Dear Friends and Colleagues,
It is a pleasure to report that I have a new homework assignment, from Oxford University Press, related to their acceptance of "The Beat Stops Here" for publication (yay!). My task - to restart the TBSH blog and to share it with as many people as possible. Given that I am not on social media, I hope you will take the opportunity to spread word about the blog with your friends and colleagues, and together, we can make empty, dumb beating a thing of the past. We can cure podium deafness, one maestro at a time. We can solve the problem of tempo illiteracy and wasted rehearsal time, if we do it together.
Public service announcement over. I thought you might find this fun; it is from a new piece, about tempo. I shared it with my students at opera bootcamp this summer and with my current class - hope you enjoy! By the way, next CCM orch conducting workshop is next April 22-24, 2016: Conducting Rachmaninoff and Sibelius 2nd Symphonies. Woo-hoo! Can't wait.
MAKE YOUR OWN METRONOME!
An Interactive Arts and Crafts Project
I: FIRST, A TEST!
1) Do you like music?
2) Are you good at math?
3) If not, do you have a calculator?
4) Do you like scavenger hunts?
If you answered yes to at least three of the questions above, you passed the test and you can start to MAKE YOUR OWN METRONOME! All you need are a few items you already have around your house or studio. First you need some scores, then you need a pencil and paper, and a calculator (if you are not good at math).
II: GATHER YOUR TOOLS!
Scores you will need - all of the Beethoven symphonies, especially the Scherzos.
Other scores you may use – Tchaikovsky 5 and 6, Carmen, Petrouchka, and/or any other scores you want that have metronome markings. Gather your scores, pencil, paper (and calculator, if you are not good at math) in one place; you are now ready for the next step in MAKING YOUR OWN METRONOME!
III: SCAVENGER HUNT!
Below you can see a list of numbers. All you have to do is hunt through the scores in front of you for pieces of music - either entire pieces or parts of pieces - that match the numbers below. You may need more scores, so get some if you need them. Ready? OK, let’s go!
Metronome marking
Piece #1
Piece #2
Piece #3
40
48
52
56
58
60
63
66
69
72
76
80
84
88
90
92
96
100
104
108
112
116
120
126
132
138
144
152
160
168
176
Now you may be thinking, “Boy, that is an awful lot of numbers!” You are right, Maestro, it is! That’s ok; you are smart. If everyone could do it, the world would be filled with conductors, and aren’t we glad that it isn’t? So start hunting for those numbers, take all the time you want, look through all the scores you need. Here, I’ve given you a head start; below you can find a list of the metronome markings Beethoven himself assigned to the Scherzos of eight of his nine symphonies. Why not all nine, you may ask? Silly Maestro! You must know that the 8th Symphony doesn’t have a Scherzo, silly! Wasn’t that silly! Isn’t this fun?
You may now be asking yourself, “But wait, what about all the numbers in between, like 41, or 65, or 113, or 147? Why don’t we have to find THOSE numbers?” OK, here is a secret, but don’t tell ANYONE – those numbers really don’t exist on a metronome. No REAL composer uses them. You may see them in some pieces of music and even on some of those metronomes you find online, but most composers don’t use them, at least not GREAT composers. All right, maybe Bartok, but he doesn’t count; he was Hungarian. No, you really only need the ones listed above.
Another question? OK, what is it? “If I find a piece at 60, why do I have to find a different piece at 120? Isn’t that just twice as fast?” You are RIGHT, Maestro, you really only need to find pieces that are divisible into another number! The same is true with 126, or 144, which are divisible both by 2 (63 and 72) and by 3 (42 and 48). Now you are really getting the hang of it!
HERE IS YOUR BONUS STARTER LIST OF PIECES WITH NUMBERS!
Metronome Markings of the Scherzos from Beethoven Symphonies,
from slowest to fastest:
Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67
dotted half = 96
Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 36
dotted half = 100
Symphony No. 4 in B-Flat Major, Op. 60
dotted half = 100, Trio: 88
Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 21*
dotted half = 108
Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68
dotted half = 108
Symphony No. 3 in E-Flat Major, Op. 55, “Eroica”
dotted half = 116
Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Op. 125 (2nd mvmt)
dotted half = 116
Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92
dotted half = 132, Trio: 84
* - 3rd movement marked “Menuetto”
Note: Symphony No. 8 in F Major, Op. 93 has no Scherzo. 3rd movement Menuetto is at 126.
Wow! That’s 8 different numbers already, and if you divide them in half, why, that’s 16 numbers. See how much fun it is! Now for the MOST IMPORTANT PART of MAKING YOUR OWN METRONOME!! Are you ready? Here it is:
IV: CHARGING YOUR NEW METRONOME!
Once you have as much of the chart filled in as you can (and you can keep adding to the chart as much as you want), you will be able to say
I MADE MY OWN METRONOME!
But the metronome WON’T WORK until you put in a battery. Your metronome doesn’t take normal batteries, because it doesn’t run on electricity. No, your new metronome runs on a “BRAIN BATTERY.” All you have to do to charge your brain battery is to STUDY SCORES. Learn the pieces you yourself found that correspond to the numbers in the chart you made all by yourself, so you know exactly how they sound and how fast they go. The more you learn, the more powerful your brain battery will be and the longer it will last. You may ask now, “Won’t that take a long time?” The answer is YES - it will a long time. It will take years. So you had better get to work, Maestro.
You might now ask, “Now that I have my own NEW METRONOME, what can I do with it? What is it good for?” These are excellent questions: Think about this:
V: USES FOR YOUR NEW METRONOME!
Now that you have your own new metronome and charged it with your brain battery, there are several useful and fun things you can do with it. First, you can use it to find a right tempo, or the right tempo, of any other piece that has a metronome marking. Suppose you come a piece of music that you haven’t studied, and it has a metronome marking at the beginning. Maybe you are looking at the aria known as “Musetta’s Waltz,” from act two of Puccini’s opera, La bohème. It is written at 96 to the quarter note. Take your metronome, go to the line that says “96” and you will find the Scherzo from Beethoven 5. Everybody knows how this one goes! Just sing; sing just the horn call: “Sol – sol – sol – so-o-o-l, sol – sol – sol – so-o-o-l,” etc. And now you know the tempo for Musetta’s Waltz, at least as written by Puccini.
I know what you are going to say now. You will say now (I already know!) that you have heard this Puccini song, and that it went much slower than that.
Right. We said that your new metronome can be used to find a right tempo. Many pieces of music have different “right” tempos, depending on who is playing or singing them. Yes, Maestro, there is more than one “right” tempo for some pieces of music; in fact probably for all pieces of music. Don’t confuse your NEW METRONOME with another toy, like the “Magic 8-Ball,” which knows ALL the right answers, if not the right tempos. Your NEW METRONOME doesn’t have all the right tempos; it has all the tempos you need, but only you can decide if they are right or not. But here is the neat thing about your NEW METRONOME – at least you don’t have to guess anymore what all those confusing numbers mean and how fast or slow they are. Isn’t that neat? So much fun!
More to come friends. Rock 'n' roll! - MG
