As many of you have probably noticed, I haven’t posted on this blog in a full six months. I don’t know why, but one day I woke up and it was no longer important for me to continue to share my thoughts with the world.

I’ve always been a bit of a reluctant blogger anyway, unwilling to talk in detail about my teaching for fear of offending a student, unable to express the compositional process as it relates to my own work, and risk averse when it comes to exposing my theory chops. In the end, it became too difficult to formulate a post, as I would labor over each paragraph, sentence and punctuation to the point that every effort became an obsessive hour-long bout with my own strict self-editor. No fun for me.

I don’t want to lose touch with those that to whom I’ve connected and re-connected via this blog. Please make a note of my email address and put me in your contacts, and I will do the same with you, as well as adding all of my blogroll to a feed-reeder just to keep up. I might start a new blog one day, either anonymously and seriously, or open and light for those who are closest to me.

Twitter is cool, but too pithy for my tastes. I can’t imagine who would really care about the daily details anyway. Perhaps it will prove useful though, so I did sign up for a feed. You can search for me there as markjconnor.

So with sadness, I will be deleting this blog in the very near future. I put a lot of time into the template, and the visual aspect of the site, so it’s a bit sad to delete it. I’m quite proud of my work to personalize the style and coding template to make it suit my tastes, so I hate to see it go. Then again, it’s just a bunch of pixels!!

Before I go, I should let you all know that this has been a remarkable spring for me personally. Marta and I are taking martial arts and attend class 4-5 times a week, I have lost almost 20 pounds, AND after 22 years of poisoning myself, I haven’t smoked in over a month! I’m very excited about these changes and I think I’m adding years to my life.

Professionally, I’ve come to terms with my situation. I have carved out a nice niche between the two schools at which I teach and financially we are in the best shape of our marriage. I wrote a document last summer that I still need to finish and submit for presentation/publication, but that “final inch” that Solzhenitsyn so eloquently described* has held me back. I will finish that this summer and start another one on another pedagogical issue in theory that I hold near and dear to my heart. Eventually I will gather enough courage to be more than just a composer who dabbles in theory and join all of you in the big leagues. We shall see.

In the meantime, I hope that this missive finds all of you as well and as content as I am. Best wishes to all who have read this blog for the past three years. Drop me a line!

* And later gave it’s name to a really interesting documentary about the work to eradicate the last few thousand cases of polio in India and Africa.

America is back!

That’s how long I’ve been waiting for today’s election. I have rarely been happier to cast a ballot, in fact, I don’t think I’ve been this eager to vote since 1992.

We have had 2845 days under Bush and Cheney. There are only 77 days left. Regardless of who wins today, that’s a nice thought.

GO VOTE!

Neocon nemesis Andrew Sullivan posted two amazing videos on his Daily Dish blog today. I must share:

And the second:

A couple of philosophical questions regarding the previous post:

1. Are works in slow compound meter really compound, or are they actually simple triple notated badly? In other words, at what tempo does the hierarchy of rhythmic values that actually makes a meter compound start to work/break down?

2. At what point is it even worthwhile to apply any syllables to counting? As my wife said in her typically realistic style, honed by years in Eastern European music conservatories: “Do you really count more than 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &” in simple meter? Do you really need to count the triplet feel in a fast 6/8?” (And she can sight-read rhythm as well as anyone I’ve encountered…)

What she’s saying, and I don’t disagree, is that with everything else you’ve got to deal with, when it comes down to performance time, you’re not really consciously counting the “ees” and the “ahs” anyway. In practicality those smaller rhythms really just fit into the framework of the counting that is manageable. It is analogous to putting an overhead with scale gridlines over a map: You can clearly see what is a mile, and you can pretty well guess about the half mile, or at least close enough.

Well and good for the cellist in my family. The theory teacher, however, wants to put things in their boxes!!

A student in my sophomore aural skills class couldn’t quite understand why I didn’t like to count a measure of compound duple as 1-2-3-4-5-6 and insisted on making the students feel the music in two rather than six. His logic, which is actually pretty solid, was that it didn’t matter how we counted the example, but rather that the example was performed correctly.

This is a tough argument for me to win, because when I teach fundamentals I often teach my theory students several ways to solve problems and that if they can consistently and quickly generate the correct answer, then their process matter little. This attitude has been cultivated by years of teaching students from a variety of backgrounds with a variety of methods to determine intervals, triads, seventh-chords, etc.

However, when it comes to meter, I don’t want to take such a laissez-faire approach to the teaching because I honestly feel that my first job as a theory teacher is to make sure that the students clearly understand the why behind the meter so that they can build upon a good, solid foundation. Practice and accuracy are of course non-negotiable, but to me so is understanding the fundamental difference between simple and compound meters!

(Perhaps this is a reflection of my own early training in rhythm. I burst into tears at 11 years old during a trumpet lesson about dotted-eighths! Don’t get me started on French Overtures…)

As we know, the difference between a simple meter and a compound meter is found at the beat division level of the rhythmic hierarchy. Using Karpinski’s aural skills materials, it is very easy to show this relationship with his rhythmic “protonotation”:

|--|--|--|--| = beat divisions in simple meter (vertical lines equal the pulse)

|---|---|---|---| = beat divisions in compound meter

Using the Orff trick of “pineapples” and “apples” it is even relatively simple to have students performing complicated mixtures of simple and duple against a fixed pulse within a matter of minutes!

The problem starts when we move beyond feeling the difference between the pulses and actually attempting to apply a rhythmic solmization to the music. Example 1 shows two common systems for a short example in simple triple:

The solmization below the rhythm shows two of the more common systems being used today. The top line uses the traditional “1 ee & ah” rhythmic solmization system that seems to be taught pretty evenly throughout American schools. This works wonderfully well in simple meters and can even accommodate borrowed divisions without too much confusion.

The second line shows the “takadimi” method (see Hoffman, Pelto, and White in the 1996 Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy for more information.) This system, endorsed by Karpinski, performs very well with the division and subdivision in this simple meter example, but a bit less well in showing a difference for the borrowed division in the second measure.

Now let me show you an example in compound duple, with several different methods, all of which I’ve encountered in my teaching career:

The top line shows the method that my student wanted to use this morning. It is in fact the very same method that I used for years before college. The problem with it is that it transforms a meter that should be felt as compound into what is essentially a “simple sextuple” or perhaps a badly notated piece that should be in 3/8. It does have the advantage of being very easy to understand, but what about that borrowed division in the second measure?

The second line shows the “takadimi” method. I find that in compound meters, it performs exceptionally well and even handles that second measure with ease and grace. “Tavakididama” is a bit of mouthful, but clear and simple to see and hear.

The third line shows what I like to call the “triplet” method of understanding compound meter. Works great at the division level, fails utterly at the subdivision level, and really doesn’t help to draw a difference between compound duple and simple duple.

The fourth line is a hybrid that actually works to show the “dupleness” of the excerpt. It’s actually not a bad method but can become very awkward to perform if you can avoid becoming utterly confused by all of the numbers. It also, like “takadimi” in simple meter, fails to make a difference between the subdivision of the compound and the borrowed simple division. This was the second method that I used to count compound meters, starting sometime during my first year in college.

The fifth line shows the Orff “fruit method.” As you might have guessed, not so hot when things get complicated.

Obviously, none of these systems is foolproof (and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing) and they all have drawbacks, but I’d be very interested to hear from anyone who has a better system that can cover more bases. I’d also be interested to see how you would apply solmization to this example:

On a side note, I’m fascinated by the “bols” used to teach rhythm in Indian musical and dance traditions. If anyone uses these and can explain them, I’d be very interested to learn more about them.

I’m glad a prominent and well-respected American, and conservative, finally said some of the things that needed to be said about the type of politics being used in this current election. Us Democrats can say all we want, but until the cry rises from both sides, the paradigm won’t change.

Barack Obama rally under the Gateway Arch
St. Louis, Missouri, October 18, 2008

Barack Obama attracted 100,000 people at a Saturday rally here, his biggest crowd ever at a U.S. event.

The crowd assembled under the Gateway Arch on a sunny Saturday afternoon to hear Obama speak about taxes and slam the Republicans on economic issues.

Lt. Samuel Dotson of the St. Louis Police Department confirmed the number of attendees piled into the grassy lawn by the Mississippi River.

Unfortunately, Marta and I didn’t make it down there today. We talked about it, but she had to teach a lesson and we figured we’d use our afternoon to go for a bike ride on what is a pretty nice autumn day. Part of me wishes we had been a part of this though!!

Here’s an even better picture from the Huffington Post:

CNN reports:

Given the close nature of the presidential race, Jerry Falwell, Jr., chancellor of Liberty University, recently launched an ambitious effort to register all 10,500 eligible student voters at the fundamental Baptist institution in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Since the announcement of the registration campaign, students have been offered voter registration forms by resident advisers during residence hall meetings and by professors during class. Jonathan Woods, a junior at Liberty and resident adviser, said he and fellow RAs were instructed to educate their residents about registering to vote during a regular RA meeting.

In addition to the increased availability of voter registration forms, classes will be canceled on Election Day, and buses will be available to shuttle students to the polls.

“The truth is through 90 minutes of debating, John McCain had a lot to say about me, but he had nothing to say about you… Didn’t even say the word middle class. Didn’t say the word working people.”

~Barack Obama in Greensboro, North Carolina 9/27/2008.

What else can an elitist college professor like me say to top that other than to point out that technically, middle class is two words…

Or should it be hyphenated?