The Evolution and Future of Digital Sheet Music

Early Music ... However, today this term has come to include "any music for which a historically appropriate style of performance must be reconstructed on the basis of surviving scores, treatises, instruments and other contemporary evidence." Revival Performance practice According to Margaret Bent, "Renaissance notation is under-prescriptive by our standards; when translated into modern form it acquires a prescriptive weight that overspecifies and distorts its original openness...

Ear Training ... Many musicians use functional pitch recognition in order to identify, understand, and appreciate the roles and meanings of pitches within a key. To this end, scale-degree numbers or movable-do solmization (do, re, mi, etc.) can be quite helpful...

Transformational Theory ... The goal of transformational theory is to change the focus from musical objects—such as the "C major chord" or "G major chord" -- to relations between objects. Thus, instead of saying that a C major chord is followed by G major, a transformational theorist might say that the first chord has been "transformed" into the second by the "Dominant operation." (Symbolically, one might write "Dominant (C major) = G major.") While traditional musical set theory focuses on the makeup of musical objects, transformational theory focuses on the intervals or types of musical motion that can occur...

Orff Schulwerk ... A child participating in an Orff classroom does not feel the pressure of performing that is often in tandem with music because every student in an Orff classroom is treated as an equal, even when performing a solo... The Orff Approach is used by teachers to encourage their students to enjoy making music as individuals as well as in groups... Students of the Orff Approach learn music by experiencing and participating in the different musical lessons and activities...

Four-part Harmony ... A special genre in this music is the "barbershop quartet" usually consisting of 4 men who sing tenor, countertenor, baritone, and bass parts... Four parts for instruments Some music is written, in four-part harmony, for small groups of only 4 instruments, such as a string quartet, a brass quartet, or a woodwind quartet (might include a French horn)... However, due to the range of musical instruments covering more pitches than a typical human voice, a quartet might play some harmonies with very high notes or very low notes, rather than the blended range of choral music...

Music Of Greece ... Music was an important part of education in ancient Greece, and boys were taught music starting at age six... Greek musical literacy created a flowering of development; Greek music theory included the Greek musical modes, eventually became the basis for Western religious music and classical music... Greece in the Roman Empire See also: Music of ancient Rome Due to Rome's reverence for Greek culture, the Romans borrowed the Greek method of 'enchiriadic notation' (marks which indicated the general shape of the tune but not the exact notes or rhythms) to record their music, if they used any notation at all...

Napster ... Its ease of use led to massive copyright violations of music and film media, as well as other intellectual property... History Although there were already networks that facilitated the distribution of files across the Internet, such as IRC, Hotline, and USENET, Napster specialized exclusively in music in the form of MP3 files and presented a user-friendly interface... The result was a robust system whose popularity generated an enormous selection of music to download – at its peak there were 25 million users and 80 million songs, and the system never once crashed...

Rhythm ... Anthropology In his series How Music Works, Howard Goodall presents theories that human rhythm recalls the regularity with which we walk and the heartbeat we heard in the womb... London writes that musical metre "involves our initial perception as well as subsequent anticipation of a series of beats that we abstract from the rhythm surface of the music as it unfolds in time" (London 2004, 4)...

Renaissance Music ... Demand for music as entertainment and as an activity for educated amateurs increased with the emergence of a bourgeois class... Relative political stability and prosperity in the Low Countries, along with a flourishing system of music education in the area's many churches and cathedrals, allowed the training of hundreds of singers and composers... Opera arose at this time in Florence as a deliberate attempt to resurrect the music of ancient Greece...

Schenkerian Analysis ... This reflects Schenker's belief that the deep, long–range structure of a piece of music has no particular rhythm... This long–range structure is called the Fundamental Structure (Ursatz) in Schenkerian analysis, while the more surface aspects of the music are called the foreground or surface layer... Although it is a subject of debate among music theorists whether there is a single correct hearing and analysis of a piece of tonal music, even those who hold that there is a unique correct analysis agree that the analysis can only be arrived at and evaluated subjectively by an expert listener...

Music And Mathematics ... The attempt to structure and communicate new ways of composing and hearing music has led to musical applications of set theory, abstract algebra and number theory... Time, rhythm and meter Without the boundaries of rhythmic structure – a fundamental equal and regular arrangement of pulse repetitivity, accent, phrase and duration – music would be impossible... The common types of form known as binary and ternary ("twofold" and "threefold") once again demonstrate the importance of small integral values to the intelligibility and appeal of music...

MMCP – Manhattanville Music Curriculum Project ... Fostering the continued relevance of music to a student in school and contemporary society is a key purpose for MMCP in the areas of: Artistic Relevance – How can students recognize the aesthetic value of music? Personal Relevance – How can music satisfy the personal needs of students? Social Relevance – How can the changing nature of music in our society stay relevant to students as they grow older? MMCP believes presenting music as changing and evolving rather than “static” like western art music increases the interest in new creation... Rather, learning and acquisition of musical information are the byproduct of the “doing” in performing and creating the music... Attitudinal – Students excited about their own creative musical potential and their aesthetic sensitivity to music...

Paleolithic Flutes ... They suggested music may have helped to maintain bonds between larger groups of humans, and that this may have helped the species to expand both in numbers and in geographical range...

Kodály Method ... Beginning in 1935, along with his colleague Jenő Ádám, he embarked on a long term project to reform music teaching in the lower and middle schools by actively creating a new curriculum and new teaching methods, as well as writing new musical compositions for children... The school was so successful that over one hundred music primary schools opened within the next decade (Eösze 1962:79)... After about fifteen years approximately 50% of the schools in Hungary were music schools (Russell-Smith 1967:44)...

Aspect Of Music ... Universal aspect Often a definition of music lists the aspects or elements that make up music under that definition... In classical music of the common practice period, for instance, melody and harmony are often considered to be given more importance at the expense of rhythm and timbre... John Cage considers duration the primary aspect of music as, being the temporal aspect of music, it is the only aspect common to both "sound" and "silence"...

O'Connor Method ... Violin Philosophy: To offer beginning string students training in the basic fundamentals of the many "dialects" of American string music by using a holistic approach to string technique...

Suzuki Method ... The essential components of his method spring from the desire to create the "right environment" for learning music (he believed that this positive environment would also help to foster excellent character in every student)... These components include: Saturation in the musical community, including attendance at local concerts of classical music, exposure to and friendship with other music students, and listening to music performed by "artists" (professional classical musicians of high caliber) in the home every day (starting before birth if possible)... Suzuki firmly believed that teachers who test for musical aptitude before taking students, or teachers who look only for "talented" students, are limiting themselves to people who have already started their music education...

Timbre ... In simple terms, timbre is what makes a particular musical sound different from another, even when they have the same pitch and loudness. For instance, it is the difference between a guitar and a piano playing the same note at the same loudness...

Progressive Rock ... The Oxford Companion to Music states that progressive rock bands ".explored extended musical structures which involved intricate instrumental patterns and textures and often esoteric subject matter." Additionally, the arrangements often incorporated elements drawn from classical, jazz, and later world music... Progressive rock bands sometimes used "concept albums that made unified statements, usually telling an epic story or tackling a grand overarching theme." Progressive rock developed from late 1960s psychedelic rock, as part of a wide-ranging tendency in rock music of this era to draw inspiration from ever more diverse influences... The term was initially applied to the music of British bands such as Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, Jethro Tull, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, reaching its peak of popularity in the mid 1970s...

Consonance And Dissonance ... These may be summarized as simplicity. "A stable tone combination is a consonance; consonances are points of arrival, rest, and resolution." —Roger Kamien (2008), p.41 Dissonance "An unstable tone combination is a dissonance; its tension demands an onward motion to a stable chord...