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."  

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

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. 

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

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. 

This Time There Should Not Be Any Just Letting Them Get Away With It

THE ICESTAPO IS KILLING PEOPLE AND WILL GET AWAY WITH IT.   The Trump regime is killing Americans in the street and just watch the free press back up them murdering Americans in the street and the courts and the Republican-fascist Congress.   Every alleged protection of American democracy has failed us.

For further details, see my piece about the corruption baked into our constitutional system, both those by the slave-holders and corrupt northern financiers and those added to it by the Supreme Court and Congresses that ceded Constitutional powers to the executive.   The Roberts Court six who made Trump king should be removed and given life sentences for their treason against egalitarian democracy and the American People along with the entire Trump regime,  from him down to the scummiest ProudBoy incel-boy Icestapo terrorist and the Noem-Bondi-Leavitt floozie corps, too.

I listened to, I think it was Alison Gill and Dana Goldberg give a list of times that the worst criminals in American history have been given a pass,  from the Confederate traitors to the insurrectionists, with things like Iran Contra and, maybe, Daddy Bush's invasion of Panama in which hundreds were murdered so he could have the kind of political theater that Trump mounted in Venezuela last weekend.   

No more.  When Democrats get back the Congress and Presidency they have to go after all of them, they have to nullify the G.H.W. Bush pardons to cover asses, whether Trump's or Vances or the billionires who they are the bitches of and right on down because Trump-Vance will pardon all of their criminal gang.   If the Roberts Court won't go along with that, well this whole thing started with the six fascists on the Court, impeach them and charge them with crimes against the oaths they took.   Needless to say,  Democrats should nullify the Marbury power grab, finally.   There is no reason that they can't do it, any Democrat who has the chance to fill a vacancy should only appoint known critics of that and if those don't exist among rich lawyers, they should find citizens with the intelligence to read the Constitution and tell the truth, that such a power does not appear in it.  

Seriously reigning in the pardon power is probably as necessary to reinstating American democracy as anything else is, and there are many other such necessities.   One is making it possible for politicians and other public figures able to sue people who libel and slander them again.   Trump would never have had a political presence if he had been able to be sued for the lies he started telling as he started to become famous.  The Republican fascist party has thrived on such lies since Nixon first started in the 1940s.   It's time to face the fact that we can either have lies or we can have a republic.  We certainly can't have lies and a democracy.   Any lawyer, judge, "justice" who claims there is a right to lie should have their law license taken away and removed from any public office they might hold.  Especially the "justices" who claim such lies. 

Two Examples Of How To Easily Notate Your Chant Experiments

HERE ARE TWO EXAMPLES of what I more clumsily described in yesterday's post about chanting on two notes.  Notice that the first one has re for the tone center (the ending note) and the second one ends on the higher note, "mi".   The effect is noticeably different even just using two notes.  

Al le  lu  ia   |  Al le  lu ia   |    Al le  lu   ia      ||
re mi mi mi |  re mi re mi  |    mi mi mi  mi-re ||

Al le lu  ia   | Al le lu  ia   | Al le lu       ia     | A  men    ||
mi re mi mi | re mi mi mi | re re re-mi mi    | re re-mi   ||

Note I have written slurs between more than one note sung on one syllable with a hyphen.  

I will leave it to you to experiment with the notes mi and fa (e and f) noting only I think you'll find the effect is quite different especially, in this case, when you make mi the final note instead of the major-minor accustomed ear hearing fa as the tone center and last note.  

I should mention something else, if you are typing out your experiments instead of the easier and more flexible practice of writing them by hand,  using a monospace font such as is commonly used by programmers is far, far easier and gives better results in coordinating two lines, the text and the notes.  

Such a font isn't available in blogger, at least I haven't found it so even copying and pasting the above required me to do some fiddling with the spacing.  You can generally find all kinds of those in a good text editor,  I use Feather pad but I think all but the simplest text editors give you monospace fonts in a variety of styles.  

By far the best thing to do,  especially if you've got good handwriting or, better, experience in calligraphic writing, is to write things out by hand.   If I had a scanner that's what I'd have done with the examples above.  That is if I had a scanner and good hand printing.   Even when I do the most sensible thing and use plain block lettering on graph paper it's far from calligraphic.   

In researching that I was interested to find out how many countries sensibly use graph paper instead of just lined paper for teaching hand writing and how common it is in many of those countries to continue to use graph paper for everyday writing.   I might have developed good handwriting if I had been taught that from the start.   

I would recommend using a good pencil,  one with a softer lead than the typical 2b or #2 pencil works quite well though a good #2 pencil will be good enough.   Ticonderoga pencils aren't what they used to be but they still have good leads and have the best erasers I've ever found at the other end of a pencil.  A good white artificial rubber artists eraser is good, too but less convenient for someone used to finding one at the end of a pencil.   Cheap erasers that are colored tend to leave stains on the paper. 

I think on most scanners, if you wanted to copy your score without the typical blue lines on graph paper, it can be set to make those disappear while copying and printing out the black pencil marks.   The brilliant American composer Steve Reich said he gave up writing his scores in pen when he realized that writing them in pencil and copying them gave as good a score to put in the musicians' hands.   I'd respected Reich before that but hearing him say that endeared him to me even more.   And I'm a really hard sell for the "minimalist" school.    

That is, by the way, the advice I always give students unless they have a jerk of a teacher who requires using a fountain pen - hells belles - use a pencil you can erase.  

For this project I have developed a variant on the numerical notation used by millions, possibly more than a billion People in Asia and elsewhere,  most commonly called "jainpu"  but with two crucial differences. 

Instead of using the numbers 1-7 I use the do-re-mi syllables* and instead of making it the equivalent of movable-do - typically a piece written in jainpu considers 1 as being the tone center of whatever key is to be played or sung in - do is ALWAYS a c, re is ALWAYS a d, etc.   In that most chant is modal instead of major-minor, as movable do and jainpu seem to both assume,  it makes no sense to use a movable do system for it.   Actually, having been taught movable-do,  it sucks.  

In what I've been doing in this regard I have used capital letters for the lower octave of a voice and upper case letters for the upper octave, writing lines below or above the syllables if a lower or higher octave note is wanted.   As it seems to me to be best to not break with tradition entirely (no matter how rational doing that might seem to be) I have kept the convention of starting octaves on c and not a.   So for a two scale range typical of most human songs you would have DO RE MI FA SO LA TI do re mi fa so la ti and the next do above that you would write with a line above the syllable, which I can't do easily in blogger.  If you wanted to go below the lower c you would write a line below TI LA SO, etc. which can be done easily on blogger.   Just remember to turn it off so the underlining won't go farther than you want it to. 

Of course, if you're familiar with standard western musical notation you should feel free to use that.  I would suggest looking into using the Lilypond text based music printing program which takes some learning to use but which I like at least as well for many things and far better for some things than any graphic based music editors I've used,  the withdrawn Finale, Sibelius, the at least for now freely available and free  MuseScore (which actually is better than the for-profit programs I've used).    

If you go the Lilypond route, you should look at both the Frescobaldi text editor written for use with Lilypond and also the Denemo keyboard editor (all of these are free) though I find the latter, at least in the version available for the Linux OS I use, a bit glitchy.    

Writing out your score on music paper with pencil is a hell of a lot easier,  though unless you've got excellent musical calligraphy - I DO NOT - being able to print out a legible score is appreciated by singers and musicians. 

*Musically, one of my goals is to encourage ear training and in the beginning of that it's best to leave as few steps between what is written on a page and what is understood by the mind and produced to hear.   You can learn to coordinate what you already can imagine, and hear, with marks on a page a lot better if you're secure in knowing what it is you are hearing or supposed to sing or play.  Giving you a score in musical notation without any clue as to what that sounds like - the purpose of the solfege syllables - is like asking a toddler to jump hurdles.   I'm for knocking down the hurdles at the start,  you can put them back up when you are steady on your feet. 

The Cynical Hilarity Of The United States In The 21st Century Condemning The "Illegitimacy" of Venezuelan Elections

 THE ANTI-DEMOCRATIC FEATURES OF THE CONSTITUTION are baked into it and have been from the beginning.   And I'm not talking about the Venezuelan Constitution which, UNLIKE THE U.S. CONSTITUTION was the product of a referendum,  not based on the certainly less democratic process required for its adoption by the U.S. Constitution.   The Constitution of Venezuela was written by an assembly which was voted into that body by the popular vote and the Constitution they came up with was approved by 72% of the voters in that election in 1999.  I don't know of any other Constitution in the Americas that is the product of such a democratic process, certainly not the rigged writing and adoption of the U.S. Constitution which started with the unauthorized creation of a new government and its "adoption" in which a very small percentage of even the Protestant, white men of property allowed to vote in the majority of relevant elections actually voted in them.  Even the Supreme Court god John Marshall admitted that it was an iffy if not a dicey thing - that would be in his biography of Washington,  not his from the bench blather about that which was blatantly false.   More honest evaluations of the process in a decisive number of the several states notes that it was rigged to ensure that the heavily federalist urban vote would make it to the polls while the more skeptical rural vote would not be cast.   History does have that ironic result a the history of America continued and the anti-democratic features baked into it in the 1780s increased to favor states without much of anything but rural votes often of the most benighted states and regions.  Swamping many, many times over their population in the most populous states. 

But getting on with things, in the 21st Century we have had two presidential election in which the actual loser of the election became president under the anti-democratic Electoral College which is baked into the Constitution.   Trump in 2016 and far more tellingly George W. Bush in 2000.

Let's concentrate on 2000.  You may remember that the question of who would win the electoral college hinged on the vote in Florida,  a state run by the brother of the "winner"  Jeb Bush who was governor whose Secretary of State, the infamously sleazy and arguably corrupt Katherine Harris, and lower down officials rigged the election in numerous ways, including a campaign to exclude Black Voters from voting lists and roadblocks to hamper voting in communities with large Black populations.  And that's not getting to the infamous "butterfly ballot" which was clearly intended to confuse voters who wanted to vote for Al Gore. 

That election was ultimately decided by a five to four vote in favor of the Republican,  George W. Bush, (Oh, I've fogotten to mention that in addition to being Jeb's brother he was, of course, the son of George H. W. Bush who, as mentioned here on Sunday had to pardon his way out of being prosecuted for his crimes while vice president and president) . . . George W. Bush was installed as president by five Republican "justices" on the U.S. Supreme Court including Sandra Day O'Connor who had wanted to retire but only if a Republican would name her replacement.   That was so corrupt that two of those "justices" who voted against that decision were, themselves, Republicans Stevens and Souter who, to his credit, had been named to the court by daddy Bush.  

And there are the numerous other corruptions of elections baked into the Constitution or placed there by a combination of anti-democratic (these days literally anti-Democratic) politicians and judges and, especially "justices."   The Roberts Court has been doing everything it dares to to bring us back to the days of 5/5ths of Black representation being in the hands of white supremacists in especially the Southern but hardly only the Southern states.   Back to the status quo of Jim Crow that started with the Electoral College and corrupt deal that put Rutherford Hayes in the presidency after he made a deal with the Confederate losers of the Civil War to end Reconstruction.  

As for the 2016 election a large role in Trump's eking out an "Electoral College victory" was played by the Republican head of the FBI (as well as the NYT) when he broke Department of "Justice" policy by making announcements of a new round of "investigations" of Hillary Clinton days before the election.   I will note in passing that Hillary Clinton has to stand as both the most investigated human being in American history as well as the most exonerated person, perhaps in human history.  Instead of her, the actual winner of the election,  the genius of our framers gave us the most criminal and least punished politician in American history, as well as the stupidest and most vile one, Trump.   For Trump to call Madurro illegitimate or corrupt is the final death of irony, only the American "free press" the supposed protector of democracy and even the republic letting him get away with that is actually the more massive of ironies. 

It is forbidden here, in the so-called land of the free and home of the brave to mention that our Constitution has anti-democratic features galore baked into it and never removed by the process of amendment and some amendments to the thing to correct just some of those injustices which were overturned by UNELECTED SUPREME COURT FIAT.   Again, that's not something that happened in the 1880s or the 1920s,  that's something that is an ongoing program of the Roberts Court.   It is forbidden to tell the truth about the corruption of our Constitution with the goddamned First Amendment in place - you're never going to hear it said this way on any corporate news venue or the goddamned New York Times and certainly not in the Bezos owned WaPo or the Soon-Shiong owned LA Times.   Ken Burns won't tell you but I just did. 

Starting To Use Two Notes For Chanting

If we consider the Roman repertory from the point of view of progressions from one note to the next, the basic role of stepwise motion [notes next to each other on the white notes of a keyboard or in a c major scale] is self-evident.  There is no chant in which the number of steps would not be, by far, greater than that of all other progressions combined.  The only exception, if it can be so considered, is the simple recitative with prevailing unison repeat. 

Gregorian Chant, Willi Apel p 252*

For those who are beginning to experiment with composing new chants dealing with the two sizes of steps, a major and minor second is a good place to start (recto tono, is it really composing?).   

I will start with the notes d, e and f though in stressing ear-training as much as more theoretical descriptions I'm going to use the "do-re-mi" names for notes in their "fixed-do" form in which "do" is always a c, "re" is always a d, "mi"is always an e and "fa" is always an f.  Unlike some of the conventions of fixed-do, I will not use those common names for sharps and flats as well as the plain letter name note, given by Paul Hindemith as his reason for rejecting using solfege syllables in his Elementary Training For Musicians.  Hindemith seems to have had perfect pitch, which I and most of humanity does not have.   I think using the do-re-mi syllables are extremely helpful but only in fix-ed do for and only with each possible note  of the scale having its own syllable.  More on that  later, for now the syllable do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti corresponding to c, d, e, f, g, a, and b are what I'll be using. 

In the notes of re mi and fa, (d, e, and f) the interval between re and mi is a major second and the interval between mi and fa is a minor second.   You should check them on an instrument to make sure you are singing the right notes as you intend to. 

Chanting On Only The Notes re and mi.

Try chanting on both re-mi using re as the first and last note and mi as the first and last note.  You might use one or the other as the "tenor" for reciting most of the text and the other note for the initiation, the half-pause within a sentence or phrase and as the ending note.  You should try both and whatever else occurs to you to try.  If you find something you like, write out the words of the text you are singing and the notes you want to sing any given syllable to above it.  Use a single line to mark pauses and a double line to mark the end.  

Chanting On Only The Notes mi and fa. 

Do the same with mi-fa checking the pitches on an instrument to make sure you are accurately singing the size of a "whole-step" (the major second d-e) or a "half-step" (the minor second e-f). 

If you tried the chanting on one tone, using pauses and longer and shorter notes to go along with the text you will have some idea of how you might do it with two notes. 

If you can't think of a text you want to set in this way, try "Alleluia" Or the English Hallelujah  and "Amen" (whether A-men or Ah-men singly or repeated. 

Speaking of things you might like to know but you don't have to worry about. 

One of the things to keep in mind is that our ears accustomed to music in major and minor keys is that a half-step will often make us feel that the lower note draws us to expect to hear the a resolution on the higher note of the two.  But it doesn't have to do that in music.  Music in the Phrygian mode has e is the expected last note, the note of repose, the goal of a line often resolves to e from the f a half step above it.  Such things are what give the modes their individual character just as the resolution of the B up to the c above it gives the major scale it's character. 

*  The passage from Apel continues on to the next page:

Unison repeats of a special character occur in some of the elaborate chants,  where we find the same pitch repeated, up to eight times, on one syllable; eg. three unisons in the gradual Haec dies [778] on "(Do)mi(nus) five in the Offertory Perfice gressus [508] on "gres(sus)," eight in the Offertory Anima nostra [430] on "(libera)ti."  Actually, it would be misleading to consider these formations under the aspect of vocal progression.  As explained previously [p. 107] they represent an ornament, the vocal counterpart of the violin tremolo. 

And as it happens, there is this example or exactly that in the liturgy of January 6th Reges Tharsis

10 The kings of Tharsis and the islands shall offer presents: the kings of the Arabians and of Saba shall bring gifts:

11 And all kings of the earth shall adore him: all nations shall serve him.

12 For he shall deliver the poor from the mighty: and the needy that had no helper.

13 He shall spare the poor and needy: and he shall save the souls of the poor.

14 He shall redeem their souls from usuries and iniquity: and their names shall be honourable in his sight.

Psalm 71 or 72 depending on which numbering system you use.   I went on a little from what the chant says for obvious reasons.   This is the 1899 edition of the Douay-Rheims translation of the Vulgate. 

Update:  I should mention before someone else does that I will be spelling "sol" "so".   In this series I want all of the solfege syllables to have two characters to make fewer difficulties when typing things out.  I found it was easier when typing things if all of them had two characters instead of one having a semi silent "l" in it.