[Menvi-discuss] Suggestions for expediting assignments.

[Brandon Keith Biggs]

Hello,
Thanks, the 8 key does it! I wondered what that was for...
My theory class is horrible! I'm sitting in the first lecture part emailing 
this and napping because my teacher is up pointing at the board... He has 
written some notes on the board and he's explaining what he is doing by 
shifting chords around. I think half of it is he's beating a dead horse to 
death in explaining a concept but I wish I could be learning.
Today I learned 2 things, there was two things that I was able to understand 
that wasn't all on the board. I'm wondering if there is anything I can 
suggest to my teacher that will let me learn? This class is 3 hours long and 
2 concepts is a very small amount of information for me to take home.
I'm wondering if I should just get a theory book and learn from reading even 
though I only read 40 words a minute in Braille and I learn about half as 
effective reading as I do listening. At the rate this class is going I'm 
afraid it would be a better use of time.
The problem is that I need this class to graduate. Perhaps I can challenge 
the class, but honestly I want to learn face to face.
This is first year theory and we just finished cantus firmus. I have one 
more quarter and I'm not sure what I should do. I'm itching for composing 
and I can count the amount of octaves I've composed for this class on one 
hand.
please any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! I hate this!
Thank you,

Brandon Keith Biggs
-----Original Message----- 
From: Kaiti Shelton
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2012 1:40 PM
To: This is for discussing music and braille literacy
Subject: Re: [Menvi-discuss] Suggestions for expediting assignments.

Hi,

I had some of these keyboard issues earlier in the year... What you
have to do in order to make certain inverted chords on the keyboard is
play some of the notes and then use the octave keys to adjust the
keyboard.  Then you have to press 8 and that will allow you to add an
additional note to the chord.  So in the inverted B chord for example,
You could get away with playing the D sharp on the right side of the
keyboard, and then make the keyboard an octave higher and add in the F
sharp and B.  This same trick can be applied to other chords too.
Like if you want to make a C major chord with 6 or 7 notes as you said
you sometimes are asked to do, you could just add in the extra notes.

I could be wrong about this because I've never really seen a ton of
people using lime to compare myself to, but I don't necessarily think
that I'm slow at it.  I also don't think that using Lime is all that
tedious; rather, I think that there is a discrepancy between what we
have to do verses what the sighted students have to do.  Granted, a
lot of this has been resolved quite nicely.  We can now prepare
assignments and write our own scores just like the other students in
our classes, but the main difference I see is that the other students
don't have to transfer musical text to their own staff paper.  I think
the time issues would be a lot less problematic if there were, for
example, pre-edited music xml files on a disk that could be downloaded
to a thumb drive or something.  Then we could just import the file and
go right into the analysis like our classmates.  I'm not necessarily
complaining; I want the skills and the degree along with it so I'm
willing to take those extra steps if that's what needs to be done, but
I'm surprised that especially for some of the more popular theory
textbook collections like Tonal Harmony that a CD of electronic music
files hasn't been produced either as an alternative to the physical
textbook or as a teaching aid, especially with the advent of
SmartBoards.  In theory, Teachers and professors could pop the CD into
a computer and project the musical example they want on the board
without even writing it, therefore making more use of class time.
Such a CD would be extremely beneficial to us as well.



On 2/13/12, Brandon Keith Biggs <brandonboy13 at comcast.net> wrote:
> Hello,
> I have this same problem kind of.
> What my teacher does is place a piece of music under the overhead and he
> talks about the intervals, chord formations and plays some pieces. Then he
> has us sight sing them.
> He does around 3 or 4 major pieces a day, so it is almost out of the
> question to get them transcribed. Does anyone have any suggestions?
> Also, I find myself being very slow at composing in class... It is 
> probably
> because I'm horrible at the qwerty keyboard piano, but any ideas on 
> creating
> compositions in class would be awesome. I'm thinking that I should just
> write the music out in Braille and wait till I'm at home to create the Lim
> file... (Is there a way to put Braille files into lime)?
> Most of the compositions we are to compose are 6 or 7 key chords which
> doesn't work on the qwerty piano. Any suggestions on how to do this in
> class? I suppose making extra voices would work, but that is a really big
> pain to have to switch through octaves and not make duplicates of the same
> pitches... Also if there is a B inversion chord I'm up a crick. Is it
> possible to do a B chord, or first inversion chord on the qwerty Keyboard?
> Thanks,
>
> Brandon Keith Biggs
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kaiti Shelton
> Sent: Monday, February 13, 2012 3:48 PM
> To: This is for discussing music and braille literacy
> Subject: [Menvi-discuss] Suggestions for expediting assignments.
>
> Hi,
>
> I was just wondering if anyone had some suggestions about how to
> complete theory assignments more efficiently than the way I am
> completing them now.
>
> If I use lime directly when my teacher assigns an analysis in class I
> often find that when the class starts to go over it I'm only halfway
> done at best.  This is of course because I have the added step of
> copying whatever passage we're working on into lime before I analyze
> the piece.  To save some time I've started to use my BrailleNote and
> braille music in combination with my own musical shorthand in kwb
> files.  This works out fairly well for participating in the class, but
> it leaves the extra leg work of copying everything into lime.  This
> method also makes me nervous because then I run the risk of copying
> something wrong or missing something I wrote down.
>
> If anyone has any suggestions or a better way to do this I'd love to
> hear them.  My teacher has been pretty understanding and allows me to
> turn in assignments before the start of the next class if I need time
> to finish them, but I'd like to be able to keep up a little more with
> my classmates if at all possible.  Also I'll be starting college
> theory next year, so it would be really awesome if I could get this
> down before I go away to school.
>
> Thanks,
> --
> Kaiti
>
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-- 
Kaiti

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