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Musicology

My good friend Stephane will be teaching a one night “Slackademics” class on Music Theory/How to Read Music on Wednesday, Oct 11 @ 7pm. Venue will be either his place (cats) or my place (cat) depending on the number of respondents (me= Oak & 13th Ave, Stephane = 12th Ave & Glen). Right now we have the following interested parties:

John M
Michael B
Toren
Chris G

I know there are other interested parties (David, Amanda) but I haven’t heard from them on availability for the date/time.

Note that this is also a potluck! Stephane says:

I don’t have any specific food requests for the potluck.  I’m sure there’ll be food I like there.  (I don’t like onions and funny mayonnaise-based dishes)

and

Here are possible topics I could cover. If anybody feels any of this is redundant or not interesting,

1) Explain the two main musical clefs/staffs
2) Run through all the types of notes and rests for those that don’t remember from elementary school music (it’s all simple math)
3) Go through the note value of each note on the staff.
4) A brief run-through of the history and evolution of musical theory, both in the West and in the East.
5) A brief run-through of the ‘periods of music’ in the West (Baroque, Classical, Romantic, 1900s) and its main contributors, along with interesting facts about their lives/music.
6) Talk about the differences and correlations between Major/Minor keys
7) Go through the key chart explaining how to figure out how many sharps/flats are in each key, and what the corresponding Major/Minor keys are.
8) Run through some scales in both Major and Minor keys.

Those are all the basics, so depending on every one’s level we could just skim that and go into more advanced. Let me know if you have any comments or requests.

Please contact me if you or anyone you know is interested in attending!
Slackademics – BSing our way to higher education

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Slightly Dull Weekend Wrap-up

This weekend was full of frisky frolics. I went into Chilliwack on Friday to hang out with Mr Woods and to practice with the band one last time before the show. I’ll put up some photos courtesy Amanda soon enough.

We played some Destroy All Humans for the XBox. It was a lot of fun, destroying tanks in a flying saucer and whatnot. Reminded me a little of the Invader Zim cartoon. And I totally pigged out on the worst kind of junk food, it was liberating (dark chocolate almond bark, peanut M&Ms, Black Pepper Jack Doritos, and licorice allsorts). We hit the Value Village and waited in a long line. We had lunch at the Airport Cafe and the waitress was surly AND screwed up my order. She tried to invoke the “no substitutions” clause on the Daily Special stand-up (I’m sure there’s a name for those plastic things, but I have no idea what to call it) but they forgot to put it on. At least the pie was delicious, as usual.

The rock show at The Vault went well, despite 3/4 of the band being sick with cold (including me). We played six new songs and they went over pretty well I think. I had to use cheat sheets for some of the lyrics. Merrick stuck me at the door taking people’s money, which was a pain, asking for $5 from disinterested old farts and people who didn’t have to pay because “we are friends with the owner” but at least we sold a goodly amount of merchandise. Clearly I should have brought more Big Robot Dinosaur and Sendak Cthulhu pins as they were all the rage.

Regardless, lots of fun in goat legs.

I got home in the wee hours of Sunday morning thanks to Peet and Amanda, listening to Zombina & the Skeletones (“Nobody Likes You When You’re Dead” is a good one) on the trip.

On Sunday it was a bit of Call of Cthulhu with Caleb & the Gang and then hanging out with Joyce getting a good workout trying to explain how roleplaying games work. Also watched the comedic wuxia film White Dragon which was weird but pretty fun.