Wednesday 18 November 2009

dominic rivron is a bad man

so, off the back of dominic's generous making mp3s link in the last post i get to thinking about the capture of sound, about its notation and reproduction. and while it's true i haven't even dented the previously discussed sound project i do have a piano. yes, i do have a piano.

so off up the stairs to do some plinky plonky explorations. and what fun!

except for the bit where i'm aware that i have to be able to do this again. naturally i can't figure out how the computer connects up to the piano. and naturally it's too much hassle to get the microphone set up and even if i did my tone memory is something so far in the past i don't how reliable it would be, if it ever was.

so i'm left to write down the notes. of course intuitively i should know how they go together, but will i? and what about some sort of time signature. which means of course i need some sheet music rather than the blank page shorthand i'm using. sheet music! i haven't written anything on sheet music for thirty years!

so thank you dominic rivron for introducing yet another time vampire into the time constricted boundaries of my day! and y way of doing so, a big fat smile on my face!

8 comments:

Totalfeckineejit said...

I think he may be The Devil himself.

Dominic Rivron said...

"So thank you dominic rivron for introducing yet another time vampire into the time constricted boundaries of my day!" My pleasure! Heh heh!

>:)

(The spikey bracket was an attempt at horns)

Dominic Rivron said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dominic Rivron said...

Sorry - don't ask me how - I managed to post my comment twice - so I deleted the second....

Roxana said...

"yet another time vampire into the time constricted boundaries of my day" - hahaha, i am glad to see someone facing a similar problem, i was thinking in exactly these terms about my newly acquired passion for video :-)
and you even know how to write notes?! swiss, you are a neverending mystery novel to me!
:-)

swiss said...

yes, a pleasant gour or to that should've been spent doing much more pressing tasks plinking about on the piano.

and then even thinking about writing the results down without sheet music was just funny but something i'm going to pursue just for the sake of it. my musical education, for which i'm very grateful, was very formal and consisted of a lot of practice, grade exams and competitions which kind of sucked the joy out of it.

it took a massive gap and a bit of tragedy before i settled back to a tin whistle, a guitar and then back to the piano. getting the first two tho, meant i got over the formal restriction of those early years and began to just make noises, experiment. tap my foot!

that said, in addition to the lack of informality in my musical education somehow i seem to have forgotten or just wasn't taught much in the way of music theory, something i find massively frustrating, like tryiong to write a sentence with no grammar.

seeing as you're responsible for this dominic, maybe you could recommend a music theory for idiots type reference work that maybe has exercises (and possibly even jokes!).

cheers

Dominic Rivron said...

With jokes?? Perhaps I should concoct one - with risque acronyms (my favourite is King Lear's Bloody Marvellous Pink Jockstrap - but I've no idea what it's for).

Honestly, I think there's a case for taking theory neat - even if it means bracing yourself - like the Associated Board theory books: Music Theory in Practice Grade 1. There's one for each grade and you work through them filling in the exercises. There are no jokes, but they do break it down into climbable steps.

Dominic Rivron said...

Another good music theory resource:

http://www.musictheory.net/index.html