…And remember what comfort there may be
In owning a piece thereof.
The internet is often very nearly a grab bag of stupidities, false “information” and outright lies, but if one has a decent basic education (a rarity nowadays *sigh*), the ability to read and actually comprehend the language of ones birth and the rudiments of research and filtering capabilities, it is also a rich, rich resource for learning. No, not Wikipedia, although it too has its uses for folks with enough basic knowledge and filtering skills to be able to throw the bullshit flag with authority. No, I’m talking about such gems as the MIT Open Courseware, Project Gutenberg, The University of Chicago Press online books and a myriad of other less easily found but profoundly enlightening sites.
A new discovery for me is the “education” links Gary Garriton has posted at his website that promotes his sample libraries and software. Imagine: a resource anyone who writes music can find valuable, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Principles of Orchestration, available as an interactive tutorial, complete with sound samples that are drawn from the score samples in the book. Anyone who writes music would almost have to salivate over the prospect of having an interactive Principles of Orchestration right on their desktop! Oh, my! Nice! Sure, the book’s now in paperback (not so in my days as a student) and remarkably inexpensive, but the setup at Garriton’s site, complete with forum for discussion, is much more valuable than isolated study.
Anyone interested in learning how to write better music would be well served by hieing themselves over there and getting on with it.
I love writing music, but I’m more of a lyrics gal than notes. Probably because I play the piano, French horn, trumpet, drums, violin, and a few more instruments. I wouldn’t know which scale to follow! *heh*
I don’t claim piano (though my transcript doesn’t note a piano deficiency *heh* I guess I musta passed the proficiency exam after all :-)), but I’ve played more than a few wind and string instruments and still play some. The key for me was teaching instrumental music for a few years–kinda made all the theory come alive. Afterwards, writing what I heard in my head was much easier, especially since I could score the transpositions easily. And it does make this interactive version of Rimsky-Korsakov’s classic much, much more useful than when I was exposed to it earlier.