RE: [Finale] Partial tuplets in Finale - slightly OT, Ferneyhough

[Owain Sutton]

> 
> And I'm *still* not sure I grok what's going on in your Ferneyhough  
> example. Let me try again:
> 
> You've got two notes of equal length in the 2/10 bar -- never mind  
> what to call them. Each note gets one beat. The tempo 
> indication says  
> e=68. Does the tempo indication mean *these* two notes in the first  
> bar are played at 68 BPM?

Yes

> 
> And the next bar -- my understanding is that the three notes in this  
> bar are all 4/5ths as long as the notes in the preceding measure,  
> right? So is the tempo for this bar is 54.4 BPM? Or does the e=68 in  
> the *first* bar mean the eighth notes in the *second* bar are all 68  
> BPM -- and therefore the two notes in the *first* bar are 85 BPM?
> 

The former (you mean 5/4th?), in performance terms one should feel an
elongation of the pulse by a specific ratio rather than concerning
oneself with a particular calculation for a metronome marking.  This is
particularly important for being able to make sense of passages where
there may be a long gradual rall. or accel. across several bars,
including such changes in the pulse.



> 
> So what is the test to determine whether you can, in fact, hear an  
> interval or a rhythm in your head? Whether you can write it 
> down? That  
> can't be it -- lots of singers can't accurately transcribe the  
> intervals they sing. Art Blakey could have played you (accurately!)  
> rhythms he'd have found impossible to notate.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> - Darcy
> 

But is a 'test' what we really want or what is needed?  That's getting a
little distracted from the point at hand, the music itself, and
trivialising it into some kind of game.

Owain


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Re: [Finale] Partial tuplets in Finale

[dhbailey]

Christopher Smith wrote:


On Mar 23, 2008, at 4:10 PM, Darcy James Argue wrote:


Hi Owain,

On 23 Mar 2008, at 10:36 AM, Owain Sutton wrote:

 incompleteness of tuplets,


 using the names for note durations that actually tell you how long 
the notes are.





What struck me immediately is Owain's use of the word "tuplets" for 
"non-binary division of the beat" when only a Finale user has ever heard 
or would understand such a term. An excellent example of a word 
springing into being because it was needed, kind of like a shoemaking 
elf from a fairy tale...


Sibelius users have heard of the word "tuplet" -- it's the term they use 
to refer generically to triplets, duplets, quadruplets, quintuplets, and 
other such subdivisions.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuplet

http://www.musictheory.halifax.ns.ca/19triplets.html

Do a websearch on "tuplets +music" and you'll get lots of hits which use 
that term.  It's even found a place in the "wiktionary" so it's hardly 
just a term for Finale users anymore.  When I use the term with people 
who have never used Finale, they know just what I mean.  So it may 
possibly have started with Finale, but it has gained a much wider 
acceptance as a term for all such rhythmic alterations.



--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: [Finale] Partial tuplets in Finale

[David W. Fenton]

$On 23 Mar 2008 at 20:40, shirling & neueweise wrote:

> guys, really, get over it.  this music is playable

It's notational abominations that bother me.

Granted, it's an old notation system being twisted to do things it 
wasn't designed for, so that's bound to result in nasty things.

But then why not propose a new notational convention?

-- 
David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates   http://dfenton.com/DFA/


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Re: [Finale] Partial tuplets in Finale

[David W. Fenton]

On 23 Mar 2008 at 20:40, shirling & neueweise wrote:

> noone faults 
> richter for playing insane amounts of wrong notes

Er, yes, many people do -- I do, for one.

-- 
David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates   http://dfenton.com/DFA/


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Re: [Finale] OT - HP 500 duplexer - how to search list archives? (sending again--sent over 7 hours ago)

[Bob Morabito]

Hi Chuck--

Two places to search:

http://www.opensubscriber.com/messages/finale@shsu.edu/topic.html

http://www.mail-archive.com/finale@shsu.edu/

Hope this helps--

Bob Morabito
On Mar 24, 2008, at 4:39 PM, Chuck Israels wrote:


Hi all,

Some time ago there was mention of a repair kit for the duplexer  
for the HP 5000 printer.  I remember navigating to the page on the  
HP site where this kit was listed and seeing it there.  (Should  
have bookmarked the page! Experience is a hard teacher; first the  
test; then the lesson.)


I see that the archives are separated by month and year, and I have  
no idea how long ago this thread was.  Any ideas?


Thanks,

Chuck




Chuck Israels
230 North Garden Terrace
Bellingham, WA 98225-5836
phone (360) 671-3402
fax (360) 676-6055
www.chuckisraels.com

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Re: [Finale] Partial tuplets in Finale

[David W. Fenton]

On 24 Mar 2008 at 12:16, shirling & neueweise wrote:

> late mozart string quartet

Your argument would be helped if you didn't repeatedly use this 
vastly ignorant turn of phrase.

-- 
David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates   http://dfenton.com/DFA/


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Re: [Finale] Partial tuplets in Finale

[David W. Fenton]

On 24 Mar 2008 at 3:31, shirling & neueweise wrote:

> even as far back as chopin we have examples of tuplet values which do 
> not necessarily have a clear-cut, unquestionable relationship to the 
> metre (22:6/8, for example, or 5-lets in cadences that REALLY do NOT 
> function like quintuplets in clear relation to the preceding and 
> subsequent music; i'm thinking esp. of the nocturnes); why is it then 
> such a problem with F et al?

Well, for one, in Chopin, they aren't intended to played evenly.

-- 
David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates   http://dfenton.com/DFA/


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Re: [Finale] Partial tuplets in Finale - slightly OT, Ferneyhough

[A-NO-NE Music]

Darcy James Argue / 08.3.23 / 6:36 PM wrote:

>Notational convenience, nothing more. The Brazillians wrote their  
>bossa novas in 2/4, but all those sixteenth note syncopations were  
>hard for American jazz musicians to read, so we renotated them into  
>cut time. Doesn't make any difference to how it sounds, though.

Sorry, I can't let this one go.
American jazz musicians staring with Stan Getz converted bossa into
4/4.  Not cut time.  You must be thinking of samba, instead.  Anyway,
when jazz musician plays Brazilian music in 4/4, this means that
musician is feeling on 2 and 4, it's like stabbing my back.  I can't
stand it.  Jazz schools teaches bossa groove as jazz bossa, not the real
one.  Even samba with cut time, Brazilian music dance on beat 2, not 1. 
If anyone watch Brazilians dance, he/she will never be able to feel
their music in 4.  I played in Rio twice.  The musicians I played over
there took me to samba school and/or choro every night, and people dance
until 4 am.  People who come out for music every night doesn't need to
work next morning!

Anyway, the point is, as a musician who has been playing with various
native Brazilians last 18 years, I totally believe that Brazilian music
will sound differently when played by non natives if they are not
written in sixteen note syncopations. 

Notation is very phycological.

-- 

- Hiro

Hiroaki Honshuku, A-NO-NE Music, Boston, MA
 



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Re: [Finale] Partial tuplets in Finale

[Christopher Smith]

On Mar 24, 2008, at 9:18 AM, shirling & neueweise wrote:



What struck me immediately is Owain's use of the word "tuplets"  
for "non-binary division of the beat" when only a Finale user has  
ever heard or would understand such a term.


oops.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuplet



Okay, so non-Finale-users have the opportunity to look it up and find  
out what it means. But I would REALLY like to know where this word  
came from. I had never heard it before using Finale, and I still only  
ever see it used by Finale users (the Wikipedia article  
notwithstanding; I suspect it was written by a Finale user (first  
entry 2004) and the word doesn't appear in any other dictionary).  
Discussion on Wiki about the etymology of the word is inconclusive  
(last entry Nov 2007 doesn't cite any sources for the word, though  
someone tried to link it to the mathematical term "tuple" meaning  
sequence.)


I always assumed that the programmers (or technical writers) for  
Finale had invented the term. One user on Wiki claims to have used it  
and read it long before Finale existed, but provides no citations.


Can you prove me wrong?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Tuplet

Christopher

(P.S., I see that tuplets and irrational rhythms are not actually the  
same thing. Makes perfect sense to me now, but I had never needed to  
make the distinction before! What does that say about my pretense of  
musical sophistication?) 8-)


(P.P.S., It's nice to have the time to look into such matters now,  
rather than rush to the next deadline! Well, for another week or so,  
anyway...)



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[Finale] test

[Bob Morabito]

thank you
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RE: [Finale] Partial tuplets in Finale

[Owain Sutton]

> there is a whole generation of musicians who have grown up 
> with the possibility of performing his music, and learning it from 
> people who had to "figure it out'" themselves.
> 


I could not agree more.


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Re: [Finale] Partial tuplets in Finale

[Noel Stoutenburg]

Regarding my suggestion of the solution to the puzzle Darcy posed by 
changing key signatures, it occurs to me that to make this to work, at 
the point the key signatures change, the tempo also needs to change so 
that the dotted quarter of the 12/8 bars equals the quarter of the 4/4 
bars.


ns
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Re: [Finale] how to search list archives? Blue Flash

[YATESLAWRENCE]

Thanks John,
 
I've been through the archives too, but can't find anything - the subject  
line could well be something completely different.
 
I don't use Internet Explorer and it wasn't on the machine on which I first  
had the problem. I do remember that it was something unusual that caused the  
problem and was not obviously connected to the symptom.
 
Ah well.
 
Cheers,
 
lawrence
 
lawrenceyates.co.uk



   
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Re: [Finale] how to search list archives? Blue Flash

[John Blane]

Lawrence -

I was trying to find this for you but could not. The problem, as I  
recall, relates to Internet Explorer version 7. Either uninstalling  
it and/or changing versions seemed to work for people.


Good luck!

On Mar 24, 2008, at 4:00 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:




In a message dated 24/03/2008 20:57:16 GMT Standard Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

I see  that the archives are separated by month and year, and I  
have no

idea how long ago this thread was.  Any  ideas?



I have a similar problem regarding the blue triangular flash  
which,  for some

reason, under some circumstances, appears on the left hand side of the
screen in winfin06 page view.  It was duscussed at some length and  
the  (very
simple) solution was given, but I can't remember when it was nor  
what  that

solution was.

I'm still hoping someone will be able to tell me.

cheers,

Lawrence

lawrenceyates.co.uk




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John Blane
Blane Music Preparation
1649 Huntington Ln.
Highland Park, IL 60035
847 579-9900
847 579-9903 fax
www.BlaneMusic.com
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


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RE: [Finale] (was Partial tuplets in Finale) now the state of musicin academia

[Stu McIntire]

> > My theory (and I really miss being able to discuss it with Andrew) is
> > that the return to simplicity and melody in the early 20th century was
> > in reaction to the increasing complexity of late romantic harmony, and
> > that 20th century American popular music was and is the result of that
> > stylistic change, while all the 20th century experimental stylistic
> > movements are simply an unnatural late outgrowth of post-romantic
> > excess which survive precisely because academia has nourished and
> > protected them from the influence of public opinion.  

John, I'm so used to the narrative of the late 19th century breakdown of
tonality leading to free atonality then on to serialism that I don't even
know what return to simplicity and melody in the *early* 20th C you are
referring to.  What composers/salient pieces are you thinking of?

Thanks much,

Stu 


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[Finale] how to search list archives? Blue Flash

[YATESLAWRENCE]

 
 
In a message dated 24/03/2008 20:57:16 GMT Standard Time,  
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

I see  that the archives are separated by month and year, and I have no   
idea how long ago this thread was.  Any  ideas?



I have a similar problem regarding the blue triangular flash which,  for some 
reason, under some circumstances, appears on the left hand side of the  
screen in winfin06 page view.  It was duscussed at some length and the  (very 
simple) solution was given, but I can't remember when it was nor what  that 
solution was.
 
I'm still hoping someone will be able to tell me.
 
cheers,
 
Lawrence
 
lawrenceyates.co.uk



   
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Re: [Finale] Partial tuplets in Finale - slightly OT, Ferneyhough

[Darcy James Argue]

On 23 Mar 2008, at 5:55 PM, Owain Sutton wrote:


That'd be no deal, anyway - they're not 'quaint', just
historically-informed :p


So historically-informed, in fact, that you insist on calling the note  
*without* a hook a "crotchet." Even the French, from whence you stole  
the word, get this one right -- "croche" = eighth note.


In seriousness, perhaps the desire to refer to 'tenth notes' is  
causing

some of the difficulty here.  Look on it as two bars with a quaver
pulse, the first being in 2/10, the second in 3/8.  There's no need  
for

the first to be heard as anything other than quaver=c.68, so yes, it
isn't that all that different in some ways from metric modulation.   
(Why

notate anything as 2/2, if it's likely to be heard as 2/4?)


Notational convenience, nothing more. The Brazillians wrote their  
bossa novas in 2/4, but all those sixteenth note syncopations were  
hard for American jazz musicians to read, so we renotated them into  
cut time. Doesn't make any difference to how it sounds, though.


And I'm *still* not sure I grok what's going on in your Ferneyhough  
example. Let me try again:


You've got two notes of equal length in the 2/10 bar -- never mind  
what to call them. Each note gets one beat. The tempo indication says  
e=68. Does the tempo indication mean *these* two notes in the first  
bar are played at 68 BPM?


And the next bar -- my understanding is that the three notes in this  
bar are all 4/5ths as long as the notes in the preceding measure,  
right? So is the tempo for this bar is 54.4 BPM? Or does the e=68 in  
the *first* bar mean the eighth notes in the *second* bar are all 68  
BPM -- and therefore the two notes in the *first* bar are 85 BPM?


On the other hand, some of his approach seems very much to me like  
that

of Xenakis, of putting in things which may or may not be achieved by
current performers, but (a) are something to strive towards, and (b)  
may

prove less of a challenge to future generations of players, as other
aspects of the music take a place in our general knowledge and
understanding.


Yes -- I get that, and I approve that message. If not the music itself.

"If you can't clap it, then you *can't* hear the rhythms in your  
head."

- it's the other way around.  I can hear any rhythm I can clap, but I
can't clap all the rhythms I can hear in my head, any more than I can
sing all the notes I can hear.


Some would argue that if you can't sing it, you don't really hear it,  
either.


So what is the test to determine whether you can, in fact, hear an  
interval or a rhythm in your head? Whether you can write it down? That  
can't be it -- lots of singers can't accurately transcribe the  
intervals they sing. Art Blakey could have played you (accurately!)  
rhythms he'd have found impossible to notate.


Cheers,

- Darcy
-
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Brooklyn, NY



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Re: [Finale] Partial tuplets in Finale

[Noel Stoutenburg]

In the origin post for a moment, wherein Darcy asked about "another 
way", which question I have not seen an answer to:


I set out to recreate the brief example from Michael Gordon's "Trance" 
(great piece, BTW) in Finale -- with correct playback -- and quickly 
hit a brick wall.


The rhythm is (with "e" = eighth note, and "3" = one quarter-note 
triplet):


4/4 | e e e e 3 3 3 | 3 e e e e 3 3 | 3 e e e e 3 3 | 3 3 e e e e 3 | 
2/4 3 3 3 |


I couldn't figure out how to get Finale to accept the incomplete 
quarter note triplet. What I need here "one quarter note in the space 
of 2/3rds of a quarter note," but the Finale interface doesn't provide 
for that. Is there another way? 


My suggestion as another way: selecting a time signature of 12/8 display 
as 4/4. The notes designated by "e" would be notated as duples (2 
eighths in the place of three eighths); the quarter note "triplets" 
designated by "3", then become "ordinary" quarter notes. The principal 
advantage is that nested tuplets is not required.


ns
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[Finale] OT - HP 500 duplexer - how to search list archives?

[Chuck Israels]

Hi all,

Some time ago there was mention of a repair kit for the duplexer for  
the HP 5000 printer.  I remember navigating to the page on the HP site  
where this kit was listed and seeing it there.  (Should have  
bookmarked the page! Experience is a hard teacher; first the test;  
then the lesson.)


I see that the archives are separated by month and year, and I have no  
idea how long ago this thread was.  Any ideas?


Thanks,

Chuck




Chuck Israels
230 North Garden Terrace
Bellingham, WA 98225-5836
phone (360) 671-3402
fax (360) 676-6055
www.chuckisraels.com

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Re: [Finale] (was Partial tuplets in Finale) now the state of music in academia

[Ray Horton]

John Howell wrote:



My theory (and I really miss being able to discuss it with Andrew) is 
that the return to simplicity and melody in the early 20th century was 
in reaction to the increasing complexity of late romantic harmony, and 
that 20th century American popular music was and is the result of that 
stylistic change, while all the 20th century experimental stylistic 
movements are simply an unnatural late outgrowth of post-romantic 
excess which survive precisely because academia has nourished and 
protected them from the influence of public opinion.  Andrew does not 
agree with me, and I suspect that others on this list do not either, 
but that's how I see it.  And if I had completed my Ph.D that's the 
kind of study that would have fascinated me for a dissertation.


John


You have stated this very well, John.  I am in complete agreement.  (Not 
as much fun as having Andrew to argue with, sorry.)



Has academia been changing?  I'm not really in it, although I sometimes 
observe it from afar.



When I was in grad school (1975-6) the Musical Quarterly was full of 
articles like "Rhythmic Interruptions in the mazurkas of Chopin" and 
nonsense like that.  I was trying to write my thesis composition in 
1975-6 at the U. of Louisville and I  wanted to write a work for 
orchestra that was a pretty simple treatment of Appalachian folk 
melodies.  My teacher liked what I was writing but said it was in no way 
serious enough for a master's thesis.  I started over, wrote a heavy, 
dissonant, work (also using an Appalachian tune, but dutifully pounding 
it into submission) and all were happy.  (Well, the old, grizzled band 
director at the orals ridiculed the fact that I had trumpets using four 
types of mutes, but he was an artifact.) 



About 1983-4, I found myself looking at a Musical Quarterly or some such 
rag, and it was full of articles on world music and "A Harmonic Analysis 
of Jimi Hendrix's 'Star Spangled Banner.'  I surmised things had been 
changing in the academic world, although the music written by the 
university professors that I have played since then is still usually 
pretty dismal, with a couple of exceptions.  What do you think?



Raymond Horton
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Re: [Finale] (was Partial tuplets in Finale)

[dhbailey]

John Howell wrote:
[snip]> I can agree with that, certainly, but it isn't really the right 
starting
point.  That starting point has to be the simple question, "what is 
there about this music that will make it worth the time and effort to 
learn to play it?"  (Or sing it, which is an order of magnitude more 
difficult than playing instruments where you just have to push the 
buttons at the right times!)  Some people seem to believe that making 
music impossibly difficult equates to creating great music.  I don't 
think it's that simple at all.


I think you've hit the nail on the head here, John.

But the problem lies deep, because for far too many people the "I can't 
play it right off the bat" equates to "there's nothing there to warrant 
further study and practice."


With the difficult-but-easy-to-recognize masterworks, one can easily say 
"I can't play it right off the bat but my teacher played it for me and I 
love it so I'm going to work on it night and day until I can play it." 
And one can also run out and buy a Cd and start imitating that and 
internalizing recorded performances (for good or ill, that's a whole 
other discussion) and eventually play it.


For a lot of the newer music under discussion, it's not easy to find 
recordings to listen to in order to find the way with the difficult 
notational elements and one's teacher quite often simply can't play it 
even if they wanted to because they've never put the effort in (see my 
paragraph number 2 above).


But at the heart of any music, new or old, complicated or simple, lies 
John's question.  For some, the music of Ferneyhough is just such a 
music that makes them say "Wow, that's a challenge and I love a 
challenge and I'm going to master this and show the old farts that it's 
nothing to be afraid of" while for others even after working at it for a 
while there's a feeling of "why am I doing this?"


And what's really horrible in all of this is that the moment anybody 
says "I can't see anything worthwhile in this so I'm not going to work 
on it anymore" defenders say they haven't tried hard enough and they're 
lousy musicians for not wanting to put more effort into it, which is 
just as bad, in my opinion, as people who have never tried it (either as 
performer or as listener) who call it junk or worthless or something 
akin to "the end of civilization as we know it."


One has to be allowed to walk away from it if one finds it lacking 
without being labelled a philistine or worse, just as one has to be 
allowed to work at it and perform it without being labeled pejoratively 
and feeling the need to program some Brahms or Bach in atonement.


If someone doesn't like it, that's their right, for whatever reason -- 
lack of interest, lack of ability.  Do we fault people who don't like 
the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto? I hope not.


--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: [Finale] (was Partial tuplets in Finale)

[John Howell]

At 8:40 PM +0100 3/23/08, shirling & neueweise wrote:


but in case you don't want to take my word for it, check out 
arditti's site (as only one example), check out just how much this 
music is being performed around the world and compare it to even 10 
yrs ago.  there is a whole generation of musicians who have grown up 
with the possibility of performing his music, and learning it from 
people who had to "figure it out'" themselves.


I can back Jef up on this, even though the music in question is not 
something that will ever appeal to me, personally.  We have applied 
music faculty who are probably of that "in between" generation who 
had to figure it out themselves.  And we have performance major 
students, at least the best of them, who have no automatic prejudices 
against all the various kinds of "new music" and have reasonably open 
minds towards them, and working with their teachers they manage VERY 
creditable performances of very difficult music.  It's definitely a 
generational thing, and definitely not uniform within a generation 
since both those same performance majors AND their contemporaries are 
deep into rock, pop and rap as well.


On the other hand, music performance majors represent, what, at least 
one standard deviation (or more) above the mean in the general 
population in terms both of their desire for technical mastery and 
their understanding of the degree of musicianship that this music 
requires.  There's a difference between accepting new musics because 
they are interesting and intellectually challenging, and embracing 
them because they make sense to you and satisfy your musical needs. 
So the number of performances may indeed be going up, but what that 
actually proves may not be what the composers would like it to mean 
in terms of general public acceptance of their work.


it really comes down to this, for me.  instead of saying "X is 
unplayable", any argument against such things should begin with "i 
can't play that."


I can agree with that, certainly, but it isn't really the right 
starting point.  That starting point has to be the simple question, 
"what is there about this music that will make it worth the time and 
effort to learn to play it?"  (Or sing it, which is an order of 
magnitude more difficult than playing instruments where you just have 
to push the buttons at the right times!)  Some people seem to believe 
that making music impossibly difficult equates to creating great 
music.  I don't think it's that simple at all.


I've seen this happen over and over again in music history, since 
that happens to be my field of special interest.  Musicians want to 
be able to do something new and different, so they figure out how to 
do it, but then have to figure out a new way to notate it.  And style 
periods start, develop, and decline, increasing in complexity and 
making sense to fewer and fewer people until, unless you're a member 
of one of those elite in-groups, there's a reaction against it and a 
return to simplicity, which in every transitional period I've studied 
has meant a return to melody as the basic building block of music. 
It was the reaction against the rhythmic complexities of the Ars 
Subtilior in the late Ars Nova period (different, but every bit as 
challenging rhythmically as anything being attempted today) that gave 
birth to the new flowing melodies and rhythmically simplified 
accompaniments of the early renaissance.


My theory (and I really miss being able to discuss it with Andrew) is 
that the return to simplicity and melody in the early 20th century 
was in reaction to the increasing complexity of late romantic 
harmony, and that 20th century American popular music was and is the 
result of that stylistic change, while all the 20th century 
experimental stylistic movements are simply an unnatural late 
outgrowth of post-romantic excess which survive precisely because 
academia has nourished and protected them from the influence of 
public opinion.  Andrew does not agree with me, and I suspect that 
others on this list do not either, but that's how I see it.  And if I 
had completed my Ph.D that's the kind of study that would have 
fascinated me for a dissertation.


John


--
John R. Howell
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:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
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Re: [Finale] Partial tuplets in Finale

[shirling & neueweise]

What struck me immediately is Owain's use of the word "tuplets" for 
"non-binary division of the beat" when only a Finale user has ever 
heard or would understand such a term.


oops.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuplet

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Re: [Finale] Partial tuplets in Finale

[Christopher Smith]

On Mar 23, 2008, at 4:10 PM, Darcy James Argue wrote:


Hi Owain,

On 23 Mar 2008, at 10:36 AM, Owain Sutton wrote:

 incompleteness of tuplets,


 using the names for note durations that actually tell you how long  
the notes are.





What struck me immediately is Owain's use of the word "tuplets" for  
"non-binary division of the beat" when only a Finale user has ever  
heard or would understand such a term. An excellent example of a word  
springing into being because it was needed, kind of like a shoemaking  
elf from a fairy tale...



[I'm joking, of course. The US will never refer to the game where  
you kick the ball with your feet as "football."]




Nice one. 8-) Kind of like in Toronto where you park on a driveway  
and drive on a parkway. Except of course at "rush" hour (odd name  
considering the speed of the traffic), when everyone is pretty much  
parked on the parkway, too. 8-)


Christopher


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Re: [Finale] Partial tuplets in Finale

[shirling & neueweise]

As for the rest of your post, I wish you wouldn't give me credit for 
saying things I'm not saying.


darcy, my apologies if that came across as a personal attack, it 
wasn't menat that way, it was an attack on the argument itself, 
because it is more often than not the only thing that people can say 
about such music, and with such comments a whole range of musical 
styles and interests is simply dismissed because of a problem which 
may in fact have nothing to do with the composers who wrote the 
music, or with the music.


i saw arditti give a master class once where he berated a violinist 
playing a piece written partly in proportional notation but mostly in 
non-metric rhythmic figures without barlines or recognizable 
(recurrent) pulse: i don't think you have mastered the basic rhythmic 
aspects of this piece to take the kind of freedom in rhythmic 
interpretation you are doing at the moment.


the "audible grid" may not be an aspect of the piece the composer is 
at all interested in, so if you insist on looking for it, listening 
to the music with the "wrong ears" essentially, of course the 
experience will be uninteresting.  you don't listen to victoria for 
interesting meters and great swing passages...


you can hear sloppy playing in ferneyhough's music as well, but you 
have to have enough of a reference with the music to judge it 
properly.  but you can also hear sincere performances of it as well, 
where yes maybe some of the specific hyper-notation is not played as 
it is written, but this doesn't necessarily mean they aren't playing 
"the piece"... what's written on a jazz chart isn't what's played on 
stage either.


check out and compare different performances of ferneyhough's time 
and motion study II (i think there are 3 versions recorded), and you 
will immediately see what i mean about this music ALSO being one that 
can be **interpreted** in different ways.  in fact, one performance 
that is particularly musical is one that is sometimes quite far away 
from the score.   but there is no doubt about the musician's talent. 
and again, to continue to kill the jazz analogy, the worst 
performances of jazz i have heard were when people "played the 
score".  the same is just as true about the performance of a late 
beethoven sonata, of a late mozart string quartet, and of much new 
music.  some of it really does have to be played "as written" for the 
piece to work at all, but there are other times where, to conclude 
arditti's point, rhythmic detail definitely has to be mastered, but 
then you have to do something with it to make it musical and coherent 
with the piece and with your interpretation of the piece.


a friend once complained about how so many musicians play triplets 
like they are notated and proceeded to play like a dozen kinds of 
triplets and could explain -- and make audible -- the differences 
between them.


and again, i repeat, it depends on where you've heard it and who was 
playing it (and why they were playing it!).  i know that there is a 
core of "complexists" in the SW USA and a few people playing this 
kind of stuff in the NE here and there, but the new music scene in 
the US is quite limited in scope and depth in many places.  using 
performances in the US to pass judgement on any kind of music is just 
erroneous.


if you ever get a chance, check out greg beyer, NY percussionist, has 
played loads of stuff with serious rhythmical challenges (the guy 
eats the shit for breakfast!), incl. a drumset piece by james dillon 
(might be called ta-ri-ti-ki-da???).  also steven schick teaches and 
plays in NYC regularly.



Many professional classically-trained musicians -- most, I would 
say, although younger generations are considerably better -- can't 
play *Piazolla's* rhythms accurately or convincingly, let alone 
Ferneyhough's. A great many of them cannot play a long string of 
quarter notes without speeding up or slowing down, or play three 
quarter-note triplets of equal length (which is kind of an important 
prerequisite before attempting 5/6). Rhythmic authority is not 
something that is emphasized in conservatory training. Many 
established classical teachers even disdain rhythmic accuracy as 
"mechanical," something to be avoided at all costs in all 
situations, and heap even more disdain on music that requires a 
regular, stable pulse. And god forbid you suggest that they might 
want to break out the metronome on occasion.


So it's a bit galling for someone coming from a tradition where it 
don't mean a thing if it ain't got that rhythmic authority to hear 
players who clearly have zero emotional connection to rhythm, and 
who have not spent the long hours necessary to develop a solid 
internal sense of time, fake their way through the rhythmic 
minefileds laid by composers like Ferneyhough (especially when you 
know these are players who fall all over themselves trying to find 
the "and" of three in a bar of 4/4). And then to have people 
congratulate th