This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,792 for Tuesday, the 14th of February, 2023.
Today's show is entitled, Learning to Read Music Park 1.
It is hosted by Anna's Tello, and is about 23 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, in which we learn to read music by going for a walk.
Hi, this is Anna Stello, on Hacker Public Radio.
If you want to recall the podcast of your own, get yourself broadcast out on the network,
head over to the Hacker Public Radio website, maybe go through the list of subjects
that there's some demand for, and record something.
One of those subjects on the Hacker Public Radio website for which there's some demand
is Music Theory.
Now it's quite a difficult subject to tackle, so what I thought I'd do was teach anyone
who doesn't know how to read music in the space of one podcast.
Not kind of nearly.
Back in the day, when I was but a slip of a lad, I spent, I think it must have been 10 years
or so, teaching music, and my claim to fame, if I ever had one, was that I would be able
to teach anyone how to read music in half an hour.
Now there was obviously a good degree of hyperbly about that claim, and there still is.
And it's a whole lot more challenging, of course, to teach anyone to read music in half
an hour on a podcast, because it's entirely an audio medium.
So I am going to cheat there are show notes which you can get for this podcast, and it's
quite a good idea to have those show notes in front of you.
It's not absolutely necessary.
I'll do my best to describe what's going on on the printed page.
Having it in front of you in some form or another either on a piece paper, print out,
or on a tablet's really good, and you need to take that with you.
Take it with you.
I hear you cry.
Where are we going?
Well, we're actually going on a walk.
You need to go outside, you need to find a street or a path somewhere where you can walk
without any hindrance, without bumping into people, or weaving round things, or coming
to a crossing point, you need a fairly unencumbered stretch of walk.
It needs to be fairly flat, because you need to keep the rhythm of your steps going
in a fairly regular manner, and the reason why that's important is because, as humans,
we spend a lot of time walking, and that actually sets up a really nice pulse or rhythm,
which of course is one of the building blocks of music.
There are largely two building blocks of music, pulse or rhythm, and pitch.
Today, we're going to be largely talking about rhythm, which is, in my opinion, by far,
the most important aspect of any piece of music, and I'll come to why that might
be at the end of this episode if there's time or certainly in a later episode, if there
isn't.
So, we're out there now, we're walking, we've got our piece of paper in front of us,
and we're just going to start walking along, and we're going to count to four as we
go. One, two, three, four, left, right, left, right. I'm sorry if the speed at which I've
set this up is either too quick or too slow for you, obviously, take your own speed,
take your own time, but count to four as you go along.
One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.
Now, the reason why I'm saying four is because it's really a very common timing in music,
a lot of music can be divided into fours really easily. And in fact, in musical terminology,
we call it common time, or often denoted with a C. If you look at your hand out, what you'll
see is on the first line of music, which is the stave, which is five parallel lines,
very close together, that stretch across the page. At the beginning of that, there's a thing
called a clef. The clef actually is related very much to pitch and the pitch of the notes
that you'll hear. So we're kind of going to ignore it for now. It's at the beginning of every
line of music, no, various different shapes. The one that's on your hand out is called a treble
clef, or sometimes the G clef, it's actually a curly letter G at the beginning of each line.
That's followed by C and of course C stands for common time. Four. So what we're doing here is
dividing all on music into measures or bars, and each bar or measure has four things in it,
in this case, four paces, one, two, three, four left, right, left, right, okay. So online one,
we've got four dots in each measure. As you can see, and to make them more legible,
there's a little line coming from each black dot in the, I'll just pick the top gap of this
particular stave and just put a dot in there. And each dot has a line coming down from it,
so it makes it easier to see. And so we are going to count off now, one, two, three, four,
one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Okay, so let's hear that now,
as a snippet of the world's dullest music coming up.
And now as we go along, what I'd like you to do is just clap your hands or click your fingers,
if you're in a public place and don't want to appear like a complete lunatic.
And it's just clap on every footstep. So we're going to go one, two, three, four, one, two, three,
four, simple isn't it? Okay, now, just keeping that rhythm going and I'm going to try and keep
the rhythm going here as well so that you guys don't fall over as you're trying to stay in
step with what I'm saying. What we're going to do is we're going to clap in between each footstep
and on each footstep. And we're going to use the word and to pace ourselves. So we're going to go,
four, one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and one and three and
four and one and two and three and four. Okay, now if you look at your handouts, which is in your
page in front of you, hopefully, you what you've got now is eight notes in each measure or
bar. And in fact, we call them eight notes or Quavers in some cases. And what you'll just clap
out is that rhythm, one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and just to
refresh our memory, not that we need it refreshing. Let's go back and just do each step with a
clap, set, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Okay, should we go back to the ends? One and two
and three and four and one and two and three and four and now if you look at your handout,
you can see that on lines two and three we've got essentially what's exactly the same thing,
but there is some difference in the way that the music is represented. Online two we've got
eight notes or Quavers written out individually and that's for those of you haven't got the
handouts, that's a black dot in the top line of the stave and then the line coming off it and then
a little tail on it and that says it's not a quarter note, it's an eighth note, it's got a tail.
In line three what we've done is we've done exactly the same thing, there are eight notes in each
measure or bar and we've paired them together or actually put them into blocks of four and connected
them with a thick black line and this is just a legibility exercise so you can group your
eighth notes or Quavers in groups of two or four you can use them with tails or mix and match them.
If you look at the last bar for instance of line three of the handout you've got a Quaver with
the tail and then three joined together and then two with tails and two joined together,
doesn't really make any difference. The rhythm that we're clapping or playing
is exactly the same, line two and line three go like three four one two and three and four
and one and two and three and four and it's all exactly the same. Now if we go back we can remind
ourselves of quarter notes or crotchets so one two three four is quite easy and then the Quavers
or the eighth notes are one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and
okay simple really. Now we can mix and match those in line four of our handouts I've got a
let's have a look we've got a crotchet on the first beat or quarter note and then two
Quavers followed by two more Quavers followed by another crotchet so in Imperial if you like that
is a quarter note four eighth notes and a quarter note so let's beat that out it's very simple
one two and three and four one two and three and four one two and three and four one two and three
and four one two and three and four and there's variations on that of course as long as you keep
your walking going you never lose that pulse and of course if you did lose that pulse you would
fall over and look pretty deaf so let's keep that walking going and tap out some more rhythm
just using simple crotchets and Quavers or quarter notes and eighth notes line five we've got
one and two three and four one and two three and four one and two three and four one and two three and four
line six one one two and three four and one two and three four and one two and four And one two and three
four and one two and three four and simple as knit. Line seven I've gone back just to get
you back into those quarter notes or crotchets again just to remind you keeping that
pulse going we go one two three four one two three four now let's imagine you're a
woodwind player so you're playing flute clarinet something like that trumpet
even brass player if you play constantly you're going to fall over and a
fixiate because you never take a breath and in fact taking a breath or
resting is very important part of music and we use a squiggle various types of
squiggles in each place in music where a rest takes place if you look at
line eight I'll try and describe it to there are two quarter notes followed by a
thick black squiggle and then another quarter note in a bar or measure so in
fact now what we have is if I can't you in three four we have one two
rest four one two three four one two rest four one two three four so you can either
whisper that number that you're missing or say the word rest and we can really
mix and match those in fact what I'm going to do now is I'm going to throw a
couple of things out you I'm going to change from four beats in a bar to three
beats in a bar so keep walking but now we're going to count in three so we're
going to go one two three one two three one two three okay so keeping that going
three time or three four time as it's sometimes cool is also worlds time and in
fact any of you who've cut some rug on the dance floor we'll probably have
an old style dancing obviously but the worlds time is three beats in a bar
it's very familiar I think to all of us really if you think about the blue
denue and all the famous well so one two three one two three and of course
you can you know keep playing out or clapping out your eighth notes or
quavours so you would be going one and two and three and one and two and three
and that kind of thing so I'm going to keep the pulse going in the background
as I'm keeping chatting with you and we're just going to do three in a bar
if you look at line nine what I've got is two rests and two quavours and then
three crotchets or three quarter notes and then a new type of note which is if
you like a kind of hollow black note with its tail going down and essentially
this is a note that lasts for two beats and probably the best way to approach
this one is just to do it three or four times okay so I'm going to count you in
three beats one two three rest rest three and one two three one two three
and one two three one two three again one two three and one two three and one two
two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three.
So I've thrown a couple of things out of you here.
First of all, we're now doing three beats in a bar
and we're using rest.
We're mixing up quarter notes and eighth notes
or crotchets and covers and we've also got this new note
which is a hollow one which actually lasts two beats
and obviously clapping that is gonna be really
difficult in fact it's more or less identical
when we clap this new note which is called a half note
or a minimum.
And it's gonna be indistinguishable
from a single note followed by a rest
because obviously claps only last a tiny point in time
and this note lasts for two beats.
So just going through nine again,
this is nine nine in the handout, I'll count you in.
One, two, three, so it's one, two, three, and one,
two, three, one, two, three, and one, two, three, one, two, three.
Okay, let's take a pause here.
You can draw a breath, come to our halt.
And let's just have a quick chat about these two elements
of music that I mentioned to you a while ago.
The first one is pitch and the second one is rhythm.
Of these two, it's my opinion that rhythm is the most important
and in fact, if you get someone who shares
a musical heritage with you in that you share popular tunes
and if you tap out the rhythm of a tune
that you were both know, the chances are that person
will be able to guess it.
However, if you sing or play a popular tune,
but mess the rhythm up, then there will be unlikely
to be able to discern what that tune is.
I guarantee you, and in fact, what I'm gonna do now
is play you a well-known tune
and I wonder if you can guess what it is.
And now I'm gonna tap out the rhythm of that tune
and see if you can work out what it is.
Not wildly difficult.
Let's talk about the notation of that.
And for this, we're gonna have to start walking again.
So my rhythm is gonna be one, two, three.
Maybe a bit quick, let's slow down a bit.
One, two, three, one, two, three.
Three, one, two, three.
Okay, so let's keep that going.
I've got a new numonic for you.
Numonic being memory aid.
So far we've used a number and the word AND.
Now we're gonna do in the Annie Hall style.
We're gonna do Lardy Darts.
Can't you remember three?
One, two, three.
Lardy Darts, Lardy Darts, simple, okay.
Lardy Darts, if you look at line 10 of your handout.
Lardy Darts is a dotted quaver followed by a semi quaver
or an imperial, a dotted eighth notes followed by a sixteenth note,
gathered together and connected with a thick bar.
But Lardy Darts is a much nicer way of looking at it.
And a Lardy Darts is actually spread over two beats or steps.
Lardy falls on one step and Darts falls on the next step.
So, for instance, in our handout, in line 10,
we have if we count one, two, three, remember we're counting three
in each measure or bar at the moment.
So if we go one, two, Lardy Darts, two, three, one, two, three.
Okay, so you can see where we're going with this onto this well-known
tune.
I'll count it out again for you and perhaps you can sing along and put your shoulders
back, express your musical genius onto a grateful world.
Let's go one, two, Lardy Darts, two, three, one, two, Lardy Darts, two, three,
or one, two, three.
You can come to a nice halt here, get your breath back or that clapping, bit of singing,
bit of patriotism, maybe what we're going to do now is bring into our handout our first
mention ever of pitch and you can see it's really very simple.
The lower down on the stave, remember the stave is those five that grouping of five lines.
The lower down on the stave, a dot or hollow dot is the lower the note and the higher
up the stave, the higher the note.
It's simple, so therefore you can easily read the rhythm here and you can kind of follow
the pitch as we go along if you look at line 11 that you can hear, stand up everybody.
Okay, that's about all from me today, it's technically less than half an hour, I think
to get to this point, I've got 20 odd minutes, I think, on my timer here, we haven't
quite learnt to read music, but certainly we've learnt to read some of the most important
aspect of music, again, in my opinion, which is rhythm and we've also begun to explore
pitch, we can now make sense of things like rests, we can see what looks furiously complicated,
which is the dotted eighth note, followed by the sixteenth note, dotted quaver, followed
by semi quaver, which is a lardidae or a lardidae of the lardidae, with seen rests, with
seen quivers or eighth notes, the notes with little tails, we've seen those eighth notes
or quaver's barbed together with the thick black line, and we've also seen minimums
or half notes, which are two beats or steps long, and those are the hollow ones, with
no tail and just a line, and we've also seen a couple of things as well, you've probably
stopped seeing, as it were now, let's just go back and cover those, we've seen the
C for common time at the beginning of each line or at the beginning of a piece of music,
and we've also seen the craft, remember that's to do with pitch, and that's the very first
thing on each line, the one I've used in the handout is a G-claf or a treble-claf, one else,
oh yeah, we've seen the final measure of a piece of music, on each line we've got a single
bar ending or measure ending for a biethic black line, so there's all sorts of information in there
and actually you've picked up, and the way that you did it was by walking, and without getting
too philosophical about it, of course, walking is very much a primal thing that humans do,
and we have this inherent, this innate sense of rhythm and pulse, and it comes from walking,
and in fact, there are whole cultures out there, which are based on the nomadic lifestyle,
the aborigines of Australia, for instance, you know, consider walking and traveling across the land
to be a wholly act as of itself, and if you're into exploring that kind of thing, I would recommend
Bruce Chapwins, the songlines, as a really good read, and his exposition of the theory, that in fact,
the natural state of a human being is to be nomadic, is to be walking, and it's so integral
to the way that we think, the way that we move, that music and rhythm in music becomes a whole
lot easier, if you base it on this idea of pulse, of steps of walking, just keeping it going,
and of course, the whole thing is, that as you read music, you can't stop, you can't pause,
because if you do, you'll fall over, if you see what I mean, if you translate music into walking.
Anyway, that's enough for now, in a later episode, we'll consider pitch in music,
maybe bring in some more complex rhythms, triplets of good fun, their palays, by the way,
anyway, we'll come to all that. If you've enjoyed this podcast or maybe thought to yourself,
I could do a lot better job than any Stella, please do go to Hacker Public Radio, sign up,
send in your recording, get yourself broadcast. Anyway, that's all for today, many thanks for
listening, this is Anna Stella on the Hacker Public Radio.
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