CONCEPT: THE LANGUAGE OF MUSIC. What is music? What is music theory? If music is a language, what is it saying?
EAR: SING AND WRITE IN TRADITIONAL PITCH COMMON FOLK TUNES USING PITCH CLASS NUMBERS (SEE LIST OF SONGS)
NOTES: TRADITIONAL PITCH AND RHYTHM (TENUTO NOTE ID LEVEL 02)
MELODY: CREATE A TUNE FOR A FIGHT SONG
HARMONY: STABLE AND UNSTABLE PITCHES (HARMONICA)
ART: JOYFUL JOYFUL WE ADORE THEE (PHRASES AND CADENCES)
CWM: FINDING MELODIC PATTERNS IN CCLI TOP 25 MELODIES
WE’RE HERE IN THEORY
The Language of Music
QUIZ: The Story of Music
After watching the video, take this quiz to celebrate your mastery!
BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND: HARMONICA
for fun: ask a theorist or two, introduction
ASK A THEORIST OR TWO, ASSAULTING SCHENKER
Lesson 2: Say What?!
What part of Dit-Dit-Dit_Dahhhdo you not understand?
1. Semiotics = The study of how people communicate.
a. Musical semiotics is particularly intriguing, because music is abstract.
b. Music’s meaning is culturally assigned, so every culture assigns its own meaning. In this course, we deal only with musical styles of the western hemisphere in relatively-recent history, so already we have limited our possible meanings.
c. Furthermore, music is very personal, so each person might hear a different message. Adding lyrics to a song certainly helps people to agree on the meaning; otherwise, we must rely on common experiences. Images help to clarify (or undermine) the meaning even further.
d. In addition, what a person hears one time might not be the same thing he or she hears a different time. Context seems to provide much of the meaning.
e. Put all of these together and you can see why movie music is such a powerful communication tool.
i. You have images, words, context already in place, and when you add music, it tells you what to “feel” about what you see.
ii. The images in music videos, conversely, help you to know what to “think” about the message of the music.
2. What does “western” music “mean?”
a. What does the opening motive of Beethoven’s Fifth mean?
i. A knock on the door?
1. If so, is it good or bad?
2. Fate! Or Friend?
ii. A bunny rabbit hopping in a field?
1. If so, what does it come to mean in the frenetic, dramatic section a bit later?
iii. Morse code? (An already-assigned symbol.)
1. V for Victory! The peace after the battle is over.
2. V for Viceroy cigarettes.
b. The story of the lighthouse keeper. “That’s right.”
c. Implied syntax
i. Pitch
ii. rhythm
d. The building blocks of spoken language mimic music.
i. phonemes = pitch
ii. syllables = gesture
iii. words = motive
iv. phrase = phrase
v. sentence = period
vi. paragraph (structure and form)
vii. chapter
viii. book
ix. series
x. How do we know? Large-scale form (within a form)
e. How do we know what “Shave and a haircut” is saying?
3. Expectation and fulfillment (or surprise)
a. Culturally-determined meaning
i. Opening sets up expectation (antecedent),
ii. cadence answers (consequent)
b. Antepenult cue
i. To be specific
ii. Five gold rings
c. Musical punctuation
i. Phonetic punctuation in Beethoven’s Ode to Joy
ii. Swanee River
iii. Take Me Out to the Ballgame
ILLUSTRATE:
Parts of Speech
Shave and a Haircut
Punctuation
CELEBRATE:
OBJECTIVE QUIZ
CREATE:
Play the ending of a song you know well, and find five ways to change it to create a “surprise.”
DISCOVER: