[Harp-L] What's a scale really mean anyway?

["samblancato" <samblancato@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Folks,

 

It's the guy who started this thread again.  I thought I'd point something
out at this point which I hadn't thought of before.  I played Trombone in
band in junior high and freshman year of high school.  I read music, played
scales, practiced at home- all that stuff. I was 1st Trombone for a year, I
think.  I could sight read a lot of stuff.  I have almost no memory of being
able to sight read.  But I can remember several things about the band
classes that are germane to this discussion.  

 

I remember Mr. Ulmer passing out songs to everybody.  If the new song was in
F he would start out the entire band playing the F major scale.  We would do
this in unison.  Some of the instruments, like the Tubas would do one octave
up and down three times in a row while the Clarinets and Tenor Saxes might
go up three octaves in the same time frame.  The Trombone scales rarely ever
did three octaves of a key unless it was a real low one like B flat and I
think even then we'd only do two octaves. 

 

As stupid as this may seem I never really made the connection that we were
practicing a particular scale because we were about to go to work on a song
in that key.  I mean I think I understood it on the surface but in a
meaningless way like I knew I was sitting in a chair when I was playing - so
what?  The Trombone has several slide positions; 1st, with the slide closed,
2nd, about 2 inches open 3rd, at about the bell, 4th, 3 inches past the
bell, etc.  The same positions are numbered differently for different notes
so 3rd, at the bell is also 8th at the bell but you change your embouchure
to produce a higher note.  I knew all the notes for each position and so I
ignored the scales-matches-the-song thing almost completely.



I started out with private lesson for a month in seventh grade and then Mr.
Ulmer said I was good enough to switch to band class.  I remember the first
song I played was called "baladar" and the 3rd Trombone part was pretty
simple and so I practice it to the point where I didn't really have to read
the music other than keeping track of the rather long rests (some lasting 12
measures).  

 

We did a lot of different time signatures and some were a real pain in the
ass but you did band class four times a week so you were always on it and if
you paid attention to what everybody else was doing you eventually go it.
And I must have picked up on it okay because I became 1st Trombone with the
more demanding parts.  We played concerts that our family came to hear (who
else would want to!).  We marched in parades - the whole shebang.  But
eventually I found that I was entirely too cool for band and I dropped out.
What a shame that I was so cool.  

 

I remember all the books that I read from that era of my life.  I remember
most of what I studied in other subjects. But my burgeoning musical literacy
seems to have blown away in a cloud of smoke from a bong.  I think this says
something about either me or about the way people in general deal
cognitively with the language of music and it is, after all, a language.
What it says about me, apart from the over-arching things like I didn't have
enough guidance or discipline or what ever, is that the right brain/left
brain stuff may indeed be true for me in a large way.  Why would I forget
the abstract elements of music, the syntax and vocabulary of the language?
I am a guy who loves music. I have hundreds and hundreds of CDs of
everything from Ravel to Little Walter to Bill Evans to The Replacements.  

 

Here's another thing to consider though.  The stuff I played in Band was not
music I had any emotional (or intellectual for that matter) investment in; I
just played the stuff, although Jingle Bells Ole' was pretty cool.  But what
I mean is I didn't really care about the stupid songs we played in band.
(He actually had us play a song called Three Cheers for the Band
Instructor.)  Blues harmonica, on the other hand, was something I could
really get behind.  I could feel what I was playing and still can even
though it's all by ear now.  What an interesting schism.  I wonder if this
is common among musicians.

 

Sam Blancato, Pittsburg