Nathan Bowen's Blog

Click here to get the PSS sheet.

Click here to download your dictation/theory assignment for Monday. Here’s the deal: this melody is in E minor.  Your assignment is to write the melody (8 measures, in duple meter) and the bass line to your best ability, then write what the Roman numerals are implied (or what you hear).  This will be handed in at the beginning of Theory 2 at 1pm this Monday.

Hi class:

Go to http://songza.fm/nb23 to access my playlist.

Oh, and you can download the syllabus here.

For those of you who are interested in being able to poke around with a piano, but never seem to be in front of one, here’s a simple midi keyboard application I’ve made (Mac OS X only for now), aptly named Midi Keyboard 1.0.  It’s free!

The main feature of this app is the ability to use your computer keyboard (commonly called the ‘QWERTY keyboard’) as a piano keyboard.  This is a feature that now comes standard with most DAWs (digital audio workstations) like Garageband, Logic, Sonar, etc., but for most beginning musicians, those programs are either too expensive or too advanced.

QWERTY keybaord meets piano keyboard

This application is designed to help a beginning musician get acquainted with pitches, intervals, and note names quickly and easily.  Once you hit the caps lock button and start playing around, the program automatically tells you what note letter name you are playing (C and G in the picture below), what interval the last two notes you play formed, and how many semitones that interval is.

Screenshot of the interface.

Additionally, if you choose a key the program will tell you what solfége syllable your note is (using the movable do system).

This is in a beta stage and is likely to be part of a larger project involving interval recognition.  But in the meantime, you can download the latest version here:

Midi Keyboard 1.0

One of the classes I teach currently is MUSTH 101 at Hunter College.

Course Summary

The aim of the course is to teach the fundamentals of Western music and Western music notation from the ground up; that is:

• recognizing and notating pitches in treble and bass clefs;
• the basics of rhythmic notation, including durations, rests, and the distinction between simple and compound meters;
• accidentals;
• hearing and notating simple intervals, and identifying their quality (first without, and then with accidentals);
• major and minor scale construction;
• major and minor key signatures;
• standard articulation and dynamic markings;
• writing simple tertian triads (major, minor, diminished, and augmented) in root position on a single staff;
• introduction to the basic layout of the piano keyboard.

Fall 2008 syllabus

To download, click here for a pdf version.