Saturday, March 03, 2018

Reading Music



I like music actually written music fascinates me. I can kind of site read music but not as I should. I went through flute-a-phone, that plastic monstrosity that public schools used to train students in the old days. The flute a phone itself was a reiteration of and even uglier piece of plastic. Then of course three years of accordion but I really should've learned to sight read. I learned enough to get by but still I should know much more. In college however I took my ability to sight read to another level.

I was living in the dorms – – Chafee Hall. The hall is/was located on the east end of the campus. My major was psychology and the psychology section of the library was actually on the second floor of the main library. Early on in my freshman year I learned that the music section of the library is also on the second floor not far from the psych section. I also learned there were photographs scattered through the music section of the library students could use to listen to music. Clunky square boxes with the turntable on top and the controls and three or four headphone jacks so multiple students can listen to the same piece of music. But I also found that year was that there were countless scores of music shelved in the library. Soon, my research in the library was augmented by listening to music. I spent freshman and sophomore years listening to everything from Broadway musicals to concerts and sympathies of the classical nature. As I indicated I also realized the library also had scores to the music. I enjoyed reading the musical score to say West Site Story as well as the Fantasticks are Fiddler on the Roof. Then I got really ballsey when I started listening to George Frideric Handel. I actually found the scores to the organ concerts. I played a game to start reading the music as the concert started and I would when if I ended up finishing a piece of music and the music finished in my headphones.

So I've just recently discovered that many of the musical greats have YouTube versions of their music online, the video follows the music so you can actually listen to the video and watch the score zip by the same time. I'm currently working on Haydn's third mass or the Lord Nelson would have loved for years. It was great fun and enjoying this new form of technology.I haven't had a lot of time to explore the many options open to me now. Just knowing I don't have to purchase complete scores is quite a load off my mind not that I was going to. I actually have a couple scores already The Lord Nelson being one of them. I don't know I suppose that the same concept holds true on tablets and maybe even the cell phone that I might be able to play this game of Follow The Score,on the train, on the bus or I might want to be – – you got a love technology.

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