Re: OT: singing training

[Tim Litwiller]

Nick Bailey wrote:
> We did some work on Rosegarden which might interest you:
>
>     http://www.n-ism.org/Papers/Nick_Bailey/icmc2008_19ETrehearsal.pdf
>
> The software described in that paper was for training expert musicians 
> to sing microtonal songs which have more than 12 divisions of the 
> scale such as Graham Hair's "Three Microtonal Songs: Dance". There is 
> a video of a successfully trained (and, if I might say so, rather 
> brilliant) Soprano here:
>
>     http://www.polonius.uklinux.net/dance.mp4 (which is more often 
> down than up I'm afraid)
>
> The score is here:
>
>     http://www.n-ism.org/People/graham.php#microtonal
>
> Dance starts on page 9 (not Lilypond!!! Sorry!!!).
Thanks I'll take a look.

> I'd be a bit careful about teaching absolute pitch accuracy. I'm not a 
> musician, but it is a common mistake by us engineers and computer 
> scientists to consider individual notes important. 
Right I just want her to by ear be able to match a note. I think the 
schools training is covering reading notes, at least she can read me the 
note names and or scale letters from a song faster than I can read them 
she just can't put the right sound on them.

> They aren't. They are like sub-atomic particles, and are only make 
> sense when formed into molecules (motifs). I'd look into the teaching 
> aspect a bit more if I were you. I'm sure a singing teacher would be 
> able to advise you what would be best to do first. You might find they 
> prefer your daughter to work from a primer which develops pitch 
> accuracy alongside other musical skills. Again, IANAMusician, but I 
> suspect you are doing a lot of good in getting your daughter to 
> interact with other players (you) instead of a mechanical device, so 
> perhaps it's a case of "be careful what you wish for, you might get it". 
Yes, I don't plan to quit helping her.  But I think some more pure 
practice could help her.