CTImusic
News
Spring 1996
Analytical Listening Guide: La Creation du Monde
The Analytical Listening Guide to Darius Milhaud's La Creation du Monde, authored by Deborah Mawer, offers a comprehensive and accessible analytical perspective on this jazz-inspired tour de force of the 1920s, in association with the Rattle/London Sinfonietta CD recording (Simon Rattle: The Jazz Album on EMI: CDC 7-47991-2). The Guide includes an introductory exploration of the Parisian cultural background to the work, together with discussion of the main musical ideas and compositional techniques. The centre-piece is a detailed musical analysis, coupled with a more concise CD Tour version, designed for study in 'real-time' in conjunction with the commercial CD recording (to be purchased separately). Musical examples, glossary entries and a selected bibliography serve to support this text which is the result of previously unpublished original research. (Milhaud's La Creation du Monde also features as a main case study in a full-length book by Deborah Mawer: Darius Milhaud: Modality and Structure in Music of the 1920s, Scolar Press, forthcoming, 1996.)
This analytical package is suitable for individual or class use (either in a lecture-room with computer display projection facilities, or in a computer lab with several copies of the courseware). The material is suitable for inclusion in undergraduate courses on early twentieth-century music, French music, the assimilation of jazz within 'art music', and analytical approaches to modality. A successful pilot scheme was undertaken in Autumn 1995 at Lancaster University in a third-year course on 'Paris in the 1920s'. This Analytical Listening Guide is currently only available for the Macintosh.
Studio Techniques
The TLTP studio techniques package consists of four separate pieces of courseware:
- a guide to MIDI
- an introduction to the mixing desk and mixing
- a basic guide to acoustics
- a survey of electroacoustic music
Authors include Christiane Ten Hoopen, Paul O'Leary, Linda Irwin and David Cooper. The material is designed for first level undergraduate courses in Music Technology. It was written in Toolbook and is currently available only for the PC.
CD Tour Generator
The CD Tour Generator is an application program which enables lecturers and teachers to generate another program that is, principally, a mechanism for displaying text synchronised to an audio compact disc. This can be done without any programming knowledge. Those who have used or seen the Voyager or Warner CD-ROMs will be familiar with the idea of the generated guide.
The CD Tour Generator enables a user to add text and pictures to a 'card' and then associate that card with a portion of an audio CD. The cards and the portions of the CD must run sequentially. An access mechanism to any named and identified portion of the CD is automatically generated. A facility is also provided for the preparation of an introductory block of cards that does not form part of the CD tour itself. This can be accessed at any time during both the preparation and the operation of the tour.
The CD Tour Generator was written by Michael Pengelly. It is currently available only for the Macintosh.
Practice in Stem and Slur Annotation as a Learning Aid in Schenkerian Analysis
This practice environment for students of Schenkerian analysis was written by Michael Pengelly, Anthony Pople and Kirsty Kirkpatrick.
Using stem and slur notation on two sets of staves, students can analyse a score to show motion within the principal harmonies. A MIDI version of the musical score is provided so that students can listen to the piece provided for analysis.
Students indicate the harmonies by figuring the principal bass-notes. They can then transfer notes from the musical score on to the empty staves and annotate the transferred notes with stem and slur notation. All operations are performed by pointing and clicking with the mouse.
The program itself does not attempt to teach. It does, however, give basic advice if incorrect choices are made, though ambiguities in interpretation are not accounted for. Students may choose to look at the completed example to find their omissions, and then try again.
The recommended mode of use is for students to use the program in pairs or threes so that it provides a focus for discussion. Practice in Stem and Slur Annotation uses Mozart's Piano Sonata, K545, as the piece to be analysed. The program is currently only available for the Macintosh.
CTImusic News is © 1996 CTImusic, Celia Duffy, Lucy Warren. All rights reserved