Discussion about music, finance, and more
I’ve just added a page about sleep apnea. The more I learn about this, the scarier it gets. It’s hard to believe that this is actually very common, and yet most cases are undiagnosed, especially in kids.
In this day and age, once you think to look, it’s really easy to take a recording to find out if you’re at risk. Smartphones and tablets are everywhere, and they have remarkably sensitive microphones. I hope this information helps someone.
As a broke high school student in the early 90’s, sheet music was hard to come by. There’s the music you get from the school orchestra or youth symphony, but minimal sheet music available at the local library. Today, there is the internet, and the great thing about classical music is that the composers are long dead, which means that almost all of it is out of copyright*.
So now, if you hear a piece and want to look at the score or see a particular instrument’s sheet music, just go to the Internet Music Score Library Project (imslp.org). For an amateur musician, this is heaven!
And for most pieces, if you want to hear them, you can always head over to YouTube.
For example, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol
*Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue is still under copyright, and in fact was one of the publicized examples mentioned when congress extended copyrights.
An odd but useful phrase for remembering the Circle of Fifths.
It’s funny how some things can stick in one’s memory. I’ve recently started coming back to music after a 20 year hiatus. It’s been a Rip van Winkle experience, seeing how much has improved in 20 years (more on that later). But this mnemonic above helped me memorize the Circle of Fifths, which is really helpful in identifying key signatures and the order of sharps/flats.
There are other mnemonics, but this one stuck with me.
C major has no sharps or flats.
The sharps are added from left to right: F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, E# (aka F natural), B# (aka c natural)
The flats are added from right to left: B flat, E flat, A flat, D flat, G flat, C flat (aka B natural), F flat (aka E natural)
Given a staff with some number of sharps, it’s really easy to identify the key. You first identify the last (right-most) sharp. If in doubt, consult the circle of fifths. For example, if there are 3 sharps, the 3rd sharp must be G sharp (“Fried Chicken Good”). Then you go up a half step to the next note which is A, and hence A Major. 3 sharps = A major
Given a staff with some number of flats, you need to remember that one flat is F major. Otherwise, the key name matches the 2nd to last flat. If you think of the circle of fifths as a circle that wraps around, you’ll notice that the first flat is B flat, since flats start from the right (“Fried Chicken…. Every Bite”). Also notice that F is just to the left of C. So to find the connection between flats and keys, work by moving left in the circle of fifths. Examples: 2 flats: “Fried Chicken…Every Bite“, so the last 2 words indicate B flat and E flat. (Note I list B before E since the flats go from right to left). The key is B flat major
3 flats: “Fried Chicken… Ate Every Bite”, so B flat, E flat, and A flat. The key is E flat major.
4 flats: “Friend Chicken Good Dinner Ate Every Bite” so B flat, E flat, A flat, and D flat. The key is the 2nd to last flat, so A flat major.