Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • Prof: Okay, ladies and gentlemen.

  • Good morning.

  • I think things are going to work better today.

  • I'm optimistic about the audio equipment and about our slide

  • material and things such as that.

  • All cell phones off and we will begin.

  • Don't forget sections start tonight at seven o'clock and

  • there's another set at eight o'clock and then Friday

  • afternoon at one thirty and Monday morning.

  • We've got that all online for you.

  • And you do your work product and you bring it to sections and

  • hand it in to your TA in section each time.

  • So that's the way this works.

  • I'll be sending you a global e-mail bringing you up to date

  • with some other things later on this afternoon.

  • Okay.

  • So today we--Actually, before I get to that,

  • any questions from you?

  • Student: Yeah.

  • Is there stuff to do-- Prof: Is there stuff to

  • do for section tonight?

  • Yes, but only the stuff that was assigned,

  • the Listening Exercises that are assigned early on.

  • It's just one, nine through 11,

  • which you've probably had done for days now so you just bring

  • that material and hand it in.

  • Others will be assigned tonight.

  • This is shopping period.

  • We're started sifting through things and then we'll get

  • rolling.

  • Gentleman.

  • Today we're going to come to what I would call the

  • nitty-gritty of the course.

  • We no longer have any introductory material but we're

  • going to jump into musical notation and we're going to be

  • dealing with things such as half notes,

  • quarter notes, things like that,

  • but before we do this I'd like to say a couple of words about

  • musical notation because it affects how we deal with music,

  • how we treat music.

  • Musical notation is a particularly Western phenomenon,

  • and when you stop and think about it only we in the West,

  • and by West what I mean is the United States and Canada and

  • Western Europe and Russia, parts of South America,

  • only we use musical notation and we use it principally for

  • our high art music.

  • That's not to say that the Chinese don't have an esoteric

  • form of musical notation, that the Indians do not have an

  • esoteric form of musical notation.

  • They do, but it doesn't intersect quite as intensely as

  • musical notation does in Western cultures.

  • Most cultures around the world, if you stop and think about it,

  • don't use musical notation.

  • But we do here with our art music and that has two

  • advantages.

  • Let's talk about the advantages first.

  • One, it allows the composer to specify rather precisely what he

  • or she wants, to sort of write things out in

  • the form of musical details, so as the result the creator in

  • this Western art form takes on greater importance than the

  • creator in other cultures where the composer so to speak is more

  • or less anonymous and perhaps synonymous with the group as a

  • whole.

  • So again the process of notation allows the composer to

  • loom larger.

  • And secondly there's another advantage of notation.

  • It allows us to preserve the work of art.

  • We can kind of freeze dry this thing and store it and then

  • bring it back to life more or less exactly as the composer had

  • intended.

  • But this, if you stop and think about it, takes the traditional

  • balance of things and throws it out of proportion.

  • In our art music, our symphonies,

  • concertos, genres of this sort, the performer is actually much

  • less important.

  • Let's think of this as architect and carpenter.

  • The great architect, the thinker,

  • is the composer and the performer,

  • the violinist, gets this piece of--gets this

  • blueprint or black print in the case of musical notation and is

  • expected simply to replicate the black print.

  • Well, that's very different than what happens in other kinds

  • of music.

  • Let's talk about pop music for a second: jazz,

  • rock, hip-hop, blues, that kind of thing.

  • You go over to Toad's Place and you see the band come out and

  • the first thing they do is plunk this in front of them?

  • No. That'd be ridiculous.

  • How many of you--I was walking with a student over to my office

  • after lecture the other day to get some material to him.

  • How many of you play in a rock band or have ever played in a

  • rock band?

  • Okay, a number of you.

  • Young lady out there, did you use musical notation?

  • No.

  • That would be kind of silly.

  • Right?

  • It's--Okay.

  • So how is it done?

  • Well, it's all done aurally and we'll talk a little bit more

  • about that as we go along.

  • So the composer in the West is very important,

  • more important than the composer in other cultures.

  • Other cultures don't use this type of prescriptive notation.

  • Here's a thought for you.

  • Musical notation was the first graph in Western culture.

  • "How could that be?"

  • you'd say.

  • How could that be?

  • Well, if you go back to the formation of musical notation

  • from the ninth through the twelfth centuries,

  • we see that very early on these two dimensions of music,

  • the two axes of music that we talked about before,

  • pitch vertically and duration horizontally,

  • are in place and we have these spots in this grid.

  • So musical notation: the first grid pattern in

  • Western culture-- but it does lock us in in

  • interesting ways that we may-- you perhaps have never

  • considered--compared to how music is made in other cultures.

  • Let's see how some music is made in other cultures.

  • We're going to play here now as our first excerpt an Adhan,

  • and what this is is the Islamic call to worship which is sung

  • across the world thousands of times every day,

  • and as we listen to this I want you to think about the vocal

  • production here.

  • What's interesting are all of the vocal nuances,

  • so let's listen to just a bit of this please.

  • >

  • Let's stop there.

  • Fascinating.

  • What a wonderful sound, but the beauty of it is all

  • between what we would call the notes.

  • We would specify a precise frequency here,

  • another one up here, but what that gentleman was

  • singing was all the stuff in between.

  • That made it very beautiful, and there's no way in God's

  • earth that we could replicate that to the Western system of

  • musical notation.

  • Let's take another example.

  • We're going to go to the realm of Western jazz here and I'm

  • going to pick on Chuck Mangione.

  • Anybody ever heard of Chuck Mangione?

  • Yeah. Okay.

  • Brian, our tech guy, has.

  • He's an older fellow.

  • He's sort of my age, and the reason I mention Chuck

  • Mangione is that years ago I went to school with him.

  • He was a couple of classes ahead of me at the Eastman

  • School of Music.

  • I was a fledgling pianist.

  • He was a very good trumpeter.

  • Indeed, he was winning Grammys when he was in his twenties and

  • has been recording sort of esoteric jazz and sometimes more

  • pop jazz thereafter.

  • Now you can go to a Mangione concert.

  • He will sometimes play the Shubert Theater there and

  • they'll have two hours of spectacular jazz,

  • but what you won't see, again, is any sort of music in

  • front of them.

  • So how do these musicians generate two hours of music with

  • no music in front of them?

  • Does this mean he doesn't read music?

  • Of course not.

  • You can't get through these conservatories like Eastman or

  • Juilliard or Curtis without being introduced to an intense

  • regimen of musical notation, but it would get in the way of

  • the music.

  • So let's listen to a track here, a sax solo,

  • and I am going to try to keep--make some sense out of

  • this-- because it gets more and more

  • complex-- by following the electric bass

  • underneath so let's listen to an old tape.

  • I used to go to bars in Rochester and listen to this guy

  • and tape his stuff.

  • So here's Chuck Mangione with his saxophonist and a saxophone

  • cadenza.

  • It's a wild riff for saxophone.

  • >

  • That's probably enough.

  • It gives you an idea.

  • Now how in the world would you ever notate that?

  • To produce this as a pre-scripted document that

  • anybody else could follow?

  • It was all improvisatory.

  • If they tried to notate it, again, it would take all the

  • spirit out, all the heart out of the music.

  • Well, how do they do that?

  • How do these performers play such long spans of music without

  • any notation?

  • Is it all memorized?

  • Well, it's not memorized as we think of it,

  • and you may have had music lessons along the way and your

  • teacher and your mother said, "Go memorize your

  • piece."

  • It's not memorized like that.

  • There are certain basic patterns that they have.

  • They might say for that sort of music:, "All right.

  • We're now going to have a thirty-two-bar solo.

  • We'll be in the key of E-flat.

  • We're going to work through a one, six, four,

  • five, one chord progression as--We'll come back to that.

  • We'll sit on the dominant chord for eight beats and I (Chuck)

  • will look over and everybody else will come back in at the

  • end of Chris's solo."

  • It would be that kind of thing, kind of head charts,

  • general plans, and within that general plan a

  • lot of freedom of expression.

  • So having said that about musical notation--

  • something about a cautionary tale about musical notation--

  • we should think about how it affects the way we compose music

  • in the West and how we perform music in the West.

  • When you go to a concert of classical music and the music is

  • played and you start to talk, what happens?

  • Somebody will go, "Shh."

  • Right?

  • We go to these concerts and we have to be so quiet.

  • Why do we have to be quiet?

  • That doesn't sound like much fun.

  • Why do we have to be so quiet?

  • It's because we have these performers up there that are

  • reading this blueprint and everyone is listening,

  • basically, to see how accurately they can reproduce,

  • revivify, this artistic artifact.

  • So that's sort of what's going on, but it really does

  • affect how we behave, even, in a concert.

  • Now if you go to concerts of other cultures and they are

  • engaged in their own classical, not just popular,

  • but classical music, Indonesian gamelan music for

  • example, the audience will be there

  • swaying back and forth, clapping, applauding with the

  • performance with particularly good solo,

  • the same thing with Indian sitar music,

  • that classical tradition.

  • Oddly, it's much more like going to a jazz concert where

  • the audience is sitting maybe around tables or something like

  • that and encouraging and interacting with the performers,

  • but again in those cultures no notation.

  • , everybody sits there sort of mummified, waiting for this

  • great work of art to come back to life.

  • It's an interesting thing.

  • And isn't it typical of us in the West to take something,

  • music, which is expression and feeling and motion and movement,

  • a response to sound, and turn it into complex

  • patterns, complex patterns that can be

  • visualized and rearranged and analyzed,

  • and nowadays even digitalized.

  • What we've done is take this spontaneous response to the

  • creation of sound, and bodily movement with sound

  • and replaced it.

  • We've replaced the ear and the heart, the ear and the body,

  • with the eye and the mind.

  • Ours a much more visual--it's a much more analytical--type of

  • approach to music and it has its pros and cons.

  • We get great Mahler symphonies yet we have everybody sitting

  • there rock-still at these concerts.

  • Okay.

  • Having said that and pointing out the advantages and

  • disadvantages of notation, let's plunge in then to a

  • discussion of it.

  • I've put on the board up here the following and we're going to

  • review this.

  • It's simply material found on page fifteen of your textbook

  • but let's review it.

  • We say this is a beginning course so we assume no previous

  • knowledge.

  • If you've read through that material, and you should have

  • read through it by now, you know that we have a value

  • in music.

  • It's called the whole note.

  • What the whole note is, what all these symbols are,

  • are simply representations of duration so we have a symbolic

  • language here that's going to represent the horizontal axis,

  • the axis of duration.

  • And this whole note obviously can be subdivided into two half

  • notes and each of the half notes into two quarter notes,

  • each of these quarter notes into two eighth notes,

  • and so on.

  • So these are symbols telling us how long a particular frequency

  • is to endure.

  • Similarly, just as we have symbols for the presence of

  • sound and its length, we have symbols that represent

  • the absence of sound.

  • We call those of course, what?

  • Rests. Okay.

  • So we're resting over here.

  • We're not making any music.

  • So we have the notes and their values and the rests.

  • Notice that they're all pretty much duple in their divisions.

  • Now here's a question for you--all duple divisions.

  • How do we make--How do we get triple arrangements in music?

  • How do we do that?

  • Well, we take our basic note and what do we do to it?

  • I bet--I'm sure some of you know this.

  • How can we get a half note that actually equals now three

  • quarter notes?

  • What do we do?

  • Gentleman here.

  • Add a dot.

  • What does that do to this value specifically in terms of ratios?

  • It adds--Okay.

  • It adds fifty percent or a half to that and that means instead

  • of two quarter notes that we now have three,

  • and we can do the same thing to any one of these other values

  • here, and that's how we get our

  • triple relationships.

  • Okay?

  • So those are the basic note values normally with a duple

  • division but we can superimpose triple by using a dot and the

  • absence of sound.

  • Now let's talk for a moment about the idea of pulse in music

  • and the beat in the music and rhythms in music.

  • We all know that there is this thing in music called

  • "beat" and to the extent that popular

  • music is more interesting and that you--

  • everybody likes it and will go dance to it is because it's

  • really foregrounding beat and rhythm in an important way that

  • classical music does not.

  • So I've put this idea of the beat up on the board here.

  • It's really just a pulse.

  • It's very much like the human pulse.

  • This is the pulse of music, and music theorists ever since

  • the late fifteenth century from music theory Francinus Gafurius

  • on-- we could go all the way back

  • then--have said that the pulse in music is basically at the

  • same tempo as the human pulse, which comes out to be about oh,

  • we'll say seventy-two beats if you will,

  • pulses, per minute.

  • So we have this pulse, and it's just kind of out there

  • streaming, beat, >

  • , but we don't like undifferentiated,

  • disorganized material in the West.

  • Our psyche says we've got to bring rational organization to

  • this.

  • Ever think about this?

  • Why do we have this periodicity when you take history courses?

  • Why do we have the Renaissance, the baroque period,

  • the classical period, the romantic period and so on?

  • We have it in music.

  • We have it in history.

  • We have it in the fine arts.

  • Why do we have it?

  • It's simply a convention established after the fact that

  • allows us to organize material in ways that we can grapple with

  • it, ways that we can understand it.

  • So in music what has happened is that we have organized this

  • steady stream of beats in ways that we can understand.

  • We organize them.

  • We subdivide these into units of two, for example,

  • groups of two like this, or we have an undifferentiated

  • stream like this.

  • I am convinced--even though I'm sure that the Toyota Motor

  • Company didn't organize it this way--

  • I am convinced that on my automobile when I do not plug in

  • my safety belt that there is a bell ringing,

  • "DING, ding, ding, DING, ding,

  • ding."

  • I don't think they were thinking of that in terms of

  • triple meter.

  • I think they were just a succession of dings,

  • but I'm hearing it--my mind wants to hear this organization,

  • so there's another organization here of units of three.

  • As you may know, there's yet another

  • organization where we could group this in units of four,

  • but for all intents and purposes--there are a few

  • nuances to it-- four is simply a multiplication

  • of two.

  • So in our course we are only going to have two types of

  • meter, duple and triple.

  • These organizations, taking the beat and organizing

  • it into groups, is called superimposing

  • meter on the music.

  • Then we want to indicate that meter to the performer.

  • It's a way to tell the performer how this music is to

  • be executed.

  • So what do we do?

  • Well, in music the most basic symbol for the beat is the

  • quarter note.

  • The quarter note usually carries the beat.

  • Okay.

  • So here we have a series of groups of two quarter notes.

  • We have the convention of music of writing this symbol

  • indicating the beat-carrying unit of four so I'm writing a

  • four underneath each of these.

  • Then I look up here and say, "Well, in this duple

  • pattern I have two of these quarter notes."

  • So I'm going to write a two out there.

  • That (4) tells a performer that the quarter note is carrying the

  • beat.

  • And the 2 says that there'll be two in each of your units.

  • These units we call bars or measures,

  • and just to finish this off down here,

  • we would have three quarter notes, of course,

  • in this particular arrangement.

  • Okay.

  • Now ultimately what happens with this is that we begin to

  • take this stream and organize it into different patterns.

  • I can go >

  • , something like this, and we would call that a

  • rhythm, superimposing longs and shorts, different patterns,

  • patterns that oftentimes repeat.

  • The dividing up of this stream into different patterns,

  • often repeating, of longs and short,

  • is superimposing rhythm over top of this basic beat which is

  • organized in terms of these meters.

  • So are there questions about that?

  • Did that seem straightforward enough?

  • Now as you may know--some of you may have played clarinet in

  • a high school band or something like that,

  • neither here nor there if you did or did not--

  • but you may know that there are other meters out there,

  • these things called six-eight (and nine-eight).

  • I was thinking this morning >

  • four, five, six, one, two, three,

  • four, five, six, one, two.

  • Well, that's a beat of basically a duple meter with a

  • triple subdivision, but we're not getting into

  • triple subdivisions here.

  • In our course the beat is always going to be a--divided,

  • to the extent that it's divided--always going to be

  • divided into two.

  • We have only so-called simple meters rather than compound

  • meters.

  • If you want to learn about compound meters,

  • go take music 210 and become a music major.

  • That's the kind of thing that they get into but we're not

  • doing that here.

  • We're interested only really in two things: One,

  • can you differentiate between duple and triple meter;

  • and two, can you recognize some very basic rhythmic patterns?

  • And we'll be doing some of that today.

  • Questions again?

  • Okay.

  • Let me play some music at the piano.

  • This is Bulldog.

  • Isn't this the Yale fight song?

  • Who wrote this?

  • Anybody know?

  • You've probably heard it eight zillion times at football games.

  • It's great--What a wonderful fight song--Yale was so lucky to

  • have this as.

  • So yes, I think I hear somebody out there.

  • Student: Cole Porter.

  • Prof: Cole Porter.

  • Who was Cole Porter, as I glance through my music

  • here?

  • Oh, phooey. I've lost it.

  • Who was Cole Porter?

  • He was a Yale graduate, class of 1914,

  • and unfortunately I seem to have misplaced--Well,

  • I can generate a little bit of it here.

  • >

  • Okay.

  • I was sort of trying to remember the first page of the

  • missing music there.

  • So is this in duple meter or triple meter?

  • >

  • Huh?

  • What do you think and how do we find out?

  • Tap your foot.

  • Did we find any music?

  • >

  • Ah, thank you.

  • Enlightenment from Lynda.

  • >

  • What-- What's the key here?

  • What do you listen to?

  • How many think it's in duple meter?

  • Raise your hand.

  • How many think it's in triple meter?

  • Okay.

  • Almost everybody thinks it's in duple meter and that's correct.

  • Now we worked through this just a little bit once before.

  • What is it that tells us that it's in duple meter?

  • It's the bass <<plays piano>>

  • because it's organizing itself very strongly in duple patterns.

  • There's one other interesting thing in here.

  • This would be?

  • Well, let's think through this in one additional way,

  • and that is--notice that in duple meter we have a strong

  • beat, right, "strong, weak,

  • strong, weak, strong, weak,

  • strong weak" in that sense or if we have

  • triple it would be "strong, weak, weak, strong,

  • weak, weak."

  • There would be two weak beats or two unstressed beats between

  • each strong beat.

  • We could do this <<plays piano>>

  • and we'd have the "Waltz of the Bulldog."

  • It'd be pretty cool >

  • to see actually.

  • So there it's--I'm simply taking the Cole Porter piece and

  • throwing in an extra beat in each measure,

  • an unstressed beat in each measure,

  • and it works out pretty well.

  • Notice--this would be--Harvard would have had a field day with

  • this melody if he--Cole Porter--had not done one thing.

  • He makes this really rather snappy by the use of this kind

  • of stuff.

  • >

  • We'll come in on >

  • and then it's >.

  • What's that a good example of?

  • Syncopation, yeah.

  • The term is on the board, and it's a good example of

  • syncopation, sort of jumping in ahead of

  • time, cutting off the beat, getting in there ahead of time

  • and throwing off the metrical balance for a very short period

  • of time.

  • Okay.

  • So that's a duple meter piece and what we're trying to do here

  • is just hear if we've got one strong and one weak beat or one

  • strong and two weak beats.

  • How do we--How should we do this?

  • How are you going to do this?

  • Well, I think one thing that's very helpful is for you to start

  • to move, to move around, to sway, tap your foot.

  • Now we can't do this during a test in here.

  • It'd be a little bit annoying but we really have--we really do

  • have to do this.

  • Now musicians, being a bit more uptight

  • oftentimes, classical musicians,

  • than other more spirited folks, have developed this tradition

  • of using conducting patterns.

  • Right?

  • So for duple meter we just go down, up, down,

  • up.

  • It's kind of--maybe a little shape over to the right,

  • down, up, down, up, that kind of thing,

  • and for triple we do down, over, up,

  • down, over, up, down, over, up.

  • Okay?

  • So I'm going to start playing here and you are going to start

  • conducting.

  • You're going to listen just for a second and then you're going

  • to move and you're going to move using the conducting pattern.

  • >

  • Okay. Good.

  • Now I see some of you out there from--like this,

  • not really participating, and if I can get up here--Think

  • about this.

  • I'm old.

  • I'm sort of used to thinking of myself a "White Anglo-Saxon

  • Protestant."

  • I have every reason in the world to be repressed.

  • Right?

  • >

  • I could-- >

  • This--So if I could be up here making a fool of myself on a

  • daily basis, you guys are much younger than I and known for

  • outrageous behaviors.

  • You can certainly get in here and move and flow and go with

  • the beat here.

  • So here we go.

  • Everybody together.

  • >

  • Much better.

  • Okay. I'm watching-- Good.

  • Virtually everyone has got the downbeat here.

  • You're not going >.

  • You're going>

  • , so there is a sense of downbeat and we'll come back to

  • that in just a moment.

  • Let's do a triple meter one.

  • Here we go.

  • >

  • Good.

  • Excellent. Very good.

  • Now I'm going to modulate, >

  • go to a different key.

  • >

  • Can you conduct this?

  • Okay.

  • There's a little confusion here so let's try to do it together.

  • Are you ready?

  • >

  • Okay.

  • Now this gentleman out here is actually doing it different from

  • what I am doing and what most of you are doing,

  • but you know what?

  • He's doing it correctly.

  • We're doing it incorrectly.

  • >

  • What's wrong here?

  • We're off because our downbeats, our strong pulses,

  • always have to come on the first part of the bar,

  • this note.

  • The first part of the bar is called the downbeat.

  • It's the most important thing and our conducting pattern

  • always has to have the downbeat of the hand in sync with the

  • strongest impulse in the music, the strong.

  • The downbeat in the music comes with the down motion of the

  • hand.

  • So we were getting >.

  • Oh, there's the downbeat, >

  • but we were putting that on two, >

  • , and we don't want that.

  • We want >

  • at that point.

  • So what do we have here?

  • What's happening?

  • Well, there's a little bit of music before the downbeat.

  • That's called a pick-up.

  • Okay?

  • So we have a little pick-up, >.

  • I was thinking of a diver in the Olympics.

  • They go out there--They do these little steps just before

  • they spring off of the board, >

  • , kind of gets you, really landing good and hard on

  • that downbeat, so the downbeat is very

  • important to us and we could conclude this by saying that

  • although all music has a downbeat,

  • not all music starts with a downbeat.

  • Sometimes when listening to music you have to wait.

  • Listen for a while and your body almost will start to tell

  • you, start to signal to you, where the downbeat is.

  • Is it really your body that will signal this to you?

  • I doubt it.

  • It's your brain up here processing all of this

  • information.

  • We talked about the auditory cortex the first section and

  • maybe there are other parts of the brain that are factoring in

  • here as well, but how is it that composers

  • send this information to, let's say, our auditory cortex

  • here?

  • How do they do that?

  • Well, there are four principal ways that composers signal to us

  • the whereabouts of the down beat.

  • Okay?

  • So let's review--let's focus on that just for a moment.

  • Okay.

  • Way number one: That has to do with duration.

  • Notes are simply longer, held longer.

  • That's how we have the sense of where the down beat is.

  • >

  • You have old Amazin' Grace--I guess it's a spiritual,

  • right?

  • Beautiful. It's beautiful.

  • But think about that.

  • >

  • >

  • And all of those long notes are coming on the downbeat so that's

  • how we start to hear that as a downbeat,

  • and that's how we know to make our hand go down at that point

  • so that's one way.

  • Now another way is through accent,

  • and to exemplify this let's turn to some classical music,

  • the music of Mozart, so here we have Mozart's

  • Fortieth Symphony, his famous G Minor Symphony,

  • and we're going to go ahead and start to play it.

  • >

  • Okay. Good.

  • Several of you were actually conducting this.

  • That's great.

  • Okay.

  • This happens to be in duple meter and that's fine.

  • That wasn't the question here but great, you're hearing that

  • and I'm delighted.

  • What Mozart has done here--If we could get the score up here

  • of Mozart's music-- we would see that he has put a

  • little arrow over top of-- a wedge--over top of each of

  • the down beats <<plays piano>>

  • so that the string player will really accent those,

  • but the string player would be accenting them anyway.

  • Why?

  • Any violinists in here or anybody who ever played a string

  • instrument?

  • What are you always told to do?

  • If you are playing a downbeat with an up-bow,

  • are you in good shape?

  • No, no, no, no.

  • Your teacher would not be happy with that.

  • Your bowing pattern is probably backward at that point.

  • String players are taught, whether it's cellists going

  • this way, downbeat, or violas and

  • violinists coming down this way, that the downward motion of the

  • hand or the pull across, the strong pull across,

  • should come with the downbeat; that emphasizes the downbeat.

  • That's how we know the downbeat.

  • So so far we've had duration and accent.

  • Mozart is actually writing accent into this.

  • The third way that we--that composers signal to us,

  • that we pick up almost intuitively the whereabouts of

  • downbeats, is through patterns of

  • accompaniment.

  • We'll call it range.

  • Okay.

  • So here's a waltz by Richard Strauss,

  • not to be confused--no, excuse me, by Johann Strauss,

  • not to be confused with Richard Strauss whom we heard last time.

  • >

  • And so on.

  • What's important here is the left hand.

  • >

  • That's why we hear a triple pattern here.

  • We're hearing two weak beats, and the strong beat is always

  • in the lower position here so we're getting low,

  • middle, middle, >

  • low, middle, middle, or it could be

  • something as we had the other day in the Tchaikovsky Piano

  • Concerto, <<plays piano>>

  • low, middle, high, low, middle,

  • high, but each time the downbeat seems to be coming in

  • association with that lowest note.

  • So range or position here in the accompaniment can oftentimes

  • signal this information to us.

  • And finally, and most important-- these

  • others have been pretty straightforward--

  • but what has not been straightforward is something

  • that you might listen to many, many times and not be aware of,

  • and that is chord changes.

  • We have chords in music.

  • >

  • They're these building blocks that support the melody and they

  • have to change for that melody to be consonant all the time.

  • But where they change oftentimes is on the downbeat.

  • Most frequently, chord changes come on the

  • downbeat so composers signal to us in a fourth way the downbeat

  • by means of chord change.

  • Now we're going to play just a little bit of pop music--

  • a bit of pop music here, and by playing this you might

  • think that I think that I'm hip or with it.

  • We're going to play some rock and roll.

  • Do I look hip or with it?

  • Hopelessly out of touch with popular culture and nobody knows

  • this better than I, and to prove this I have chosen

  • a piece because there's a little story with it.

  • I like this piece because it does something and I've used it

  • in previous years, and I put it on and I would

  • announce, "I'm now going to play out

  • of the-- It's an album called

  • Document by REM ," and put it on and REM and it's

  • fine with me.

  • That's what it says, "REM,"

  • on the printout, and about two years after I was

  • doing this a student came up and said,

  • "Professor Wright, it's really not

  • "Rem.""

  • Oh, it's not?"

  • Okay.

  • So that's how distant I am from all of this, but let's listen to

  • a little of this.

  • It's in a straightforward four.

  • Rock really comes forth not so much in twos but in fours so

  • we'll call this a 4/4, and you can beat a four pattern

  • to it or you can beat a two pattern.

  • It doesn't really matter but notice that whenever the chords

  • are changing they're changing on down beat.

  • So let's hear a little bit of this and then we'll stop so they

  • don't sue us for copyright infringement and then we'll go

  • somewhere else and take another chunk.

  • >

  • Okay.

  • So that's all they're doing there.

  • Every time they're changing your hand is going down,

  • so chord changes may be the most powerful of all of these

  • aspects of where the down beat is.

  • Okay.

  • I had intended to give you just a little bit of a rhythmic quiz

  • but let's just do one of these things.

  • Here's something else we have to do in here.

  • We have to hear a rhythm and recognize it so we have a series

  • of rhythms on the board up there.

  • Please choose a rhythm for excerpt one, you can choose

  • rhythm A which is >

  • or you could choose rhythm B, >.

  • So I'm about to play a piece.

  • It's by Chopin.

  • Which rhythm is in play here?

  • Which rhythm am I playing?

  • Is it A or is it B?

  • >

  • So what do you think?

  • How many think A?

  • How many think B?

  • Okay.

  • So that's not too challenging.

  • We'll be doing some of that.

  • Then <<plays piano>>

  • Chopin is sitting here and he modulates;

  • he changes key.

  • What about this?

  • Is it--This is number two.

  • Is it A or B?

  • >

  • Lovely.

  • Wasn't it lovely, a little thing by Chopin?

  • How long did it take old Chopin to think that up,

  • do you suppose?

  • Two seconds?

  • Three seconds of white-hot inspiration?

  • I'm sixty-four years old and I haven't had one second of genius

  • in my entire life.

  • >

  • This is really depressing.

  • It's discouraging.

  • I soldier on but it hasn't come to me.

  • You are younger and I'm sure that your moment of genius is

  • out there.

  • It's really the difference between perseverance,

  • in my case, and genius--pure, unadulterated genius--in the

  • case of Chopin.

  • What a beautiful melody.

  • In any event, the answer is what?

  • For two, is it A or B?

  • >

  • What do you think?

  • A, yeah, so that's his rhythm, A there.

  • All right.

  • We're going to end with one final exercise.

  • It's a fun piece I think.

  • It's fun to do.

  • It's a piece by Maurice Ravel called Bolero.

  • It's a unique piece.

  • Maurice Ravel was a French composer writing in the early

  • twentieth century.

  • It's a unique piece because what he does is take some very

  • basic patterns and simply repeats them over and over and

  • over again for about fourteen and a half minutes depending

  • upon the tempo that the conductor is taking the music.

  • So let's listen to a little bit of this music and I want you,

  • maybe as a group, to tap with your foot,

  • your hand, whatever, just the beat as you hear it.

  • You don't have to pay any attention to this.

  • We'll come to this in just a moment, but just tap and we'll

  • all--maybe eventually all together the beat.

  • Here we go.

  • >

  • Most of you are not tapping.

  • So everybody start tapping where you think it is.

  • >

  • Okay. Good.

  • All right.

  • Gentleman out here in the orange shirt.

  • I'm going to have you be a conductor.

  • You were doing really well and you were conducting correctly

  • early on.

  • So good.

  • Here's what we got.

  • Most people have >.

  • Some people are going >

  • and in this course we would know whether you're hearing

  • duple or triple based on some other information so don't worry

  • about if you're doing >.

  • That's a little bit fast for a beat.

  • What you're doing there is actually subdividing the beat

  • into two, but don't worry about that.

  • That's fine.

  • You're doing eighth notes and the rest of us are doing--other

  • people are doing quarter notes.

  • Okay.

  • So the beat is >.

  • Now what music have we been hearing here?

  • Santana, where are you?

  • Okay. Come on up here.

  • Take a look at this.

  • Lynda, come on over here and take a look at this.

  • We should have rehearsed this in advance.

  • We did not do this.

  • These are two ladies that are very experienced singers.

  • I want you to just stand right up here, please.

  • They have not been forewarned about this!

  • Take a look at this.

  • >

  • We're going to do it together.

  • Here we go.

  • You're going to sing that top melody.

  • One, ready, go.

  • >

  • Okay, and we're just going to keep--It'll be fine,

  • and we're just going to keep going and once you get to the

  • end one then we're going to repeat.

  • Okay?

  • Here we go.

  • Two, sing.

  • >

  • Okay.

  • So you're going to keep going over and over and over like

  • that.

  • I'm going to be this thing here.

  • Let's just go--This is the percussion.

  • >

  • Okay?

  • There is no pitch to it.

  • It is just rhythm.

  • Up here we have melody and rhythm.

  • Here we have just rhythm.

  • Underneath we have >.

  • We have basically harmony, but it has a simple rhythm to

  • it.

  • It's a rhythm with a couple of different patterns.

  • You, students, are going to sing this.

  • Okay?

  • So here we go.

  • Everybody together, ready, sing.

  • >

  • Okay.

  • So here we're going to go--The gentleman in the orange shirt--I

  • hate to do this to you but we've got thirty seconds.

  • Stand up.

  • You were doing a great job.

  • >

  • Stand up and you can--That's fine.

  • You can face me.

  • We'll coordinate it better this way, and just conduct this in

  • three.

  • I'll start conducting with you and then you take over.

  • Here we go, one, ready, go.

  • >

  • >

  • Okay. Great.

  • This is actually terrific.

  • We're going to take it to Hoboken and Sheboygan.

  • We're going to play across the world with this group.

  • Okay.

  • Thank you very much, ladies.

  • The point here--final point and then I'll let you go.

  • This is a melody with rhythm.

  • This is pure rhythm.

  • This is a harmony with a very simple rhythm here.

  • Who is playing the beat?

  • I asked you to conduct the beat or to tap the beat.

  • Most people--And everybody was tapping the beat just fine and

  • dandy, but notice up here nobody is playing the beat.

  • There's nobody up here that's playing the beat.

  • The brain perceives all of this complex information and it

  • processes it and it extrapolates from it the beat,

  • but again nobody in music--except the bass drum

  • player in a marching band-- nobody in music ever does

  • anything except just play the beat.

  • Okay.

  • So I'll see you starting this evening in sections.

Prof: Okay, ladies and gentlemen.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it