Structure and Content

In Rhythm As Motion I discuss the value of learning rhythm by learning the underlying components that are common to all metronomic rhythmic systems. As an aspect of that I would like to discuss the difference between structure and content. In “Exploring music Deconstructively” I explore different methods for identifying pulse and meter and acknowledge that there are occasionally multiple “right answers”. The reason for this is that when you only have the content (what you hear), you are reliant only on the music as you hear it to make sense of  what is happening. As a participant in the

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Interior and exterior experience of music

If I ask you to thoroughly describe Shakespeare’s Hamlet – could you do it (assuming you have read/seen it)?  Your could tell me it’s in English, that it’s believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601.  You could count the words in the play, the nouns and verbs – or the sentences,  or the number of acts. You would probably also tell me about the setting, characters, and the plot.  You might describe the struggle from the famous soliloquy, Hamlet’s madness – feigned or real, or Ophelia’s death. You might describe the sense of betrayal Hamlet feels about his

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Exploring Music Deconstructively

“Tell me, oh great musician, who is your teacher?” Tansen replied: “My teacher is a very great musician – but more than that. I cannot call him musician, I must call him music”. – Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Mysticism of Sound and Music One of the most challenging aspects of developing as a musician is acquiring vocabulary. It may be relatively easy at first to find some internal musicality and express it through an instrument but over time, many students find their development will slow down. Epiphanies come at first hard and fast – one after another. Over time they

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