[Menvi-discuss] Young Braille musicstudent/keep thosesuggest ions coming/ques tion

[Orlando Enrique Fiol]

   At 12:38 PM 2/21/2023 +1300, Jeanie Willis via Menvi-discuss wrote:
>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.

In continuing this thread, let me state for the record that we're just bantering about in good fun, making fun of each other's metrical inconsistencies.
That said, all anyone needs to grasp sixteenth, thirty-seconds or sixty-fourths is the ability to multiply by 2 and 3. In contrast, I'd need Greek  and Latin degrees to figure out the exact duration of a "hemi-demi-sami-quaver". I mean, come on, what freaking value is that, especially when the prefixes hemi, demi and semi all mean half of something" (eighth note), "la semicorchea" as the sixteenthg, "la fusa" as the 32nd and "la semifusa" as the 64th note. I have no idea what we call the 128th. But, I do know that dotted notes just get called "con puntillo" (with dot) and triplets are called "el tresillo" because you need at least three of them.
That makes lots more sense. No Hispanic musician haas any illusions about the whole note equaling different durations in different meters, since "la redonda" only means it's round. It still gets two blancas, four negras, eight corcheas, sixteen semicorcheas, etc.

And, if you have the monstrosity of a hemi-demi-semi-quaver, does that prefix list also apply to crochets? Can you have a hemi-semi-demi crochet?
Contrast our systems with the simplicity of the Spanish system. The whole note is called "la redonda" because it looks round. The half note is called "la blanca," presumably because half of its head is just white space. The quarter note is called "la negra" presumably because its note head would look black on the staff.
>From there on down, we have "la corchea (8th), "la semicorchea" (16th), "la fusa" (32nd" and "la semifusa" (64th).
I have no idea how we name 128this. But, I do know that the dotted note is called "con puntillo" (with a dot), and the triplet is called "tresillo" because there must be at least three of them.
No Hispanic musician thinks the redonda's value should change depending on the meter. We just know that it equals two blancas, four negras, eight corcheas and 16 semicorcheas.

Are you confused yet? What do the Russians, Poles and Germans do?

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