Chapter 3 Musical Sound: Section 3.1.5

3.1.5 Musical Notation

I do not have much constructive to say about this section. I will just express some personal opinions on how to let one learn music better. First, I would like to preview an example of all the musical notations that we will talk about this section at the very beginning as a whole picture.

3.1.5.1 Score

When talking about the mnemonics, I want to see a figure showing each of them next to this paragraph so I don’t have to flip back to last page, plus the figure on page 10 does not group notes by their positions.

3.1.5.2 Notes and their Duration

This section is fairly short, and the material covered is very easy. As it says “each time we add a flag, we divided the duration of the previously defined not by 2”, why don’t we reorder the table, going from whole note and “add” flags on later. Or maybe a figure showing the time length horizontally instead a table taking 2 pages could show the relations better.

3.1.5.3 Rhythm, Tempo, and Meter

This part is quite straight forward. Do we really need to know those Italian key words.

3.1.5.4 Rests and their Duration

Also, a table goes from the longest rest to the shortest or a figure showing the time length horizontally might be better.

- The Video Tutorial: Music with Rests does not exist

- If it does, it should go with this section, but it looks like going with the next one.

3.1.5.5 Keys

3.1.5.5.1 Key Signature

The key signature is easy to see and but, again, hard to know well in short term.

3.1.5.5.2 The Circle of Fifths

The circle of fifths is absolutely helpful, however, if we could talk about intervals first the word “fifth” would make more sense.

3.1.6 3.1.6 Musical Composition

I was at first having trouble reading and moving on at this part, but after Elizabeth and Erica’s explanation, most concepts are clear now. It’s just a lot of minor questions here or there. Memorizing all these terminologies shortly is quite challenging. But on the whole this section is much more organized than some previous ones.

Overall 3.1 explains the music ideas in a more science way, which pretty much works for me.