12 Nov
2008
12 Nov
'08
7:39 p.m.
Fons Adriaensen wrote:
On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 03:26:26PM -0700, Stephen
Doonan wrote:
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.
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... 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