Thoughts From A Music Major
 

For some time now I have been debating whether to start a journal. I've finally decided to do so, and hopefully nobody minds. Yes the title kind of sucks, but this is not a creative writing forum :)

I've been a member for a little over a year now, but I don't think I've really gone into much detail about the music I like to listen to or why I like it. I guess you could just check out my Last FM page, but I don't always listen to music on my computer so it might be slightly inaccurate. I'm certainly not an expert at reviewing songs or albums but I often have an opinion. I don't care if nobody's interested in reading this thread or making a comment in it, but I'd like to get these ideas out there. Mostly to say that serious music students are not all stuck up snobs who only listen to the finest classical music :) School is starting again in a week so I will try my best to keep this updated when I have the time.

This thread will probably be more focused on individual songs or pieces rather than entire albums.

I would like to start by sharing a piece composed by Scott Joplin (1867 - 1917), the most widely recognized composer of ragtime piano music, and certainly one of the most famous African-American composers. Elite Syncopations (1902) is easily one of my favourites from his extensive catalogue.



Most, if not all, of Joplin's piano rags have been immortalized in the form of piano rolls made by Joplin himself. "Elite Sycopations" is one of them, and it's not hard to tell that a person isn't playing this piece. There are no dynamics or changes in tempo throughout the song, and certainly no personal touches that a real player would add. But I love it. The piece is a great representation of early 20th century America.

Aside from the music of Tin Pan Alley, ragtime music was the most popular genre across the United States at the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century. When I listen to "Elite Syncopations" or any other ragtime piece, I think of the silent film genre. Ragtime was used when screening silent films to keep the audience entertained and to add another dimension to the film being played on the screen. Images of honky tonk bars and saloons also come to mind.

"Elite Syncopations" in particular makes me think of a more simple time - a time before major global conflict and economic depression. A time when people were enjoying themselves and the world around them.

I'm so glad you've started a journal, Burning Down!

And I've learned something already. As I listened to Scott Joplin's "Elite Syncopations," I thought to myself, "Hey! That really reminds me of one of my favorite songs I remember hearing as a child: The Entertainer!"

So I looked up The Entertainer, and lo! It is by Scott Joplin! I never knew that. During elementary school, we used to have snacks in a room with a piano, and some precocious piano-playing kid often played The Entertainer. So now Graham Crackers and The Entertainer are always pleasantly associated in my mind. Also, my dad used to play The Entertainer sometimes in the evening, so when I hear it I feel as if I'm again peacefully snug in my childhood bed in the dark, listening to my dad playing the piano downstairs.

Here's The Entertainer, by Scott Joplin , on the off chance you haven't heard it:

Scott Joplin was a towering figure in American music who practically invented the jazz genre singlehandedly. As a composer & pianist, I think he's comparable to Johann Sebastian Bach. Most of his music went unheard by the vast majority of white Americans because he was a black composer & he died in poverty. The use of Joplin's song The Entertainer in the Paul Newman/Robert Redford film The Sting brought about a minor revival of interest in Scott Joplin's music in the early 70s. I grew up with Joplin's music because my lifelong best friend's father played trumpet with the St. Louis Ragtimers, so I knew about Joplin, Jellyroll Morton, & W.C. Handy at the tender age of 8 years old.

Even in his most strident & syncopated rags, there was always an element of melancholy in everything Scott Joplin wrote. My favorite rag by Joplin is The Ragtime Dance. It has such a majestic sound.

Yes, I know both those pieces! Thanks for sharing them. I've always enjoyed "The Entertainer", but Joplin's less famous works are generally more interesting to me, for the sole reason that not everybody knows them.

I'll have to come back to this later, I'm running short on time right now.

I love Scott Joplin and I'm especially looking forward to your stuckup opinions on the finest classical music, which I also love.

Ha, The Entertainer makes me think of the salloon. Though most of the time the piano players are playing the Peanuts theme. I hope that soon I can learn the trumpet solo, though it may be a challenge.

I went out today and bought some sheet music, including Antonio Vivaldi's Flute Concerto in D Major. It's an absolutely beautiful piece of music, and I hope to be able to play it so it sounds pretty! I won't have an orchestra to back me up (well not just yet ;)), only piano accompaniment for now. I was always more familiar with his Four Seasons violin concertos, and I'm trying to find other things by this wonderful composer.

Here's Vivaldi's Flute Concerto in D Major (all movements):



And here's the Spring section of his Four Seasons concertos:



I just can't get enough!

And no, the thread won't all be about classical music, but I'm just in a classical music type of mood tonight :D

And now for something COMPLETELY different. Last year I took a course in 20th Century music history. The whole course was centered around orchestral music in the 20th century, whether it be neo-Classical, serialism, ragtime, chance, or avant-garde/experimental. I was especially intrigued by the avant-garde music.

Milton Babbitt's Philomel was composed in 1964, and Babbitt used the technology of the day to it's full advantage. This is part of the piece, and there are two voices singing. To be more specific, it's the same woman, but Babbitt recorded her singing one part of the piece and then played tape while the rest of the piece was being recorded in studio. Basically a form of dubbing. It's a strange song to listen to though, especially for the first time (well it was like that for me). I think it's extremely unique and that's what I like about it.

Cécile Chaminade's Concertino Op. 107 for Flute & Piano is a flute solo piece that highlights the player's virtuosity, especially during the cadenza section when the piano cuts out. The player can use whatever tempo, technique, tone, dynamic, etc. during the cadenza. I have the sheet music for it and I'm trying to learn it! Because this is one of the most beautiful flute pieces in existence, I don't feel obligated to comment on it. It's just so pretty and I love it. Take a listen and you'll see why.

First version. No this is NOT me playing it, as much as I would like to take the credit. This is a recording.



Second version. I found a video of a 7 year old girl playing Chaminade's Concertino. WOWWWW! It's nearly flawless.



Now to find some stuff from other genres...

wow :love:

I admire and envy her deeply. The piece in and of itself didn't interest me much to be honest, but the more I watch this little girl play it, the more adorable it gets! Good find :).

Her video of Bizet's carmen was pretty sweet too, although something about it seems a bit forced.

Sorry guys! Haven't been back for awhile, but here's a little video of me playing a piece that I absolutely love. Fernando Bertoni's Canzona. I'm sight reading this piece so there are a few mistakes, and my flute is in need of repair so the pitch quality is not that great.

I just think it's an absolutely beautiful piece. And it would be even more beautiful if I played it without tripping up :o:

Oh! I also posted another video here: http://www.musicbanter.com/classical...tml#post965095. Check it out!

Where has this thread been all my life

Have you ever played/jammed with a guitarist? My friend has a flute and can play and I m unsure of how it will go. Especially since I dont think they have to much theory, therefore making playing together even harder. I mean all that comes to mind is Jethro Tull :)

I've only ever played with classical guitarists, who were just as experienced with music theory and such as I am. But of course classical guitar is a completely different style than say, Jethro Tull (because that's all that comes to mind here too). But it's worth a try though, both the flute and guitar are tuned in C. Just keep in mind that the key of E major is a horrible key on flute. It's really hard to play in E major, and although guitarists like it because there's a lot of open chords and it's a relatively easy key to play in, flutes don't like it!

I have a question and I think you'd be the one to ask... Are you majoring in performance music? And how much time do you spend practicing, would you guess, a day? I'm looking into some options that would be combining music with other stuff and wondering if it will even be possible for me to pull off. Any advice would be very much appreciated, and sorry to hijack your journal for this! Didn't know where else to find you around here.

No worries. PM's work well too ;)

I'm not a performance major at the moment - in Canada (at least in Ontario), performance diplomas are awarded only with a post-graduate degree, usually a Masters degree. Right now I'm still an undergrad and working on completing an Honours Bachelor of Music (B.Mus) degree. But a concentration on an instrument (or voice) is still required. On average, 1.5 - 2 hours should be set aside each day for daily practice, about half of which should be spent on scales and studies and the other half on repertoire.

Sometimes it can get overwhelming, like anything else in life. When I first started university I never thought I'd be able to pull off doing a music program, what with the lessons, band rehearsals, and core courses and electives to balance. But it can be done, and I find that I get a good amount of free time out of it too :D

I hope this answers your question, and if you have anymore just PM!

Honestly any key is easy on the guitar. (as easy as E i mean) All it takes is a capo. To bad you cant capo your flute.

Oh I know, I play guitar too :) I wish there was a capo for flutes too... or for other instruments... but that would just create lazier musicians!

Okay, thought that since this thread has seen a little activity as of late, I would post something new.

The school year is almost done, 3 weeks left, which means that my university's concert band and marching band are putting on their spring performances. I am a member of both, and I love it. The marching band's repertoire for this performance is more exciting than that of the concert band, as we are playing a number of pieces composed by John Philip Sousa.

The first piece is one that should be familiar to all, The Stars and Stripes Forever.



This piece is really the epitome of march music. It is probably the most well known piece from the genre, and the most widely performed. My favourite part has to be the piccolo feature that starts at about the 2 minute mark. It's so complex and beautiful at the same time. It's also a great exercise for the fingers, and a great way to improve the flutter tongue technique.

I also found a trombone quartet playing it - the original piccolo part is played so well by the soloist here, and it must be twice as hard on a brass instrument:



One march that we are not playing, but is still one of my favourites, is Semper Fidelis. This is another march that should be familiar to a lot of people, as it is (I believe it is) the official march of the United States Marine Corps Marching Band.

And finally, some lesser-known Sousa marches:

Saber and Spurs March


Liberty Bell March (actually some of you might know this one from Monty Python's Flying Circus)


Colonel Bogey March


Seventy-Six Trombones

Wow. My last post in here was in March. Sorry guys!

Okay, I made a couple of new videos of my flute playing, and I'd like to share them with you. I thought my journal would be the best place to post these, since I don't think we have a section for this type of thing. Praise or critique is certainly welcome, just don't be too mean about it :)

First video: Georg Philipp Telemann, Fantasia #6 in d minor, First Movement (Dolce).



Fantasia 6 is actually in fugue form, thought at the time to be impossible on the flute (or any instrument other than the harpsichord or the pipe organ). Although there is only one line of music, the different parts to the fugue (i.e., the subject and countersubjects) are embedded within the single part.

Second video: Koji Kondo, Theme from Super Mario Bros.



Thought that one would be fun to play. And it is :D

That's all for now!

I've always been a believer that you should listen to what you enjoy, not what other people think you should. And certainly you should not NOT listen to something, for fear of being branded "populist" or whatever. I actively avoid the charts, but hey, I've been known to spin a Madonna or Kylie record from time to time, and I recently reviewed The Script's album. Some of it IS okay; it's just the general music that masquerades as r&b these days (because they can't find any other handy category to shoehorn it into --- I'd say crap generic, but that's just me) that annoys me, along with the "stars" that come out of the likes of the X Factor.

Being on the radio or in the charts doesn't necessarily make your music worthless; it's what you do before/after that which I think makes or breaks a musician, band or artiste. If you fold after one big hit single (and I mean really fold, not just go on to make many more albums but be viewed by the general public as a failure and a "one-hit-wonder") then that says more about your music than any amount of record sales.

Listen to what you want to: jazz, classical, funk, rock, metal, punk, samoan nose flute melodies... as the old Kit Kat ad used to say: just enjoy it!

And sod those who don't or won't understand.
That's what I do, anyway... ;)

I'd subscribed to it... but that was many moons ago.:(

I guess this is sort of a do-over then, lol. I dropped the ball on this thread, for sure.

There are things that I relate to in your journal, like I tried to learn a Joplin rag on gutiar and one of my favorite tunes to play on classical guitar was short piece by Telemann. I'm glad it's back.

After having abandoned this journal for quite a while, I've decided to make a post. I left it for several reasons:

1) I was working 40 hours a week steadily over my summer holidays, from May through August. Yes, I was visiting Music Banter throughout the day but only to make short posts. Then I would get home and be too exhausted to think of any possible journal entries.

2) I started school again in September and this year, I am busier and spending more time doing school work than I ever have before, in my entire academic career.

3) I was still unsure of whether people would read it regularly. I didn't want to commit the time and effort into something that may not have been read by other people. I didn't think people would be interested in what I had to say, or that everything might be "TL; DR" to them.

4) I have a real life with important things going on.

But now, I'm done with my first term final exam (I only had one this time around – the other classes I had continue into next term, along with a couple of new courses), and I have officially been on Christmas holiday break since December 13th (although the last full day of class for me was November 29th, so I've had plenty of time off of school. I've just been working). I don't go back to school again until January 7th, and my last full day of work is tomorrow. So I will have some time to come back and write a bit, hopefully.

Lately I have been thinking about music that represents or maybe reflects my life at the moment. I'll share one of those thoughts with you now:

"You're My Best Friend" by Queen is a good representation of my relationship at the moment. It's absolutely cheesy, I think, but it's so true. Danijel is my very best friend and I think he even knows me better than I know myself.



Speaking of Dan - since I have known him, he has introduced me to some crazy Serbian music that he likes to listen to sometimes. I'll talk about some of it another time, though.

I've also been really getting into musicals over the last year, ever since I was a pit band member for the school show choir, playing bass guitar. Show tunes encompass all kinds of emotions – joy, happiness, sadness, despair, anger, love, lust… For every possible human emotion, there is a Broadway song to represent it. I'll talk about some of those songs next time as well.

I think that's all I will write for now. I just wanted to breathe some life back into my own thread.

Good to see you writing again BD. It's true that often you wonder if anyone is reading your journal, but I think generally people tend (I do anyway) to click on anything that's bolded, which shows there are new entries. This is probably due to the fact that few journals are updated that regularly (I'd say mine and Unknown Soldier's would be the two you could rely on to be) and so anything new is checked out.

Everyone understands people can be far too busy with their real lives to worry about their journals. Even I, with my essentially work-free day can still feel occasionally pressured and too busy to bother updating today, though I always get back to it. The most important thing, as I've said in my "Guide to starting your own journal" and elsewhere too, is that you do it because you enjoy it, not because you feel you have to. I learned that lesson, after having tried to update every single day with two or three entries, and realised at one point it was more like something I had to do rather than something I wanted to do.

No-one is forcing you to write, no-one tells you this has to be in by that date: there are no deadlines, and you decide yourself when to update, and when not to. There are plenty of journals here that haven't been opened in months or longer. At some point, I hope they will, but real life does have a habit of intruding and this is, after all, just a pastime for us all. It's not anything important or urgent. So update when you can, it's always welcome and as I say, nice to see your journal title in bold after so long... :thumb:

(Also, I'll be interested in that Serbian music, for an upcoming journal section next year...) :)

I got real busy with school since my last update. It's my last year and it's been filled with endless papers, other homework assignments, and practise hours. And work - lots of it. But I have a little bit of time to myself right now that I need to waste away. So here we go.

I thought I would start to tell you how I got started on my musical journey. When I was a kid, I never played any sports or took piano lessons like many of my friends did. I did do tap dancing though, but I lost interest in it when I was about 12 or 13 years old. However, I was interested in the flute. When I was about 9, I convinced my parents to rent one for me and sign me up for a block of lessons. It was very expensive for them to do that and I had to promise them that I would stick with the lessons they paid for and work hard at learning the basics of the flute. If I did well and was still interested in continuing, they would purchase a flute for me and invest in lessons for the long term. Of course, I was absolutely interested, and my parents went out and bought my first flute for a mere $600. I was ecstatic.

About a year or so later, I started middle school, and they had a band class there. I took that class in place of private lessons for the next two years so I could play music with my friends and learn about other band instruments.

At that point, I became really interested in other aspects of music. How it was made, what it meant (and what it meant to me), why people enjoyed it, and why they enjoyed some types of music but not others. I continued with the flute throughout high school, taking music class and learning theory, harmony, and history. I was still part of the school band, and our music class was a smaller band, and both groups put on a performance at the end of each semester.

During this time, however, I discontinued with private lessons in flute. I realize now that I was not learning proper playing technique for playing flute at an advanced level, nor was I being provided with solo music that would challenge me and force me to become a better player. Instead, I was in a band setting, learning flute from music teachers who did not play it themselves, and playing mediocre band transcriptions of movie themes and popular songs and classical repertoire.

Would you consider picking it up again? Interesting post hun. xx

Oh, I've continued with the flute and picked up other instruments along the way (that's for part II).

I started with the private lessons again in university, with a top notch instructor and lesson program. It's my main instrument in school right now :)

And thanks. I thought you guys deserved to know a little bit more about my life outside the Internet, lol.

I continued with the flute because I knew I had potential with the instrument. I no longer had the time to take private lessons anyways, as I concerned myself more with school and doing well. I did have an excellent band teacher for the first three years of high school who, although a trumpet player himself, directed me to various resources to help me with my flute studies. I was doing it all on my own now, outside of band materials. I found great songbooks and studies specific to the flute and worked through them on my own, using the knowledge I already had to help me. It was frustrating at times, though, especially if I was stuck on certain exercises or passages in a solo piece, because I really had no one to ask for advice or playing tips. This was also before the advent and popularity of YouTube, so I could not even turn to instructional videos for help. But I managed quite well in the end, I must say.

During this period, I was encouraged by my teachers and peers to take up other instruments. My high school offered another music course that focused solely on the guitar, for grades 10 through 12. When I enrolled in 10th grade I signed up for the course, and got a guitar for Christmas that year. Learning guitar with my friends in a group setting was really fun and exciting. I was no longer bound by the flute or by the rigid classical repertoire found in my instruction books. I was learning to play simple popular songs by the likes of The Beatles and other artists, and I loved it. I continue playing guitar to this day, and I also play electric bass now. I also did about 3 years of piano lessons, didn't get all that far (i.e. I am not a prodigy!), but that basic knowledge did end up helping me in university (more in Part III).

In grade 12, I started applying to university. I knew that I wanted to enrol in a music program of some sort, and I decided to go for education and a little bit of performance on the flute. So I applied in the fall of that year, and anxiously waited for their responses about audition and interview dates. When January 2008 rolled around, I heard back from all of them, and I was told what kind of material I had to prepare. All of them asked for one solo piece, and two contrasting pieces with piano accompaniment. I hired an excellent accompanist and started to practise for all my auditions. I was so thankful that none of them required me to memorize the pieces, as I hadn't perfected that technique yet.

In May of that year, I received letters of acceptance and rejection from the various schools I had applied to. I was sad to be rejected from my top choice, but they also demanded a lot more of their music students and have a more prestigious music faculty than the others. But I got into my second choice and I'm glad I accepted their offer. So the enrollment process had officially started. I felt like I had come so far with the flute and I had my music teachers and my own determination to thank.

It is so cool to see someone achieve so much in one time. You're very inspiring! And they do say people who play an instrument are more intelligent. I just wish that I had talent to play the guitar but I don't have the drive for it. I'd love to play piano if I was offered lessons so I could finally sing songs that I've written that will finally have music attached to it.

Bravo! Is there a part 3?

:love:

Yes, there's a part 3 where I'll talk more about my university life. Just hang tight!

Your life would be an interesting novel, so would mine! :love:

I'm just glad someone is reading! Motivates me to keep writing. Will have part 3 up soon.

I think you should continue this!

I will! I've just been super busy with work and other things, as you know. I have something partially written, though. I guess that's a good enough start :)

Sounds good.