Due to changing needs and technologies, the SMT Executive Board has decided to retire SMT Discuss (effective Nov. 9, 2021). Posts will be preserved for archival purposes, but new posts and replies are no longer permitted.
jzmckay
About
- Username
- jzmckay
- Joined
- Visits
- 75
- Last Active
- Roles
- Guest
- First Name
- John
- Last Name
- McKay
- Affliation or Location
- University of South Carolina School of Music
Comments
-
Stephen, So far, you've provided several long posts and have now repeatedly referenced an issue ("The Problem") which you haven't clarified yet. And, apologies for being blunt, but then you berate me for replying to what you've said. I actually di…
-
Stephen, Just a few thoughts in reply to your most recent post: (1) I by no means meant to claim that there aren't useful ways of exploring physics as a linguistic or semiotic system, or exploring the language of physics from a semiotic perspective.…
-
Since I was one of the people involved in the previous discussion and pointed out some flaws in the science analogy, I should clarify that I never meant to claim that musical inquiry was completely incompatible with scientific inquiry. Rather, I th…
-
Dimitar- I think we're talking "across" each other here. I said the "melodic minor" is representing melodic defaults for a particular era; you say we can derive harmonies from melodic minor scales. I agree with your statement, but it does not contra…
-
Isn't the whole point of calling something "melodic minor" that the scale is intended to represent something, well... melodic? If we're talking about Bach: Absent any harmonic rationale for further alteration, the default melodic motion in most Com…
-
Trevor - just to be clear, I wasn't claiming that our "statistical outlier" status was on the same level. I trust my experience is at least a sigma more off the norm than yours (if not more). (By the way, I've applied to at least three different r…
-
Whenever I read stuff like this, it makes me think of Guido Adler, and his classic 1885 "manifesto" on the "Scope, Method, and Aim of Musicology" (available here). It's one of the early academic attempts to lay out a blueprint for wide-ranging music…
-
Carson- If don't know how much you know about combinatorics in general (which is really what you need to understand to dig into such questions). If you haven't read it before, you might check out Julian Hook's article "Why are There Twenty-Nine Tet…
-
Trevor, First, let me echo what many others have said and thank you for drawing attention to this issue and speaking so openly about something that most people probably just feel awkward discussing. But I also have to say that I view the "arbitrarin…
-
Carson - thanks for a provocative discussion. I don't think we need "apologies" for studying the Western canon, but we should ask "whose canon" we are representing in that "Western canon." And I'm not just talking about the stereotypical "dead whi…
-
My primary reactions on this blog post: (1) obviously there's still a lot of focus on the Western canon in music theory, but (2) a lot of basic theory classes may not be reflective of the pluralism of repertoires, approaches, etc. in the professiona…
-
@S_Soderberg, I completely agree with your concern about not "boxing students in" with inferior pedagogical choices at the start. I guess I'm also not quite sure how to try to answer otherwise when this question seems about extant textbook pedagogy…
-
@RichardCohn Rick, I absolutely agree that to some degree the selection of tactus level is arbitrary. Which is why I framed my statement about 2/2 vs. 4/4 about the "traditional notational differences," not as some abstract idea of meter. There ar…
-
Perhaps this is too elementary a response for such a complex question, but don't the common textbook designations of duple, triple, and quadruple meters already contain an implicit differentiation of hierarchy (something William already hinted at in…
-
@nllam, Nathan - I just saw your reply and question to me. I was speaking generally about pedagogical systems in the U.S. and not of my personal pedagogical choices. I don't think there are many U.S. schools that do BOTH fixed-Do and movable-Do (a…
-
Dimitar-- I certainly agree there can be advantages to the kinds of distinctions you are drawing. However, while there are many theorists who agree with you, Jason is also correct that this is a matter of convention and definition, not some sort of…
-
@Nicolas Oops - accidentally submitted this post before writing my reply. (Having "enter" just submit on a comment seems like a bad choice.) Anyhow, yes I do use that "trick" with students too. By the way, my experience with U.S. students is that…
-
@Nicolas: I'm assuming you're asking the question just about the concept in U.S. aural skills pedagogy (and not a deeper ontological question about "what this might all REALLY mean"). In U.S. pedagogy, "movable Do" systems are pretty common. "Fixed…
-
"Discovery learning," as I'm sure everyone here knows, is cognitively intensive and more difficult at the beginning. Personally, I find it more fun. But it's more work and requires students to take risks in figuring out the unfamiliar for themselv…
-
Carson - A couple observations. (1) "Mode" has obviously meant MANY different things throughout history. Aside from the notion of scale or a collection of pitches or even a tendency toward a final resolution note (as Nicolas mentioned), I'd also no…
SMT Discuss Manager: smtdiscuss@societymusictheory.org