Term 2 - Lesson 8, Monday 30th January

Here's a page which talks about the alto and the tenor clefs.

Term 2 - Lesson 7 - Friday 27th January

Some horrid stuff to listen to...





This is one of my favourite songs ever, but it is full of "faults". What are they?



This is far from horrible. This is a very good example of scat singing





Popping is a common fault in recordings. Read about it here .





Homework:

FOR NEXT FRIDAY: find examples of errors in performance or production in recordings from the last 5 years...

Term 2 - Lesson 6 - Monday 23rd January 2017

Acoustics (by which I mean the science of sounds).

This page recaps pretty much all the stuff we covered.



Here are various modes of a string vibrating:

Here is a violin string vibrating in slow motion (showing the different modes happening at the same time:




and here is the harmonic series

This video explains things really well:



These videos are Leonard Bernstein talking about the Harmonic Series (giving a very similar demonstration to that which I gave so anyone who missed the lesson must watch this.)








Finally, if you like maths:

Term 2 - Lesson 5 - Friday 20th January

There are many terms you need to learn for Grade 5 theory.

Make sure you have learnt all of these by next Friday (27th January) - these are from the Grade 1 syllabus...

You will be tested on them!

(Those of you who are doing the restest from the beginning-of-term test will also be doing that next Friday).

a tempo	In time
accelerando (accel)	Gradually getting quicker
adagio	Slow
allegretto	Fairly quick (but not as quick as allegro)
allegro	Quick (literally: cheerful)
allegro moderato	Moderately quick
andante	At a walking speed
cantabile	In a singing style
crescendo (cresc)	Gradually getting louder
da capo (DC)	Repeat from the beginning
dal segno (DS)	Repeat from the sign
decrescendo (decresc)	Gradually getting quieter
diminuendo (dim)	Gradually getting quieter
fine	The end
forte (f)	Loud
fortissimo (ff)	Very loud
legato	Smoothly
lento	Slow
mezzo	Half
mezzo forte (mf)	Moderately loud (literally half loud)
mezzo piano (mp)	Moderately quiet (literally half quiet)
moderato	Moderately
pianissimo (pp)	Very quiet
piano (p)	Quiet
poco	A little
rallentando (rall)	Gradually getting slower
ritardando (rit) (ritard)	Gradually getting slower
ritenuto (rit) (riten)	Held back
staccato (stacc)	Detached
tempo	Speed, time

Here is the full list of all of them - you can filter them by grade or language.

Term 2 - Lesson 4 - Monday 16th January 2017

We are looking at tempo, dynamics and articulation.

DYNAMICS

A dynamic may change very suddenly, when this happens we use the word “subito” which is Italian for suddenly. Eg. subito f (or sub. f) means suddenly loud.

TEMPO

Here is a tempo tapper that enables you to find the bpm (beats per minute) of a song.

Here is a more comprehensive list of tempo markings.

Here is a link to an amazing online music dictionary which has every musical term you can imagine.

ARTICULATION

(PLEASE NOTE: The one that says "legato in groups" is an example of slurs)



This is Village Ghetto Land by Stevie Wonder which has some examples of interesting articulation:

Term 2, Lessons 2 & 3 - Monday 9th and Friday 13th January 2017

(notice that the keys go up by a 5th clockwise and down by a 5th anticlockwise)
(also, as we go clockwise, we add a sharp, and as we go anticlockwise, we add a flat)


Key signatures:

To remember the order of sharps:

Father Christmas Gave Dave An Electric Blanket


OR:


Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle

The advantage to the second one is that it works backwards for flats:

Battle Ends And Down Goes Charles's Father


Feel free to make up your own and put in the comments.


This may or may not help you to figure out how many sharps or flats there are:

For a sharp key, the leading note (7th) is the last sharp in the key signature.

eg. For B Major, A sharp is the last sharp so the key sig. is F, C, G, D and A sharps.


For a flat key, go through the flats until you get to the key note and then go one further.

eg. for A flat Major, the key signature is B flat, E flat, A flat AND D flat.

This link explains it as well.


And below is a reminder of the names of the scale degrees.