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From: mgresham@artsnet.UUCP (Mark Gresham)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: 2nd rate European Conference
Message-ID: <1128@artsnet.UUCP>
Date: 10 Jan 91 22:16:30 GMT
References: <16244@venera.isi.edu> <1991Jan6.195628.20624@en.ecn.purdue.edu> <1117@artsnet.UUCP> <5141@idunno.Princeton.EDU>
Reply-To: mgresham@artsnet.UUCP (Mark Gresham)
Organization: ARTSNET  Atlanta, GA  USA
Lines: 43

In article <5141@idunno.Princeton.EDU> eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) writes:
>In article <1117@artsnet.UUCP> mgresham@artsnet.UUCP (Mark Gresham) writes:
>2nd-rate european conference:
[...pop song form...]
>;>>[...]  For  the  critical
>;>>understanding  of  it,  it  is  essential  to  develop  adequate
>;>>analytical methods.
>
>;I can't vindicate it.  I think it's nonsense.  Pop song-form has
>;essentially remained the same although a number of features of
>;style have changed (though not radically, and mostly through
>;matters of engineering).  [...]
>
>Amazingly, Mark, your reading of this is even less generous than mine
>was. When I read "song-form" I thought, not even Camillieri could
>mean by 'song-form' something as obvious as -- 'song-form'? He doesn't
>mean that ABA has been transformed, does he? But it's thinkable,
>now that you mention it, that he means just that. Don't forget, that
>when Camillieri listens to music, he doesn't actually hear the sound:
>he just USES the sound to figure out what form he's in. He probably
>learned about this from Lerdahl and Jackendoff.

Well, it's this absurd implication that we don't have adequate
analytical methods even if the analysis were of much damned value
at all.  The most *basic* freshman analytical methods suffice;
in fact, a high-school student of mine with average abilities is
doing it, and after 10 minutes of examining together a single
current top-40 song (with irregular phrasing and dovetailings)
exclaimed, "Oh, I see, that's easy."  (And she self-admittedly has
trouble with math.)  Latched onto it like a duck to water.
[The purpose of learning the analysis was to make it less time
consuming for her to transcribe a song from tape on her own.
Practical application, not self-congratulatory head-trip.]

Cheers,

--Mark

========================================
Mark Gresham  ARTSNET  Norcross, GA, USA
E-mail:       ...gatech!artsnet!mgresham
or:          artsnet!mgresham@gatech.edu
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