a good little student
Jan. 26th, 2009 12:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareinaToday ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
clovis_t went to fighter practice. I wanted to go--many of my friends would have been there, and it is always good sewing time. But I was good and stayed home and worked on my thesis. Total hours actual uni work today: 6 hrs, 47 min. Mostly doing edits to chapter five (yah, the one I wanted to be done and sent off to my advisor well before now--I keep finding more that can be done to improve it!), but also creating a totally new sort of figure for this one--I set up a map (using ArcMap) of all of the locations of the samples which have had monazite dating done, and then copied the outline of Tasmania + sample locations into CorelDraw, and am now adding layers with arrows showing the direction one needs to go from one region to the next to get to monazite with increasing amounts of Y or Sr. Other elements will follow, but although *often* Y increases in the direction Sr decreases, sometimes it is opposite. No idea if this figure will wind up in the thesis, or if it is just for me to organize yet more thoughts before typing up something profound, but...
In addition to the uni work, I actually got out my hammer dulcimer today! First time I've touched it in just over a week. Played with it for about two hours, though part of that was typing up the letters for the notes of the Cantigia de Santa Maria #322 into a Word document so that I could see all of them at once, since NoteWorthy has the sheet music hanging off the right hand side of the screen. The program does these jumps as it plays the music, where the score suddenly jumps left enough so that the note currently being played is at the left edge of the screen, then it holds still until the current note is almost to the right hand side, then it does another jump. This is probably well and fine for people who are able to read music--they can probably cope with the jumps. But I, who am only just teaching myself the skill, can't. While I could zoom out so that more of the notes fit on the screen, that results in them being too small to actually see. So instead I created a notational system for myself which communicates as much information as I need to play.
Cantiga de Santa Maria #322
A virgin que de Deus Madre
B_ B C | D_ D_ | E_ D C | D_ D_ | D_ D E | D_ D C | B_ C B | B A G_ |
B_ B C | D_ D_ | E_ D C | D_ D_ | D C B A | G_ f G | B_ C B | B A G_ |
^G_ ^G ^A |^G_ F E | D E D C | D_ D_ | D_ D E | F_ E DC | B_ B C | D_ D_ |
^G_ ^G ^A |^G_ F E | D E D C | D_ D_ | D_ D E | F_ E DC | B_ B A | G_ G_ |
B_ B C | D_ D_ | E_ D C | D_ D_ | D_ D E | D_ D C | B_ C B | B A G_ |
B_ B C | D_ D_ | E_ D C | D_ D_ | D C B A | G_ f G | B_ C B | B A G_ |
In the word document the spacing is such that all of the bar lines | are lined up above one another. I'm not going to try to take the time to make that happen here! The normal notes are upper case. Lower case means that it is an octave lower than the upper case of the same letter, and the ^ before a note means that it is an octave higher than the normal note of the same letter (though, to make the spacing work out easier, in Word they are just superscript characters). This particular tune plays in whatever key requires both the B and the E to be flat, which means it needs to be played on the upper right hand side of my hammer dulcimer--that being the only place where those two notes are flat. This particular tune is almost all half notes and quarter notes. Therefore the half notes get a _ after them, and the quarter notes don't. The two spots with sixteenth notes just get the two notes typed without a space between them.
Sure, I'd learn to read music faster if I tried playing from the dots themselves, but I'm so not ready to cope with the screen jumps!
So, to teach myself this tune I first had the computer play the first phrase to listen to what it sounds like, then tried hitting the notes in that order. Repeat till I could do that much. Add the next phrase. Repeat. When I got to the point where I sort of knew what my hands should do for the first 16 bars of music, I then started trying to play along with the computer (it is so nice to have sheet music that makes noise!). This is a bit more of a challenge, but I've got it set to play reasonably slowly, and, when I get lost I can wait for the next spot where there are two D half notes in a row and jump back in there. I found that it was pretty much necessary for me to sing the name of each note as I hit it, and to stare at the word document that told me which notes come next. However, By the end of the evening I did manage to play the first 16 bars (on my own) without looking at the screen. Next session I'll try to learn the middle bit, but two hours total time elapsed is as much as I was willing to spare today, even if I didn't play at all last week.
I also went for a walk "around the block", and explored a side street (dead end) too. My goodness, the house at the end of the side street has too much money for landscaping. What would possess someone to put such a huge, tall, metal (painted off-white) gate with large stone-work supports on such a short wooden fence? It so doesn't match! I bet it opens automatically, without anyone having to get out of the car.
clovis_t went to fighter practice. I wanted to go--many of my friends would have been there, and it is always good sewing time. But I was good and stayed home and worked on my thesis. Total hours actual uni work today: 6 hrs, 47 min. Mostly doing edits to chapter five (yah, the one I wanted to be done and sent off to my advisor well before now--I keep finding more that can be done to improve it!), but also creating a totally new sort of figure for this one--I set up a map (using ArcMap) of all of the locations of the samples which have had monazite dating done, and then copied the outline of Tasmania + sample locations into CorelDraw, and am now adding layers with arrows showing the direction one needs to go from one region to the next to get to monazite with increasing amounts of Y or Sr. Other elements will follow, but although *often* Y increases in the direction Sr decreases, sometimes it is opposite. No idea if this figure will wind up in the thesis, or if it is just for me to organize yet more thoughts before typing up something profound, but...In addition to the uni work, I actually got out my hammer dulcimer today! First time I've touched it in just over a week. Played with it for about two hours, though part of that was typing up the letters for the notes of the Cantigia de Santa Maria #322 into a Word document so that I could see all of them at once, since NoteWorthy has the sheet music hanging off the right hand side of the screen. The program does these jumps as it plays the music, where the score suddenly jumps left enough so that the note currently being played is at the left edge of the screen, then it holds still until the current note is almost to the right hand side, then it does another jump. This is probably well and fine for people who are able to read music--they can probably cope with the jumps. But I, who am only just teaching myself the skill, can't. While I could zoom out so that more of the notes fit on the screen, that results in them being too small to actually see. So instead I created a notational system for myself which communicates as much information as I need to play.
Cantiga de Santa Maria #322
A virgin que de Deus Madre
B_ B C | D_ D_ | E_ D C | D_ D_ | D_ D E | D_ D C | B_ C B | B A G_ |
B_ B C | D_ D_ | E_ D C | D_ D_ | D C B A | G_ f G | B_ C B | B A G_ |
^G_ ^G ^A |^G_ F E | D E D C | D_ D_ | D_ D E | F_ E DC | B_ B C | D_ D_ |
^G_ ^G ^A |^G_ F E | D E D C | D_ D_ | D_ D E | F_ E DC | B_ B A | G_ G_ |
B_ B C | D_ D_ | E_ D C | D_ D_ | D_ D E | D_ D C | B_ C B | B A G_ |
B_ B C | D_ D_ | E_ D C | D_ D_ | D C B A | G_ f G | B_ C B | B A G_ |
In the word document the spacing is such that all of the bar lines | are lined up above one another. I'm not going to try to take the time to make that happen here! The normal notes are upper case. Lower case means that it is an octave lower than the upper case of the same letter, and the ^ before a note means that it is an octave higher than the normal note of the same letter (though, to make the spacing work out easier, in Word they are just superscript characters). This particular tune plays in whatever key requires both the B and the E to be flat, which means it needs to be played on the upper right hand side of my hammer dulcimer--that being the only place where those two notes are flat. This particular tune is almost all half notes and quarter notes. Therefore the half notes get a _ after them, and the quarter notes don't. The two spots with sixteenth notes just get the two notes typed without a space between them.
Sure, I'd learn to read music faster if I tried playing from the dots themselves, but I'm so not ready to cope with the screen jumps!
So, to teach myself this tune I first had the computer play the first phrase to listen to what it sounds like, then tried hitting the notes in that order. Repeat till I could do that much. Add the next phrase. Repeat. When I got to the point where I sort of knew what my hands should do for the first 16 bars of music, I then started trying to play along with the computer (it is so nice to have sheet music that makes noise!). This is a bit more of a challenge, but I've got it set to play reasonably slowly, and, when I get lost I can wait for the next spot where there are two D half notes in a row and jump back in there. I found that it was pretty much necessary for me to sing the name of each note as I hit it, and to stare at the word document that told me which notes come next. However, By the end of the evening I did manage to play the first 16 bars (on my own) without looking at the screen. Next session I'll try to learn the middle bit, but two hours total time elapsed is as much as I was willing to spare today, even if I didn't play at all last week.
I also went for a walk "around the block", and explored a side street (dead end) too. My goodness, the house at the end of the side street has too much money for landscaping. What would possess someone to put such a huge, tall, metal (painted off-white) gate with large stone-work supports on such a short wooden fence? It so doesn't match! I bet it opens automatically, without anyone having to get out of the car.
