[Menvi-discuss] Young Braille music student/keep thosesuggest ions coming/question

[Jeanie Willis]

Hi Orlando,

Yes I do understand how it all works and I guess we will beg to differ on
the simplicity.
My point was exactly as you explained that the whole, half, etc in no way
refers to its proportion of the bar or the beats and when a student is being
told that a note called a quarter is actually 1 beat that kind of makes
sense in 4/4 but makes no logic in any other time signature for why it is
called a quarter.

Then I find students just freak at things called 16th and 32nd notes.  That
just sounds very complicated.

Taking away any sort of number attached to them makes the thinking in
different time signatures more fluid I think.  But as you say it is probably
partly what you have got used to and grown up with.


-----Original Message-----
From: Menvi-discuss On Behalf Of Orlando Enrique Fiol via Menvi-discuss
Sent: Tuesday, 21 February 2023 12:11 PM
To: This is for discussing music and braille literacy
<menvi-discuss at menvi.org>
Cc: Orlando Enrique Fiol <ofiol at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [Menvi-discuss] Young Braille music student/keep thosesuggest
ions coming/question

At 1 1:50 AM 2/21/2023 +1300, Jeanie Willis via Menvi-discuss wrote:
>I am not a fan  of
>the American names for the notes as they seem unduly complicated and 
>make no ense what so ever when you are counting in 3/4 or 2/4 where a 
>whole bar is not a whole note and a quarter note is only 1/2 or 1/3 of 
>the bar.  So I would avoid any reference to anything to do with fractions
what so ever.

Just FYI, the term "whole note" doesn't refer to a whole bar; it refers
tothe whole note always equaling 4 quarter notes. A whole-bar note in 2/4
time is a half note; in 3/4, it's a dotted half. So, the word "whole note"
in no way implies that it will or should last an entire bar, until&unless
that bar is in 4/4 time.

If the whole note had to last an entire bar, no consistent proportions could
govern its subdivision. In 7/4 time, a whole note would then equal seven
quarter notes, while in 5/8 time, it would only equal five eighth notes.
The logic of the American durational system is that all the proportions
remain the same, regardless of the time signature. If you had a bar of 5/4
time in which you wanted one note to sustain until beat 5, when another note
would sound, you could notate that measure with a whole note for the four
beats, and a quarter note for the sixth.
Similarly, in 12/8 time, a whole note equals 8 eighth notes, which would
mean you have four remaining to complete the bar. Those four eighth notes
equal one half note.
With your system of crochets, semicrochets, minims and semiminims, the
student doesn't get an immediate sense of proportion from those note names.
How would they know how many semiminims equal a crochet? With our method,
all the counting is simple and duple. To make it triple, you either dot
notes or use triplets. Nothing could be easier.
As we say on this side of the pond, "Different strokes for different folks."

Orlando Enrique Fiol
Charlotte, North Carolina
Professional Pianist/Keyboardist/Percussionist, Pedagogue and Poet Ph.D. in
Music Theory University of Pennsylvania: November, 2018
Home: (980) 236-8685
Mobile: (267) 971-7090 

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