HARMONIC FUNCTION

I’m thinking about harmonic function in music.

If ^7 is the leading tone of the tonic, and #^4 “tonicizes” the dominant key, then #^4 is not the leading tone of the dominant key, it is the leading tone of the dominant-being-tonicized, and therefore only the leading tone of a tonic.

Does the dominant have a leading tone? Yes, as per Harrison and others, flat-^6 must be the leading tone to the dominant, which means flat-^2 is the leading tone of the tonic-being-dominantized, and therefore the “Neapolitan Sixth” chord is… dominantizing both the dominant and the tonic? Then what is the most straight-forward dominantizing chord? ^4–b^6–^1. It’s the Subdominant triad.

Then how does one Subdominantize? Is this what Tonic function does?

Kick off Fedora 18 with a Bang!

I published the Musicians’ Guide for Fedora 18 earlier today (link).

Now that the Audio Creation SIG has our own spin (whether or not it’s official yet), I’d like to try moving forward with revisions to improve the Musicians’ Guide. I have virtually no spare time, and that’s my reality for the forseeable future, so instead I’d like to encourage everybody who uses Fedora’s music/audio software to contribute!

When you contribute to documentation for free software, you’re making it easier for somebody else to take their first steps into unknown territory. Comprehensive, accessible documentation is, in my opinion, one of the most important tools we have when trying to spread free software to new users.

Here are two easy ways to join in…

1.) Check out our list of bugs (here).

If you see something that you can do (or do part of), just add your proposed changes as a comment on the Bugzilla issue. Maybe you can rewrite an entire chapter or section, one paragraph a day. Later on, I’ll pick up your revised version, add the Docs Project-specific markup, and publish your changes with Fedora 19!

2.) Start using the Musicians’ Guide, and report issues (here).

The biggest challenge I have in maintaining this 270-page document is that, because I know there are *tons* of different areas for improvement, it’s difficult to know where to start. Feedback from real users is invaluable in helping to know where to spend my time. Even if it’s as simple as fixing a typo, clarifying a sentence, or including/excluding additional information, your feedback is extremely important.

And heck, let us know when things are going well, too!

Some Docs Project Statistics

Numbers, meaning statistics. I was just updating the Musicians’ Guide translation source files for the upcoming Fedora 18 release (better late than never, right?) when I saw that Transifex, our Web-based translation tool, keeps a count of the number of words in every file. They don’t automatically sum the number of words in the whole document, but I was curious, so I did it myself.

14650 + 3600 + 1767 + 44 + 31 + 27 + 2763 + 3558 + 855 + 1201 + 1134 + 2950 + 2743 + 3692 + 7 + 1583 + 1 + 6128 + 1409 + 511 + 2345 + 4112 + 1589 + 1593 + 1448 + 21374 + 7687 + 520 = 89322

So that’s it: the English Musicians’ Guide for Fedora 18 will have nearly ninety thousand words. In case you’re wondering, the chapter with the most words is “Basic Programming in SuperCollider,” with 21,374 words, or approximately 24% of the whole book.

But how does this compare to other things I’ve written? Consider the “Cadence in Sibelius” paper I’m submitting for my doctoral applications… 15.5 pages of text brings it to 6,841 words. The Musicians’ Guide has 13 times as many words! No wonder I always feel like revising the Guide is a hopelessly lost cause…

The Art of What-Now?!

So I was reading Jono Bacon’s blog post about the second edition of his book, “The Art of Community.” This is great because I liked the first edition, and because the second edition has a much nicer cover (it’s about time the O’Reilly covers move into the 21st century).

But… why did he write it by himself? Twice! How is it that nobody along the way realized how strange it is that a book about collaboration has only one author?

Thanks to my Mentors

I just finished the survey for Fedora Project contributors who have been contributing for fewer than three years. If you can, I suggest you complete it too:

http://limesurvey.sim.vuw.ac.nz/index.php

The survey made me think about why I was able to join the project in the ridiculous way I did. Rather than starting with sensibly small tasks, I jumped in at the deep end, thanks to Fedora Summer Coding 2010. In retrospect, I can see that my mentors in this project went out of their way, and spent a considerable amount of time ensuring that I could successfully complete the Musicians’ Guide.

I wish I could return the favour, either to another new person, or to the project generally. I wish I had enough time to actually commit to and perform one of the roles I’ve put myself into.

Either way, what I want to say here is that free software contributors–and maybe people in general–don’t necessarily understand the full impact and importance of their work.

“Sibelius” Software Is Saved!

They’re hiring a “principal software engineer.” So I don’t know what they always intended to do, and I certainly don’t know what they intend to do now… but they’re trying to hire somebody.

Now you know!

Response to a Friend, about the McGill Symphony Orhcestra’s Recent Concert

Here’s what. About the MGSO concert.

I think Berlioz is great, and the world could use more of his overtures specifically, also more “Harold en Italie,” and less of “Symphonie fantastique.” And the Rachmaninoff concerto is a Rachmaninoff concerto. Whatever. I’m over it.

But the reason I had to go is because Bruckner is one of my things. It started in high school because the Bruckner tuba excerpts are fun because they’re difficult in exactly the way a tubaist appreciates. None of this super-high, super-fast BS like Berlioz (whose music is fun for another reason) or under-used octave-machine BS like Brahms (except in the “Academic Festival Overture”). In Bruckner some parts are loud, some are soft, some are lyrical, some are percussive, and so on–it’s a good mix of everything. You can see how Bruckner’s tuba writing was the start of a trend continuing through Mahler, Nielsen, Hindemith, Shostakovich… everything we have! In my opinion.

Near the end of my second year, after four terms of training in harmony, three in Caplinian form, and three in music history (Laurier is a very different place), I started to appreciate Bruckner for another reason: forget Beethoven and Mahler/Schönberg; it’s Bruckner whose music paints a very compelling picture as the culmination and conclusion to the Romantic period, and Classical-style form with it. The music historical and music theoretical frameworks are set up to do that. Whether or not it’s true is another matter, and I think not worth considering, because we can never know the truth content of a statement like that. We wouldn’t even be able to establish the criteria for whether it’s true.

But I’ve never understood the dude’s fourth symphony. I haven’t listened to it in aaaaaaages, but as it turns out, I still don’t really get it. No idea which version the MGSO used (maybe a terrible one, like the Dover score, which would be a problem), but I spent most of the first movement laughing at the symphony. I think you’re right to say they played it well, but it just sounds like it was composed by a university professor (which it was).

So I just listened to Bruckner’s fifth symphony, and indeed it’s not that all of Bruckner’s music is stupid… just the fourth.