Date: 06 September 2006 08:56:45
My adult education course on How Music Works started last night: and I greatly enjoyed it. I've put "Western" in parenthesis above as, as the presenter said, this course looks at Western Music and other types of music are very different. It'd be interesting if courses on other culture's music were offered: I'll keep an eye out.
The presenter is wonderful: she is very knowledgeable and presents the material in a wonderfully engaging and humorous manner. The two hours flew by. As well as using a piano, various recordings from Gershwin to Beethoven were played, including a beautiful Agnus Dei in Gregorian chant, and some songs were even sung by the presenter: thanks be to God we didn't have to have a go at singing though!
For the first lesson we looked at the basic elements of notes (pitch, ryhthm, tone colour and dynamics) and whe notes are put together (melody, harmony, texture and form); we then looked at a basic level at the physics of notes and what an octave and a fifth is; and we concluded with music notation as well as learning why some keys on the piano are white and others black and why there aren't black notes between B & C and E & F [the frequency difference between these notes is markedly less than that between others so, to have a constant increase in frequency between notes they are not needed: at least I think that is what we were told!] Next week, looking ahead at my notes, we are looking more at melody and rhythm, and getting an introduction to the major scale.
Aside from the content, an interesting aspect was the ratio of men to women: I'd guess it to be 7 to 1 or even 8 to 1: interesting considering why, given we were told that is not generally the case with this course. Perhaps Tuesday nights are more appealing to men -- who knows?
It is also an interesting course as we won't be learning any instruments: simply music theory. It may spur me on to try my hand at an instrument. Suggestions at work have ranged from an oboe to a harp: not sure what to make of either of those!