tonystride

I really respect that, if anyone can speak to this it would be a devoted reader like you. I might even be willing to consider it in a new light after reading what you have to say.

I’m not an adaptation hater, I mourn the cancelation of the live action Cowboy Bebop, I loved it, despite that being an unpopular opinion. That being said…

There was a scene towards the end of season two, where the dark one was lobbing bad CGI fireballs at Egwene, and Moraine was down on the beach and launched a bad CGI dragon? to like even out the fight. And I could just feel the writers being completely lost there and just punting it over to the CGI department to figure it out…

Agreed, it started out alright but got worse and worse as it diverged from the books. The finale of S2 is truly laughable. If you switch your expectations to fantasy/comedy you mighhhhht be able to enjoy it?

I get it, I just finished Arcane and that was pure chef’s kiss. It can be done and it’s so disappointing when it’s not, especially considering the budget. Although maybe with that much money involved it’s probably hard to keep one unified vision as I’m sure there are many interests competing.

That being said, it was still better than Wheel of Time. I’d argue that LotR was watchable, where as WoT was absolutely not!

I don’t understand the hate for Amazon’s LotR compared to what they did to Wheel of Time! I’ll admit I’m not a huge LotR fan, but I didn’t hate the time I spent watching the Amazon adaptation. Wheel of Time though, they drove a truck through that poor franchise. Then backed up over it, and drove over it several more times!

Tbh I feel like this is a ‘read the room’ situation. So if I’m on HN, providing thorough, cited sources, with as much nuance as possible is right. On the other hand, if I’m teaching a class of middle school theory students, giving them a fun digestible story about ‘the real thing about the triangle guy’ is more effective.

It’s impossible to know the true scope of how it was all made whether it’s Pythagoras and the origin of tonality or Bach and the birth of common practice. There should always be a ‘click here to go deeper down the rabbit hole’ option, but sometimes Pythagoras and Bach are easy focal points to begin delivering the concept that this all came from somewhere.

Tbh this is a bit over my head as my music degree only qualifies me to count to four. But all joking aside, I wonder how Pythagoras would feel if he knew that one day he would be better known for this theorem and not for music?

I’m amazed by how many people I meet who don’t know about his contribution to the discovery and development of tonality! You mean the triangle guy invented music???

This makes a lot of sense when it comes to vibrating large volumes of air in a concert hall.

But something in this realm that also surprises me is how a small amount of strings can sound like a much bigger ensemble through composition and arranging techniques. For example I’m always amazed at how full Mozart’s string quartets sound.

It’s also interesting how early game systems had to make use of these techniques since their synth chips had limited voices. Sometimes just three waveforms and a noise wave form (for ‘percussion’)

As a pianist I love the ragtime era. It’s full of low hanging fruit like this that’s just waiting to be reawakened. The coolest thing I’ve noticed is how timeless these pieces can be via live performance. Tbh recorded ragtime can be meh, but there’s something truly captivating about watching the velocity of that left hand stride irl.

This was a pleasant surprise to see on HN, I’m looking forward to adding some of these pieces to my repertoire

From a pianist perspective, when I was in college I played at a restaurant with an old beat up grand piano. I’d constantly complain about how bad it made me sound. Then one day I went to hear one of my mentors play on said piano. He sounded great. It was a pretty vivid demonstration of this principle for me.

One thing though, is that this title doesn’t paint the idea of amateurs with a great tone. Nothing wrong with being an amateur since it really means to do something for the love of it. I think pros need to be careful not to lose their amateur mentality wrt to the love.

I’ve heard that before, do you know of any examples? It makes sense since many of those composers were improvisers.

Fakebooks also improve classical playing. Learning how to read a lead sheet format forces a musician to internalize core music theory principles. A common classical music pitfall is relying too much on shallow rote learning, black dot = push down key without the substance of musical grammar & vocabulary.

I often see classical music as a lead sheet with the written notes being the composer’s suggested arrangement technique. It takes some time to see the collections of dots (notes) as higher level pattern like chord symbols but it all leads to the same place!

[edit] your playing becomes less fake by learning how to fake from a fakebook!

Maybe that’s the point, he respected someone flourishing with their own sound rather than someone trying to copy them.

Yes, for me I usually get trapped in a fractal maze of whatever media I consumed last. Video games, tv shows, etc. after my second Moderna dose I binged ‘The Circle’ on Netflix, that was a mistake when I dipped into the fever dreams...

I really like the analogy of trying to learn to run by speed walking faster and faster. It can’t be done, you have to specifically practice your ‘running’ form. Sometimes I do this way before I’m ready and make tons of mistakes like you mentioned, but with the focus of understanding the ‘running’ form as opposed to the speed walking form. This can literally be hilarious, I laugh so much at how ridiculous it can sound but it is really helpful!

What do you think about accidentally learning too rote like? For example I never really understood how to play a lot of classical until I was able to feel what it feels like to ‘speak’ music as a jazz pianist. Now I really try to understand what I am saying when I play as if it were my own notes. I can still get in the habit of relying on reading & memorizing without really getting to the heart of the notes and it usually causes me to hit a plateau.

For example I’ve been working on James P Johnson’s ‘Carolina Shout’ off of a transcription and hit this plateau without even knowing it. I realized it when I heard Ethan Iverson perform it and realized he was owning the song so much more than the rote attempt I was making. What do you think about moving past the rote learning and owning a piece?

https://youtu.be/eM09yob0RFM

I’ve been working on a project converting my piano curriculum into a 42 week YouTube series (currently on week 34, almost there!) and one of the first challenges I ran into, other than sucking a video production, was what to do about teaching repertoire so as not to run into copyright claims.

I decided to compose my own material each week and it has turned out to be the best thing about producing the series. At first the idea of writing a new intermediate level piece each week seemed daunting but it’s actually been quite liberating. Also when I’m finished with the series I’ll be able to publish the collection as my own book of repertoire.

If you’ve been teaching for a while (like 10 years) I would highly recommend going beyond the safety net of pre published teaching repertoire and try making some yourself. Find the deeper connection to what you teach about music by encoding into, well, music! New music, that reflects your unique relationship with the craft.

yeah 'traditional music forms' was a poor choice of words, guess I meant western music, or modern popular styles.

I really love synthesis & IDM but I tend to gravitate more towards soundscape compositions that are made of samples that have been abstracted to varying degrees. For example here's a piece I made that loosely follows Sonata form but has very little harmony or rhythm. Made completely of samples from an outside field and my living room. https://soundcloud.com/anthony-nagid/the-reality-sculptor-st...

Thanks for the essay, I'll put that in my que! There's a book I really like on 'The Art of Sound Organization' that got me into these styles. https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Art-Sound-Organization-...

Totally agree, needing to groove or follow harmony in some ways is a limited way of thinking about music. And my job is to teach people how to groove and follow harmony! One of my favorite types of music is electro acoustic because it is soooo far from the ideas of western music, probably most similar in formal structure. That being said Radio Head’s ‘Amnesiac’ is a superb example at bringing together the extended sonic pallets of electro acoustic in a main stream setting. What are some examples where you feel technology has enhanced traditional music forms?

What about using the RB/LB as a metaphor for teaching? I feel like it helps me build a ladder of abstraction for certain concepts as a music teacher. Of course I add the disclaimer that this is not ACTUALLY how your brain works, but all that neuro-jargon isn't really helpful for understanding syncopation...

How about his work with Toots Thielemans, ‘Affinity’. Such an unlikely combo but certainly kindred spirits.

when I first started teaching online I used Google Hangouts for 6 months and it was beautiful. I do a lot of rhythm teaching where the student uses their own metronome and taps, claps or sticks the rhythm and I listen for accuracy. I was dismayed when I switched to Zoom and experienced the filter. It has no idea what to with that kind of audio, where as it was so simple in GH. Even with all of the Zoom setting optimally configured you never know for certain what’s going to get through and what’s going to be canceled out.

As for configuring the settings, it can be easy enough to walk a student through the desktop config but last I checked the tablet config is ridiculous. And even required uninstalling and reinstalling. Would be so happy if that’s no longer the case?

The best part of Zoom imo is being able to share your computer’s audio or the audio from a certain window. That combined with Google Shared Piano is pretty clutch for me.

[edit] oh yeah one other offering to the Zoom gods. I also do a lot of screen sharing, like most of the lesson, and I hate how the video feeds default to a tiny format that can not be resized. A lot of times I need to be able to share my screen AND see my students hands but that’s just impossible now. I could do it with Google Hangouts no problem...

I just purchased spiral bound Henle edition of his Impromptus. Not sure how I've gone this long without doing a Schubert deep dive but I'm certainly looking forward to it!

This is the theory behind drop 2 voicings is it not? Being that as you alternate b/w Maj & dim voicings you copy the top note of the RH in the LH, I like to add a chromatic flourish to the LH note and it gives you a very George Shearing sound.

But wait there's more! Not only does this function harmonically, it also functions melodically. The added scale tone makes it so that a chord tone ends up on every down beat when playing in eighth notes. I've actually found that it doesn't matter where you add that extra scale note, you can do it all the way up and down the piano anywhere you like as long as you get chord tones where you want them.

Not surprised at all. Worked in this industry out of college and couldn’t get out fast enough. It’s such a surreal environment, you know the toxicity that exists at every level but most people seem to be gleefully ignorant. Pretty beaches, drink packages, tons of food, don’t rock the boat just enjoy the ride like everyone else...

I haven't looked into this yet but is the added note you are talking about like the added note of the Major bebop scale between Sol & La? Or is it the sharp Fa of the Lydian sound?

welp looks like I've filled my 2021 theory quota with a single HN post!

This is why I love HN, thank you for these links! As someone who grew up listening to crappy compressed CDs of early jazz recordings I can easily look past the poor video quality.

yep that's it sorry for the sp, reckless typing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Never done a deep dive on BH but I'm very aware of him. It's funny how theory can seek to reduce down so much, the positive and the negative. Kinda like Shankerian, except I would be much more interested in what BH has to say since Shanker was such an terrible person.

This makes me think of the way that an experienced jazz musician can seemingly know an overwhelming amount of standards (common practice jazz songs). Or how jazz musicians are expected to pick up a tune on the spot even if they don't know it. The key to this seems to be that most jazz progressions are based on circle of fifths, or interlocking cells of CoF progressions. This would imply that there is a grammar of jazz chord sequences that experienced musicians use to play or fake a massive amount of repertoire without having to cram rote learning every day.

Isn’t this what google’s shared piano does? Its been a god send to me as a virtual teacher throughout this whole pandemic.