Music To My Ears

music to one's ears

phrase of music

1. something that is pleasant or gratifying to hear or discover.

   
   

   "the commission's report was music to the ears of the administration"

   
   

   
   

   

   
   

   Music has probably been one of the most important parts of my life because....

   
   

   Music is science.

   Music is mathematical.

   Music is foreign language.

   Music is history

   Music is physical education

   Music develops insight and requires research.

   Music is all of this... but more importantly music is art and teaches you to recognize beauty and perhaps see the infinite beyond this world.

   
   

   I was singing along with the record player and radio before I had a full vocabulary... I have always had a feeling for music... I'm not going to give you a music lesson here per se but rather an overview of some of my experience.

   
   

   I learned how to read music in classes in primary school and started piano lessons when I was about nine years old and started guitar lessons when I was 13 and voice lessons when I was 15... all three worked together to further my love and understanding of music.

   
   

   I am fairly sure that with computer technology learning to read and understand music is probably really easy but I don't have any first hand experience... I still work the old fashioned way with a piano and guitar.

   
   

   Some of the nuances that I've learned are...

   
   

   Pitch--- the relative height and depth of a sound... think of the high pitch of a bird on the high end and the low rumble or thunder on the low end. Another way of looking at this is that men tend to have lower pitched speaking and musical voices than woman. The symbols a musician uses are musical notes

   
   

   

   
   

   If you look at the left hand side you will see on the top the Treble Clef that represent the medium to high zone of pitch and below it is the Bass Clef that represent the notes with medium to low zone of pitch. As you can see above the piano music is bracketed together; the right hand plays the higher pitched notes and the left hand plays the lower. After mastering the treble and bass clef individually  you can then learn to read both simultaneously. The extra line between the treble and bass clef is for middle C and that is generally where most musical and vocal lessons begin.

   
   

   There is also  an alto clef that has been adapted to other pitch zones creating the soprano and mezzo-soprano clef. The tenor and baritone clef (which is my vocal range) is below the alto clef.

   
   

   Rhythm--- This is a bit more complex because this relates to the pulse, stress and speed of a musical note. The notes are broken down to a whole note (which sounds twice as long) as a half note (which sounds twice as long) as a quarter note (which sounds twice as long) as an eighth note (which sounds twice as long) as a sixteenth note (which sounds twice as long) as a thirty-second note. A rest is an important silence between sounds. One of the more important aspects is knowing how many beats between the bar lines (the lines you see separating  the notes above) this is known as the time signature  typically written in numerals such as 

   4    4

   8 = eight note beats in a bar

   
   

   3   3

   4 = quarter note beats in a bar (or measure)

   
   

   this can get more involved when you  start to understand compound time signatures  which are when the top number is a multiple of three... this is for another day. Suffice to say for our purposes today the strongest stresses will be the first beat of a measure and the following will be weaker. With the help of a music teacher you can learn to  read rhythm patterns in music  and with practice you will be able to sight read unfamiliar  music. While you study music you learn the keys of a piano,  and scales  and their structures, octaves, key signature., sharps, flats and the Chromatic Scale which means colorful...this is a collection of all twelve steps that fill each octave that can start on any note and ascend or descend through 12 consecutive half steps until only two more notes need to be added to complete the chromatic scale. With all of this being said it has taken me up until about a few years ago that I could transpose music from how it was written into a different key better for me vocally... it's not all that difficult but it took me longer than most to master it. I still do not have the ability to transpose music for different instruments other than the piano and guitar.

   
   

   Here is something that helps put things into some  perspective also (read them out loud the way you see it)

   
   

   
   

   piano

   FORTE

   ᵖᶦᵃⁿᶦˢˢᶦᵐᵒ

   FORTISSIMO

   ᶜʳesCENDO

   DIMINuenᵈᵒ

   SFᵒʳzaNDO

   a   d   a   g   i   o

   a n d a n t e

   allegro

   rit a r  d  a   n   d    o

   a    c    c   e   l  e  r a ndo

   stac- ca- to-

   leeggggaaatttoooo

   The reason all this came up is someone  asked me about my musical background and my vocal work and asked what takes to sing and do voice over work... I outlined the above briefly  that a good understanding of music and your vocal range and languages are really just the start... but I ended with everyone should sing even if it's just in the shower every day.... music has always been very healing for me. Anyone can carry a tune if you practice... I'll be bold enough to tell you that you don't have to know how to read music to sing... there are many people who sing the words and not the music. (Lauren Bacall won a Tony Award for singing the words)... to me you just have to make up your mind that you want music in your life. I watched an interview with Linda Ronstadt last week... and it broke my heart a little bit  because she said she can't sing anymore that her vocal cords are unable to make the sounds they once did... but she can still hear  it in her head... so I guess that is more than many will ever have.

   
   

   Edit 21 Feb... A few people wrote in to ask what I do in the music industry... this about sums it up.
   
   

   Double tracking or doubling is an audio recording technique in which a performer sings or plays along with their own prerecorded performance, usually to produce a stronger or "bigger" sound than can be obtained with a single voice or instrument. ... The effect is used to give one singer a fuller sound.

   And it's then mixed as backup vocals.

   Voice Over

   Voiceover (also known as off-camera or off-stage commentary) is a production technique where a voice—that is not part of the narrative (non-diegetic)—is used in a radio, television production, filmmaking, theatre, or other presentations.

   Looping

   ADR. ADR stand for "Automated" or "Automatic" Dialog Replacement. Dialog that cannot be salvaged from production tracks must be. re-recorded in a process called looping or ADR. Looping originally involved recording an actor who spoke lines in.

   
   

   
   

   I'm going to close with something that really touched me... like many I'm on facebook to keep up with friends and acquaintances... even if you don't see them regularly you get to see their vacation and holiday photos etc and have some grasp of everyday life... but I need to go back to a conversation I had with someone when I was nine years old... growing up people would call their parents ... mom and dad or mother and father... but I always had some contempt (even as a child) for people who used mommy and daddy... it always sounded childish and it was explained to me that it was a byproduct of family history for using the different words... but last week someone  I know posted something about revering and remembering his daddy and after all this time I realized that people who use the words mommy and daddy came from a home that was filled with love... and his memories of his daddy were music to my ears.

   
   

   See you in two weeks.