I have only recently started reading as part of a group of novices. I was advised to learn the tunes in this way as aid to developing the 'highly desirable skill of thinking SLOW and playing FAST'. I am always intrigued by naturally occurring incongruities in whatever shape or form they arise but this one particularly so since it concerns another obsession: ITM. But, what does this mean? Is it essential, desirable? Can it be developed in this way? How would this affect the day to day playing technique?
I dunno. My magic dot-reading powers are rather good, but they only seem to get in the way now that I've forsaken all else but trad. It's easy to use sheet music to play music you don't know well, but in my experience it takes so much out of the experience of playing, especially in a group situation (I'd imagine VERY much so in session), that it's just not worth it. Not for trad.
That said, in moments of weakness, dots are like drugs for me, having to learn to play by ear is hard and frustrating, and dots - they take the pain away!
As far as the 'thinking slow, playing fast' is concerned - if you're a good dot-reader then the music goes straight from the page, through the eyes, bypasses the brain and into the fingers and into the air and its gone, leaving you feeling used and slightly dirty.
As far as *learning* from the dots is concerned, you might be able to play a brand new tune that way, but you won't internalize it that way. Also, it most likely will sound mechanical. And it does get in the way of the true traditional Irish music experience.
1 - the ability to LEARN a tune from the dots:
This is a very useful ability to have - and is worth pursuing.
2 - the ability to PLAY a tune straight from the dots:
This can be done by a machine - think of the old fashioned pianola playing from the roll, it produced a tune without ever knowing it. Most ITM players do not want to be like that.
(like "Clocks with no hands, forever drumming out time without ever knowing what time it is" - from a radio play by a some Taffy.)
I use dots for learning a new tune. I find that quite useful. But once I have the tune in my head I prefer playing it from memory. I find i'm more likely to ornament and twiddle with tunes when I do them from memory.
We've had this discussion several times in different guises. Unlike many of my fellow musicians, I learned firstly by ear and, over the years, taught myself to use the dots. When I used to go to trad music classes a few years ago, those who already read music were discouraged from doing so but I found it beneficial to learn for various reasons. These included building up a repertoire more quickly, confirming the notation in more difficult passages, and when I joined a local fiddle society it was necessary to play from the written music.
However, when I have learned a tune, I prefer to play it from memory and adapt it accordingly e.g style, ornamenation etc. Of course, I still learn loads of tunes by ear and listening should always be an important part of learning regardless of your chosen learning method.
Dave, I agree that your first category is the most effective and this is where I would fall. I do know some musicians who are able to play a tune "note perfect" from the dots first time but never seem to learn a tune and rely on the written music indefinitely. This is something I can't really understand, probably as my natural inclination is to learn by ear.
Bit tongue in cheek, but is there anyone out there who admits to having a theoretical musical education but cannot read music?
Or is more that, if you cannot read music, you MAY also have trouble picking up harmonies, rhythms and tunes as you don't fully understand what is going on behind the scenes.
Obviously there are always self-taught musos out there who can pick everything up by ear, and by the same token, classically trained musos who can't.
I read the dots and I learn by ear. The dots for me are a tool, a reminder of how a tune goes. It suggests the tune, or represents it but does not tell you "how" to play it. No matter what style of music you happen to be learning the nuances of playing musically come from the player not from the dots. I often look at the music to help me see how and where to add ornamentation or to mark the bowing so I'm learning the feel. I'm still a relative beginner on the fiddle so those things take work and a constant reminder "no, no down bow there, group those notes together etc.". It helps me to learn to play it right, technically speaking. Then I can go away and learn the tune in my head.
Geoff, I've met one or two people who have done general arts degrees including a study of music, but who I know cannot play or sing, and presumably would never have got round to learning to read music. And I think we've all met people who are very knowledgeable and enthusiastic about music who again cannot play or read music.
About a year ago I mentioned on a thread about the lead singer of a rock band ("The Dead Pets", if I remember right), who could not read a note of music and who knew nothing whatsoever about classical music, being entered by a television company into a prestigious competition for young orchestral conductors. After a month's intensive training and a makeover he performed well enough on the night conducting a professional symphony orchestra to convince the audience and most of the jury (I think he came 2nd overall) - one of whom was right p1$$ed off when he discovered the truth afterwards! Our young man didn't conduct from the score; he memorised the music from cds and conducted most impressively. So it shows it can be done.
Trevor
Oh, you wouldn't believe some of the discussions on this one. Usually we wind it all up by agreeing on a few key things:
1) Dots only provide a skeleton of a tune; you will not learn feel or variation or the essential soul of the tune or the playing from them. Nothing but experience and careful education of your ear (ie: listening in a meaningful way) will do that.
2) Dots are an exceedingly useful tool, but like a carpenter, you can make do without one specific tool if you need to.
3) Nothing wrong with not reading dots, nothing wrong with reading them, either.
Dots, to me, are a different issue from the issue of thinking slow and playing fast. (Playing relaxed is another way of putting that.) However, every teacher teaches differently, and every student needs to be taught differently.
Will's the one you want for this one, really. But we've all had the experience of listening to a really good player play something beautifully and lyrically and it all sounds effortless, and then we suddenly realize how fast they're actually playing. Thinking slow, playing fast.
There's all kinds of tricks to get yourself there mentally, and finding which one works for you is the really hard part, I'm guessing. Besides the hours of work after you find it, I mean.
Me, I've been reading music since I was about 4. (Mom claims it was earlier, but c'mon, she's my mom.) As Q says, I can read music very quickly, and it goes in the eyes and out the fingers without engaging one single memory muscle. This trick wouldn't work for ME but might for someone else.
Reading the dots to my mind is very useful (accessing unusual tunes, as an aid to memory, developing a repertoire more quickly, etc, etc) and I'd recommend all musicians to have a go at developing this skill - as has already been stated, it's not "rocket science". However, it's even more important to internalise the tunes so that the music can be discarded once the tune is learnt. The very nature of trad is that the music has to come from the heart and this can never be achieved playing from a sheet at a session!
It's a psychological phenomenon: you play fast, therefore you think "fast". It's easy to (subconsciouly) assume that because you're playing fast, you don't have a lot of time to execute certain physical movements. It was the most obvious to me when playing larger intervals on the fiddle (involving string crossing). In order to make it to the second note on time, I tended to cut off the previous note rather abruptly. The effect is that the tune sounds rushed. Well, not only sounds, it is rushed and it usually speeds up. The key is, to "think slow," or to consciously play each note at its intended length. And you will find out that you actually have much more time to physically execute each note than you thought. If you really don't have the time, it means that the tempo is too fast for your current technical ability. But by playing each note consciously, you are able to increase your overall speed eventually - much sooner than otherwise, and to a much faster speed, since you learn to be in control of your playing.
As for the reading part:
The idea behind this might be that when reading music, you see/read/play each individual note more consciously, and by doing so, are more likely to play each note at its intended length.
There might be something to it. Recently, I wanted to write down a tune I had learned by ear and hadn't played for a while. I really had to put the pieces back together, and I couldn't remember the third part for quite a while. After writing it down, I played through the tune reading the music to check for errors. And I found that in some more difficult sections, my intonation was better when reading the music. When I play by heart, the whole tune exists as one single entity, and I am not consciously playing individual notes (and it doesn't matter if I learned the tune originally by ear or by dots). After not having played the tune for quite a while, the motor memory of my fingers must have become a bit "hazy" and reading the notes refreshed that memory quite a bit by making me aware again of the individual notes.
On the other hand:
When reading music, you always have to look a bit ahead to see what's coming next. This might be inductive to speeding and is probably correlative to the degree of familiarity with that tune.
And, once aware of the above-mentioned phenomenon, you can also make yourself "think slow" when playing by heart, maybe even better, since - once you really know a tune inside out - you can focus more on listening to yourself.
As with almost everything, it's probably not black and white. A combination of approaches might be a good way to go. Isn't it a proven fact that the more parts of the brain are actively involved, the better one learns/remembers?
I think Andee's post inadvertently shows the disconnect that some trained musicians experience between playing from the dots and playing from memory. I think trad musicians who can read music *do* directly internalize the tune from the dots. We use the dots to hear the tune in our heads and then play it from there. In the end, this is not much different from hearing a tune played and internalizing it.
This is different from the experience of many classical players because they don't need to memorize pieces--they know the sheet music will always be there and there is no stigma against using it. So the music stays on the page for them.
As for thinking slow and playing fast, Cojo, my guess is that your teacher is talking about the time that opens up between notes and phrases in a tune once you've really got it locked in. Someone not familiar with the music tends to hear a blurring stream of notes (why it all sounds the same to neophytes), but for an experienced player the notes seem to slow down, allowing time between phrases and even between specific notes to think of variations and new directions.
My experience of this is that when I'm relaxed and playing a familiar tune, my sense of time has nothing to do with the clock and everything to do with the tempo of the tune and the relative lengths of the notes. A slower tempo give you more time, but so does a bar full of dotted quarter notes. You can also find whole chunks of time in front of stock phrases because your brain doesn't have to count each note. It anticipates the whole block of time taken up by that stock phrase and either goes with it, or uses the time to consider and act on other musical possibilities.
I'm sure I'm making this as clear as Mayan mythology...let's try a little exercise. Find an analog watch or clock with a second hand. Keep your eye on that second hand, following it from second to second. First off, even though we think of a second as a very short, quick blink of time, notice how much breathing room there is between each tick of the hand. How many thoughts or choices can you fit in there? Chocolate or vanilla ice cream? Or cookie dough or strawberry? Now, as you're naturally exhaling, stop breathing and watch the seconds go by...notice how long they seem to stretch out when your body is panicking over the abrupt lack of air?
Now imagine 5 minutes worth of seconds--seems interminable, doesn't it. Could you watch a second hand go round for a full five minutes, heeding every single tick?
The point is, in playing music, part of our brain has to acknowledge every note, and they're often going by faster than 60 per minute. So it's easy to get caught up in that, and play in a frenetic, panicky rush from one note to the next. In contrast, the relaxed, effortless lope that most of us aspire to comes from feeling that stretch of time between the motions of the second hand, between the notes themselves. It's like holding your breath. Time grows longer. You have to be conscious of that time to be able to use it, and in fact, that's where good lift or pulse comes from.
Will, you've haven't been reading Terry Pratchett's "Thief of Time", have you, where he talks about "time slicing"? Gets quite deep and philosophical in places
Trevor
LOL is electronic shorthand for laugh or laughing out loud. There are a few variations; ROTFL = Rolling on the floor laughing. ROFLMAO = Rolling on the floor laughing my a*s off.
Zina, the artiste is awaiting divine inspiration....
No really, I'm back on the walking-dead western resource policy book, incorporating peer review comments and edits. I've tried before, but I can't seem to write two books at once. Mostly, I'd suffocate under the double avalanche of paper in my little office.
In one of Terry Pratchett's books he mentions that the authorities in Ankh Morpork conducting a census of the A-M docks found something like 240 seamstresses, but only one needle.
Will, I guess I should have said *I* wouldn't be able to internalize a tune from reading the music. Maybe it's because I don't read music very well or quickly enough. ( I am more of a disconnected *untrained* rather than trained musician...
"How do they rise up, rise up, rise up, how do they rise up, rise up high?" Does anyone have any idea what song that is? Pratchett normally bases those kinds of things around real things, or at least, things that are from this particular leg of the trousers of Time...
> I remember a kid at primary school singing something like it
> and I tracked down another version in the 1920s -- can't find any
> provenance for it anywhere, and consensus of opinion is that it
> may be a WW1 trench song which became an early version of
> what are now known as 'Rugby songs.' Whatever the tune, it
> should be simple and swing along. it's only 'sad' in context. - Terry Pratchett
I wondered if it was somehow related to the counting song about Angels and Devils -- "Ten little angels, all dressed in white, trying to get to heaven on the end of a kite, but the kite it broke and down they fell...instead of going to heaven, they all went to nine little angels..."
My wife, who used to run a Brownie pack (junior Girl Scouts in the US?,) tells me that "Angels and Devils" was very popular with the children and that the "devils" part goes:
"Ten little devils all dressed in red tried to get to heaven on the end of a bed but the bedstead it broke and down they all fell they could not get to heaven but they all went to nine little devils ..."
Here in the States, the Girl Scouts (Guides over there!) sing: Ten little devils, all dressed in red, trying to get to heaven on the end of a thread, but the thread it broke and down they fell...instead of going to heaven, they all went to nine little devils...!"
I remember once laughing a lot with a whole group of former Girl Scouts as we laughed and argued about whose version of the camp songs were the "right" ones... Heh.
Oh, and Trev, your wife may or may not remember that the song ends with "don't get excited, don't lose your head...instead of going to heaven, they all went to bed!"
reading the notes
reading the notes
I have only recently started reading as part of a group of novices. I was advised to learn the tunes in this way as aid to developing the 'highly desirable skill of thinking SLOW and playing FAST'. I am always intrigued by naturally occurring incongruities in whatever shape or form they arise but this one particularly so since it concerns another obsession: ITM. But, what does this mean? Is it essential, desirable? Can it be developed in this way? How would this affect the day to day playing technique?
# Posted on November 12th 2003 by r&c
Re: reading the notes
I dunno. My magic dot-reading powers are rather good, but they only seem to get in the way now that I've forsaken all else but trad. It's easy to use sheet music to play music you don't know well, but in my experience it takes so much out of the experience of playing, especially in a group situation (I'd imagine VERY much so in session), that it's just not worth it. Not for trad.
That said, in moments of weakness, dots are like drugs for me, having to learn to play by ear is hard and frustrating, and dots - they take the pain away!
# Posted on November 12th 2003 by Q
As far as the 'thinking slow, playing fast' is concerned - if you're a good dot-reader then the music goes straight from the page, through the eyes, bypasses the brain and into the fingers and into the air and its gone, leaving you feeling used and slightly dirty.
# Posted on November 12th 2003 by Q
Re: reading the notes
I like that description, Q !
As far as *learning* from the dots is concerned, you might be able to play a brand new tune that way, but you won't internalize it that way. Also, it most likely will sound mechanical. And it does get in the way of the true traditional Irish music experience.
# Posted on November 12th 2003 by Andee
Re: reading the notes
There are two things going on here:
1 - the ability to LEARN a tune from the dots:
This is a very useful ability to have - and is worth pursuing.
2 - the ability to PLAY a tune straight from the dots:
This can be done by a machine - think of the old fashioned pianola playing from the roll, it produced a tune without ever knowing it. Most ITM players do not want to be like that.
(like "Clocks with no hands, forever drumming out time without ever knowing what time it is" - from a radio play by a some Taffy.)
Dave
# Posted on November 12th 2003 by showaddydadito
Re: reading the notes
I use dots for learning a new tune. I find that quite useful. But once I have the tune in my head I prefer playing it from memory. I find i'm more likely to ornament and twiddle with tunes when I do them from memory.
Dots for starters for learning the basic tune
# Posted on November 12th 2003 by deharvey2002
Re: reading the notes
We've had this discussion several times in different guises. Unlike many of my fellow musicians, I learned firstly by ear and, over the years, taught myself to use the dots. When I used to go to trad music classes a few years ago, those who already read music were discouraged from doing so but I found it beneficial to learn for various reasons. These included building up a repertoire more quickly, confirming the notation in more difficult passages, and when I joined a local fiddle society it was necessary to play from the written music.
However, when I have learned a tune, I prefer to play it from memory and adapt it accordingly e.g style, ornamenation etc. Of course, I still learn loads of tunes by ear and listening should always be an important part of learning regardless of your chosen learning method.
Dave, I agree that your first category is the most effective and this is where I would fall. I do know some musicians who are able to play a tune "note perfect" from the dots first time but never seem to learn a tune and rely on the written music indefinitely. This is something I can't really understand, probably as my natural inclination is to learn by ear.
John
# Posted on November 12th 2003 by Johannes J
Re: reading the notes
Bit tongue in cheek, but is there anyone out there who admits to having a theoretical musical education but cannot read music?
Or is more that, if you cannot read music, you MAY also have trouble picking up harmonies, rhythms and tunes as you don't fully understand what is going on behind the scenes.
Obviously there are always self-taught musos out there who can pick everything up by ear, and by the same token, classically trained musos who can't.
# Posted on November 12th 2003 by geoffwright
Re: reading the notes
I read the dots and I learn by ear. The dots for me are a tool, a reminder of how a tune goes. It suggests the tune, or represents it but does not tell you "how" to play it. No matter what style of music you happen to be learning the nuances of playing musically come from the player not from the dots. I often look at the music to help me see how and where to add ornamentation or to mark the bowing so I'm learning the feel. I'm still a relative beginner on the fiddle so those things take work and a constant reminder "no, no down bow there, group those notes together etc.". It helps me to learn to play it right, technically speaking. Then I can go away and learn the tune in my head.
# Posted on November 13th 2003 by ANNY
Re: reading the notes
Geoff, I've met one or two people who have done general arts degrees including a study of music, but who I know cannot play or sing, and presumably would never have got round to learning to read music. And I think we've all met people who are very knowledgeable and enthusiastic about music who again cannot play or read music.
About a year ago I mentioned on a thread about the lead singer of a rock band ("The Dead Pets", if I remember right), who could not read a note of music and who knew nothing whatsoever about classical music, being entered by a television company into a prestigious competition for young orchestral conductors. After a month's intensive training and a makeover he performed well enough on the night conducting a professional symphony orchestra to convince the audience and most of the jury (I think he came 2nd overall) - one of whom was right p1$$ed off when he discovered the truth afterwards! Our young man didn't conduct from the score; he memorised the music from cds and conducted most impressively. So it shows it can be done.
Trevor
# Posted on November 13th 2003 by lazyhound
Re: reading the notes
Oh, you wouldn't believe some of the discussions on this one. Usually we wind it all up by agreeing on a few key things:
1) Dots only provide a skeleton of a tune; you will not learn feel or variation or the essential soul of the tune or the playing from them. Nothing but experience and careful education of your ear (ie: listening in a meaningful way) will do that.
2) Dots are an exceedingly useful tool, but like a carpenter, you can make do without one specific tool if you need to.
3) Nothing wrong with not reading dots, nothing wrong with reading them, either.
Dots, to me, are a different issue from the issue of thinking slow and playing fast. (Playing relaxed is another way of putting that.) However, every teacher teaches differently, and every student needs to be taught differently.
Will's the one you want for this one, really. But we've all had the experience of listening to a really good player play something beautifully and lyrically and it all sounds effortless, and then we suddenly realize how fast they're actually playing. Thinking slow, playing fast.
There's all kinds of tricks to get yourself there mentally, and finding which one works for you is the really hard part, I'm guessing. Besides the hours of work after you find it, I mean.
Me, I've been reading music since I was about 4. (Mom claims it was earlier, but c'mon, she's my mom.) As Q says, I can read music very quickly, and it goes in the eyes and out the fingers without engaging one single memory muscle. This trick wouldn't work for ME but might for someone else.
Zina
# Posted on November 13th 2003 by Zina Lee
Re: reading the notes
Reading the dots to my mind is very useful (accessing unusual tunes, as an aid to memory, developing a repertoire more quickly, etc, etc) and I'd recommend all musicians to have a go at developing this skill - as has already been stated, it's not "rocket science". However, it's even more important to internalise the tunes so that the music can be discarded once the tune is learnt. The very nature of trad is that the music has to come from the heart and this can never be achieved playing from a sheet at a session!
# Posted on November 13th 2003 by Bannerman
Re: reading the notes
As for the "thinking slow, playing fast" part:
It's a psychological phenomenon: you play fast, therefore you think "fast". It's easy to (subconsciouly) assume that because you're playing fast, you don't have a lot of time to execute certain physical movements. It was the most obvious to me when playing larger intervals on the fiddle (involving string crossing). In order to make it to the second note on time, I tended to cut off the previous note rather abruptly. The effect is that the tune sounds rushed. Well, not only sounds, it is rushed and it usually speeds up. The key is, to "think slow," or to consciously play each note at its intended length. And you will find out that you actually have much more time to physically execute each note than you thought. If you really don't have the time, it means that the tempo is too fast for your current technical ability. But by playing each note consciously, you are able to increase your overall speed eventually - much sooner than otherwise, and to a much faster speed, since you learn to be in control of your playing.
As for the reading part:
The idea behind this might be that when reading music, you see/read/play each individual note more consciously, and by doing so, are more likely to play each note at its intended length.
There might be something to it. Recently, I wanted to write down a tune I had learned by ear and hadn't played for a while. I really had to put the pieces back together, and I couldn't remember the third part for quite a while. After writing it down, I played through the tune reading the music to check for errors. And I found that in some more difficult sections, my intonation was better when reading the music. When I play by heart, the whole tune exists as one single entity, and I am not consciously playing individual notes (and it doesn't matter if I learned the tune originally by ear or by dots). After not having played the tune for quite a while, the motor memory of my fingers must have become a bit "hazy" and reading the notes refreshed that memory quite a bit by making me aware again of the individual notes.
On the other hand:
When reading music, you always have to look a bit ahead to see what's coming next. This might be inductive to speeding and is probably correlative to the degree of familiarity with that tune.
And, once aware of the above-mentioned phenomenon, you can also make yourself "think slow" when playing by heart, maybe even better, since - once you really know a tune inside out - you can focus more on listening to yourself.
As with almost everything, it's probably not black and white. A combination of approaches might be a good way to go. Isn't it a proven fact that the more parts of the brain are actively involved, the better one learns/remembers?
# Posted on November 13th 2003 by heike
Re: reading the notes
I think Andee's post inadvertently shows the disconnect that some trained musicians experience between playing from the dots and playing from memory. I think trad musicians who can read music *do* directly internalize the tune from the dots. We use the dots to hear the tune in our heads and then play it from there. In the end, this is not much different from hearing a tune played and internalizing it.
This is different from the experience of many classical players because they don't need to memorize pieces--they know the sheet music will always be there and there is no stigma against using it. So the music stays on the page for them.
As for thinking slow and playing fast, Cojo, my guess is that your teacher is talking about the time that opens up between notes and phrases in a tune once you've really got it locked in. Someone not familiar with the music tends to hear a blurring stream of notes (why it all sounds the same to neophytes), but for an experienced player the notes seem to slow down, allowing time between phrases and even between specific notes to think of variations and new directions.
My experience of this is that when I'm relaxed and playing a familiar tune, my sense of time has nothing to do with the clock and everything to do with the tempo of the tune and the relative lengths of the notes. A slower tempo give you more time, but so does a bar full of dotted quarter notes. You can also find whole chunks of time in front of stock phrases because your brain doesn't have to count each note. It anticipates the whole block of time taken up by that stock phrase and either goes with it, or uses the time to consider and act on other musical possibilities.
I'm sure I'm making this as clear as Mayan mythology...let's try a little exercise. Find an analog watch or clock with a second hand. Keep your eye on that second hand, following it from second to second. First off, even though we think of a second as a very short, quick blink of time, notice how much breathing room there is between each tick of the hand. How many thoughts or choices can you fit in there? Chocolate or vanilla ice cream? Or cookie dough or strawberry? Now, as you're naturally exhaling, stop breathing and watch the seconds go by...notice how long they seem to stretch out when your body is panicking over the abrupt lack of air?
Now imagine 5 minutes worth of seconds--seems interminable, doesn't it. Could you watch a second hand go round for a full five minutes, heeding every single tick?
The point is, in playing music, part of our brain has to acknowledge every note, and they're often going by faster than 60 per minute. So it's easy to get caught up in that, and play in a frenetic, panicky rush from one note to the next. In contrast, the relaxed, effortless lope that most of us aspire to comes from feeling that stretch of time between the motions of the second hand, between the notes themselves. It's like holding your breath. Time grows longer. You have to be conscious of that time to be able to use it, and in fact, that's where good lift or pulse comes from.
Okay people--Inhale!
# Posted on November 13th 2003 by Will CPT
Re: reading the notes
Will, you've haven't been reading Terry Pratchett's "Thief of Time", have you, where he talks about "time slicing"? Gets quite deep and philosophical in places
Trevor
# Posted on November 13th 2003 by lazyhound
Re: reading the notes
Heh, no, but great writers think alike....
;o)
# Posted on November 13th 2003 by Will CPT
Re: reading the notes
LOL
# Posted on November 13th 2003 by Zina Lee
Re: reading the notes
Hey, I'm the champion of coming up with great ideas and inventions a day later than the other guy or gal.....
# Posted on November 13th 2003 by Will CPT
Re: reading the notes
And novels?
# Posted on November 13th 2003 by Zina Lee
Re: reading the notes
And movie scripts, plays, magazine articles, thought-provoking political essays, oh, and books about playing Irish music at sessions....
# Posted on November 13th 2003 by Will CPT
Re: reading the notes
Yes, how is that fiddle book coming along? *snort*
# Posted on November 13th 2003 by Zina Lee
ZINA!
What does "LOL" mean? And why? Please explain %)
# Posted on November 13th 2003 by fiel
Re: reading the notes
LOL is electronic shorthand for laugh or laughing out loud. There are a few variations; ROTFL = Rolling on the floor laughing. ROFLMAO = Rolling on the floor laughing my a*s off.
Why.. quicker than keying all in.
Deb.
# Posted on November 13th 2003 by Agnes Nutter
Re: reading the notes
Laughing Out Loud.
Because I made a funny.
Zina, the artiste is awaiting divine inspiration....
No really, I'm back on the walking-dead western resource policy book, incorporating peer review comments and edits. I've tried before, but I can't seem to write two books at once. Mostly, I'd suffocate under the double avalanche of paper in my little office.
# Posted on November 13th 2003 by Will CPT
Re: reading the notes
Yes, but remember an artiste is just an artist with an e on the end...
# Posted on November 13th 2003 by Zina Lee
Re: reading the notes
And a seamstress is just a seam leading into stress....
# Posted on November 13th 2003 by Will CPT
Re: reading the notes
In one of Terry Pratchett's books he mentions that the authorities in Ankh Morpork conducting a census of the A-M docks found something like 240 seamstresses, but only one needle.
# Posted on November 13th 2003 by Q
Re: reading the notes
yeah, yeah, watchit or I'll come after you with my mushroom...hehe. I was going to make a joke about a tuppeny upright, but decided against it...
# Posted on November 13th 2003 by Zina Lee
Re: reading the notes
I like Heikes' idea of stretching tunes a bit. One of my heroines is Mary MacNamara on anglo concertina, she does exactly that.
# Posted on November 13th 2003 by geoffwright
Re: reading the notes
Will, I guess I should have said *I* wouldn't be able to internalize a tune from reading the music. Maybe it's because I don't read music very well or quickly enough. ( I am more of a disconnected *untrained* rather than trained musician...
# Posted on November 13th 2003 by Andee
Re: reading the notes
help I'm turning blue - can I breath out yet?
# Posted on November 13th 2003 by Yohan
Re: reading the notes
*splorf*
Yohan, what with you and Ottery over in the Tune Names thread, I've had to mop up tea off my keyboard three times already today!
# Posted on November 13th 2003 by Q
Re: reading the notes
Here muckas... have a bit of Pig Treacle then.
And wear a bit of Lilac on the 25th of May.....
# Posted on November 16th 2003 by Pádraig
Re: reading the notes
"How do they rise up, rise up, rise up, how do they rise up, rise up high?" Does anyone have any idea what song that is? Pratchett normally bases those kinds of things around real things, or at least, things that are from this particular leg of the trousers of Time...
# Posted on November 16th 2003 by Zina Lee
Re: reading the notes
"They rise head up, head up.....
I don't know. It sounds like it should.
An Ó Mhaoldhomhnaigh....
# Posted on November 17th 2003 by Pádraig
Re: reading the notes
"They rise feet up, feet up..."
I'll ask... brb... right, from the man himself:
Where did the tune to 'Rise up' come from?
> I remember a kid at primary school singing something like it
> and I tracked down another version in the 1920s -- can't find any
> provenance for it anywhere, and consensus of opinion is that it
> may be a WW1 trench song which became an early version of
> what are now known as 'Rugby songs.' Whatever the tune, it
> should be simple and swing along. it's only 'sad' in context. - Terry Pratchett
# Posted on November 17th 2003 by Q
Re: reading the notes
Cool. I assume that's from the BB on his website?
# Posted on November 17th 2003 by Zina Lee
I wondered if it was somehow related to the counting song about Angels and Devils -- "Ten little angels, all dressed in white, trying to get to heaven on the end of a kite, but the kite it broke and down they fell...instead of going to heaven, they all went to nine little angels..."
# Posted on November 17th 2003 by Zina Lee
Re: reading the notes
My wife, who used to run a Brownie pack (junior Girl Scouts in the US?,) tells me that "Angels and Devils" was very popular with the children and that the "devils" part goes:
"Ten little devils all dressed in red tried to get to heaven on the end of a bed but the bedstead it broke and down they all fell they could not get to heaven but they all went to nine little devils ..."
Trevor
# Posted on November 17th 2003 by lazyhound
Re: reading the notes
Here in the States, the Girl Scouts (Guides over there!) sing: Ten little devils, all dressed in red, trying to get to heaven on the end of a thread, but the thread it broke and down they fell...instead of going to heaven, they all went to nine little devils...!"
I remember once laughing a lot with a whole group of former Girl Scouts as we laughed and argued about whose version of the camp songs were the "right" ones... Heh.
# Posted on November 17th 2003 by Zina Lee
Re: reading the notes
Oh, and Trev, your wife may or may not remember that the song ends with "don't get excited, don't lose your head...instead of going to heaven, they all went to bed!"
Ah, the days of innocence.
# Posted on November 17th 2003 by Zina Lee
Re: reading the notes
The quote was from the alt.fan.pratchett newsgroup.
# Posted on November 17th 2003 by Q