It is awesome that you can embed interactive Noteflight scores in a web page, like so: But for optimal music education results, I also want to be able to show that same example in MIDI piano roll view too. Imagine if the Noteflight embed included a pane that showed this:
Tag Archives: MIDI
Clair de Lune
I struggle with the rhythms of rubato-heavy classical pieces, and no one loves rubato more than the Impressionists. When I started listening in earnest to recordings of Debussy’s “Clair de Lune,” I couldn’t even guess the time signature, much less place notes in the bar. This piece is therefore an excellent use case for aural …
Perpetual motion in Bach’s E major Violin Partita Prelude
In this crazy time, learning and analyzing Bach is an obsessive-compulsive activity that feels like an anchor of mental stability. In that spirit, I’m finding it therapeutic to dig into the famous prelude from the E major violin partita. It’s an example of “perpetual motion,” uniform note values played without interruption. Aside from measures 1, …
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Let’s listen to some extremely slowed down Bach
In this stressful time, we all need some help attaining inner peace. I’ve been enjoying listening to and thinking about the prelude to Bach’s Violin Partita Number 3 in E major as played by Hopkinson Smith. Beautiful though this is, it’s also a lot of information packed into a small space. I thought it might …
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Syncopation in Chopin
I’m trying to get better at understanding classical music, ideally without doing too much Schenkerian analysis. I can hunt for cadences as well as anyone who’s been to music school, and I understand how important they are as structural elements in the Western canon. But there’s more to this music than harmony. It has rhythm …
How to record from the aQWERTYon
People ask us a lot if there’s a way to record the output of the aQWERTYon. We might introduce recording functionality some day, but in the meantime, there are two methods for recording your aQW performances.
Learning minor key harmony from the Bach Chaconne
Major keys are easy to understand, at least in classical music, because a major key and a major scale are coextensive. Minor keys are harder, because you can’t just equate them to particular minor scales. To understand how chords work in minor keys, I’m going to walk you through a standard progression that happens throughout …
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Bach’s Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 – Prelude
I’m teaching melody in music theory class this month, and nobody wrote better melodies than Bach. If you want to learn how to use single note lines to imply chord changes and counterpoint, the prelude to his first cello suite is a whole textbook worth of wisdom for you. My favorite interpretation is by Mstislav …
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Announcing the Theory aQWERTYon
A few years ago, the NYU Music Experience Design Lab launched a web application called the aQWERTYon. The name is short for “QWERTY accordion.” The idea is to make it as easy to play music on the computer keyboard as it is with the chord buttons on an accordion. The aQWERTYon maps scales to the …
Remixing Satie’s Gymnopédie No 1 with Ableton Live
Following up on Debussy’s “Claire De Lune”, I’ve taken on another of the greatest hits of the classical canon that my ear does not intuitively understand: Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédie No 1“.