BA1-U2- SLIDES

Button-Accordion Project

(Dual-row G-C or A-D, with Accidentals)
Based on tunes2play4fun.com & Facilitated by ZOOM

MINI-COURSE BA1

Basic Melodies

UNIT TWO (of Four)

A Simple Rhythmic Notation
(for learning to play less-familiar melodies)

Return to BA1 - Unit 2

ZOOM SLIDES & COMMENTS
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This is a 60+ year old, single-row, Hohner accordion with 10 treble buttons and 4 bass-end buttons.

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Although we going to develop a rhythmic notation for somewhat-familiar melodies,
I'm initially going to make the case using an unfamiliar melody.

This children's composition is one of the world's least familiar song melodies, because no more than about a dozen people have ever heard it.

Using only the lyrics (above), it is near impossible to guess what the composer intended as a suitable melody. We need more info, some of which is given on the next slide.

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The simple notation shown for the first line gives us three pieces of information

But that is not enough! What is missing is info about the song's rhythm.

This rhythm is determined, in part, by how long, in musical time, each note is held.

ASIDE #1: Of course, if it were a very-familiar song-melody, this simple notation might be
sufficient. But this is not a very-familiar song, so it would require timing information.

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A melody is, in part, a series of physical tones, in time, one after the other, forming a set.

For the accordion, the tones are emitted by vibrating metal reeds and transmitted as music sound waves.

The music sound waves that reach the ear are then transmitted as electro-chemical signals to the brain, where, in part, they are perceived in terms of "pitch".

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The brain can then symbolically represent these various musical pitches as notes, such as A to G, repeated, or (for our button-accordions) by the button-number notes.

These letter-notes or button-notes can be printed on paper or displayed on a screen.

The first line of "Happy Birthday" is shown at above as an example.

Within melodies there are patterns in the lengths of notes, that is, in the amount of time that
notes are held.

Although "melodic rhythm" is difficult to define or describe simply, we can begin by stating that it is related to the patterns of note-lengths in musical time.

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We first need a way of counting and indicating musical time.

The most common unit of musical time is the "beat interval", sometimes lazily referred to as the "beat".

b. In music, the "beat" is a regular pulse in time. It could be a drum beat, a guitar strum, a foot tap, a metronome click, etc. (real or imagined)

c. To be precise, the "beat interval" is the period of time from the beginning of one pulse to the beginning of the next, or from mid-point of one pulse to the mid-point of the next, or ... from some point on a pulse to the corresponding point of the next pulse.

d. The beat interval can be related to clock time by giving the number of beats per minute, sometimes called the "tempo" of the melody. Alternately it is sometimes referred to as the "pace" or the "speed" of the melody.

e. So, to take our accordion notation to the next level, we will need a symbol for the beat interval, the simpler, the better.

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For melodies that have a simple rhythm, I have found it convenient to indicate the simple beat interval using a period, or dot ( . ), and place it before the button number in our simple accordion notation.

Think of it as a "period of time" being represented by the actual "period" symbol ( . )

The colon's two dots ( : ) can represent two beat intervals, etc.

ASIDE #2: When, in future Units we meet more complicated melodic rhythms, it should be easy to adapt or fit our simple "period" notation to those melodies as well.

ASIDE #3: Beat intervals and notation will play a major role in helping us move from melodies (right hand only) to tunes (both hands), where we can play the left-hand bass and chord buttons to generate musical pulses and harmonic enhancement. We'll come back to this in BA2.

ASIDE #4: Q: How long is a beat interval in seconds or fractions of a second?
A: Beats don't have any absolute time in seconds or fractions of a second.

When first performed, it is often up to the composer, or the music director,
or the band leader, or the first performer to determine if the melody is to
be played somewhat quickly, moderately, or somewhat slowly.

ASIDE #5: The length in real time, in seconds or fraction of a second, of a beat interval can be quite different in different songs, even for different performances of the same song that follow the same rhythmic patterns.

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Our use of periods (or dots) makes it relatively easy to identify patterns in the lengths of time that notes are held for.

Identification of such rhythmic patterns may make it easier to learn less familiar melodies.

ASIDE #6: I should stress that rhythmic patterns are an important part of music. The creative combination of both pattern variety and repetition makes for interesting and enjoyable music.

Here, however, our initial interest is in using these rhythmic patterns as a learning aid, helping us to break verses and lines of music into smaller units or chunks, each of which can be practiced separately, and then combined.

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You may wonder why the slides contain certain song-melodies, but not others.

It is because these melodies meet the criteria (at left) for an introductory mini-course.

Future mini-courses may be less restrictive in this way.

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Four featured song-melodies

For each, with your microphone muted, play & practice, as we go through these selections.

All learning (self-teaching) starts with the familiar, and no song-melody is more familiar than the Birthday Song. And so it is that we begin with it.

At this stage, identify the patterns that are most useful to you.

For the novice, perhaps the 1st two notes (.5 .5) could be considered a basic pattern.

For a more experienced player, perhaps the whole first line could be considered as a single pattern, with repeats on lines 2 & 4

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(For Web Slide 20 below) This is an old English tune, from 1833. It can be played either high or low on either the inside or the outside rows. The button notes given here are for playing it using the lower octave.

Verses 2, 4 & 6 (given on the main web page) use a different melody for their first two lines, and are not formally part of this BA1 section

The white rhythmic pattern below is the same as the yellow colored one.

The red pattern is the same as the salmon one.

For initial practice, use the smaller rhythmic segments as needed.

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