All of the ICEstapo Goons On The Scene Murdered Renee Good AND THE TRUMP REGIME IS GOING TO MAKE SURE HER KILLER GETS OFF

THE NEWS SAYING that Renee Good was still alive, breathing with an irregular pulse, by the time that the ambulance arrived, dying later proves one thing,  the ICE killers at the scene who kept a doctor from treating her wanted her to die.   Just as the entire group of robbers is responsible for a murder committed by one of them during the robbery,  all of the ICE and/or other federal goons on the scene are her murderers.   As are those who sent them there and allowed them to be there. 

I see no judge or, especially, "justice" on the criminal Roberts Court who did anything to prevent the many crimes of the ICEstapo, the other federal goons who have been attacking American cities and other localities.   I see no evidence that they or the joke of a Constitution are doing a single thing to stop Trump and the rest of his criminal gang for a reign of criminal terror that makes Al Capone's crime spree in prohibition era Chicago look like civil order.

What they did to Renee Good and Keith Porter are crimes that Trump's reportedly insurrectionist and white-boy gang member riddled terror police will almost certainly go unpunished,  any state or local investigations into those crimes are already being hampered by the federal government,  the federal government are going to put the victims and their survivors on trial.   

This is what the Roberts Court's six Republican members have given us,  this is what Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans who voted not to convict Trump of both the proven crimes he committed in shaking down a foreign leader in his attempt to get him to lie about Trump's rival and, most seriously, for calling and fomenting the January 6 insurrection when he tried to overturn the Constitution have done to the United States.   They weren't alone.  The corporate media from the cabloid swill to the networks to the Sulzberger shit rag brought back Trump so their owners and highly paid on-air talking heads could get more tax breaks.  The billionaires who planned on raiding and sacking the national treasury,  and most obviously such criminal organizations as the Heritage Foundation all played a major role in this war against the American People.    I see no reason to not suspect that if a Democratic Congress and president are elected that they would not, ANY OF THEM, do any better.  

This is the American People pitted against the American billioniare-millionaire class and their servants on the one hand and the seemingly permanent third of the country who, largely on the basis of their white supremacy,  hate equality, democracy and, as that kind ultimately always end up, hate a republic instead of a strongman despot.   Our Constitutional system, set up by wealthy financiers and slave-holders, is rigged to give them the upper hand a significant majority of the times,  our national mythology ignores those majority of times and pretends that the best of our history, the various civil rights movements, the Northern side of the Civil War have effectively countered the white supremacists and oligarchs when our history actually proves that the Constitution means THEY WILL ALWAYS WIN IN THE END UNDER IT. 

I believe the majority of Americans - when counted by individuals and not by the fiction of blocking them into Electoral College style "states" - are People of good will.   I believe that maybe as many as a third are consistently so and that another third may be most of but not consistently.   The Constitution as designed by the aristocrats who made up the form of government guaranteed that the worst third of our population would always get the upper hand and so that has happened.  Too many of the rest of us have been gulled by the hagiographic history constructed of lies,  the popular patriotic clap-trap of Hollywood and pop-history writers,  popular bio hagiographers,  semi-idiot Broadway toonsters,  dancers and scribblers, etc.  to not see what even our lived experience of America shows us clearly.

Those who are expecting the Constitutional order to save us need to be forced to face the fact THAT THIS IS THE GODDAMNED CONSTITUTIONAL ORDER.   You don't see any stopping Trump by the Congress.  You certainly don't and won't see him stopped of his goons punished by the Roberts Court - which is the worst Supreme Court in American history - and the entire history of that court gives them stiff competition for that title.   And under our idiot system they get to say what the goddamned Constitution IS at the time when they are in the majority on that court.   

It's not protecting us, it's not protecting our rights, it's not protecting our freedom.   It's not protecting us from ICE goons who attack, injure, terrorize, kidnap, disappear without charge or trial AND MURDER US.   An the goddamned lawyers are saying that they can effectively keep her murderer Jonathan Ross from ever standing trial by merely fiddling with the physical evidence.  If the law is an ass, it's one because the lawyers, judges and justices want it to be one. 

I doubt we're going to get out of this under the goddamned Constitution,  if we manage that miracle BUT DON'T CHANGE THE GODDAMNED THING THE FASCISTS WILL REGROUP WITH THE BILLIONAIRE-MILLIONAIRE MONEY BEHIND THEM AND DO IT MORE EFFECTIVELY THE NEXT TIME. 

Little Bobby Kennedy Is An Even More Dangerous And Deranged Ambulance Chasing Killer Than I'd Known Before

 

Notice that one of the officials mentions the number of children who have died under RFK's watch,  just in case you think my repeating the slogan asking him how many kid's he's killed today is hyperbolic. 

And see that Oklahoma's Markwayne Mullin - carrying water for RFK jr. by lying - continues to prove that the cosplay cowboy is a total and absolute scumbag.   He lied that there was a recording of a meeting that he claimed the witness was lying about only to have to admit he lied about that.  He should be disciplined, actually he should be expelled from Congress.   And Florida's skank, Ashley Moodey,  is even stupider, as you can expect from any one from that state with an R after their name.   Following the precedent set the other day by the Hysteria Podcast,  I think it's appropriate to the conditions in 2026 to call her a stupid skank.*   SHE THOUGHT IT WAS AN OUTRAGE THAT THE CONFIRMED HEAD OF THE CDC, TRUMP'S OWN PICK,  WHO HAD SAID SHE WOULD KEEP THE REPUBLICAN CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMITTEE  INFORMED,  THE LEADER OF HER OWN SIDE AND THE DIM BULB THOUGHT KEEPING HIM INFORMED WAS FODDER TO DISCREDIT HER!   Republicans are leading me to think that there should be a competency requirement, certainly for those appointed to Congress.  Especially from states like Florida who seem to be specializing in sending their stupidest Republicans to Washington.   

* Mullin's a stupid skank, too. 

If Only I Had This Ability To Deal With Trolls - He Knows How To Do It Right With Style, Class and Humor

Oops! She Forgot to Switch to Her Burner Account Before Calling Me Ugly 

His series on creepy conservative men who invade his space mistaking him for a woman is hilarious.  Here's one of the best. 

Creepy Conservative Man in My DMs: Two Perspectives on the Same Story (Pt. 1 & 2)

Olberman Proves Trump Is Currently 32 Out Of 40 Of The Offenses That Justified The Founders Overturning The Form Of Government

You know as we approach July that the Republican-fascists are going to make a big deal out of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.  It's going to make the Buycentennial during Ford's regime seem less emetic than it was and it was plenty emetic.   You remember the Declaration  which they and the legal system have ignored pretty much the entire history of the country,  the Constitution is, in large part, a repudiation of the very foundation of that document given in the first couple of paragraphs.   No wonder,  under The Declaration we would have been justified in overturning the system it set up most of our existence as a country under the Constitution.  Slaves certainly had that right the entire time.  And such an overturning is  certainly that is one of the things that the post-Civil War Congress and a majority of State Legislatures did in the Civil War Amendments which he most corrupt and oligarchic of all the branches set up in the Constitution,  the Supreme Court have been annulling, amending and distorting for pretty much the entire period after that,  none more corruptly or blatantly or with such obvious self-interest as the Roberts Court.  The Rehnquist majority did a lot in that regard but never so much as the Roberts Court has done.    The teaching of American history is dishonest,  it is clear that there has been a continual struggle by Black People, other People of Color, Women, Workers members of other oppressed minorities,  the poor, etc. to secure their rights as stated by the Declaration only to continuously see progress towards that, bought with decades of struggle and blood and toil and suffering, overturned by the Court reimposing the 1780s Constitutional order and, in many cases, making it far worse than the text of the document could justify.  

It's kind of uncanny, as Olbermann points out how many of the things Jefferson had the wisdom to list then are our everyday reality,   I will state again that the Jefferson who was there on the day he wrote that  document was the absolute peak of Jefferson's moral clarity - he quickly and revoltingly devolved into a slave owning- slave raping (child raping, actually) Virginia aristocrat (the same ilk of genteel white supremacist that Roberts is) but that doesn't negate the truth or value of what he gave as the justification of People aspiring to freedom and a decent life for all in overturning ANY FORM OF GOVERNMENT. 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Going back to what was there in October 2024 is not enough,  it is entirely inadequate,  that form of government is what got us where we are ESPECIALLY THE POWERS THAT THE ROBERTS COURT WAS ALLOWED IN HANDING OVER THE GOVERNMENT TO QUID PRO QUO CORRUPTION (WHICH IS RAMPANT AMONG THE REPUBLICANS ON THE COURT NOW) AND TURNING TRUMP INTO A DICTATORIAL MONARCH ABOVE THE LAW.    As critical as I am of the U.S. Constitution, it did both with powers that it was given nowhere in the Constitution,  the power to negate and nullify parts of duly adopted federal law AND THE CONSTITUTION, ITSELF. 

Part of that was its refusal to enforce the disqualification of insurrectionists from holding federal office in the 14th Amendment.   Despite the unanimous ruling of the Court including three Democrats who had rather dumb reasons for voting as they did,  they were correct that the six Republican-fascists on the court went way beyond what was warranted by the Amendment and its legislative history in saying that the Congress (in the hands of Republican-fascists) had exclusive power to make the determination of who had disqualified themselves by committing insurrection against the Constitution and they explicitly noted that the Republicans had done so specifically on behalf of Trump.  

No Democratic government, if we ever have another one, which does not make progress in reigning in this bought and paid for Court and, in fact,  that institution,  stripping it of the Marbury power it created for itself will have done anything like an adequate job of making the country safe.   I'm afraid the lawyers in the Congress will be too cowardly or craven or merely reluctant to face that fact as, for example,  Biden's Department of Justice did too little and far too late to prosecute Trump.   Jefferson was a lawyer, as were most of the actual framers,  but clearly they were lawyers who had more courage than of that profession today. 

Reaching Across the Aisle: Drag Queen Recreates Congresswoman Lauren Boebert's Makeup

 

Over night I've become a huge fan of Landon Reid,  he's funnier than any comic strip.  And this isn't all he does.   Here's a review of a celebrity VHS tape from 1990.

I'm Not Really Interested In Going On About The Death Of Scott Adams

Other than to say that his decision, reportedly early into his diagnosis with prostate cancer to try the Trump cult, internet doctor playing snake oil peddlers advice to use  ivermectin and fenbendazole is possibly what really doomed him.  It wasn't if he was one of the millions of Americans who couldn't afford routine medical check-ups or ever, most likely, to pay for actual treatment provided by scientific medicine.   I suspect it was his arrogance and choice to be a libertarian-right-winger that was the source of those decisions. 

Millions of Americans are being thrown out of health insurance, People who would follow sound medical advice if they could afford it and it was made available to them.   I'll worry about them instead of a dead cartoon scribbler whose strip I stopped reading sometime in the mid 1990s because I realized his about three jokes had been repeated way too many times by then.   The ultimately and similarly repugnant Johnny Hart was a fount of humor compared to him.* 

-----------------------

Instead I'll tell you a joke I heard a priest tell the other day.

There were two fishermen (let's say they're Irish, he was Scottish so he made them Scottish) out to ocean in a boat when a storm came up.   They were terrified and sure they were about to be broken up in the ocean and drowned. 

Paddy:  We'd better get down on our knees and pray to be saved.

Eoin:  I haven't prayed in 40 years.

Paddy:  Well, unless you want to die you'd better start.

Eoin (kneeling):  God,  I haven't spoken to you for 40 years,  and if you save us from this storm I promise not to bother you for another 40.  

* Update,  what was it, about sixty years ago I saw this in the Boston Globe and it's one of the few cartoons I've remembered so vividly.   

Tetrachord Exercise 1 RE MI FA SO

Coming back to the chant project.  Here is an exercise to lead to mastery of the musical resources already given, the permutations of the tetrachord RE MI FA SO.

Play the first note on an instrument to check it, starting with a d then try to sing the entire four notes given on their solfege syllables, then to check that you've sung them correctly with the instrument.   The raised circles, ∘ ∘ ∘ ∘, indicate four counts.  To start with you should give each note one beat with four rests then repeat  that twice, or more if you feel you need to reinforce those you haven't gotten correctly on the first try.  After you have learned the pattern you can go through it with as many of the permutations as you feel you need to.  Take note of the ones you have more trouble with and give some extra practice to those,  the ones you can consistently get right, you should leave behind.  It's one of the worst things for a musician to do, to keep repeating what they can already do instead of concentrating on what they can't already do. 

RE MI FA SO    

RE ∘ ∘ ∘ ∘   RE MI FA SO  ∘ ∘ ∘ ∘  RE MI FA SO  ∘ ∘ ∘ ∘  RE MI FA SO ||

SO RE MI  FA  
SO ∘ ∘ ∘ ∘   SO RE MI FA  ∘ ∘ ∘ ∘  SO RE MI FA  ∘ ∘ ∘ ∘  SO RE MI FA ||

MI RE SO FA  
MI  ∘ ∘ ∘ ∘  MI RE SO FA  ∘ ∘ ∘ ∘  MI RE SO FA ∘ ∘ ∘ ∘   MI RE SO FA ||  


SO RE FA MI    RE FA MI SO    SO FA RE MI    MI  RE FA SO    RE SO FA MI    

FA MI SO RE    FA MI RE SO    SO MI RE FA    RE SO MI  FA    FA RE MI SO  

MI SO RE FA    SO FA MI RE    MI SO FA RE    RE MI  SO FA    FA RE SO MI    

SO MI FA RE    RE FA SO MI    FA SO RE MI    MI  FA RE SO    FA SO MI RE

I will be giving this exercise for every one of the diatonic tetrachords and for those which contain a Bb.   This exercise can start to give you an appreciation of how variable the feeling of these four notes can be depending on the order of the notes and the intervals.  

Seator Whitehouse Explains The Scam Behind Trump's Attack On Clean Energy And How That Screws Everyone But The Fossil Fuel Oligarchs

I'm old enough so I remember when Ronald Reagan, in one of his first acts as president removed the solar panels from the White House that Jimmy Carter had had installed.  The Republican Party has been in the pocket of the oil, gas and coal industry since at least then.   And, of course, the Supreme Court scuttling of clean election laws on the pretext of, you know "The First Amendment" clearly has been, too.    If he has some free time I hope Senator Whitehouse would do an estimate of how much corruption and oligarchic theft we have suffered from the Buckley v Valeo and its ever more corrupt progeny have cost us.   While racists have cost us enormously,  the rich have cost us ever more in concert with the "civil liberties" industry. 

New Guilty Pleasure - Drag Queen Re-Creates Kristi Nome’s Makeup Look | Queer Eye for the MAGA Guy

 

He's pretty funny and just watching a few of his videos I've learned more about makeup than I knew existed before.    

The Body at Play | Dean's Forum with Dr. Luke Timothy Johnson, February 23, 2025

I'M STILL SICK but getting better.  I've been taking the chance to get caught up on some lectures I'd meant to listen to but didn't get around to.   This one is from a series by Luke Timothy Johnson about aspects of embodied existence and its religious ramifications and consequences.  I especially like what he said about the ill-advised "theology of the body" book by JPII which he said were a series of tedious sermons given by someone who knew nothing about the topic, choosing a small range of Scriptures to come to a ridiculous conclusion.  

The reason I'm posting this one is that it is relevant to music making and, specifically, singing in a choir,  which Johnson did for hours a day for ten years of his life as a Benedictine singing chant.  

Minute Rant

A REAL JOURNALIST who I used to know back in the 1980s, a reporter on a small town newspaper  said that our generation was so obsessed with itself that she expected there to eventually be a TV series called Eightysomething.  The idea of conforming to the commercially designated characteristics of those in your age cohort is stupid.    I don't recall if it was before or after that that I said that I fully expected greedy Mick Jagger and his old stones would be doing  The Oxygen Tank Tour.   

I've got a really bad cold just now, the kind that makes someone my age wonder if it's worth recovering,  last night these two items from my past came up because I was toying with the idea of writing a bold new statement for what they will insist is "my generation"  The Joy of Expectorants.   I'd rather have expectorants than sex at my age.   Anyone  who says they wouldn't is lying. Or dead.  

I've always been skeptical of the designation of "generations" like they used to in Life Magazine or Time Magazine, I've never felt any especial comradeship with people who happened to have been born in the years near when I was born.  Not when we were young, not today.   I don't know how much The Who's album and song of that title clarified what bullshit that was  I suspect I scoffed at the title at the time.   I really wasn't paying all that much attention to that stuff, back then. 

That's as much of a rant as I can work up just now.   I am deleting troll droppings without reading them,  that might `be a new policy.   I don't care what fascists and Nazis and Republicans and white supremacist incel boys who are getting less sex than I do these days have to say.  

Update:  I have little to no use for Piers Morgan but I have to hand it to him,  he's the one who got that uber-incel boy Nick Fuentes to admit he's a 27 year old virgin.   I finally heard that part of the interview - I won't sit through more than a couple of minutes of Piers Morgan and especially Fuentes - and wondered if that would put off his audience.   But I'd bet that Fuentes fan boys are as virginal as he is.  It's so funny that those little schmucks think the way to meet Women is to sit in front of a computer and whine to each other about their virginity, blaming it on Women who have some self respect.  They're as stupid as that. 

RFK Purjured Himself When He Said He Wasn't Going To Change Vaccine Schedules Who Knows How Many People, Starting With Babies Will Die As A Result

 

IT SHOULD BE WRITTEN INTO LAW THAT NO ONE HOLDS THE POSITION OF SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES WHO IS NOT A DOCTOR WITH A CAREER IN PUBLIC HEALTH.   No more goddamned lawyer-liars in positions they have only financial interests in like Little Bobby Kennedy.   He's just coming up with junk science and junk policy papers that his ambulance chasing law firm can go into court and sue vaccine companies and medical professionals so he and they can rake in millions more from that crap.   

Everyone should be saying it,  

Hey, hey RFK,  HOW MANY KIDS DID YOU KILL TODAY?  

The Lying, Hypocritical, Whiny and Massively Profitable Charlie Kirk Cult Can Go To Hell - Hate Mail

As was said here as soon as I heard the tapes of him saying what he did,  I thought about the shooting of Charlie Kirk - right after he lied about and slandered Trans People - the same way he thought about the murders of dozens and dozens of school children, innocent audience members, random crowds, random individuals. etc.    I spent all of my sympathy for those People who never said anyone's gun murders were "worth it."  He said that having gun murders LIKE THE ONE HE DIED IN was a "prudent deal."   Knowing what he said before that was bull shit,  clear and obvious bull shit, as reflected in the fact that the guy who is being charged with shooting him came from a family with a father in the home and the fact that school shootings, including at least one of the worst was at a school with an armed cop on duty there,  he got what he said was a "prudent deal."   I'M THE ONE WHO DOESN'T THINK IT WAS. 

Scripture says:  

5 For every man shall bear his own burden.
6 Let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things.
7 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
8 For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.

Galatians 6:5-8 KJV
  

Looks like that's what happened to me.   Who am I to question Scripture, especially when it seems to be confirmed in life experience?  And you'll notice I continued with the quote from the proof quote to that point because it justifies my title.   He's the one who demanded Biblical literalism in other dishonestly clipped proof texting bull shit.    I believe in hell, just not eternal damnation. 

As the Honorable Jasmine Crockett pointed out the other day,  it's you fascists who are gloating over the murder of Renee Good as you've gloated over the murders of so many others.   I didn't gloat over Kirk's murder,  I just pointed out he, himself, was OK with it AS I WAS NOT.  He'd be alive and lying for millioniare money if the gun laws I favor had been put into place decades ago.  Instead the widder Kirk is raking in the cash with her trash.  

America Is Governed By A Stupid And Nasty Octogenarian 2-Year-Old

WHO IS ATTRACTED TO SHINY OBJECTS.  One who our stupid system under the control of billionaire and millionaires' bitches, the Roberts Court and the Republican majority in Congress, the free press, etc.   lets do whatever he wants with the American military.

That fact, along with his racist support base has the potential to cost the U.S. more than any previous disastrous presidencies like those of the 1920s did.    In addition to his ignorant expectations of stealing Venezuela's oil which couldn't be accessed without $100 billion in investment and more than a decade away even if Venezuela or quisling rulers just rolled over for him,  his 2-year-old MINE MINE MINE obsession with the rare earth elements of Greenland could easily end up costing us tens of trillions of dollars in addition to whatever price the military adventures and occupations would cost us.

I haven't looked into these issues but this analysis sounds extremely worthy of study to me. 

The crash is coming on fast and it will make 1928-40 look like good times by comparison. 

 

A Short Side Trip Into Medieval Music

THERE WAS A BRIEF period in my education when I thought I would specialize in medieval music, it was a hot topic in the 60s and early 70s.   But it was extremely frustrating, not merely because so many of the essential details of the music, especially what we called "performance practice" was simply not available in the primary documentation but because it was and, from what I now gather from afar, still is extremely political and ideological.  Given I was a keyboard player and organs with Pythagorean tuning with medieval registration were non-existent in my area, it was extremely impractical.  I decided to specialize in music closer to our time for which such details were available in far more cases,  in many cases in performances by composer-performers that you could actually hear.   

I join those who believe that most if not all of the medieval "performance practice" was a lot more individual and localized and varied than used to be imagined by "early music" specialists.   And it's clear that much of it depended on improvisation, one of the greatest evidences of that was Guillaume de Machaut saying he didn't want people to improvise on his music.   Such practices would mostly never be written down,  many of the musicians didn't use notation which is why we have texts of so many songs without much if any musical notation to tell us how they were performed.  The reported accompaniments of them, on vielle, rebec, harp, etc. is almost entirely undocumented, more about that in a minute. 

What I'm doing here, what I'm hoping might inspire, a new chant practice is definitely not intended to be an exercise in neo-medieval romance.   If you want that you can either profitably do that by starting or joining a Gregorian Chant choir or destructively do it by joining up with the "trad" Catholic cult.  

But when the topic is chant, the habit of thought goes to the medieval.  So I'll say a few words and give you a few better words from some credible experts, such as those are at any given time. 

I don't know how the current medieval music scene lies, I don't much read about it or listen to much of it anymore  There is just so much music you can consume,  you can't speed listen to music.  

I can say that one of the best resources I bought and have about that is the now quarter of a century old A Performers Guide To Medieval Music compiled by Ross Duffin.   The best of the articles in it are probably still good practical as well as informed advice based, when possible, in contemporary documentation.   It has outlasted most of the 19th and 20th century books on the topic which I've read, those by Willi Apel notably excepted from that obsolescence.  

Looking at it again after many years,  Benjamin Bagby's article "Imagining the Early Medieval Harp" is both honest about the impossibility of knowing if you are playing music that would have been played by a genuine medieval harpist though I think the clues we have and which he mentions can indicate if you're at least pointed in the right direction with that.  His source of inspiration in the description and recorded African practice of playing the Mbira,  the procedure of which matches the contemporary descriptions of medieval harp playing and the small range of the instrument,  strikes me as inspired.

The other articles dealing with specific instruments and kinds of instruments are good too.  Almost as useful is the article Improvisation and Accompaniment before 1300 by Margriet Tindemans is very useful.  I especially like her General Rules,  

1. Keep it simple, 2. Be deliberate, make choices before you play. 3. Do not try to be overly creative. . . The perfect melody will come when you least expect it and 4. Practice since most musical training nowadays concerns itself primarily with what is written music and instruction, it may take a little while to learn to keep track of what you are playing in your head instead of on paper, and make up new things while you are playing. 

That last one is a description of good ear training based musicianship and the act of composition in which what is in your mind or under your hands should come before you start writing it down. 

I'll give you the introduction to her Exercises, too.  

1.  Learn your modes [she refers to another chapter in the books which gives a better explanation of the modes than you'll find in most places] Be very aware of the species of fifth and the species of fourth in each mode.

I'll break in here and say I think this is best considered an aspect of ear training and coordinating habits gained from that with your voice or hands,  if you're playing an instrument.   As a thing you can articulate in words,  it's not much more useful than the ink on the page is to you when the moment of performance is at hand.   "Awareness" here is more a matter of practiced expectation and habit - though I will remind you that much of superior music making is a matter of breaking those.  Gary Burton's 2010 lecture on playing jazz at his level, talking about how you have to have the physical feel of the harmonies because you can't think of those fast enough is about exactly what I mean. 

2.  Familiarize yourself with as many vocal models as you can find, especially monophonic songs of all kinds.   In the chapter on medieval fiddle you will find a more detailed listing of various repertoires and styles. 

Keep in mind she's trying to recreate the conditions for improvising on that repertoire.  For the purposes of a new chant, it's at least unnecessary though it might be helpful if you handle it the right way.   I would implore you to not try to imitate it.

3. Advises you to learn the different forms of medieval music,  I'll just say that if you're interested you should look at how Gregorian and other chant was used liturgically and personally.  And that is too big a topic to really go into.  

4.  Look at and try to learn different languages.  Even if you do not speak or understand them much information can be gathered from the sounds  How do they sound different one from the other, a dhow could you imitate these differences on your instrument?

Of course,  interested in both new local and international chant practices,   I'd encourage people to write chants in their own languages and to write it in the only current, ideologically, politically and economically neutral language, Esperanto.  I can point out that's something I agree with Lou Harrison about, he advised in his Music Primer:

TO AVOID THE MONSTROSITIES that might be done to your vocal works in translations, make one version yourself directly in the international language endorsed by UNESCO - Esperanto.  This language is particularly musical anyway, more so, I think than the majority of ethnic tongues . . . 

That's good advice IF the text you've set is something that can be recreated by you in Esperanto which is far more flexible in word order and other aspects of the language than, for example, English or French are.  Though for Scriptural and certainly liturgical texts I think it would be best to rewrite the music according to the necessities of the text in whatever language instead of making a version of the same composition.  

5.  Look at texts, learn about poetic and other forms, learn about poetic devices such as rhyme, form, alliteration etc.  [The necessity of this in effectively setting texts is rather obvious though what that means in how you actually set the text is, as I indicated yesterday, undefinable. I can guess that if you try doing it you will get caught up in a net of complexity that will inhibit you.   Consider how many great folk songs, spirituals etc. were created probably without any of these being taken into account.  At this point I would ignore those unless you notice them.  NEVER ALLOW ANYTHING TO INHIBIT YOUR ATTEMPTS AT COMPOSITION.  There's plenty of time to revise or withdraw or not to publish. ]

6.  Playing an instrument was considered a science as well as a craft; to be versatile you have to do it enough.  Make up short patterns and repeat them on each degree of the mode you have chosen.  Then repeat the same pattern backwards in mirror (inversion) and backwards at the same time again on each degree.  

She then give a number of such pattern exercises which are certainly more relevant to playing an instrument than they are to composing chants.   I will be giving you a very large number of patterns with suggestions of how you might use them to increase your musicianship, any of which you might use this way but that's for next time.  

Before I finish this post,  I will be giving you much of what  William Mahrt, the very experienced director of a Gregorian Chant choir director said in his article in the book in another post.  Till then I'll  give you this link to an episode of Ross Duffin's old radio program in which he discussed the rhythm of Gregorian Chant with William Mahrt calling your attention to the extremely useful transcript of the show to the right of the screen.  I especially found what he said about the practice of the choir at  Einsiedeln, in which most notes are more or less the same length except for some which, at appropriate points in the text are about twice as long to be extremely helpful.   After puzzling over the written instructions of those who promote the famous Solesmes rhythmic practice and after a half a century not being able to really make heads nor tails of it,  I think the Einsiedlen practice is far more valuable and doable and a better way to sing the texts. 

Gregorian Chant I Got Rhythm 

Good Advice For Us And The Angry White Supremacist Who Trolls Me

 

Or as I sometimes as, "Do you ever listen to yourself?"  

Got More Hate Mail From The White Supremacist Who Trolls Me

The white supremacist who trolls me wants me to post his comment full of  the Trump and Republican-fascist lies about what happened in the murder of Renee Good,  which I will not post.   I have a policy against posting lies and slander about other People.  I will post ones told about me if it amuses me to answer them.  More on that in a moment.

First.   I do notice that when I went to look for the source of his lies I typed "Renee Good" into Google and fascist sources, starting with the Whorey Beiss run See B.S. site came up first in the list of sources,  something I don't ever recall seeing,  though in the past FOX Lies and other such sites which the Beiss dominated faux Tiffany site imitates in that place.  

I never click on those sites,  I can't imagine most people who value the news do,  from what I have heard the former CBS has been bleeding listeners.  Does Google have some glitch in its algorithm that does that?  Or is it a glitch?   Why does CBS come up in such searches regularly now, of all times?  

I saw someone ask a good question as to what authority ICE had to be giving orders to Renee Good,  she wasn't suspected of being an illegal immigrant,  she wasn't being arrested for breaking any law,  she was obeying an order given by someone to leave.   So she was complying when Jonathan Ross seemed to have his steroids kick in and he decided to murder her.   I would bet anything that a lot of the ICE goons are juicing.   I am certain others in the Trump fascist regime are,  Kegbreath and RFK certainly are steroided up. 

Renee Good was ordered to leave the scene, which she was obviously attempting to do when her murderer started to escalate dangerously,  she obviously understood that was what he was doing as she tried to calm him down.   HE, Jonathan Ross,  is the one who escalated as she was trying to leave as she was ordered to,  he was the one who shot an unarmed, unresistant woman, he was the one who approached her car, if he was in any harms way he put himself there.  AND THE VIDEO FOOTAGE CERTAINLY SHOWS HE WAS IN NO DANGER FROM HER.  He shot her three times in the face and said "Fucking Bitch" as the dead or dying woman's foot clearly had hit the accelerator of her car and it lurched forward.   I watched the videos, including the murderers body cam that the the Trump regime released.  I think they released it mainly because they liked him calling her a "fucking bitch" just after he murdered her,  I can't imagine any other reason for them releasing it and have to wonder what it showed leading up to the segment they showed and right after.   I saw footage that others had taken that showed him recording what was happening on his phone and footage that showed him very possibly deleting that from his phone after he'd murdered her.  

Oh, as as his fellow ICE goons who couldn't have known she couldn't be saved KEPT A DOCTOR ON THE SCENE FROM ATTENDING TO HER.   Even if her wounds had not been fatal,  they made sure she would die. 

Do I think that there is any possibility of justice being done to the ICEstapo murderer?   Or given the fact that they kept her from being treated MURDERERS?    If I thought there was I'd go out and buy a lottery ticket because under America's fascist regime and the cowardly and complicit courts, I think me being a millionaire tomorrow is a sure thing by comparison.  

We live at the beginning of what is likely going to be a long and increasingly violent fascist regime,  the white collar white supremacist who trolls me is getting exactly what he wants and what all of those white collar lawyers in the Trump regime, in many of the federal judgeships and the six Republican-fascists on the Supreme Court want.  It's what the continuing majority of Republicans in the House and Senate want -  I looked at what that inbred white supremacist goon Tom Cotton said, it's clear he wants to be the heir apparent to Trump when Vance's repugnance keeps him from getting elected president, even with the Republican Putin style rigging of elections.  I have a feeling that outside of the corporate media, including the NYT who would have no objection to him, it's going to take a lot of rigging to sail that turd into port.  But there will be someone.   They've already convinced one of those they thought was a possible successful Democratic candidate to quit,  Tim Walz,  they're going to concentrate on damaging and sinking any white male Democrat they think has any chance of that in the next three years, just watch that.   It's a pattern you'll be seeing on venues like Beiss's and A.G. Sulzberger's rag.  Not to mention FOX Lies,  which has actually set the trend for the corporate media - remember Sulzberger was at the helm of the great gray whore when Beiss was doing her rinky-dink thing there.   I have seen exactly no one who has any credibility as a reporter or even opinionator praise Bari Weiss's "journalism."  Actually,  I don't even remember any without that credibility pretending to respect her journalism.  Another source pointed out how remarkable her navigating her daddy-gotten internship at the Wall Street Journal into where she is today has been considering she's never reported an original story or done much but lie and try to suppress the speech of those she doesn't want heard.   Like she did when she was trolling professors of Arab descent or with sympathy for Palestinians when she was in college.  That's the beginning of the now branded promoter of "free speech."  

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And about "free speech" among the English speaking peoples.  America was bought to fascism by lies permitted to be told and magnified and amplified in one of the two dumbest things about the Constitution,   the implicit "right to lie" magnified by the unconditional privilege granted to corporate entities, the "press" to promote lies that its owners profit from.  The other one is, of course, the slave-patrol provision, stupidly written into the Second Amendment.    Since the Columbine massacre started turning public schools and other places into shooting galleries for those the NRA and gun industry serves,  the Supreme Court has done everything they could to put more guns into more hands of those who did those killings. 

Just think of that.  AS THE NUMBER AND FREQUENCY OF SCHOOL SHOOTINGS HAS INCREASED,  THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT HAS DONE EVERYTHING TO PUT MORE GUNS IN THE HANDS OF MORE OF THOSE KILLERS.   

That is an absolute fact of America under the U.S. Constitution ESPECIALLY THE IDOL OF LIBERALISH-LIBERTARIAN DROOLING IDIOCY, THE BILL OF RIGHTS.  That is the Bill of Rights especially as interpreted by the most eminent lawyers in the country, the Supreme Court,  the same Supreme Court which has rigged elections to put more Republicans in office, the same Supreme Court who has enabled those encouraging fascists to murder, the same Supreme Court who invented a "right to lie."   

As I said the other day, the free press won't tell you that but I just did.   They'll dutifully carry Trump regime lies and slander and come up with some of their own to please their billionaire and millionaire owners who got their big tax breaks and other public money from Trump.   I'm sure the Sulzberger family got what they wanted out of this.   It's clear from the revelation of A. G. "Putsch" Sulzberger originated anti-trans slant at the Gray Whore that he does, actually steer its editorial policy.   Just as his protegee Whorey Beiss does at the former Tiffany network, now.  

Run for Governor? Hell, I'm Ready To Nominate Jacob Frey For President

 "I'm sorry to offend your Disney Princess ears."

Words that will go down in history. 

Moving Fourward

Note:  I posted the draft of this post early this morning before I had some coffee and edited it, it contained some glaring mistakes which I hope I've corrected.  Just in case those who read it found it confusing.  I should never write a piece in blogger, that's always happening when I take that shortcut.  

SO FAR I'VE GIVEN YOU THREE NOTES,  re, mi and fa (d, e, and f) which,  from here till notified,  I'm going to give you in lower-case to signify the lower octave of your singing range.   Add the note above that, SO and you've got what is called a "tetrachord."   I won't go into the history of the term because what a tetrachord is meant different things at different periods, starting with the classical Greeks.*  We aren't classical Greeks or medieval or late medieval monks so for musical purposes it only means what the term is used for today,  a set of four given notes, generally though not necessarily four adjacent notes in the diatonic scale (for our purposes here for now, white keys on a keyboard notes). 

RE MI FA SO is a good place to start because it avoids the "do re mi" trap, which I might define for you someday if I'm in a sour mood related to how much movable-do solfege sucks.  In addition to the major seconds of RE MI and FA SO it has the minor second of MI FA, and thirds, the minor thirds of RE FA AND MI SO and the perfect fourth of RE SO.    It is the first four notes of the Dorian mode as well as the d minor scale but you aren't limited to those unless you want to be.

Most typically a melody or Psalm tone using those four notes would tend to use RE for the first and last notes and one of the higher notes as the tenor (repeating) note for reciting most of a text.   But there is no reason you can't begin and end on different notes or to end something you create on any of the other notes   For my ears a Psalm tone or melody that ends with a cadence of FA MI has a very strong feeling of the Phrygian mode.   I could go into the difference between the Dorian and hypodorian modes which both have RE as a final one but you don't have enough notes yet to worry about that and, anyway, you're not limited by Medieval practice or theory.

To start I'd advise trying melodic writing only step-wise melodies with adjacent notes, major and minor seconds.   After you come up with a number of those, as many as pleases you to write, you can start working with the thirds and then the fourth from RE to SO.  

If writing in the tradition of Gregorian Chant is your interest,  continuing on with that passage about step-wise motion dominating, by far, in that body of chants,  Willi Apel continues from where I left off:

Among the disjunct progressions, ascending and descending, major and minor thirds occur frequently.  Numerous chants consist of nothing but unisons, seconds and thirds, for instance the just mentioned Offertory Anima nostra.  Next in frequency is the ascending or descending fourth examples of which are found, for instance, in the Offertory Perfice gressus and in the Communion Introibo ad altare from the same feast.  

I'll give you what he says about larger intervals when we get to them, till then you don't have to worry about them. 

But with all of that said never forget that chant is more about the words even when the music becomes more complex, presenting the text in a comprehensible way in music that moves the emotions and mind to what is being said.   If you want me to explain to you what that means,  I can't.  Having read several long treatises about setting words to music I can't recommend even reading any of them.   I'm tempted to say that Virgil Thomson's rather unattractively self-indulgent Music With Words is the worst of those but really none of them are especially helpful and trying to read anything like that will do you worse than reading one of those awful books grammar nags of prescriptive grammar will if writing natural sounding dialogue is you goal.   Trying to learn to composer from theory is among the most counter-productive things a beginner can do, all those do is inhibit them from trying things, finding out what they think works (what they like) and writing their own music instead of junk that may as well have been written by the rules. 

My theory of the history of Gregorian Chant is that there were probably many hundreds of thousands of melodies that were composed many of which got tried out and which were not found useful and so were lost or forgotten.  I think most of the old chants are probably the product of that legendary test of time under use.  What condescending anthropologist types would call "the folk process."   Only the words, based in the Vulgate and the authorized liturgy didn't tend to change except, maybe, in the hymns. 

But a new chant doesn't have to follow those old models.  I would expect that some composer could come up with a hundred chants in c major with or without set notated rhythm worth using, just as I think it's possible one might come up with something I couldn't classify because it wouldn't fit any theoretical classification that I could come up with.   Theory is sloppiness,  I believe it was Roger Sessions who said that in German (my translation) and for any attempted start at creative work, that is putting it mildly.   You might want to be aware of what the musical materials you're using are called because it helps to explain that to yourself. 

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ABOUT USING INSTRUMENTS

I suggested using an instrument to check your pitches to make sure you're writing down what you think you are.   I made the assumption that you had an instrument you knew which notes it played, one that played reliably in tune.   

If you do not have such an instrument or never learned to play one (or to read music, for that matter) the best thing you could probably do is get a good plastic recorder and learn to finger the notes on it.  Probably you would want a Soprano or Alto recorder because they're the least expensive and easiest to hold.  There are lots of awful cheap recorders that don't play reliably in tune but there are some that aren't just excellent in that regard but have a decent tone, some of the most expensive would rival a good but budget wooden instrument.   Yamaha, Aulos and the Mollenhauer Adris Dream soprano are the only models I've had any experience with and all are excellent, the Adris Dream being far more expensive than you'd probably want to spend.   You can find a decent, in tune Yamaha plastic recorder for less than ten dollars BUT MAKE SURE YOU GET ONE THAT HAS "BAROQUE" FINGERING.   I have never encountered a "German fingered" recorder that played in tune,  not even a very expensive wooden one.   The so-called German fingering was an idiotic scheme to produce a slightly more easily taught school recorder in the early decades of the 20th century.   What they did was make the thing almost impossible to make it play in tune except in one key, and not for that if you had to play notes outside the key.   Most of the horrid "school recorders" that have done so much to give the instrument a bad name have German fingering.   It's worse than movable-do as an attempt at making teaching music easier but eternally burdening the learner with inferior content. 

It's a lot more iffy to try using a penny whistle.  To start most of those are in the key of d major with an f sharp and a c sharp built into it.   It's easy to play a c natural but playing an f natural is very hard to get reliably.  Both of which you'll need for what I'm doing here.   If you want to try using a penny whistle, go out of your way and get the somewhat rarer instrument tuned in c.   

Here's a video about choosing a plastic recorder from a professional recorder player (yes, there are professional players).

Sarah Jeffrey has done a lot of reviews of recorders from the cheapest to the most expensive and she is a really excellent musician and extremely practical and anything but pretentiously stuck in an imaginary past.   I say that even as I don't always agree with what she says, especially about medieval music.  Most of what she says is solid and reliable. 

And here's one from the American Recorder Society with two other professionals.

*I'll warn you off of putting much faith in what you'll read or hear online about medieval music theory or, really music theory of any period.   Some of it is valid, some of it might even be useful but most of it is everything from bogus to total nonsense.  None of it will be much help to you in coming up with the music that will be YOUR music. 

One of the truly stupidest papers I have ever read in well over a half a century of reading music papers was someone who proposed reviving medieval Guidonian solfege to apply it to everything from the music of Debussy on as well, including  romanitic, classic, baroque era music.  A more idiotic and, useless and entirely unnecessary practice I couldn't have imagined until I read the paper, for which I believe the guy got a masters degree from an accredited university 

I'm Too Angry To Write About The Trump Nazis In Minnesota This Morning So I Thank Olbermann For Doing It For Me

 

Watch the corporate media cover up for the murder and terrorism,  the free press freed from the requirement to tell the truth.   Only the media that voluntarily tells the truth has any value for democracy and none owned by a millionaire or billionaire is going to do much of that. 

Mayor Jacob Frey really is America's Mayor not like that NYC media creation who they used to call that because the terror murder that threatens America is happening in his city and he told the truth about that.