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Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 3:00 pm
by strachs
Yeah, sorry motherlode, for hijacking your thread! ALL of these threads are related to some degree or another....

It's just that the circle of fifths, so fundamental to the concept, and all the insight and perspective it affords us (especially in "out-there" stuff like Giant Steps) is universal, and it's usefulness can and should be harnessed right from the get-go.

dds1234:

As to teaching the concept to a musical virgin: You never want to alienate your student from the rest of the world. In a perfect world, we would call the sharp fourth in the Lydian scale just "4" and it would be "lowered fourth" in the major scale. (just to rid ourselves of the unwarranted bias toward the major scale)

Since modes (and especially modal genre) are an intermediate, rather than an entry-level concept, I think there are limits to how much a teacher can introduce the Concept to a beginning student. From a very purist point of view, you would want to completely eliminate any inaccurate terminology and biases, but there is still hundreds of years of musical literature available and useful, though written without LCCTO's insights.

In practical terms, most beginning music students just want to get some familiar music under their fingers, and to some degree have some lingo they can use to play/discuss this stuff with their friends in a jamming situation. That's what we ALL want, even as we advance.

The concept is really at the level of the artist, because artists (generally) understand some of the pure science at work in the physical world, and find ways to exploit it in order to express themselves through their instrument or their brush (or their pixels).

Nevertheless, I think that introducing such a powerful fundamental as the circle of fifths (even without an understanding of temperament and all of it's compromises) at an early stage, opens the door to both the basic and the advanced.

As to being a "harsh" teacher .... as long as you build genuine enthusiasm for the benefits, students can enjoy this stuff... really. (It's not like I stand there with a flame-thrower, threatening pain if they don't remember "father charles goes down...")