[Smt-talk] Music Notation Software Alternative

[Stephen Jablonsky]

If one more theorist admits to be a guitar player I’m going to scream. Am I the only theorist who was trumpet player?

I blame this whole guitar thing on the Beatles. Since the Fab Four invaded our shores three quarters of the students who enter our school play the drums, the bass, or the guitar.

All kidding aside, the major question at hand concerns the ways our students come to understand music, and playing the piano is just one of them. Even though I am not an accomplsihed pianist I do find that playing critical sections of pieces I am analyzing on the piano helps a great deal. It is as if there is a tactile intelligence that comes through my fingers tips and brings new perspective to the piece I am studying. You all know that great chord in The Old Castle…well, I appreciate that marvelous nonharmonic tone even more when I resolve it with my own hands.



Dr. Stephen Jablonsky, Ph.D.
Music Department Chair
The City College of New York
Shepard Hall Room 72
New York NY 10031
(212) 650-7663
music at ccny.cuny.edu

America's Greatest Chair 
in the low-priced field







On May 7, 2014, at 5:15 PM, Steven L. Rosenhaus <srosenhaus at earthlink.net> wrote:

> As a composer and arranger of, ahem, many years, and as a teacher of composition, please allow me to make some observations and venture an opinion or 3.
> 
> * When I compose I prefer to work at a "real" instrument with paper (!) and pencil (!) (and eraser!). These days I will get to a first draft stage and then enter what I have into Finale. By real instrument I usually mean piano, but it can be guitar (my first instrument), and what I use depends on the genre of music I am writing.
> 
> * I find I can not compose using an electronic keyboard (digital piano, etc.) under any circumstances. I did it once and while the music I wrote is "okay" to my ears it sounds stilted.
> 
> * I have composed directly into Finale on occasion but always with a clear idea of the music in my head at the time. And this is only a recent phenomenon.
> 
> * I require my beginning composition students to write their first drafts in pencil on paper. I suggest but do not demand they do so at the piano though.
> 
> To me it is not so much the use of this or that instrument but the act of making a physical connection to the music one is writing. It helps somehow to clarify thought and to improve one's ability to critique one's own work on progress.
> 
> ----------
> Steven L. Rosenhaus
> srosenhaus at earthlink.net
> 
> On May 7, 2014, at 4:39 PM, Paul Lombardi <lombardi at unm.edu> wrote:
> 
>> Dear Felicia,
>>  
>> I agree with you. I find that when people (students as well as composers with degrees) write directly into notation software, the results are often unmusical, awkward, or limited in musical depth. 
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