Re: Metric accents of 4-time


"¤ Alias" <.~^@^~.> wrote in message
news:4oq6k3h7jihnp8cr9pj8eai5bqm0uhjbae@xxxxxxxxxx


Yeah, I saw that in another reply in this thread, and I thought along the
same lines as you - I meant to respond but I forgot, I guess - I imagined
a
student wanting to know what swing was and if he was told " If you have to
ask, you'll never know" - well, that wouldn't be very fair.

Exactly. That's what "theory" is for - not for pendantic definition of
everything music, but for a means of communicating about musical concepts.
The unfortunate things is, the reason we get stuanchly pendantic response in
somoe cases is because we've already seen the misinterpretations that not
having a consistent language can produce. Calling a Tritone Substitution a
German Augmented 6th in a misguided effort to sound "more theoretical" is
both misleading and uninformative. But calling a Tritone Substitution a
Tritone Substitution, and defining it as such, has much more useful
properties - but for playing and teaching, etc.


I have seen ususally seen it presented as a series of percentages of two
eighth notes, with say the first eigth getting roughly 33%, 50%, 66%. etc
of the time value split. I think I saw it in a Jerry Coker book -
"Improvising Jazz". But I knd of could feel it so I didnt memorize the
defs. read on...

And any definition should say it involves "de-equalizing" two eighths such
that the first 8th receives a larger percentage of the beat than the latter
8th. Perfromances vary from.... etc."

[snip]

Yes. I am dealing with this in my teaching. To recap - I've been teaching
guitar part-time as a sideline about a year now - not a lot of students
but
I am happy to have a few as opposed to many, because I'm still trying to
find my way.I think I've done OK so far ( havent caused irreparable damage
yet :-), but still finding my way. I want to be a good teacher, so every
experience is a learning experience for me as well as them.

About irreperable damage. In my experience, some students will learn because
you taught them, others will learn to spite you. But in the end, they still
learned :-).



What I'm finding is I keep coming up against topics I have learned
intuitively and internally and have to present them externally to someone
for whom it is all foriegn. I get alot out of this group reading the more
seasoned teachers here and how they explain things. Your good at
explaining, breaking things down. Joey's very good at it too.Others here
as
well, of course.
It's something I'm continually aspiring towards


Well, thank you. And I think as soon as one starts teaching one realizes
that there are a multitude of ways to present information, and a multitude
of ways in which people absorb information, and hopefully one is able to
find the right approach in each case. Many students have this deep-set
hatred for all things "academic". Whatever the reason, I believe that
there's a flaw in the "one-track mind" way a lot of academic instruction is
approached. But while the dismissal of things "academic" is hip, it's not
always unprejudiced or otherwise unmotivated, and sometimes people would do
well to step back and at least become familiar with a different viewpoint,
even if ultimately they still disagree.

best,
Steve


.

Loading