Nicola[s] to the rescue

We have the answer to the musical curiosity, published a few days ago. Did you work it out?
[Photo of Nicholas, Nicola and Nicola]
Nicholas Newell, violin teacher says that when you first look at the music, it appears to be a B flat to be played by a treble clef instrument, such as the violin.

But Nicola Ball, pointed out that if you rotate the music anticlockwise 90 degrees, it looks like an A for the cello, written in the tenor clef [which cellos, trombones and bassoons sometimes use].

Then Nicola Jones pointed out that if you rotate the music once more, it now looks like a C for the viola, using the special viola clef. And Nicholas Newell, not to be outdone, pointed out that you could rotate the music one more time and have a natural B, as the music on that turn now has no B flat key signature.

So, reading the music around the 4 sides you get B flat A C B, which still doesn't sound like a composer's name ... unless you know that Germans call B flat B and B H. So now it makes some sense: B A C H

Free sheet music

Would you like some sheet music that you don't have to pay for? Everyone loves a bargain, so it is not unusual that musicians and music students like to hunt on the internet for free copies!

There are lots of sites that offer free sheet music, but many of these have been set up to provide music that is still in copyright. When you download these you may run the risk of also downloading a virus or a piece of software that embeds itself in your computer and sends messages about your activities.

And when you download copyright music, the composers, engravers (the people who formatted the music for printing) and publishers don't get paid for the work they did in making the music available. How would you like to go to the trouble of writing a piece of msuic that other people are happy to use, but refuse to pay you for?

But there are tens of thousands of pieces of music available on the internet which are free and legal, because they are no longer in copyright, or the composers have agreed to share them freely.

One of the best sites for free sheet music is The Petrucci Music Library. On 21st July, 2010 there were 67 thousand scores available on this site.

These scores are mainly pieces of classical music that are over 75 years old and consequently out of copyright. You can find music for almost any instrument you can think of at this site, as well as scores and parts for orchestral and chamber music.

Some of the scores are poorly scanned, or the original that was used was of poor quality. Some of the scores are of an older, inferior edition to the ones we use today.

But many of them are very good quality, and you can't beat the price.

Happy hunting!

How does learning a musical instrument enrich your life?

Maggie Chan, after a successful performance

From time to time we will share some thoughts about how singing and playing Music enriches our lives. This article was originally written about The Arts generally, but it certainly applies to Music:

1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail.

2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.

3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.

4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.

5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.

6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects. The arts traffic in subtleties.

7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material. All art forms employ some means through which images become real.

8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said. When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.

9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.

10. The arts’ position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important.

SOURCE: Eisner, E. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Shows. (pp. 70-92). Yale University Press. Available from NAEA Publications. NAEA grants reprint permission for this excerpt from Ten Lessons with proper acknowledgment of its source and NAEA.

A musical curiosity

This odd-looking piece of music is the name of a very well-known composer. But which one is it?

In a later post we will reveal whose name it is.

P Plate Piano

Do music exams make you nervous? If so, you're not alone. But for our younger readers, there is a great new pain-free entry into doing piano exams called P Plate Piano.

The AMEB have introduced their very first full colour publication, which is a series of three books for students who have worked through a piano beginners' book or two.

When you can play three of the pieces in a P Plate Piano book well, you can enrol to take your P Plate exam. You don't need to study scales or undertake general knowledge or aural or sight-reading training, because the exam is meant as a gentle pleasant first experience and has no other requirements than the playing of three pieces.  

Performances are assessed, but not graded and everyone receives a report and a participation certificate. And when you do the P Plate Three exam, you are awarded your very own licence to play, just like the P Plate your older brothers and sisters get when they pass their driving test.

Your piano teacher can provide you with further information.

Who said music exams have to be scary?

Every nine days

Deanne Iovan is a Michigan musician who decided embark on a project of recording the entire Beatles white album, with a new track appearing every nine days. If you don't know why she did it every nine days, you need to brush up on your Lennonology.

It is great to have a project to work on and this one is a most interesting one. Her first effort, linked here, is very well done, don't you think?

Later in the second week

Mitchell Conservatorium is a great place to learn the guitar. We have five? teachers who can help you to learn to play the style that you would like to learn, including, blues, classical, rock n roll and grunge.

Georg Mertens, guitar and cello teacher, is here performing a piece Bach wrote for his first son Wilhelm.