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A is for A
Welcome to the Daily Parker's first entry in this year's Blogging A-to-Z challenge on the theme "Basic Music Theory." Today: A is for A.In Western music, A represents the note that all other notes are...
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B is for Bass
Yesterday's Blogging A-to-Z challenge post introduced the four principal scales used to create melodies in Western music for the past five or six centuries. Today I want to talk about the opposite of a...
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C is for Clef
Today in the Blogging A-to-Z challenge we'll take a look at clefs.Yesterday I introduced the concept of a bass line, but skimmed over how that gets written down. Let's take another look at it:Take a...
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D is for Deceptive Cadence
Today in the Blogging A-to-Z challenge, I've used a bit of sleight-of-hand to sneak in a discussion of a large topic by highlighting one example of it.A cadence resolves or pauses a musical phrase. The...
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E is for "Ethnic" sixth chords
One problem with the Blogging A-to-Z challenge becomes obvious when you try to cover a field like music theory that has concepts building on other concepts. You wind up posting things out of...
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F is for Fugue
Today's Blogging A-to-Z challenge post will discuss a form of music that, sadly, doesn't turn up much anymore. I say "sadly" because the fugue is one of the most intricate and difficult-to-write...
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G is for Gregorian Chant
The Blogging A-to-Z challenge now takes you back about 1,100 years to the beginnings of Western music: Gregorian chant.Simple plainchants go back before people generally wrote music down. In the late...
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H is for Harmony
Today's Blogging A-to-Z challenge entry builds on yesterday's by adding a third voice to a simple two-voice example to create harmony.Simply put, harmony is any two notes sounded together. But in...
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I is for Interval
Today I'm going to write about a topic that would have come second in any reasonable course on music theory. But in the Blogging A-to-Z challenge, sometimes the cart does come before the ox. Because...
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J is for Jazz
Now that you know everything about harmony...oh, wait. Because regular old harmonies have nothing on jazz. So for today's Blogging A-to-Z challenge entry I'm going to lift up the curtain on some pretty...
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K is for Key
For day 11 in this year's Blogging A-to-Z challenge, we take a look at keys. Not the ones on a musical instrument, but the ones on a staff sheet.A key designates which scale the piece (or part of the...
View ArticleJallianwalh Bagh, 100 years later
One hundred years ago this hour (Sunday 13 April 1919, 17:37 HMT), Brig. General Reginald Dyer order his men to fire on 10,000 unarmed Indian civilians within an enclosed space from which they had no...
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L is for Legato
I don't always have time to write Blogging A-to-Z challenge posts ahead of time. This week I've had almost no free time until just now.Today I'm going to slide into the topic of markings. Music...
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M is for Modes
Today's Blogging A-to-Z challenge entry goes back in time a little bit. Before there were keys, there were modes: the original scales used in Ancient Greece that still pertain today.Our C-major scale...
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N is for Notation
Today's Blogging A-to-Z challenge post will, like yesterday's, take us back in time.Almost every day I've shown samples of music using modern notation. Any contemporary musician should have no trouble...
View ArticleMore than €700m pledged to rebuild Notre-Dame
Yesterday's devastating fire in the Cathédral de Notre-Dame de Paris fortunately left the walls and bell towers intact. But the destruction of the fire and roof could take 10-15 years to fix, according...
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O is for Ornaments
This morning's Blogging A-to-Z challenge entry will take a quick turn and possibly trill your heart with a brief overview of ornaments.You got a glimpse of two of the most common Baroque ornaments on...
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P is for Pachelbel
This morning, my Blogging A-to-Z challenge post will discuss a composer whose music I absolutely loathe because of its insipid, simplistic, earwormy pabulum, Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706).You have, no...
View ArticleSears sues Eddie Lampert
While waiting for the Mueller Report to download (spare a moment to pity the Justice Department's servers), an alert came in from Crain's:The bankrupt estate of Sears Holdings Corp. sued Eddie Lampert...
View ArticleI hate Scala
"It is no one's right to despise another. It is a hard-won privilege over long experience."—Isaac Asimov, "C-Chute"For the past three months, I've worked with a programming language called Scala. When...
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