On Mar 13, 2009, at 5:09 PM, Darcy James Argue wrote:
I'm really wondering about why we accept some things from notes
which we don't accept from rests, such as quarter-half-quarter
being perfectly acceptable when they're written as notes but not
acceptable when written as rests. Why not?
I speculated about that in my last message. Again, I think it's
about the psychology of note placement. In sight-reading
situations, placing the attack in the right spot is (at least) 90%
of the battle. So rests that outline the beat clearly help the
sight-reader to visually and psychologically "plant" their attack.
I think Darcy is onto something here. I think most players DON'T
"play" the rests, they play the note-ons, so they just see the rests
as placeholders, like a numbered grid onto which notes have been
laid. This is also why spacing inside the measure is so important to
easy sight-reading. Maybe I am obsessed with easy sight-reading,
since I write music that is highly syncopated and usually depends on
being read "cold" for performances and recordings, rather than those
who write more concert-oriented works that get practiced a lot. I
depend on tradition and modern convention to make sure my parts are
instantly understandable.
I am reading a show right now that uses a lot of funk-like rhythms in
sixteenth-note subdivisions, and there are a lot of inadvertent
"solos" from various players because the syncopations are not written
in conventional ways. The beat is hard enough to see with sixteenth
subdivisions already, and though we all get it right on the second
glance, the first one is what counts. The rather loose hand-copying,
while adequate, is not exactly precise with regards to spacing
either, so that doesn't help.
Christopher
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