My 1st Dictionary Milestone
I've finished the A's! One letter down, 25 more to go :) I know I'm not even close to done, but at least I finished one letter, and it makes me feel like if I can do this much, surely I can do it 25 more times. No problem. Here are some last little A tidbits... it blurs into the B's too.
-There are lots of instruments. LOTS. And I've noticed that a good amount of the non-western-classical music instruments have some kind of drone aspect to their instrument/music. Interesting...
-There are lots of organ stops. LOTS AND LOTS. I have no idea how anyone can play the organ. Piano is challenging enough. But throw in multiple keyboards, tons of foot pedals, and a boatload of various stops, I can't even comprehend. Let alone, how on earth does someone get their doctorate in organ performance??? (in case Elaine ever reads this... I doubt it though)
-One big problem I'm having is that there are times when I want a more tangible grasp on what I'm reading. It would be nice if I could have like a score or CD to accompany some of these entries. There are occasional music examples, which help a lot, but just not enough. For example, the entry on Bailecito (A Boliovian coupled dance) mentions that there can be a combination of simple triple and compound duple elements. I totally understand that in theory, but how does that work in practice. Hmm... I just feel like I'm missing a piece of the puzzle. Incidentally, when I looked up the idea of combining the two meters I just found a hit on Google Books that showed me the exact same page I was reading from my dictionary. Not so helpful.
-B.A.C.H. : This was like the 3rd entry in the B's. I thought for a split second that maybe since Bach was so crucial in music history they were giving him his own entry (there are no biographical entries). But it turns out that since Bach was so important many other composers have used his last name to created motives and fugue subjects using the letters in his name. It's probably important to point out that in German the letter B refers to Bb and the letter H refers to B natural (a little tidbit I picked up in the As, though I kind of remember that from music school). So the motives consist of the notes Bb-A-C-Bnat. Interesting.
-I forgot all about fugues. It's kind of like when I started studying for the GREs. I opened up the book to the math section and the first problem was : x times x = 4. solve for x. I immediately thought, "well duh, 2." only to find out that it could be 2 or -2! I had totally forgotten that negative numbers even existed. Yikes, I had a lot of studying to do. Well apparently I've managed to forget all about fugues. At least I had until I got to the entry on real and tonal answers. Then it all came rushing back to me.
I'm excited to see what the B's hold in store for me :) I've stopped for now on the Ballet entry. It's LONG. I think I'll tackle that another day, I've accomplished enough for now.
-There are lots of instruments. LOTS. And I've noticed that a good amount of the non-western-classical music instruments have some kind of drone aspect to their instrument/music. Interesting...
-There are lots of organ stops. LOTS AND LOTS. I have no idea how anyone can play the organ. Piano is challenging enough. But throw in multiple keyboards, tons of foot pedals, and a boatload of various stops, I can't even comprehend. Let alone, how on earth does someone get their doctorate in organ performance??? (in case Elaine ever reads this... I doubt it though)
-One big problem I'm having is that there are times when I want a more tangible grasp on what I'm reading. It would be nice if I could have like a score or CD to accompany some of these entries. There are occasional music examples, which help a lot, but just not enough. For example, the entry on Bailecito (A Boliovian coupled dance) mentions that there can be a combination of simple triple and compound duple elements. I totally understand that in theory, but how does that work in practice. Hmm... I just feel like I'm missing a piece of the puzzle. Incidentally, when I looked up the idea of combining the two meters I just found a hit on Google Books that showed me the exact same page I was reading from my dictionary. Not so helpful.
-B.A.C.H. : This was like the 3rd entry in the B's. I thought for a split second that maybe since Bach was so crucial in music history they were giving him his own entry (there are no biographical entries). But it turns out that since Bach was so important many other composers have used his last name to created motives and fugue subjects using the letters in his name. It's probably important to point out that in German the letter B refers to Bb and the letter H refers to B natural (a little tidbit I picked up in the As, though I kind of remember that from music school). So the motives consist of the notes Bb-A-C-Bnat. Interesting.
-I forgot all about fugues. It's kind of like when I started studying for the GREs. I opened up the book to the math section and the first problem was : x times x = 4. solve for x. I immediately thought, "well duh, 2." only to find out that it could be 2 or -2! I had totally forgotten that negative numbers even existed. Yikes, I had a lot of studying to do. Well apparently I've managed to forget all about fugues. At least I had until I got to the entry on real and tonal answers. Then it all came rushing back to me.
I'm excited to see what the B's hold in store for me :) I've stopped for now on the Ballet entry. It's LONG. I think I'll tackle that another day, I've accomplished enough for now.
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