--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu <noozg...@...> wrote: > > authfriend wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, cardemaister <no_reply@> wrote: > > > >> http://www.playpianotoday.com/updates.html > >> > >> I think, at 6:56 he sez octave is the toughest interval > >> for him to hear. That's strange. For me it's by far the > >> easiest! :0 > > > > That's what he says, and that is *very* odd. > > Ear training was taught poorly when I went to college. The > students who depended on it to play their instruments were > the best at it. But those who often wanted to compose and > played fixed pitch instruments like piano it could be > difficult. That's why I knew a lot of arrangers who were > trombone players and could sit down at a sheet of manuscript > paper and write out an arrangement they heard in their head. > It was when I took voice lessons from a really good teacher > and he simply put one through a bunch of exercises just to > train the voice for interval jumps that I became better at > recognizing intervals.
All this seems very odd to me as well. The only instrument I've ever played was the piano; took lessons for about three years starting when I was around 8 or 9, never got beyond the stage of obligatory performance at the music teacher's students' recital. I'd been picking out simple tunes by ear on the piano for years before that, though. What's weird is I don't remember ever *learning* intervals. On the piano, it's pretty obvious what they are because they correspond to the number of keys from one note of the interval to the other: C to G is a fifth because G is the fifth key above C. And I never had any trouble recognizing sung intervals because they sounded like the ones on the piano. *Chords* are a different story; I can recognize all the basic ones that are used in classical music, but blues- type chords or other fancy ones I'd have to do some work on. I do a weird trick: I can whistle and hum in harmony, including some really complicated (rhythmically and harmonically) two-part harmony. (One of my showpieces is whistling "Humoresque" while humming "Swanee River." Also some of the Gilbert and Sullivan choruses in which the men and women sing entirely different tunes, and a Bach two-part invention.) Basically, I have a good ear, I guess. I don't have perfect pitch, though. > Regarding octaves, a couple years ago I wanted to do a Sousa > march of one of my tunes. I went to the Internet to find > one of his scores and the only one I could find was an obscure > march he wrote in honor of the planet Venus. It was at the > Library of Congress site and there was an MP3 of the march too. > What I noticed was how much the march was simply > written in octave or tutti voicings and then I recalled my high > school band director explaining that once. It was due to the > fact those voicing carried better in open air than thick > voicings. He left harmony to the baritone horns which were > easier to play and louder than french horns. They basically > played piano style chords on the off beats. Throwing in some > of his idiomatic stylings I wound with a very Souza or as one > friend put it a Disney style arrangement. Didn't know that, but it makes sense. Sousa is fabulous; I love his marches. They're so quinessentially *American*, brash and crude and showy. Dah DAAH da-da DAAH da-da DAAH [boom boom!], da-da dah da-da DAAH dah da-DAAH DAAH... > BTW, Sousa was an astrologer and that's why he wrote the > march in honor of Venus. Didn't know that either! > And nowadays there is a web site that specializes in musical > scores and has a bunch of the Sousa march scores.
