At 3:49 PM -0500 12/13/10, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote:
How can string players learn a fairly vast repertoire of fingerings, positions, and techniques during their careers -- techniques that are played just from the "what" on the sheet music -- but for harmonics they have to be told "how"? I quit string playing many years ago, so don't know. Are harmonics not learned as a standard part of professional string development? Players don't have a core set of harmonics memorized? Guitarists seem to.
Point taken. The question comes down to this, I think. String players certainly do learn how to read and play harmonics. But composers do not necessarily learn how to notate them properly (as the present discussion shows!), so yes, there can be ambiguous notation that needs to be interpreted. Given a choice between something clear and something that raises questions, I would usually choose the former.
John -- John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music Virginia Tech Department of Music College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:john.how...@vt.edu) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html "We never play anything the same way once." Shelly Manne's definition of jazz musicians. _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
