The Choir Conductor’s Thoughts On Sounds
That’s a very bad melody of the ice cream vendor, so loud and out of tune as is an old worn out disk on an old gramophone. It would lower our sense, taste for music and so make us stupid hearing it every day and people would n.b. like it someday.
How I like to hear Vannessa Mae playing the violin in pure, full tones. “Sure, you like her instead her playing the violin” si Upik teased.
To be wakened by soft sounds of warbling birds or the chimes in a Swiss music box instead of a frightening alarm clock. Hearing it would make one ashamed driving a motor cycle without a silencer.
To hear the “clung-cloong” sounds of bamboo pieces hanging together in the wind or an old fruit vendor calling in playful pantun (verse) or the “tok-tok-tok” of the bakmi (noodle) vendor as though knocking on a door of fortune.
Instead of being terrorized by a horn war in a traffic jam,what about a horn with the sound in broken chord like this: C-G-Bes-E-A-C upwards and close with F-C-E-A or F-A-F-D as to induce, encourage, inspire drivers to hum, or whistle his own improvised melody.
How beautiful the warming up vocal exercise of my choir: mi - do - mi - mi re si la sol do fa la mi – re do, a wonderful line from the Ave Maria of Mascagni higher and higher up then lower and lower down bit by bit.
How melodious the Javanese/Sunda pelog scale: mi, fa, sol, si, do. Just play or sing what ever note of it and you would have a beautiful melody. Not to say of the slendrog scale which is on purpose, intentionally a bit out of tune as compared with our scale. And I think of Gershwin’s “I loves you Porgy”: do mi sol si re – do, sol, mi, sol – la do mi sol si – sol me do mi - … so simple, yet so beautiful.
I hope one day to buy me a gamelan set to enjoy their rich, beautiful sounds and have my children, grandchildren and me playing together once a week. I would learn and then teach it to them.
From Ekonomi Neraca Juli 11, 1997
That’s a very bad melody of the ice cream vendor, so loud and out of tune as is an old worn out disk on an old gramophone. It would lower our sense, taste for music and so make us stupid hearing it every day and people would n.b. like it someday.
How I like to hear Vannessa Mae playing the violin in pure, full tones. “Sure, you like her instead her playing the violin” si Upik teased.
To be wakened by soft sounds of warbling birds or the chimes in a Swiss music box instead of a frightening alarm clock. Hearing it would make one ashamed driving a motor cycle without a silencer.
To hear the “clung-cloong” sounds of bamboo pieces hanging together in the wind or an old fruit vendor calling in playful pantun (verse) or the “tok-tok-tok” of the bakmi (noodle) vendor as though knocking on a door of fortune.
Instead of being terrorized by a horn war in a traffic jam,what about a horn with the sound in broken chord like this: C-G-Bes-E-A-C upwards and close with F-C-E-A or F-A-F-D as to induce, encourage, inspire drivers to hum, or whistle his own improvised melody.
How beautiful the warming up vocal exercise of my choir: mi - do - mi - mi re si la sol do fa la mi – re do, a wonderful line from the Ave Maria of Mascagni higher and higher up then lower and lower down bit by bit.
How melodious the Javanese/Sunda pelog scale: mi, fa, sol, si, do. Just play or sing what ever note of it and you would have a beautiful melody. Not to say of the slendrog scale which is on purpose, intentionally a bit out of tune as compared with our scale. And I think of Gershwin’s “I loves you Porgy”: do mi sol si re – do, sol, mi, sol – la do mi sol si – sol me do mi - … so simple, yet so beautiful.
I hope one day to buy me a gamelan set to enjoy their rich, beautiful sounds and have my children, grandchildren and me playing together once a week. I would learn and then teach it to them.
From Ekonomi Neraca Juli 11, 1997
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