tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post2440146240814800308..comments2024-03-16T00:21:43.240+00:00Comments on Separated by a Common Language: musical noteslynneguisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10171345732985610861noreply@blogger.comBlogger64125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-85978184563542236982015-10-20T17:53:12.936+01:002015-10-20T17:53:12.936+01:00There's a historical account of the terminolog...There's a historical account of the terminology by rosie on another thread <a href="http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2015/09/playing-musical-instruments.html?showComment=1445325005359#c1973236420153544224" rel="nofollow">click here</a>David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-1871698482591030722014-02-24T02:10:01.622+00:002014-02-24T02:10:01.622+00:00vp
Not coincidentally, time signatures like
4̲
2...vp<br /><br />Not coincidentally, time signatures like <br /><b>4̲<br />2</b><br />are also extremely rare now.<br /><br />Either could be cause, and either could be effect. My money is on the time signature. (The absence of, that is, causing the absence of breves.)David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-23773766791655336382014-02-23T21:04:24.509+00:002014-02-23T21:04:24.509+00:00Breves / double whole notes are very rare in music...Breves / double whole notes are very rare in music written since around 1600. However, they do feature in very famous piece of twentieth-century music: Barber's Adagio for Strings. If you take a look at <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/earbox/images/files/148/excerpt/Barber_Adagio.png" rel="nofollow">the beginning of the score</a>, you should be able to see that the very first note is a breve (like a semi breve/whole note but surrounded by vertical lines).vphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16647609487352038948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-57466490212959753482014-02-23T02:13:20.379+00:002014-02-23T02:13:20.379+00:00I've just bought what will be the final box-se...I've just bought what will be the final box-set volume of a series called <i>The History of Rhythm and Blues</i>. It finishes at 1962.<br /><br />The reason, they explain, is that <i>Bilboard</i> R&B charts were discontinued in 1963 because Black and White markets were becoming confused.<br /><br />An R&B chart was reintroduced in 1965, but from this side of the Atlantic it doesn't look like exactly the same idiom.<br /><br />The <i>History of Rhythm and Blues</i> series is, of course, produced by a British record company.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-70581815228806409812014-01-30T23:39:31.343+00:002014-01-30T23:39:31.343+00:00Andy Holyer
One distiction which my (american) GF...Andy Holyer<br /><br /><i>One distiction which my (american) GF was quite surprised about is that the BrE and AmE meanings of "R&B" are quite distict.</i><br /><br /><b>Rhythm and blues</b>, abbreviated to <b>R&B</b> was a marketing label from 1949, just as <b>Blues</b> was a marketing label from 1914. (Unlikely-sounding, but true).<br /><br />It was <i>Billboard</i> magazine that established the term so that there could be a sales chart of the music. The heading was <i>Best Selling Retail Rhythm & Blues Records</i>. <br /><br />It seems likely that they were responding to the difference between records made with acoustic instruments in the style of the earlier 40's and the 30's before that. That's certainly how the terms <b>Blues</b> and <b>Rhythm & Blues</b> were understood by British fans in the 50's.<br /><br />We were familiar with blues as played by jazz bands and as sung to the accompaniment of acoustic guitar and/or piano and/or harmonica. Records by Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and people were similar, but with the very different twist that resulted from guitar amplification. At the time, that's what R&B was in America, and to us the idiom is much as it was sixty years ago.<br /><br />(There was total consternation when Muddy first toured Britain in 1958. The jazz-fan audience had never heard blues that was anywhere near as loud. Just a few years later he had a British fan base.)<br /><br />Meanwhile in the States, the R&B chart was defined by the record-buyers and record companies. Their tastes changed; ours didn't.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-83481227695349978792012-10-18T13:34:15.633+01:002012-10-18T13:34:15.633+01:00I haven't read all comments so I apologize/apo...I haven't read all comments so I apologize/apologise in advance if this link has already been provided.<br />http://www.violinist.com/discussion/response.cfm?id=6526 an interesting discussion of the various sources of the terms.Dalehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03308872121755588350noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-69060131842097972692012-08-24T12:47:12.242+01:002012-08-24T12:47:12.242+01:00In Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, Philip Ma...In Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, Philip Marlowe first encounters his client General Sternwood sitting in his conservatory <i>(sic)</i>, which is full of tropical plants and correspondingly hot and humid, so this suggests the BrE usage right in the heart of Southern California. Of course, citing Chandler is always going to be tricky in this respect; he spent his youth in Britain, was educated at Dulwich College where, I'm told, he bowled useful leg-breaks from the cricket team, and wrote his classic Americana in British English.<br /><br />The music I grew up with – that would be from immediately pre-Beatles onwards, was all <i>pop</i>, understood to be short for "popular" and to be contrasted with "classical". There was "rock and roll", meaning what Jerry Lee Lewis and the Big Bopper had done in an earlier age, and there was "soul" which was what Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin did, but it was all pop to me and my contemporaries. Later, when I started to listen to John Peel's show on a Sunday afternoon, there was a new and more challenging pop which we called "heavy" or "progressive" pop, but it was still pop – "progressive" in this sense not necessarily to be confused with what was later called "progressive rock". I didn't encounter the term "rock" until well into the 1970s. It came as a surprise many years later that Van Morrison's <b>Them</b> were/was a "Garage band". <br /><br />In another forum which I participate in (Hello Jonathan Bogart ) a clear distinction seems to be made between "pop" and "rock", the latter being defined by the performers playing their own instruments and writing their own material, and being more inclined to actually perform it live instead of miming to the recording. Since I tend to favo[u]r the latter I have been label[l]ed "rockist", which in some circles is considered derogatory.<br /><br />One clearly AmE phrase I have encountered in recent years, and which tends to make me bristle, is "British Invasion" used to define a whole raft of (1960s BrE) groups/(AmE and later BrE) bands which emerged in Britain in the mid 1960s. We didn't invade ourselves, you know!enitharmonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17829757748223670291noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-55999381489559746362011-04-06T14:52:52.334+01:002011-04-06T14:52:52.334+01:00@Richard Gadsden - To me (as an American who spent...@Richard Gadsden - To me (as an American who spent too many hours of my teenage life thinking about popular music), the two most interesting points of your post are the separation of "swing" from "jazz" and the eyebrow-raising implication that either would be considered older than blues.Briannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-84410500282132036082011-04-04T01:00:55.222+01:002011-04-04T01:00:55.222+01:00On "pop" in BrE.
At one extreme, "...On "pop" in BrE.<br /><br />At one extreme, "pop" is all commercial music, ie anything written to sell rather than for its intrinsic artistic merit. This is often the approach of the snobbiest classical music fan - the sort who insists on referring to it as "Western art music", and reserves "classical" to a particular period. In this sense, it would certainly encompass Gilbert and Sullivan and Katherine Jenkins, as well as the whole of jazz, swing, the entirety of musical theatre, and perhaps even (in one particularly obnoxious case of my former acquaintance), the whole canon of English-language hymns.<br /><br />A more modest, and probably more customary usage for "pop" is as a broad description for, roughly, any music in a style that has heritage from rock-n-roll and is in the form of a three (ish) minute song.<br /><br />Few Brits in my experience would have a problem with regarding blues as being part of the pop universe; earlier forms like jazz or swing are more marginal. [Country, still much more likely to be called "country-n-western" in the UK, is definitely a foreign form, and was little seen until relatively recently; we still largely don't get it].<br /><br />Musical theatre is the only popular form of music being made in the UK that is widely regarded as not pop (in the broader sense).<br /><br />Pop also has the narrower (somewhat derogatory) genre sense of "music that teenage girls scream to". Also, poppier R&B (Beyonce) or hip-hop (the Black Eyed Peas) is more likely to be admitted as pop in the narrow sense than it would be in the US; the main definition would be "pop, as opposed to rock" (where the broader sense is "pop, as opposed to classical").<br /><br />Returning to broad-sense pop, other types of music that are at the same level are classical, musical theatre (a relatively new term - show-tunes is an older equivalent), jazz, folk, world and country. Traditional hymns and Christmas carols are none of those, but don't really have a named category of their own (religious music would include some classical and some pop as well). There are other musical styles that aren't really pop, but you're liable to get people saying things like "Frank Sinatra was the first pop star"Richard Gadsdenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10545595590359552775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-68215015713233188632010-10-05T01:05:52.279+01:002010-10-05T01:05:52.279+01:00I have covered Clue/Cluedo in another post, back h...I have covered Clue/Cluedo in another post, back <a href="http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2007/01/names-of-games-part-1-board-games.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>.lynneguisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10171345732985610861noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-90753184631305131622010-10-05T00:55:47.046+01:002010-10-05T00:55:47.046+01:00Some Clue's on Clue...
http://boardgamegeek.c...Some Clue's on Clue...<br /><br />http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/561430/ms-scarlett-in-the-kitchen-with-mr-greenAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-36909873245359471852010-06-08T10:23:38.127+01:002010-06-08T10:23:38.127+01:00One distiction which my (american) GF was quite su...One distiction which my (american) GF was quite surprised about is that the BrE and AmE meanings of "R&B" are quite distict.<br /><br />In both cases it means "Rhythm and Blues", but in an american context it refers to music produced by black artists, whereas in BrE it refers to a very specific genre of white guitar pop: early Who, Dr Feelgood and Nine Below Zero would be candiate examples of R&B. But not The Jackson 5. Definitely not.<br /><br />Somewhere on the net there is my transaltion of the second verse of "Cool for Cats" into standard English. And don't get me started about Robyn Hitchcock...<br /><br />Hi Lynne, BTW.Andy Holyernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-64711232464976852292009-09-13T04:37:31.378+01:002009-09-13T04:37:31.378+01:00Bar is certainly used informally for measure in cl...<i>Bar</i> is certainly used informally for <i>measure</i> in classical music as well as other varieties: "Let's start eight bars from the top, please."<br /><br />Amanda P.: You're right, of course, except that (anomalously) a whole rest signifies silence for a whole measure, whether the measure is 2/4, 4/4, 3/4, 6/8, 5/4, or what have you.<br /><br />In one the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1632_series" rel="nofollow"><i>1632</i></a> series of alternate-history novels and stories, some 17th-century German musicians are trying to figure out the early-21st-century (think time travel) distinction between <i>popular music</i> and <i>folk music</i>, since after all <i>populus</i> is just Latin for <i>Volk</i>....John Cowanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11452247999156925669noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-11060772792660335082009-09-09T16:39:49.095+01:002009-09-09T16:39:49.095+01:00Missed out a bit: "...barline(BrE), the verti...Missed out a bit: "...barline(BrE), the vertical line dividing the staff(espUS, BrE usu stave) into bars."Harry Campbellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01675794936870568336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-81170859264819639742009-09-09T16:37:23.493+01:002009-09-09T16:37:23.493+01:00Americans in the UK are sometimes surprised to lea...Americans in the UK are sometimes surprised to learn that bar (BrE) means measure (US), which I believe is an older term, also occasionally found in BrE. I believe in US Eng it means barline(BrE), the vertical line dividing the staff into bars. <br /><br />We could also throw in whole step(US) = tone(BrE). Again, you occasionally hear whole-step and half-step as alternatives in BrE. <br /><br />Theoretically there is also a "hundred twenty-eighth note" or semihemidemisemiquaver or <br />quasihemidemisemiquaver. NB The corresponding rests do not repeat the word "note", so crotchet rest = quarter rest, not quarter-note rest.Harry Campbellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01675794936870568336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-43378617074215903292009-09-02T20:57:38.147+01:002009-09-02T20:57:38.147+01:00Since the use of a "whole note" is no lo...Since the use of a "whole note" is no longer defined as "the entire measure/bar", but means "4 counts in an x/4 time signature, 2 counts in an x/2 time signature, 8 counts in an x/8 time signature,", I believe that quarter (a quarter of a whole note), half, eight, sixteenth, etc, do still make sense. In a 6/8 piece of music, you will not see a whole note denote 6 beats - you will see a dotted half (3/4 of a whole note).<br /><br />While I have heard quaver, semi-quaver, etc., I have never heard them used in practice - but I don't play or sing for a professional musical organization - only for fun.<br /><br />Related to pop music, I interpret that as a style of music in the rock family that has no substance - bubblegum rock. I think the meaning has changed in the US over the last 25 years though, as I remember "Pop" being part of the standard radio station descriptions in the 80s.<br /><br />I too think of animal fat when I hear "rendering". eeewww.Amanda P.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-65391094660024051972009-09-02T05:49:45.790+01:002009-09-02T05:49:45.790+01:00As for rock vs pop, I know that "pop" de...As for rock vs pop, I know that "pop" derives from popular, but I've always associated the term with music in which the beat is dominated by a staccato "pop pop pop pop pop pop" sound from the bass guitar (as opposed to the drum-dominated beat of rock).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-45556898490855865472009-09-02T05:36:55.951+01:002009-09-02T05:36:55.951+01:00I did not know that sunrooms were known as such in...I did not know that sunrooms were known as such in (at least parts of) the U.S., but that is certainly what they are called here in Australia, where they are very popular.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-75359278760997477132009-08-30T05:13:47.038+01:002009-08-30T05:13:47.038+01:00In Australia, a school of music is called a conser...In Australia, a school of music is called a conservatorium. To my surprise, I find that this word is apparently not used anywhere else.Alan Walkerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17875342096613838047noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-44039209588737465102009-08-26T17:18:03.603+01:002009-08-26T17:18:03.603+01:00Addendum: My music teacher's method of startin...Addendum: My music teacher's method of starting with the AmE terms and then moving to the BrE also enjoyed success for the simple reason that, to a fourteen-year-old, saying 'hemidemisemiquaver' is waaaaay more fun than saying a 'sixty-fourth note', so we embraced the BrE terms gladly.Hips Unhinged Ltdhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12347221689390797013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-84336811489299615742009-08-26T17:15:29.142+01:002009-08-26T17:15:29.142+01:00About six or seven years ago, I began learning mus...About six or seven years ago, I began learning music at school. Despite being BrE (as am I), my teacher taught us the AmE terms for musical notes first, because he explained that they made far more sense and were easier to remember. Quarter note and half note are far simpler and more intuitive than crotchet and quaver. However, as another commenter pointed out, this only really works for 4/4 time, which was fine when we were still beginners and did EVERYTHING in that time signature. Once we got into 3/4, 6/8 etc, he taught us the BrE terms, which worked quite well as we already understood the concepts by that point.Hips Unhinged Ltdhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12347221689390797013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-47828169642567111222009-08-25T00:14:19.625+01:002009-08-25T00:14:19.625+01:00Gosh, to Canadian me "rendering" is prim...Gosh, to Canadian me "rendering" is primarily some industrial procedure related to the processing of animal fats. I use it also in some semi-fossilized ways like "rendered unfit for human habitation" and "render unto Caesar." <br /><br />I learned to call them quarter and eighth notes, but was advised at the time about the "old fashioned" terms with the quavers.<br /><br />I've heard of Conservatory and Conservatoire, but the presence of Québec muddies the water here when French terms are concerned.Aviatrixhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13634111275860140084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-70073456224341869642009-08-24T10:23:25.540+01:002009-08-24T10:23:25.540+01:00Sili and Kevin: I also find the first sentence in ...Sili and Kevin: I also find the first sentence in the quoted passage rather poor and unfocussed, since the two instances of 'it' refer to different things. This gives the impression of dangling participles.<br /><br />Theirs:<br />Without being too rigorous about it, Classical Guitar has generally preferred the word 'rendering' to the word 'rendition' to describe a performance of music, considering it to be American usage only. <br /><br />Mine:<br />Without being too rigorous about it, Classical Guitar has generally preferred the word 'rendering' to describe a performance of music. We consider the word 'rendition' to be American usage only. <br /><br />I have encountered 'rendition' more frequently than 'rendering' in UK radio and writing, usually fairly formally: 'Fischer-Dieskau's masterly rendition of the lieder' although this usage also lends itself to parody. Nowadays, we would expect to hear just which aspect (interpretation, vocal style, musicality) was so good. For me, 'rendering' definitely has links to fluids such as stucco or beef dripping!biochemistnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-44111423259623207802009-08-24T10:23:24.986+01:002009-08-24T10:23:24.986+01:00I've never played Cluedo, but I gather it'...I've never played Cluedo, but I gather it's based on the traditional English whodunit, so I would expect the conservatory to be the old-fashioned wrought-iron-and-glass construction containing plants.<br />I have an album of newspaper cuttings compiled by my grandfather in the early 20th century, in which reports of village entertainments always refer to singers having "rendered" musical items. This usage is very old-fashioned to modern British ears.<br />Kate (UK)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28787909.post-51431255103800746232009-08-23T12:40:00.356+01:002009-08-23T12:40:00.356+01:00A dangling participle in: "Classical Guitar h...A dangling participle in: "Classical Guitar has generally preferred the word 'rendering' to the word 'rendition' to describe a performance of music, considering it to be American usage only"?<br />Eh? Where? <br /><br />Taking it that you're referring to the clause beginning with the word "considering", I don't see that as a case of a dangling participle -- although there is potentially a problem with the reference of the word "it". A has preferred X to Y, considering it to be Z. So is it X or Y that A considers to be Z? However, simply replacing "it" by "the former" or "the latter" would have solved that difficulty without touching the participle. <br /><br />No, for me, a "dangling participle" is what occurs in a sentence like "Speaking as aa American, Hitler never convinced me of that".Kevinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10718209592445394736noreply@blogger.com