[LAU] Reading music (was Qtractor vs Rosegarden)

[Stephen Doonan]

Fons Adriaensen wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 03:26:26PM -0700, Stephen Doonan wrote:
> 
>> In my case, music reading was hard because my eyes have different focal 
>> planes. The harder I tried to focus, the more it looked like the notes 
>> were dancing on the page.
> 
> That can probably be corrected using the right glasses...


That's probably true, but at that time (when I was 1-13 years old) I 
lived in the Amazon rainforest of Peru, in a small settlement with no 
doctor and no place to obtain glasses from. Because I didn't complain 
about the issue, my parents never took me to a doctor later, when we 
came back to the U.S.


>  If you can
> communicate using this medium, i.e. read a computer screen, you should
> be able to read music as well. The technicalities are not difficult, 
> it broadens your horizon, and it's never too late to learn it...

I have learned to read books (mostly technical books, in order to gain 
the most from the effort expended) by concentrating on the vision of 
just one eye (my left eye), so my right eye is a little weak. :-)


> Quite strange that your teacher(s) never noticed you played it in
> the wrong key ! I learned the 'Promenade' of 'Pictures at an
> Exhibition' that way - luckily in the right key :-)


My teacher was my mother. :-) She was usually working in the kitchen 
while I played, or busy doing laundry or painting (she was an oil 
painter). She would listen and offer comments and encouragement while I 
was practicing my mandatory 1-2 hours per day, but she never sat beside 
me or looked over my shoulder while I was playing except when I was just 
beginning to learn. :-)


> Same here. When my voice changed I was expelled from the boys
> choir and promoted to organist (the choir's conductor was also
> my piano teacher). I learned practical harmony well before I had
> any formal teaching of it, and that's a skill you never forget.

> 
> Well, Bach's 'well tempered' tuning is not the same as equal temperament,
> each key still has its typical character - but you can use all of them.


Thank you for that correction. Now I want to do the research to find the 
difference. ;-)


> Nor is equal temperament the ultimate - I've been rediscovering the
> charms of unequal temperaments, and of modal music, as the years passed. 
> 
> Quite much of the minimalist 'electronica' is quite modal - and for good
> reasons.


Very interesting. Are there any "unequal temperaments" that you 
particularly like? I feel, even after 48 years, that I have explored 
very little of the harmonic and melodic territory offered by the 12 
tones of the equal temperament tuning.

Thanks for your comments to my rather off-topic post, AND for creating 
the wonderful Aeolus application. I hope someday to be able to buy 
several MIDI keyboard manuals and a pedalboard from Classic MIDI Works 
in Canada:

http://www.midiworks.ca/home/index.asp

--to use with Aeolus and other software sound-producing programs.

Steve