It's Spring Break, which means catching up on grading.
In my previous post I mentioned that I'm still trying to feel out student ability. Our curricular structure is a little odd for our popular music students, in that they take the first two semesters of music theory using the same curriculum as our Tempe students, but on the downtown campus with a different instructor. Once they reach the third semester, they break from the traditional sequence to take Arranging for Popular Musicians (Theory 3) and Analysis of Popular Music (my class, Theory 4). The arranging course is a bit of an enigma — my impression that the outcomes vary depending on who is teaching it, hence the need to get a sense of what students already know beyond (mostly) diatonic harmony and the fundamentals concepts in Theory 1.
I raise the issue of background and previous experience for two reasons: 1) the vernacular the textbook uses doesn't always align with their other instructors', who are industry professionals, and 2) that the concise format of the textbook offers little guidance on how to handle ambiguous (mostly formal) features. Of the two, I've found the latter is harder to sort out from a grading perspective. Neither are deal breakers, to be clear. I'm still really enjoying using the textbook and overall find value in its approach. However, in its conciseness it presents some issues as cut and dry when there's a degree of flexibility to be offered to students. And a less generous take on the prose is that it can come off as a little dogmatic, to which I find students are increasingly sensitive.
Formal ambiguity
For now I'll start with a few simple formal issues. In Week 3, I assigned three exercises from Ch. 8 — specifically section 8.1 which requires students to create drummer's charts for select songs. I chose exercises a, b, and i more or less at random: "When Can I See You" by Babyface, "Bored to Death" by Blink 182, and "Love Will Save the Day" by Whitney Houston. Each have a few idiosyncrasies that are worth mentioning.
"When Can I See You" is fairly straightforward. The verses are a square 8 hypermeasures long, while the prechorus and chorus both feature hypermetric extensions. In Ch. 8, de Clercq offers two approaches to handling the non-standard (for a lack of a better term) four-measure phrase structure: you can either tack on the extra measures to the right of four-bar phrase, creating an extra long horizontal phrase, or you can strictly maintain the four-bar structure and place the residual measures on their own line before moving to the next formal section.[1] Example 1 outlines the two differences below. For extra clarity, I've highlighted the parts of the phrase that are being extended so you can get a sense of the phrase rhythm.
Example 1. Two ways to notate the phrase extensions in "When Can I See You" by Babyface.
The other two exercises, "Bored to Death" and "Love Will Save the Day" have a simple but non-trivial feature in their introductions: drum parts that are texturally distinct from everything else to follow. Here the issue is practice, since these intro measures may or may not be relevant to replicating the performance. "Bored to Death" has a phaser effect on a backbeat for two hypermeasures that, in my limited experience, would be difficult to replicate in a live performance. The first measure of "Love Will Save the Day" meanwhile feature a synthesized drum fill that passes down the toms. Example 2 illustrates two different ways to notate the form for each. My highlighting indicates how the first measure(s) are texturally distinct from those that follow.
Example 2. Two different ways to notate introductory measures in "Bored to Death" by Blink 182 and "Love Will Save the Day" by Whitney Houston.
When grading, the majority of students replicated the second version, where the first measures were separated from the more-typical four-bar phrases to follow. Some also put "?" next to the measures. However, a small handful simply omitted them. You may disagree, but this interpretation also makes sense to me.
Next time
Later in the semester I had students transcribe melodies with varying levels of syncopation from Ch. 10. Their responses weren't as accurate as I had hoped. I think this is partially because the book underplays the value of traditional staff notation (which I agree with) that in turn creates some friction with asking them to notate melodies with traditional rhythmic values. Next time I'll talk about how I use protonotation as a scaffold for this activity.
[1] Like de Clercq, I prefer the strict four-bar format because it's visually consistent. If the point of a chart is to provide a template for a performer, then they can mark up the chart as they choose to enhance their own understanding.
Comments