Various Resources For Music Teachers

Letter Notation ... History The earliest known letter notation in the Western musical tradition appear in the textbook on music De institutione musica by the 6th-century philosopher Boethius... For example, after capo 3, most music sheets will write A to indicate a C chord, that is, they give the chord shape rather than its pitch, but some specify it as C, others give two lines, either the C on top and the A on the bottom or vice versa...

Postmodern Art ... There are several characteristics which define the term 'postmodern' in art; these include bricolage, the use of words prominently as the central artistic element, collage, simplification, appropriation, performance art, the recycling of past styles and themes in a modern-day context, as well as the break-up of the barrier between fine and high arts and low art and popular culture. Use of the term The predominant term for art produced since the 1950s is "contemporary art"...

Ancient Music ... Ancient music refers to the various musical systems that were developed across various geographical regions such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, India, China, Greece and Rome... Mesopotamia Anne Draffkorn Kilmer from the University of California at Berkeley published in 1986 her decipherment of cuneiform tablet from Nippur dated to about 2000 BCE, demonstrating that it represents fragmentary instructions for performing music and that the music was composed in harmonies of thirds, and that it was also written using a diatonic scale (Kilmer 1986)... Hurrian music Among the Hurrian texts from Ugarit are some of the oldest known instances of written music, dating from c.1400 BC and including one substantially complete song...

Music In Ancient India ... Prehistoric Music Archaeological discoveries Musical instruments, such as the seven-holed flute and various types of stringed instruments, have been recovered from Indus Valley Civilization archaeological sites... Surviving music The Samaveda, one of the ancient core Hindu scriptures known as the Vedas, consists of a collection (samhita) of hymns, portions of hymns and detached verses, all but 75 of which are taken from the Rigveda... Echoes in modern Indian music Contemporary South Asian and Indian music has its roots in the prehistoric era of Indian and South Asian culture...

The Arts ... Art is a global activity which encompasses a host of disciplines, as evidenced by the range of words and phrases which have been invented to describe its various forms. Examples of such phraseology include: Fine Arts, Liberal Arts, Visual Arts, Decorative Arts, Applied Arts, Design, Crafts, Performing Arts, and so on...

Tablature ... Tablature was common during the Renaissance and Baroque eras, and is commonly used in notating rock, pop, folk, ragtime, bluegrass, and blues music...

1990s In Jazz ... 1990 Album releases John Zorn: Naked City (February 16) Franz Koglmann: The Use of Memory Matthew Shipp: Circular Temple Don Pullen: Random Thoughts Gerry Hemingway: Special Detail Michael Formanek: Wide Open Spaces Geri Allen: Nurturer Marty Ehrlich: Emergency Peace Marilyn Crispell: Overlapping Hands David Ware: Great Bliss Charlie Haden: Dream Keeper Bobby Previte: Empty Suits Butch Morris: Dust To Dust Jazz Passengers: Implement Yourself Myra Melford: Jump Danny Gottlieb: Brooklyn Blues Mark Helias: Attack the Future David Liebman: The Tree Elements: Spirit River Hank Roberts: Birds Of Prey Music Revelation Ensemble: Elec Jazz Kenny Wheeler: Music for Large and Small Ensemble Bill Frisell: Is That You ICP Orchestra: Bospaadje Konijnehol II Phil Woods: All Bird's Children Philip Catherine: I Remember You Ray Anderson: What Because Muhal Richard Abrams: Blu Blu Blu Gerry Hemingway: Down To The Wire Terence Blanchard:...

Music Of Mesopotamia ... Sumerian music The discovery of numerous musical instruments in royal burial sites and illustrations of musicians in Sumerian art show how music seemed to play an important part of religious and civic life in Sumer... Music and dancing were a part of daily celebration and temple rites-music was played for marriages and births in the royal families... Singers probably expressed intense and withdrawn emotion, as if listening to themselves, as shown by the practice of cupping a hand to the ear (as is still current in modern Assyrian music and many Arab and folk musics) (van der Merwe 1989, p...

Dixieland ... The term Dixieland became widely used after the advent of the first million-selling hit records of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1917. The music has been played continuously since the early part of the 20th century...

Contemporary Classical Music ... Some of these composers (Cage, Cowell, Glass, Reich) represented a new methodology of experimental music, which began to question fundamental notions of music such as notation, performance, duration, and repetition, while others (Babbitt, Rochberg, Sessions) fashioned their own extensions of the twelve-tone serialism of Schoenberg...

Neoclassicism (music) ... Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony No. 1 (1917) is sometimes cited as a precursor of neoclassicism (Whittall, 1980), but Prokofiev himself thought that his composition was a 'passing phase' whereas Stravinsky's neoclassicism was by the 1920s 'becoming the basic line of his music' (Prokofiev 1991, 273)...

Bollywood ... Bollywood is formally referred to as Hindi cinema. There has been a growing presence of Indian English in dialogue and songs as well...

Baroque Music ... Baroque music forms a major portion of the classical music canon, being widely studied, performed, and listened to... Baroque music expanded the size, range, and complexity of instrumental performance, and also established opera as a musical genre...

Indian Classical Dance ... The term "classical" (Sanskr. "Shastriya") was introduced by Sangeet Natak Akademi to denote the Natya Shastra-based performing art styles...

Swara ... The basic mode of reference is that which is equivalent to the Western Ionian mode or major scale (called Bilawal thaat in Hindustani music, Dheerasankarabharanam in Carnatic). All relationships between pitches follow from this...

Chord (music) ... There are four common ways of notating or representing chords in western music other than conventional staff notation; Roman numerals, figured bass, much used in the Baroque era, macro symbols, sometimes used in modern musicology, and various systems of symbols and notations such as are typically found in the lead sheets, fake books and chord charts used in popular music to lay out the harmonic groundplan of a piece so that the musician may improvise, "jam", "vamp", "busk" or "head arrange" a part...

Solfège ... There are two methods of applying solfege: fixed do (used in China, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Romania, Russia, South America and parts of North America, Japan, and Vietnam) and movable do (used in the United Kingdom, Germany, Indian classical music, and the United States). Etymology Italian "solfeggio" and French "solfège" ultimately derive from the names of two of the syllables used: so and fa...