Coffee Klatch

Today I found out about Last.fm. I’m not sure how I went this long without hearing about it. It’s another music program, but one that’s integrated social networking tools. It can work with most music players–you just have to download the plugin and it self-detects the players you have installed.

You can use Last.fm to track the music you play, connect with other people who have similar music interests, and get recommendations for other music you might like. As with most social software sites, you can also tag songs, artists, etc., and share playlists with your friends. RSS feeds and embedding tools are built in as well and the artist info pages are wiki-based, so you can add your own information to information about the artist and their music.

My Last.fm profile is at http://www.last.fm/user/spfitzinger/. This will show the music and artists I’ve been listening to as well other information about my recent music and friend connections. If you use Last.fm or decide to give it a try, you can visit my profile and add me as a friend.

Hymns vs. Praise Choruses

Some time ago an e-mail was circulating regarding the Protestant traditions of hymns and praise choruses. Well, someone has crafted a response to bring balance to the discussion.

First, the original:
___________________________
“An old farmer went to the city one weekend and attended the big city church. He came home and his wife asked him how it was. “Well”, said the farmer, “It was good. They did something different, however. They sang praise choruses instead of hymns.”

“Praise choruses?” asked his wife. “What are those?”

“Oh, they’re OK. They’re sort of like hymns, but different,” said the farmer.

“Well, what’s the difference?” asked his wife.

The farmer said, “Well, it’s like this–if I were to say to you: ‘Martha, the cows are in the corn,’ well, that would be a hymn.

If, on the other hand, I were to say to you:

‘Martha Martha, Martha,
Oh, Martha, MARTHA, MARTHA,
the cows, the big cows, the brown cows,
the black cows, the white cows, the black and white cows,
the COWS, COWS, COWS are in the corn,
are in the corn, are in the corn, are in the corn, the CORN, CORN, CORN’

Well, that would be a praise chorus.”

Now, the rebuttal, so to speak:

____________________________
A young Christian went to his local church usually, but one weekend when he was traveling, he attended a small town church. He came home and his wife asked him how it was.

“Well,” said the young man, “It was good. They did something different, however. They sang hymns instead of regular songs.”

“Hymns,” said his wife. “What are those?”

“Oh, they’re OK. They’re sort of like regular songs, only different,” said the young man.

“Well, what’s the difference?” asked his wife.

The young man said, “Well, it’s like this: If I were to say to you, ‘Martha, the cows are in the corn,’ well, that would be a
regular song. If, on the other hand, I were to say to you:

Oh Martha, dear Martha, hear thou my cry
Inclinest thine ear to the words of my mouth.
Turn thou thy whole wondrous ear by and by
To the righteous, inimitable, glorious truth.

For the way of the animals who can explain
There in their heads is no shadow of sense,
Hearkenest they in God’s sun or his rain
Unless from the mild, tempting corn they are fenced.

Yea, those cows in glad bovine, rebellious delight,
Have broke free their shackles, their warm pens eschewed.
Then goaded by minions of darkness and night
They all my mild Chilliwack sweet corn have chewed.

So look to that bright shining day by and by,
Where all foul corruptions of earth are reborn.
Where no vicious animal makes my soul cry
And I no longer see those foul cows in the corn.

“Then, if I were to do only verses one, three and four, and do a key change on the last verse, well, that would be a hymn.”

This is the end of the Spring 2008 semester at Butler University. Final Exams begin tomorrow. It’s also the end of my first semester working on my Master’s in Music Composition. Tonight I did the presentation to accompany my final project for the Baroque Music History course I’m taking. Several people did a bit of “performance” along with talking about their project and what they learned. All in 10-12 minutes.

My project was an analysis of John Playford’s The Dancing Master, a book published by him in 1651 that had many English Country Dances in it. Each page had the melody of the music and all the steps and figures for that particular dance, which makes it unique as well as informative. It’s one of the earliest dance manuals and was very popular in its time, going through 18 different editions between 1651 and 1728.

I analyzed all 100+ dances, documenting all the characteristics of each dance, from time signature and tempo to each dance figure used in that particular dance. The result was a HUGE spreadsheet that I could sort in various ways, allowing me to discover characteristics and trends. For my presentation to the class, I discussed some basics of what I learned and spent most of my time actually TEACHING THEM A DANCE. We went outside, learned all the steps, and then I played a track from a CD by The Dragon Scale Consort. They’re a group from the Indianapolis area that plays music for dancing by members of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), so they play tempos and numbers of repetitions to fit how the songs are danced to in the SCA today. At least locally.

The class did very well. We had 4 males and 4 females, so it worked out quite nicely. I started with the instruction and then we played the music and I called the dance while they did it. It wasn’t particularly pretty, but it was a LOT of fun. Everybody was smiling and having a great time, even if they hadn’t been that keen on dancing. I was quite happy with how well it turned out. And everyone will remember more about my topic now than if they’d heard me just talk about it for 10 minutes. Pretty cool!

Current music: English Country Dances from Playford’s Dancing Master 1651-1703, by The Broadside Band

This speaks for itself. (But what does it say?)

I took last Friday off from work and spent the weekend with my “handbell peeps” (I can’t believe I just said that) at Spring Ring 2008 in Cincinnati, Ohio. We left Friday during the day and didn’t get home until around midnight Sunday morning.

Handbell festivals like this are sponsored by the American Guild of English Handbell Ringers (AGEHR) and by the “area” or region where it’s located. The typical agenda is an opening concert, followed by a brief rehearsal. Then on the following day rehearsals and class sessions alternating in the morning and again in the afternoon. Then a final runthru and a concert that’s free and open to the public. Then everyone packs up and goes home. (The concert this year was very well publicized and I was told had almost 800 in attendance.)

Most festivals involve groups coming and playing some music all together. The “mass ring” music is usually not too difficult, so every can do it. Then there is some other music broken up by category. You have to choose whether you’re “Tin Level” (easier) or “Copper Level” (medium). There’s also a “Bronze Level,” but there aren’t too many groups that can play at that level, so that kind of music is usually reserved for separate festivals and events.

While the Tins are rehearsing, the Coppers are attending a class session (or browsing the vendors or taking a nap), and then the two groups switch. The clinician/director for the weekend was Hart Morris, who is a highly respected handbell composer & director. He’s known for writing rhythmically challenging pieces that use percussion creatively. He’s also a clinician with a great sense of humor and infinite patience! He kept everyone excited and happy throughout the weekend; even when he had to correct people (sometimes multiple times), he did it with a sense of humor that buoyed people’s spirits despite having to be corrected. As a ginormous ensemble (over 700 ringers this weekend), we improved a TON in just a couple rehearsals, thanks to Hart’s excellent direction and people skills. In this area, it was probably the most enjoyable handbell festival I’ve been to.

During Saturday’s afternoon classes, one of the sessions was called “Bronze Feud.” It involved people arriving in teams of four (unless you were just there to observe and cheer on your favorite team) and having to figure out how to play some music given to you. Our team, “Team Van” (named after the fact that our team also had carpooled to Cincinnati together) included Becky, Michelle, Karen, and me (in picture order below). We thought that it was going to involve actual music, but it was really just some figures put together by the people running the game. For example, the first round was a descending G major scale in eighth notes. The first thing you had to do was figure out how your team was going to play it and the second thing was to get through it as many times as possible in THIRTY SECONDS. That’s what really changed the dynamic (pardon the pun). They also did give some points for “style.” Our team felt rather dominant until a team of high schoolers got up there and just WHIPPED through it. We could see right then that they would be our major competitors.

There were four rounds, which got progressively harder, and I think there were 13 teams total. We were SECOND, which meant we didn’t have much time to prepare. For the second round, we were FIRST and it moved on from there. We actually thought it worked out pretty well for us, since we had to go very early on the first two and then were at the end for the next two, which were harder. That gave us a chance to watch other groups and talk through any potential difficulties we saw. It helped that for the third round the high schoolers got a couple of bells mixed up early in and never fixed it. That meant nobody played it right after that mixup. It was still close, but we had some STYLE in the last round. So even though it was difficult and hardly any groups got through it at all, the gyros we did each time on the final whole note pushed us into first place.

Even though the prizes were Burger King crowns with “gems” glued on and little foam pins of “First Place” ribbons, we were walking pretty tall that afternoon. It’s more about ego and bragging rights than it is prizes, anyway, right?

“It’s good to be da king!”

Top Ten Reasons for Being a Bass

10 ) You don’t have to tighten your shorts to reach your note.

9 ) You don’t have to worry about a woman stealing your job.

8 ) Or a pre-adolescent boy.

7 ) Action heroes are always Basses. That is, if they ever sang, they would sing bass.

6 ) You get great memorable lyrics like “bop, bop, bop, bop.”

5 ) If the singing job doesn’t work out, there’s always broadcasting.

4 ) You never need to learn to read the treble clef.

3 ) If you get a cold, so what?

2 ) For fun, you can sing at the bottom of your range and fool people into thinking there’s an earthquake.

1 ) If you belch while you’re singing, the audience just thinks it’s part of the score.

Top Ten Reasons for Being a Tenor

10 ) Tenors get high–without drugs.

9 ) Name a musical where the Bass got the girl.

8 ) You can show the Sopranos how it SHOULD be sung.

7 ) Did you ever hear of anyone paying $1000 for a ticket to see “The Three Basses?”

6 ) Who needs brains when you’ve got resonance?

5 ) Tenors never have to waste time looking through the self-improvement section of the bookstore.

4 ) You get to sing along with John Denver singing High Calypso.

3 ) When you get really good at falsetto, you can make tons of money doing voice-overs for cartoon characters.

2 ) Gregorian chant was practically invented for Tenors. Nobody invented a genre for Basses.

1 ) You can entertain your friends by impersonating Julia Child.

Top Ten Reasons for Being an Alto

10 ) You get really good at singing E flat.

9 ) You get to sing the same note for 12 consecutive measures.

8 ) You don’t really need to warm up to sing 12 consecutive bars of E-flat.

7 ) If the choir really sucks, it’s unlikely the Altos will be blamed.

6 ) You have lots of time to chat during Soprano solos.

5 ) You get to pretend that you are better than the Sopranos, because everybody knows that women only sing Soprano so they don’t have to learn to read music.

4 ) You can sometimes find part-time work singing Tenor.

3 ) Altos get all the great intervals.

2 ) When the Sopranos are holding some outrageously high note at the end of an anthem, the Altos always get the last words.

1 ) When the Altos miss a note, nobody gets hurt.

Top Ten Reasons for Being a Soprano
10 ) The rest of the choir exists just to make you look good.

9 ) You can entertain your friends by breaking their wine glasses.

8 ) Can you name an opera where an Alto got the man?

7 ) When Sopranos want to sing in the shower, they know the tune.

6 ) It’s not like you are ever going to sing the Alto part by accident.

5 ) Great costumes–like the hat with the horns on it!

4 ) How many world famous Altos can you name?

3 ) When the fat lady sings, she’s usually singing Soprano.

2 ) When you get tired of singing the tune, you can sing the descant.

1 ) You can sing along with Michael Jackson.

Some people at Ford have put together “The Car Music Project,” through which they’ve made an entire musical ensemble out of the parts for a new Ford Focus. Click the link for more information in a brief article or click the embedded YouTube video to watch and listen. It’s pretty cool as a musical composition as well as an experiment in musical instruments.