Greetings, dear friends!
Well, it's happened....I got older today -- a nice prime number this time around, and have had a great day of feeling extremely loved and remembered. What more could a person want?
It's been a busy weekend (ergo the late post!), but a good one, filled in part with rehearsals with my beloved Denver Gay Men's Chorus. They're prepping for a very exciting collaboration at the moment, and one of the pieces they've begun rehearsing has struck quite a chord with me, especially as a new year of life begins. The piece is "Choose to Bless the World" by Nick Page, and is based on three divergent somewhat unlikely elements: Page's own arrangement of "Niska Banja," a poem by a Unitarian Universalist minister named Rebecca Parker, and Michael Praetorius' well-known canon "Jubilate Deo" -- you can listen to/watch a recording of one of my new favorite people conducting it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xabP5G-Q1A
(I know, it has the Lentenly forbidden A-word, but try to forgive me...)
The full text of the poem is this:
Your gifts
whatever you discover them to be
can be used to bless or curse the world.
The mind's power,
The strength of the hands,
The reaches of the heart,
the gift of speaking, listening, imagining, seeing, waiting
Any of these can serve to feed the hungry,
bind up wounds,
welcome the stranger,
praise what is sacred,
do the work of justice
or offer love.
Any of these can draw down the prison door
hoard bread,
abandon the poor,
obscure what is holy,
comply with injustice
or withhold love.
You must answer this question:
What will you do with your gifts?
Choose to bless the world.
Cynicism and exhaustion are by-products of almost any graduate program, I think (and as many of my AKI students will likely attest), and it can be hard to remember that we still have a choice. We don't have to buy into the drama that our little grad program worlds tend to create. Or, if we do, we can catch ourselves and make a new choice. The circumstances of our lives are what they are, and on days when we're feeling the burn, it can be so hard to remember this, but we still have a choice. In every moment, no matter how crappy we think we are, no matter how hard things have been, no matter how little we think we have to offer, the choice is still there. We can choose to bless the world....and the secret wonder of making that choice is that it doesn't take anything away from us to do this. Our egos and bone-weariness might convince us that trying to bless the world is like trying to get blood from a turnip. But, it's not a matter of trying. It's a matter of choosing to honor what we already are in a state of being....we are each and all a blessing to the world.
So, if you have the energy and the inclination, there are lots of cool things you could transcribe from the recording above, or you could teach yourself to hand-sign the canon in two parts (or three -- one with your voice and one with each hand), or you could always catch up on your sight-singing. However, the assignment I'm going to work hard to embrace this week and in the coming year is this:
All Levels:
Choose to bless the world.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Holding steady
Hello, stalwart solfeggists!
It's been a crazy week in my world, and the weekend has left me with very little room to breathe. So, this week's installment will be short, but (hopefully) pithy.
In your Ottman book, chapter 18 is all about forbidding-looking rhythms, specifically, those that use very small divisions of the beat. Recently, I've been teaching some rhythmically challenging pieces in choral contexts, and it's once again come to my attention that many folks use a repetitive physical gesture (foot or hand-tapping, usually) when they encounter any sort of rhythmic difficulty, and they usually try to tap to a pretty small rhythmic value. I understand the inclination to do this, but I'm quite opposed to it. Why?
-We tend to be taught as children that our western rhythmic system is based on mathematical operations, and that's not really true (I mean, it's factual in a way to say that rhythm is mathematical, but math is not nearly as influential on our experience of rhythm as we think it is). Our rhythmic system is extremely influenced by hierarchy, and it is hierarchy that makes a rhythmic pattern feel how it feels to us. Therefore, if we don't reflect hierarchy in any aid we use to read a rhythm, we're sabotaging ourselves.
-Tapping a small rhythmic value as your "beat" the same way over and over (without any kind of hierarchy) is a recipe for getting lost. Your brain barely has a fighting chance of keeping track of all that repetitive motion, despite what your sense of security might be trying to tell you. We tend to feel like we're being more accurate because we're doing something, but the something we're doing in this case is likely to just distract us from inaccuracies.
-Rhythmic patterns aren't made difficult by speed, they're made difficult by unpredictability or unfamiliarity. So, slowing something far past the point of its intended tempo is probably less useful than we think -- the composer heard it inside her/his head as a pattern that made sense at a given tempo, and if we get too far away from that tempo, the pattern doesn't feel the same way anymore.
-Our brains aren't wired to perceive quick notes as isolated incidents, but rather as elements of a pattern that has a specific interplay within an established hierarchy.
Now, these rules start to fall apart if you start working with some types of early music or 20th/21st-century serialized rhythms or rhythms chosen through chance operations, etc., but the Ottman examples we're dealing with here definitely play by these rules. So, I'm going to insist on a few things:
1. Conduct. This doesn't necessarily have to be a traditional hand/arm pattern, but you have to do something with your body that shows the beats of the measure in distinct places AND gives a sense of which beats are strong in the hierarchy of the meter and which are not. For example, if you were to use your foot in a 2/4 meter, you could decide that your heel touching the ground would be beat 1 and your toe touching the ground would be beat 2.
2. Don't stray too far from the notated tempo. A conservative tempo is one thing, but if you're thinking in 32nd notes, the rhythm you think you're performing has nothing to do with the actual piece of music the composer wrote (unless it's in 3/32 or some such craziness).
3. If you're struggling with notes and rhythms together, isolate the rhythm.
4. Think in groupings and phrases, not in isolated note values. Start to see that the last sixteenth note of a beat will feel like a pickup to (or a decoration of) the beat that follows, etc. Just like in the world of pitches, the magic of rhythmic patterns has everything to do with the relationships being expressed.
5. Trust your body. Before you begin reading each example, take the time to really ground yourself in the the meter by moving (see item 1). Once you've started reading, if something seems wrong, see if you can figure out a reason -- it might just be a mistake, or it might be a misplaced metric accent, or an unusual phrase length, etc. Trust that your body knows how a good, solid 4/4 ought to feel, even if it's slow, and if something happens to upset your expectations, be a good detective and figure out why.
Rising Level 2's
Try your hands/feet/voices at these...ignore any grace notes:
18.1 & 18.2
18.12 & 18.13
18.16
18.17 (make sure you look carefully at the key)
18.22
18.29
Rising Level 3's
Give these your best shot:
18.18
18.19
18.21
18.23
18.25 (don't let the sixteenth rests freak you out)
18.26
Rising Level 4's
Your examples are longer and more complex, so you can spread them out over multiple days as you see fit:
18.30
18.31
18.32
18.34
So, hold steady and don't let the little notes scare you -- they're just a decorative part of the whole, and if you approach them calmly, they'll fall into place.
PS: It looks like I lied about this post being short...sometimes that happens when we get going, I guess...my apologies!
It's been a crazy week in my world, and the weekend has left me with very little room to breathe. So, this week's installment will be short, but (hopefully) pithy.
In your Ottman book, chapter 18 is all about forbidding-looking rhythms, specifically, those that use very small divisions of the beat. Recently, I've been teaching some rhythmically challenging pieces in choral contexts, and it's once again come to my attention that many folks use a repetitive physical gesture (foot or hand-tapping, usually) when they encounter any sort of rhythmic difficulty, and they usually try to tap to a pretty small rhythmic value. I understand the inclination to do this, but I'm quite opposed to it. Why?
-We tend to be taught as children that our western rhythmic system is based on mathematical operations, and that's not really true (I mean, it's factual in a way to say that rhythm is mathematical, but math is not nearly as influential on our experience of rhythm as we think it is). Our rhythmic system is extremely influenced by hierarchy, and it is hierarchy that makes a rhythmic pattern feel how it feels to us. Therefore, if we don't reflect hierarchy in any aid we use to read a rhythm, we're sabotaging ourselves.
-Tapping a small rhythmic value as your "beat" the same way over and over (without any kind of hierarchy) is a recipe for getting lost. Your brain barely has a fighting chance of keeping track of all that repetitive motion, despite what your sense of security might be trying to tell you. We tend to feel like we're being more accurate because we're doing something, but the something we're doing in this case is likely to just distract us from inaccuracies.
-Rhythmic patterns aren't made difficult by speed, they're made difficult by unpredictability or unfamiliarity. So, slowing something far past the point of its intended tempo is probably less useful than we think -- the composer heard it inside her/his head as a pattern that made sense at a given tempo, and if we get too far away from that tempo, the pattern doesn't feel the same way anymore.
-Our brains aren't wired to perceive quick notes as isolated incidents, but rather as elements of a pattern that has a specific interplay within an established hierarchy.
Now, these rules start to fall apart if you start working with some types of early music or 20th/21st-century serialized rhythms or rhythms chosen through chance operations, etc., but the Ottman examples we're dealing with here definitely play by these rules. So, I'm going to insist on a few things:
1. Conduct. This doesn't necessarily have to be a traditional hand/arm pattern, but you have to do something with your body that shows the beats of the measure in distinct places AND gives a sense of which beats are strong in the hierarchy of the meter and which are not. For example, if you were to use your foot in a 2/4 meter, you could decide that your heel touching the ground would be beat 1 and your toe touching the ground would be beat 2.
2. Don't stray too far from the notated tempo. A conservative tempo is one thing, but if you're thinking in 32nd notes, the rhythm you think you're performing has nothing to do with the actual piece of music the composer wrote (unless it's in 3/32 or some such craziness).
3. If you're struggling with notes and rhythms together, isolate the rhythm.
4. Think in groupings and phrases, not in isolated note values. Start to see that the last sixteenth note of a beat will feel like a pickup to (or a decoration of) the beat that follows, etc. Just like in the world of pitches, the magic of rhythmic patterns has everything to do with the relationships being expressed.
5. Trust your body. Before you begin reading each example, take the time to really ground yourself in the the meter by moving (see item 1). Once you've started reading, if something seems wrong, see if you can figure out a reason -- it might just be a mistake, or it might be a misplaced metric accent, or an unusual phrase length, etc. Trust that your body knows how a good, solid 4/4 ought to feel, even if it's slow, and if something happens to upset your expectations, be a good detective and figure out why.
Rising Level 2's
Try your hands/feet/voices at these...ignore any grace notes:
18.1 & 18.2
18.12 & 18.13
18.16
18.17 (make sure you look carefully at the key)
18.22
18.29
Rising Level 3's
Give these your best shot:
18.18
18.19
18.21
18.23
18.25 (don't let the sixteenth rests freak you out)
18.26
Rising Level 4's
Your examples are longer and more complex, so you can spread them out over multiple days as you see fit:
18.30
18.31
18.32
18.34
So, hold steady and don't let the little notes scare you -- they're just a decorative part of the whole, and if you approach them calmly, they'll fall into place.
PS: It looks like I lied about this post being short...sometimes that happens when we get going, I guess...my apologies!
Sunday, February 12, 2012
O tell me the truth about love
Greetings, much-loved solfeggists!
First, in honor of Valentine's Day, please indulge me in reading the following by one of my all-time favorite poets, W.H. Auden. Benjamin Britten set it and three of Auden's other poems about love in his "Cabaret Songs" -- you can follow this link to hear a performance of all four songs (the audio quality isn't the best....sorry!).
Some say that love's a little boy, and some say it's a bird,
Some say it makes the world go round, and some say that's absurd:
But when I asked the man next door who looked as if he knew,
His wife grew very cross indeed and said it wouldn't do.
Does it look like a pair of pyjamas or the ham in a temperance hotel?
O tell me the truth about love.
Does its odour remind one of llamas, or has it a comforting smell?
O tell me the truth about love.
Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is, or soft as an eiderdown fluff?
Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?
O tell me the truth about love.
I looked inside the summerhouse, it wasn't ever there,
I've tried the Thames at Maidenhead and Brighton's bracing air;
I don't know what the blackbird sang or what the roses said,
But it wasn't in the chicken run or underneath the bed.
Can it pull extraordinary faces? Is it usually sick on a swing?
O tell me the truth about love.
Does it spend all its time at the races, or fiddling with pieces of string?
O tell me the truth about love.
Has it views of its own about money? Does it think patriotism enough?
Are its stories vulgar, but funny?
O tell me the truth about love.
Your feelings when you meet it, I am told, you can't forget,
I've sought it since I was a child but haven't found it yet;
I'm getting on for thirty-five, and still I do not know
What kind of creature it can be that bothers people so.
When it comes, will it come without warning, just as I'm picking my nose?
O tell me the truth about love.
Will it knock on my door in the morning, or tread in the bus on my toes?
O tell me the truth about love.
Will it come like a change in the weather? Will its greeting be courteous or bluff?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.
Clearly, Auden isn't being too serious about all this (ergo the allusion to nose-picking), but his request is well-taken. We've all been enculturated into the rosiest of illusions about love, courtesy of the Disney princesses, Hallmark, eHarmony, etc. We've also seen the reality of our own and others' relationships, and the cognitive dissonance between the illusory and the real can be hard to take. In particular, I've been noticing that this concept of the ideal often prevents people from having the guts to talk about what's real (and what's really bothering us) because we feel guilty that we haven't managed somehow to magick fantasy into reality. Then, we get resentful because things drift ever further away from the way we want them to be, and it becomes harder and harder to salvage whatever's gone wrong. Luckily, no one has a perfect memory, and we all forget many of our disappointments, which turns into a kind of accidental forgiveness....but it's clear that this isn't a real solution, and sometimes it isn't so easy to wait until the feelings pass.
My rising level 3's will remember me saying several times this summer:
Solfa is like therapy. When you talk about your problems, it becomes a lot easier to solve them.
I'd like to add to that:
Your relationship to your own ideal musical self is like any other relationship. It doesn't thrive because you feel fuzzy about it. It thrives because you work on it.
This is not to say that you shouldn't enjoy the work. Lucky for us, there's a lot to love about being a musician, and we should strive to immerse ourselves in the most satisfying parts of that as often as we can, whether that's performing, listening, composing, whatever. But, there's also spinach to be eaten...and we can't expect to be virtuosi if we shy away from the aspects of our musicianship that fall short. We have to be honest about them. We have to talk about them. We have to give them some attention, and be ok with the fact that it might be intellectually and emotionally difficult in the short run. But, if we believe it's worth it, we have to try.
All Levels:
Take a look at this love song by Hans Leo Hassler:
http://www3.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sheet/hassler/hass-gmu.pdf
The gist of the text is, "Woe is me, I'm in love with someone too good for me..."
Sing through the melody first, and then as many of the harmony parts as you care to tackle.
Memorize the melody
Do a chordal analysis (rising 2's, do as much as you dare) -- you can take your pick of solfa chords (meaning that you start with a Do major) or Roman numerals.
Then, look at this setting of essentially the same melody:
http://www.saengerkreis-bamberg.de/noten/geistlich/passion/Bach_WennIchEinmalSollScheiden.pdf
Sing through the parts, and do a Roman numeral analysis (again, as you are able).
The text of this verse of the chorale (taken from Bach's St. Matthew Passion, and this harmonization is sung just after Christ dies) is:
When I must once and for all depart,
then do not depart from me;
when I must suffer death,
then stand by me;
when my heart will be
most fearful,
then snatch me from the terrors
by the virtue of your own fear and pain!
....and suddenly it's a whole other kind of love song. You can listen to it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8Q6rxdPT7A
And finally, to answer Mr. Auden's question:
Love is little, love is low
Love will make my spirit grow
Grow in peace, grow in light,
Love will do the thing that's right.
(Shaker Hymn)
Happy Valentine's Day!
First, in honor of Valentine's Day, please indulge me in reading the following by one of my all-time favorite poets, W.H. Auden. Benjamin Britten set it and three of Auden's other poems about love in his "Cabaret Songs" -- you can follow this link to hear a performance of all four songs (the audio quality isn't the best....sorry!).
Some say that love's a little boy, and some say it's a bird,
Some say it makes the world go round, and some say that's absurd:
But when I asked the man next door who looked as if he knew,
His wife grew very cross indeed and said it wouldn't do.
Does it look like a pair of pyjamas or the ham in a temperance hotel?
O tell me the truth about love.
Does its odour remind one of llamas, or has it a comforting smell?
O tell me the truth about love.
Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is, or soft as an eiderdown fluff?
Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?
O tell me the truth about love.
I looked inside the summerhouse, it wasn't ever there,
I've tried the Thames at Maidenhead and Brighton's bracing air;
I don't know what the blackbird sang or what the roses said,
But it wasn't in the chicken run or underneath the bed.
Can it pull extraordinary faces? Is it usually sick on a swing?
O tell me the truth about love.
Does it spend all its time at the races, or fiddling with pieces of string?
O tell me the truth about love.
Has it views of its own about money? Does it think patriotism enough?
Are its stories vulgar, but funny?
O tell me the truth about love.
Your feelings when you meet it, I am told, you can't forget,
I've sought it since I was a child but haven't found it yet;
I'm getting on for thirty-five, and still I do not know
What kind of creature it can be that bothers people so.
When it comes, will it come without warning, just as I'm picking my nose?
O tell me the truth about love.
Will it knock on my door in the morning, or tread in the bus on my toes?
O tell me the truth about love.
Will it come like a change in the weather? Will its greeting be courteous or bluff?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.
Clearly, Auden isn't being too serious about all this (ergo the allusion to nose-picking), but his request is well-taken. We've all been enculturated into the rosiest of illusions about love, courtesy of the Disney princesses, Hallmark, eHarmony, etc. We've also seen the reality of our own and others' relationships, and the cognitive dissonance between the illusory and the real can be hard to take. In particular, I've been noticing that this concept of the ideal often prevents people from having the guts to talk about what's real (and what's really bothering us) because we feel guilty that we haven't managed somehow to magick fantasy into reality. Then, we get resentful because things drift ever further away from the way we want them to be, and it becomes harder and harder to salvage whatever's gone wrong. Luckily, no one has a perfect memory, and we all forget many of our disappointments, which turns into a kind of accidental forgiveness....but it's clear that this isn't a real solution, and sometimes it isn't so easy to wait until the feelings pass.
My rising level 3's will remember me saying several times this summer:
Solfa is like therapy. When you talk about your problems, it becomes a lot easier to solve them.
I'd like to add to that:
Your relationship to your own ideal musical self is like any other relationship. It doesn't thrive because you feel fuzzy about it. It thrives because you work on it.
This is not to say that you shouldn't enjoy the work. Lucky for us, there's a lot to love about being a musician, and we should strive to immerse ourselves in the most satisfying parts of that as often as we can, whether that's performing, listening, composing, whatever. But, there's also spinach to be eaten...and we can't expect to be virtuosi if we shy away from the aspects of our musicianship that fall short. We have to be honest about them. We have to talk about them. We have to give them some attention, and be ok with the fact that it might be intellectually and emotionally difficult in the short run. But, if we believe it's worth it, we have to try.
All Levels:
Take a look at this love song by Hans Leo Hassler:
http://www3.cpdl.org/wiki/images/sheet/hassler/hass-gmu.pdf
The gist of the text is, "Woe is me, I'm in love with someone too good for me..."
Sing through the melody first, and then as many of the harmony parts as you care to tackle.
Memorize the melody
Do a chordal analysis (rising 2's, do as much as you dare) -- you can take your pick of solfa chords (meaning that you start with a Do major) or Roman numerals.
Then, look at this setting of essentially the same melody:
http://www.saengerkreis-bamberg.de/noten/geistlich/passion/Bach_WennIchEinmalSollScheiden.pdf
Sing through the parts, and do a Roman numeral analysis (again, as you are able).
The text of this verse of the chorale (taken from Bach's St. Matthew Passion, and this harmonization is sung just after Christ dies) is:
When I must once and for all depart,
then do not depart from me;
when I must suffer death,
then stand by me;
when my heart will be
most fearful,
then snatch me from the terrors
by the virtue of your own fear and pain!
....and suddenly it's a whole other kind of love song. You can listen to it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8Q6rxdPT7A
And finally, to answer Mr. Auden's question:
Love is little, love is low
Love will make my spirit grow
Grow in peace, grow in light,
Love will do the thing that's right.
(Shaker Hymn)
Happy Valentine's Day!
Saturday, February 4, 2012
The Power of Suggestion
Greetings from snow-blanketed Denver!
The Universe gave me the unexpected gift of a snow day yesterday -- despite my disappointment in the cancellation/delay of conference events at my British Studies gig, I must confess how badly I'd needed a real day off.
A little time to think and gather myself, plus a few conversations with my graduate colleagues and some of my private students, have brought the article below back to my mind:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/12/07/143265882/vowels-control-your-brain?sc=fb&cc=fp
The gist of the article is this: front vowels ([i], [I], [e], [E]) tend to imply smallness or lightness, and back vowels ([u], [o], [a]) tend to imply heaviness or largeness. Obviously, this isn't completely universal, but there are definitely some pretty convincing examples in the article.
What does this have to do with solfa, you ask? Well...I have a bit of a pet theory that I can't exactly prove yet that Guido's choice of syllables (and the later evolution of our modern syllables, including chromatics) wasn't merely coincidental with the beginning of each line of the chant Ut queant laxis. I believe the syllables were chosen intuitively and intentionally to phonetically represent both the tendencies and the relative placement of each tone. Furthermore, I believe these vowel choices had some impact on the evolution from a modal to a tonal system.
Here's what I mean -- the original six syllables were ut, re, mi, fa, so, & la. If we go strictly by the rubric above, ut, fa, so, and la fall into the category of back vowels, and re & mi belong to the front vowel category. I would argue that Guido's Italianate [a] would have been more toward the bright (front) side, especially in the case of la, since the dental [l] pulls the tongue forward (resulting in a more fronted vowel). Let's leave fa in the back vowel camp for now, and assume that we now have this situation:
ut (heavy)
re (light)
mi (light)
fa (heavy)
so (heavy)
la (light)
or in the more modern system:
Now, as speakers of American-accented English, we pronounce these syllables differently, so they feel a little different to us, and our pronunciation idiosyncrasies create intonation issues different from the ones likely encountered in 11th-century Italy. If we think carefully about our pronunciation, however, the tendencies of these vowels reflect the proper intonation for a major scale, especially if we designate the vowel [o] as "stable" rather than "heavy" (which seems an allowable substitution to me):
The Universe gave me the unexpected gift of a snow day yesterday -- despite my disappointment in the cancellation/delay of conference events at my British Studies gig, I must confess how badly I'd needed a real day off.
A little time to think and gather myself, plus a few conversations with my graduate colleagues and some of my private students, have brought the article below back to my mind:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/12/07/143265882/vowels-control-your-brain?sc=fb&cc=fp
The gist of the article is this: front vowels ([i], [I], [e], [E]) tend to imply smallness or lightness, and back vowels ([u], [o], [a]) tend to imply heaviness or largeness. Obviously, this isn't completely universal, but there are definitely some pretty convincing examples in the article.
What does this have to do with solfa, you ask? Well...I have a bit of a pet theory that I can't exactly prove yet that Guido's choice of syllables (and the later evolution of our modern syllables, including chromatics) wasn't merely coincidental with the beginning of each line of the chant Ut queant laxis. I believe the syllables were chosen intuitively and intentionally to phonetically represent both the tendencies and the relative placement of each tone. Furthermore, I believe these vowel choices had some impact on the evolution from a modal to a tonal system.
Here's what I mean -- the original six syllables were ut, re, mi, fa, so, & la. If we go strictly by the rubric above, ut, fa, so, and la fall into the category of back vowels, and re & mi belong to the front vowel category. I would argue that Guido's Italianate [a] would have been more toward the bright (front) side, especially in the case of la, since the dental [l] pulls the tongue forward (resulting in a more fronted vowel). Let's leave fa in the back vowel camp for now, and assume that we now have this situation:
ut (heavy)
re (light)
mi (light)
fa (heavy)
so (heavy)
la (light)
or in the more modern system:
do (heavy)
re (light)
mi (light)
fa (heavy)
so (heavy)
la (light)
ti (light)
Now, as speakers of American-accented English, we pronounce these syllables differently, so they feel a little different to us, and our pronunciation idiosyncrasies create intonation issues different from the ones likely encountered in 11th-century Italy. If we think carefully about our pronunciation, however, the tendencies of these vowels reflect the proper intonation for a major scale, especially if we designate the vowel [o] as "stable" rather than "heavy" (which seems an allowable substitution to me):
do (stable)
re (light) (note that the resulting do-re-mi 3rd should be wide)
mi (light)
fa (heavy)
so (stable)
la (light)
ti (light)
If this theory holds water, it casts some significant doubts on the pedagogical wisdom of both fixed-do solfege (where the vowels are at least partly contradictory of correct intonation in all keys except C) and do-based minor (where the syllables me, le, & te are used to denote the lowered 3rd, 6th, and 7th scale degrees in minor, and each has a vowel that still implies "highness" -- la to le being particularly egregious). In my earlier years, I felt much more absolute about all this. These days, I'm more willing to acknowledge that vowel influence is probably much stronger for some people than it is for others. However, from an acoustical standpoint, this all seems to hold up, too, and if physical fact gives one system even a small advantage over another, I think that's worth acknowledging. If vowels can suggest to ear and voice that two notes have a certain relationship to one another, why not use the power of suggestion to our students' advantage?
I'm curious to know what you all think about this, and I'd like you to try it out and let me know:
All Levels
Read the NPR article and all my verbiage above.
Track down your Ottman book and read some examples that come easily for you (ch. 2-9, as appropriate). The first time through, sing without thinking much about the syllables -- just sing as you normally would. The second time through, be extremely sensitive to your pronunciation of each syllable. Does your intonation improve? Do you feel an increased sensitivity to the proper intonation of each syllable/interval? If you like, choose a few examples in minor and try singing them once in do-based minor and once in la-based minor, both times with a strong focus on pronunciation. Was it hard to get the intonation of the lowered scale degrees correct in do-based minor? Try singing an example or two in fixed-do (no chromatic inflections, meaning that F-flat, F, and F-sharp are all called fa), still with an eye towards pronunciation. What happens to your intonation?
I'm really quite curious to hear what you discover...
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