|
21 Jan 02 - 03:36 PM (#632400) Subject: Tempo Deafness From: Jon Freeman This one is sort of inspired by Mrzzy's tone deafness thread but I thought it worth a thread of its own... A couple of days ago, I tired to transcribe "Donegal Danny" for the dt and was reminded of a horrible problem I have with music and I think the reason why I can rarely make sense of the dots. It really comes down to this: I know the rules but at times, I simple can not tell which note is longer than another - I can hear one note longer than another and know for example I need a dotted note and a shorter not but most of the time, there is no way I can tell which order they should be in - I have to write, listen and maybe try the other way round before I get it right. Perhaps more perplexing is that most of the music I play is dance music and I'm quite sensitive to rythyms and tempo - I tend to fit in best with sessions where timing is reasonably tight and can get upset when others drift... Any others experience this or any explainations? Jon |
|
21 Jan 02 - 03:43 PM (#632408) Subject: RE: Tempo Deafness From: Bert Yup, I know exactly what you mean. Timing details like that have always been a problem for me. Don't give up hope though. a friend once told me that "if you can hear that it's wrong, then you can get it right with practice". Me, I'm still practicing. |
|
21 Jan 02 - 03:52 PM (#632414) Subject: RE: Tempo Deafness From: wysiwyg Sometimers I think this is because the genre of music is one that is not yet woven into one's heart. Once the genre and its formulas, or an individual piece, is in the heart, the rhythm is unconsciously obvious. But I also have noticed that transcribed music is sometimes pretty badly laid out, for the PULSE of the piece. In the spirituals, for instance, some versions have started a measure off (to begin the piece) with a note that, in another version, is set up in the measures as a pickup note. SO the whole piece staggers on, an accent off the true feel of the piece. Make sense? In that latter case, unless one knows the piece or the tricks of that particular genre, it can be hard to "hear" the piece through the dots until one has internally translated it back to its proper feel. Then the dots, however badly set up across the measure breaks, make sense. Think of it like learning to read a foreign language from a font missing its tails... letters from a penpal, typed on a damaged typewriter. After awhile your mind fills in the tails, because in English you know they must be there, so you put them where needed in the new language. The measures adjust themselves in your mind, like that. And sometimes the way someone writes the notes down fits for the math of the notes, but not for the phrasing. What might show on the page as a tied pair of notes, adding up to one long note, actually is sounded as two separate notes.... or on a series of notes, the eighth note tied in is in the wrong place in the sequence, compared to the sound.... Then there are the conventions of rhythm of a genre, hard to quantify into notes without using 32nds and 64ths... shuffle-bowing I think cannot be transcribed perfectly, because the little hitrches in time are so slight that writing them down would be a pain in the ass. The spirituals have this too-- if you look in some fiddle books you will see a footnote for some pieces that what is written as a straightforward rhythm is actually meant to be played as though certain notes are dotted and others halved. Anyhow, IMO when you get into the intricacies of dotted sixteenths you need all the visual cues you can get, to de-goof a piece you may never have heard well enough to memorize. Me, I like to hear them first and then see what they become once I get 'em going in my head. THEN maybe I am ready for notes, and to adapt them to MY arrangement, whether I ever write it down or not. ~Susan |
|
21 Jan 02 - 03:54 PM (#632415) Subject: RE: Tempo Deafness From: hesperis Yeah, transcribing is hard, but it does get easier with practice! Just keep going. I've been working on one song, and it's played by a guitar player. In my experience, guitar players, especially "ear-taught" ones, tend to "swing" a lot more than piano players, so trying to get the right time signature and then rhythm for writing it out in classical notation is a little harder than with classically-trained pianists. I think I'm finally beginning to get it though. ;) |
|
21 Jan 02 - 04:03 PM (#632422) Subject: RE: Tempo Deafness From: jeffp Adding to the problem is the fact that traditional music in particular does not adhere to "strict" notational timing. For example, hornpipes are generally written as eighth notes, but are played with an emphasis on the first note in each pair. Not enough to rate a dotted eighth and sixteenth, but enough to feel. This is one reason that classically-trained players have trouble getting the right feel to their playing. Jig rhythms can be problematic as well, but the difference is more subtle and can even have regional variations. Could this be part of the difficulty you're having, Jon? jeffp |
|
21 Jan 02 - 04:11 PM (#632425) Subject: RE: Tempo Deafness From: Jon Freeman I'm reading and agreeing but I think we are drifting off what I'm trying to say. Playing wise, I have few problems (I tend to be regarded as pretty reliable in this department - more so than hitting the right notes - and when I'm playing at my best, I am heavily rythmical - I can almost use the banjo as a percussion instrument...) but although I could reproduce a few beats tapped out by someone else, if someone asked me whether this tap was longer or shorter than the preceding one, there would be a fair chance of me answering incorrectly. Jon |
|
21 Jan 02 - 04:54 PM (#632454) Subject: RE: Tempo Deafness From: Jerry Rasmussen Your problem is, you can read music. Believe me, ignorance is bliss. When I opened this thread, I thought it would be something very different. I've sung in groups and choruses where wonderful singers who have been singing most of their lives can't tell when they are supposed to come in on a line and jump the gun. Even on very simple, three chord songs. It's hard to see, because they are such fine singers. If anyone has any ideas on how to help singers with that problem, I am all ears. If you don't read music, you have to be all ears.
Sorry I'm no help here. |
|
21 Jan 02 - 04:55 PM (#632455) Subject: RE: Tempo Deafness From: Jeri Jon, I think what you're saying is you hear the rhythm just fine in context. When you start picking the bits apart is when you have problems. Maybe if you just converted the notes to words in your head ("is it a BUMP-tee or a tee-BUMP") Then you could think of the dotted quarter note as the longer "BUMP" and the eigth note as the shorter "tee." Does this sound silly? |
|
21 Jan 02 - 05:00 PM (#632460) Subject: RE: Tempo Deafness From: Jeri Jerry, I don't know if this will help or not, but I seem to be full of silly ideas today. Maybe they could "march" in place and count the steps or clap. If they knew which step or clap number to come in on, it might help. |
|
21 Jan 02 - 07:38 PM (#632589) Subject: RE: Tempo Deafness From: Jon Freeman Jerry (and perhaps others), I think that I did title and word the thread badly - was thinking of the similarities of a tone deaf person not being able to tell you whether a not was higher or lower than another and my own inability, at times, to answer whether a note is longer or shorter than another. Jeri, you make good sense to me - maybe an idea I will try to learn. Jon |
|
21 Jan 02 - 08:16 PM (#632629) Subject: RE: Tempo Deafness From: McGrath of Harlow It's not really tempo deafness you're talking about, analogous to tone deafness. That would mean you'd be unable to recognise the right rhythm for a piece you are accompanying . And I can think of a few people who do that all right. The ones that get bodhrans a bad name.
Failings in being able to put a name to it and so forth are literacy problems. More akin to the way people who can speak perfectly well can have problems in recognising the different letters, p's and b's and so forth.
Or in a musical context, there are plenty of people who can sing and play well, but who just can't cope with tuning, and really can't tell which of two close notes is higher or lower.
I'm not sure if my virtual inability to make sense of any written music is a form of musical dislexia, or, more likely, just that I've been too lazy all my life. |
|
21 Jan 02 - 08:49 PM (#632654) Subject: RE: Tempo Deafness From: Bill D Jon, I know a guy who can tune a guitar and sing on key...but who sings like a metronome is clicking behind his eyes...I simply can't tell if he doesn't HEAR the 'pace' as it should be, or if he can't focus on both song and playing at the same time...but I have heard you play and sing, and you do manage to time and pace a song...so at least you are somehow aware of the right rhythm in context...Is there some problem in measuring time apart from music? Perhaps...(I also know a FINE musician who plays anything with strings, and moves his left and right hands exactly like they NEED to be moved...but CANNOT point left OR right when asked...dyslexia to the max!)....I suppose as long as you do what you need...*smile* |
|
21 Jan 02 - 09:05 PM (#632657) Subject: RE: Tempo Deafness From: Jerry Rasmussen Thanks, Jeri: We actually do a variation of sorts on marching in place. I kinda do a dip with my guitar when it's time for the person who has trouble catching the beat is singing lead. Most of the time it works. Unless he's looking the other way. Like most problems, there are ways to compensate. We did have a wonderful singer in our group who had sung solo all of his life in a black church. In black churches, the soloist gets up and starts singing, and the piano or organ player has to poke around and figure out what key he is in. Because of that, soloist don't have to "hear" keys. When this person was singing with us, I'd play the WHOLE melody on guitar as an introduction, he'd smile at me that he had it, and then launch off in a completely different key while we were singing harmony in the key I was playing in. Then it was a matter of musical chicken to see who give in first. I learned to stop playing guitar, and we'd have to shift into the lead's key and adjust our harmonies. I've heard black gospel quartets go completely through a song with the band and harmony singers singing in different keys. Having trouble transcribing rhythms onto paper sounds highly preferable to me. Jerry |
|
21 Jan 02 - 09:11 PM (#632660) Subject: RE: Tempo Deafness From: Jeri I think a lot of problems people think they have are just differences in ways of thinking or learning. I've said it elsewhere, but I have a difficult time with memorisation. I can do it, but it seems very hard for me. Some people would learn the notes of a scale on an instrument, then would pick up the instrument and be able to play the scale. If you hand me an instrument, and tell me what a string is tuned to, I'll play a scale, but I'll figure out the names of the notes later, and with a great deal more effort. The scales are instinctive - I know where to put my fingers to make the right sounds. It's as if the music isn't processed in a concious part of my brain. Jon, it almost sounds like you do the same thing with tempo. You hear it and can play it, but it's a "gut level" thing - you don't think about it, but just do it. You may have to imagine how you play the notes and what they sound like in the tune. |
|
21 Jan 02 - 09:20 PM (#632666) Subject: RE: Tempo Deafness From: Jeri Jerry, do you ever get the feeling folks do that key-changing thing just for fun? I hope I get to hear you guys again! (Last time was at NOMAD, a couple of years ago.) |
|
21 Jan 02 - 10:21 PM (#632699) Subject: RE: Tempo Deafness From: sophocleese Jon, I have the same trouble. I have to go over and over a tune if I'm trying to transcribe it to be able to tell which notes are longer and which are shorter. Mostly I give up and ask my husband to tell me instead. |
|
22 Jan 02 - 12:37 PM (#633108) Subject: RE: Tempo Deafness From: Mrrzy Interesting. Back when I was really tone-deaf, the one thing I COULD hear was rhythm - it was the one test I would ace in music class, when we were only to write down the tempo and not attempt to rédiger the tones... I can tell teeny tiny differences. And I have not, oddly enough, lost any of that while acquiring tone hearing, if that's a term. |
|
22 Jan 02 - 01:01 PM (#633124) Subject: RE: Tempo Deafness From: Jerry Rasmussen Jeri: The one thing that the lead singing in a different key than the guitar and harmonies is NOT, is Fun. The singer in question (who is no longer with the group) did it on television and the other two guys who were singing harmony along with my guitar looked like they would kill the lead singer the moment they were off camera. All broadcast as a promotion for a concert. The Gospel Messengers are about halfway through recording our first CD now... great, great fun. This is serious thread creep, so I'll stop.. Jerry |
|
22 Jan 02 - 02:26 PM (#633173) Subject: RE: Tempo Deafness From: Don Firth Chewing it over a bit, Jon, I wonder if you're having the same problem I am. Using Noteworthy Composer, I'm trying to get the songs I know into some kind of notebook. In writing out tunes, I frequently find situations where the tempo just doesn't seem to sound right. There's nothing wrong with my sense of tempo and rhythm, and I've had plenty of practice in writing out manuscripts (took a course in manuscript writing in school, and I've done a lot of it), so—why doesn't it sound quite right when I click "play" and listen to it played back? I think it may be that written music can be too precise. For example, a 3/4 measure that at first I thought was simply three quarter-notes. It didn't sound quite the way I thought it should, so I tried a dotted quarter-note, an eighth-note, and another quarter-note. Still didn't sound right. The dotted quarter-note was too long, the eighth-note too short. I screwed around with that measure for a ridiculous amount of time, trying various combinations of dotted notes and tied sixteenth and thirty-second notes, until the measure was an absolute mess, and it still didn't sound right. So I went back to three quarter-notes, and of everything I tried, that sounded like the closest. I think what it boils down to is a matter of phrasing and emphasis. There is a little phenomenon in written music called rubato. This is when one note "robs" a tiny bit of time from an adjacent note without actually changing the tempo or rhythm. It's more a matter of interpretation and too imprecise to notate. The only way I know of to indicate this is to write "rubato" into the score at that point, but that leaves it strictly up to personal interpretation. I figured that I know what it sounds like, and anyone else who might use my manuscript is going to do it their own way anyway, so three quarter-notes was "close enough for folk music." Does this make any kind of sense? Don Firth |
|
22 Jan 02 - 03:10 PM (#633215) Subject: RE: Tempo Deafness From: Jon Freeman Yes it makes sense Don but it's not my problem. Lets say I was transcribing a hornpipe and was using dotted notation, as I know a horpipe goes longer dotted note - short note... I would be OK but if I didn't know, I could even end up writing short note then dotted note before getting something that starts to sound about right. Once I have got that far, I can then end up trying to fine tune the piece to get it to sound how I want it to and that can take me ages. Here is a hornpipe I messed about with - first in dotted notes and how I wanted it to sound. A problem with trying to transcribe a song so it sounds how you think it should go is that the printed music can end up looking a bit wierd - I don't think you'd see a hornpipe represented the way my second version here prints out for example but the use of dotted notes is pretty well understood and is interpreted by the player. I would think for the dt, it is best to produce the "written notation" rather than to try to get exact timings. Jon |
|
22 Jan 02 - 05:57 PM (#633354) Subject: RE: Tempo Deafness From: Jeri Jon, when I was VERY new to the fiddle, I played with an old guy who had decided to start playing again. (I suspect he had been quite good at one time, and picked it up because he now had someone to play with.) Anyway, I'd keep trying to read the rhythm from the dots, and he kept telling me "Just get the notes, and figure the rhythm out later." It worked. Reading both the pitch and tempo confused me. When I read just the pitch, I could figure out the tempo from listening to him play or my memory. Maybe the reverse would work. You could just stick the right number of notes in the staff. You could do a second staff under it, and work out the rhythms. In a lot of tunes, a bar is often similar to the next bit. If the first has the same "bounce" as the second, you could just type the same notes in, but copy the upper line for where they should go. Your MIDI of how you think the tune should sound looks fine to me, BTW. (So what's the name of it, please, before I go crazy? Someone does this at our session.) |
|
22 Jan 02 - 08:16 PM (#633420) Subject: RE: Tempo Deafness From: Jon Freeman Jeri, the tune is the Golden Eagle - great tune but probably not the easiest on the fiddle as it goes higher than the B on the 1st string. I learnt it from a Dubliners record - trying to think what they played with it - Blackberry Blossom maybe - it not a tune I play these days but it is a good hornpipe. Jon |
|
22 Jan 02 - 08:35 PM (#633431) Subject: RE: Tempo Deafness From: Jon Freeman Changing my mind Jeri... It was the the Honeysuckle in the Dubliners set I mentioned. Jon |
|
22 Jan 02 - 08:56 PM (#633443) Subject: RE: Tempo Deafness From: Jeri Thanks, Jon. (One of these days I'll move out of 1st position.) |