minstrel: Music software, ear training

[Arlene Hills]

Music software for Macs - try Concertware.  It has MIDI, alpha-numeric, 
*and* onscreen piano keyboard (via mouseclick) means of entry, does a 
decent job of printing out music, allows you to put lyric lines with your
tunes (and title headers and footers), and is not too expensive (so I'm 
told, I just use it on the Macs at school).  This program may be available 
for PC as well... anyway, I've used it for 1.5 yrs now, I've found it very 
easy *TO* use *WITHOUT* reading the manual, and if you have a notebook Mac,
you can input music pretty much anywhere you are.  A composer-friend of mine,
Myfanwy ferch Tangwystl (mka Cat Faber) in Portland (OR) does this, and it 
seems to work very well for her.

Ellisif's ear-training interval suggestions sparked this thought: are there
other common intervals (eg major 3rd, perfect fourth/fifth, major 6th), 
which appear in "familiar" period tunes?  If I come up with some I'll 
probably use them to do some ear training in my madrigal group...

Also, here are the sharp-flat progression mnemonics I learned, and how to
derive key signatures from them:

Sharps: Fat Cows Go Down And Eat Breakfast
key: add "1" to the last sharp, eg F# -> key of G major, 
F#+C# -> key of D major, etc.

Flats - just a string, not a mnemonic; it's backwards of sharps, ie
B-E-A-D-G-C-F, and to get the key, 1-flat is F, everything more than
that, just subtract one flat, e.g. B-b + E-b = key of B-b major,
B+E+A = key of E-b major, etc.

I hope this is helpful to someone.

Cheers,
Clarisse in Adiantum (Eugene OR)


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