or "Gonna buy me a condo, gonna buy me a petervault..."
Comments
But yeah, I admire anybody who can think clearly in solfege. My mental model is a mix of 100% internalised intervals (e.g. major/minor thirds) and ones that require a smidgen of conscious effort to think about. I have a clear mental/aural image of note abstractions like "the chord D-F sharp-G sharp-A sharp" directly, but have to translate those back into interval names if challenged to.
In the mean time, could someone please tell me 2 things that I have not been able to figure out: 1. how do you edit your own stuff once you have posted? and 2. How do you get that neat blue thingy around quotes from previous posts? I am sorry to bother you with this but I am not finding the answers to these questions even on the FAQ page.
P.S. If you are out there, JoCo - I still think that you are Mr. Cool and your music is constantly playing even though no one has mentioned your name in quite some time . . .
ETA: @LaDeDa, there should be an "edit" button in the top-right corner of each of your posts. And if you surround text with the tags [blockquote][/blockquote], but with angle brackets, it does the blue thing. Hope that helps!
2. Put the text you want to quote in between <blockquote> and </blockquote> tags, like so:
But yeah, I admire anybody who can think clearly in solfege.That produces this: (or what Shruti said.)
I think clearly in solfege, but it's the only thing I think clearly in. I'm very melodically minded, to the detriment of everything else -- I have a good melodic memory but I'm godawful at harmony especially. I would much rather be able to hear all the complexity of a piece, but instead all I get is, "gee, that sounded nice."
You may admire us folks who think tonally, but I admire you folks who think chordally. Someday, I will brush up on my piano skills again (that kick in the butt you mentioned earlier). In college, I could play through simple Bach chorales with practice, but not now. Also, our prof inflicted a special kind of torture on us called "sing and play," where we had to sight-sing a melody while simultaneously sight-reading a simple two-hand accompaniment. At any rate, I definitely think of pieces differently when I play them versus when I sing them versus when I conduct them. I can't really articulate the difference though. Each facet just expands my understanding of the whole, y'know?
@Bry: I believe I also think melodically. When I transcribe, I start with the melody, then the bass line. Then I fill in the inner voices, partly melodically, partly by chord quality (maj, min, dom, etc) and partly by making educated guesses at the harmonic progression. Out of curiosity, would you please remind me of your musical training again?
Back to Borba: You're a pretty mathy fellow. How would you describe the similarities between math and music? I have had non-math/non-music people use that as sort of a conversational gambit with me when they find out that I'm a musician, and I'm at a loss. I mean, rhythms are straight-up fractions, but for me, the similarities are pretty abstract: ratio, proportion, patterns. And there's the overtone series, I suppose, but I've never gotten much into the physics of acoustics.
TTFN...
Thanks for pointing out the "edit" sign. I didn't see it with my old lady eyes. (new glasses arriving this week)
ETA: Hey I did it! The blue thingy and an edit too!
I've been following the latest and have this observation: The grass is always greener, isn't it? How we "think" about music, depending upon our perceived strengths and weaknesses is a common discussion in my studio. If one just begins to metacognate, that is half the battle to opening up our brains to new possibilities. You can't solve a problem if you don't know what or where the problem is. In other words, if we limit ourselves to learning only in our self-described learning-style, we're missing a lot.
I have an adult student who has been studying with me for about 7 years. She is not a natural visual learner. She shared with me that when she reads (eg, novels) she cannot "see" the setting, action, etc. Once I discovered this, I helped her to start thinking more abstractly and she is a new woman. She was making no connection from note to note on the staff even though she understood (in theory) intervals. She also had a problem abstracting the keyboard set up - things that most people would take for granted. The glory of one on one lessons is to get deeply into students' heads. For example, yesterday I was teaching a student who was struggling with a new and complicated piano technique which required playing a series of chords with some notes tied, some not, legato on top, etc. "Walking" him through this, slowly, one finger instruction at a time, he finally got it right. Eureka! What happened? What was he thinking about? Can he recreate the neural pathways again? Can he send the same exact message again?
Of course we have all heard this: "Wow! That guy has great coordination, finger control . . ." Yeah, but it ALL starts in the head. Ear training is crucial, too and directly relates to the ease with which the fingers or voice "finds" that next note.
@Shruti: I once heard that 80% of brain activity is used for the visual. Little did I know that the hours a day I practiced the piano in complete darkness (piano was in the basement) was providing me with an enhanced ear AND kinetic stability on the keyboard. I highly recommend for those of you who are concerned about developing your ear to close your eyes when you are training to hear intervals, chord quality, etc. Even with tempered tuning, the piano (or any decent digital keyboard) will also help make sense of all of this. There is a good reason that all music majors, regardless of their intrument (vocalists too) are required to take several semesters of piano. It is the universal musical tool for studying theory.
Sorry if this is one big "duh" for everyone. You have all offered so much here and I am enjoying this discussion immensely! Thank You!
(I can't source it, but there's a saying in common usage, something about "the world's smallest violin playing the world's saddest song for you," usually accompanied by sarcastic miming of the tiny violin, to express mock sympathy for someone else's complaints. For example:
BOB: I have perfect pitch, so it's hard for me to sing with other people because they're always out of tune. TOM: Listen carefully. Hear that? That's the world's smallest violin.)@Colleenky: I'll have to think hard about a good answer to your challenge about maths and music. Fact is, I'm not at all a "mathy fellow". About the best I can do is nod along when people talk about the beauty of mathematics without being able to follow the details. I suspect most people on this forum will beat me in a game of no-holds-barred Math any day. I do have some computer background plus some knowledge of electronics, acoustics etc, so there are a few dots I can connect. Mostly I'm just your typical dilettante: in a debate on any given subject, I can be perceived as being primarily a specialist in another, but chances are you'll never pin me down as an expert on anything ;-) But I'll think about an answer on the "maths and music" question. A few years ago I actually was asked to do a talk on the subject at a school (one of those "let's stimulate the Gifted" things), and I can state with no fear of contradiction that I dazed and confused a bunch of schoolgirls. No idea what else I achieved.
Yes - Eyes wide shut. I miss my old beater upright in my childhood basement. No one would bother me there; my secret music cave where I could take the piano apart and bang on the strings with rubber-tipped bell mallots (dampers off please) My parents knew what they were doing, though, and encouraged this type of antisocial behavior. "Where's Laura?" "Playing piano in the dark again." "Do you think she's . . . well . . . you know . . . a little off?" "Oh yes - and that's a good thing."
I wanna really really really wanna zig-a-zig ahhh!
Spice Girls made lots of money with lyrics like that.....Oy. Sure were pretty though.
'Course, I've always loved Manfred Mann's "Blinded be the Light" and the lyrics make no sense to me whatsoever. They're supposed to mean something, but sounds like pleasant gibberish to me, as I sing along loudly.
That's where the fun iiiiiiiiiiiissssssssss !!!
I'd like JoCo's songs just for the music alone, but I wouldn't LOVE them as much as I do if not for his wonderful quirky lyrics. The fact that he has buttloads of both is just beautimous.
Rather than say "I come for the music, and stay for the lyrics" (which would imply that horrible lyrics can get me interested in a song - quite the opposite, if a song's lyrics annoy me initially I'll find a way to get rid of it ASAP), I will make the following statements:
1. A song that gets me interested must meet a minimum threshhold of quality both in music and lyrics for me to get initially interested in. My threshholds are quite low, actually, and a catchy pop song with decent lyrics would fall into this category.
2. If the song exceeds my minimum threshhold on the music (but not lyrics) front, my interest will increase, but falter after a while. There's only so long that I can stay interested in a catchy tune. If it's particularly passionate or emotional I might think of it if someone asked me about a passionate or emotional song, but that's about it. Examples: A lot of the old-school Dance Dance Revolution soundtrack, some of Hendrix's stuff.
3. If the song exceeds my minimum threshhold on the lyrics (but not music) front, I will have the song stuck in my head for a couple of days and sing it under my breath, often without realizing what I'm doing. If I'll ever hear it on the radio, even years after it stopped being popular, I will sing along unabashedly, in front of others or alone.
Examples: too many to count, but one of them is Eminem.
4. If the song exceeds my minimum threshhold on both fronts, well, I'm in trouble. I will obsess over the songs for an extended period of time, memorizing them, watching Youtube videos of performances, participating in fan forums, trying to get my friends into it. I have a bit of an addictive personality when it comes to music and videogames.
Examples: JoCo, Dr. Horrible soundtrack are the most recent.
So there you have it folks. Did this post answer the initial question? (Not really)
i feel like i've discussed my feelings about "flashing lights" by mr. k. west in this forum before but either i am wrong or my search-fu is inadequate. in any case, it is a very catchy little number, moreso if you are familiar with the bizarre music video, but then i noticed that he described the collapse of his relationship with the implied woman as being "like Katrina with no FEMA". he goes on to say of the paparazzi, "I hate these n****z more than a Nazi". yes, i do understand that hyperbole is a dramatic device used to express intensity, but this is just irresponsible. it is Aggravating.
so, i don't like that song or particularly mr west anymore.
incidentally i feel like this orientation may be one of the factors in my historical aversion to hip-hop. the music is often very basic, so it fails to catch my interest long enough to get to the lyrics comprehension stage. in support of this theory is the fact that after playing gta: san andreas, i developed somewhat more of an interest in the genre. when you are being pursued by 30 ballas with submachine guns, you don't always have time to change the radio station when you jack a car, and in any case if i'd only listened to one radio station for the entirety of the 80+ hours i played of that game, i'd of lost whatever remnants of my goddamned mind are still clinging desperately to the insides of my skull.
Bruce Springsteen's "Blinded by the Light", as covered by Manfred Mann.
Side note #2: I always think this song is one of the best sources of character names. When I was playing Everquest, I wanted to have a Bard named "Gocart Mozart" and a Monk named "Calliope Crashed".
I chose music :B
I'd rather have a nice melody with ridiculous lyrics, than have good lyrics and a horrible melody.
ETA: Whoah. I did the responsible thing and reread the thread from the beginning. Now I'm missing the heady days of 2008, and wondering what I've been doing with my life since then. Maybe it's a new year thing. Slightly ironically, the book referred to in the second sentence above is "The World in Six Songs..." by Daniel Levitin, the author of "This is your brain on music..." that Colleenky mentioned. The other book that I got from this particular shopping trip involves tuning and intervals. Maybe 2011 will be a musical year for me.
If it's a song with actual lyrics that are supposed to mean something, then the lyrics are the most important thing. A nice hook and lick can keep me interested for a while, but it takes something akin to Now I Am An Arsonist or Paul Simon's Jonah to keep me coming back for years.
Lyrics are why I love JoCo, because there's almost always more than one layer going on. You can almost always think about what he's singing - even silly stuff like Gambler's Prayer, which on the surface is just a joke-song, carries a scent of social satire.
On the other hand, when we're talking pop music, I am a fountain of malignant, cancerous loathing for "love-songs" that aren't about anything remotely LIKE love - they're about banal infatuation and one-sided, sexist objectification and I hate them I hate them I hate them!
I don't hate all pop-music, of course (I quite enjoy some of the stuff Lady Gaga does, bizarrely), but useless songwriters without a shred of poetry in their souls, playing at depth and substance that they cannot even begin to realize, that gets my goat in a major way and I refuse to torment myself with their noises. It almost physically pains me to be forced through bad songwriting, regardless of the musical qualities of a piece.
tl;dr: If there are lyrics there that are supposed to mean something, are MEANT to be a major part of the song, and they suck harder than a vacuum-cleaner in a tornado, then I don't give two carps how good the music is, I will hate it.
If there are no lyrics, of the lyrics are just there so the singer can use their voice as an instrument or a part of the rythm, then the music takes precedence.
Of course, lots of other JoCo songs are untraditional love songs, effectively parodies of formulaic love songs. "Millionaire Girlfriend" and "Under the Pines" come to mind, especially the manner in which the fundamental weirdness of the song isn't immediately apparent, taking sharp turns away from initial expectations... which is itself another major theme in JoCo songs, with "First of May" being perhaps the best example.