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

[Orlando Enrique Fiol]

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