At 01:54 PM 5/3/2007 -0700, Owen wrote:

I guess I can respond to the "public" part of this post.  After I posted 
the thing about figured bass, I got curious about some of the details of 
what the son-in-law told me, and eventually found a discussion on Wikipedia 
under Chord (music) that talks about various notation systems.  In the 
paragraph about figured bass, it says it is used nowadays mostly to notate 
chord analysis, and I think that is probably what the SOL uses it for, in 
an educational context.  He showed me some examples of taking JSB chorals 
with written out bass line and "analyzing" the bass using figured bass 
notation.  I think it would be good to learn how to do that, and I will put 
it on the "to do" list.  He claims it has the same information as "charts" 
that pop musicians use.

Wiki in that same article also talks about "charts" which it says is what 
many pop musicians use to indicate chord progressions and their timing with 
respect to the melody line.  I have known about that for a long time and 
never bothered to learn about the details of that either.  I wonder if it 
evolved independently of figured bass.

These are among the handicaps associated with playing primarily a melody 
instrument, and reading fully realized music.

JB


>That's very cool about figured bass. Just a few years ago a mere
>glance seeing those numbers under the score made me glaze over, and
>now they seem just so simple and easy!! It was just a kind of
>perception-switch. It's helpful to think of them almost as a kind of
>tabulature!
>
>Robert never learned to read music, and now wants to mess about on an
>old piano he and his roommates bought at the Goodwill bins for $40,
>and I'm trying to think of a good way to get him started without all
>the rigamarole of insisting on learning conventional music reading.
>We shall see. Lynn guesses that there might be something like
>"Playing Piano for Dummies." I'll look.
>
>I was having fun browsing through my very outdated original David
>Pogue OSX Missing Manual, and I remain impressed with the way he
>combines thoroughness with clarity and avoiding confusing geekiness.
>That said, though I want to, I've not had the patience to learn some
>of his basic outline of Unix commands.
>
>He does offer a very stern warning against logging in as Root, and
>points out that the simulated/reduced root privileges offered in the
><sudo> command are for all practical purposes all you need, and a lot
>safer.
>
>Did I tell you that after a hiatus I accidentally got printer sharing
>to work reliably again? It's very magical to sit in the living room
>on the laptop, and hit PRINT and hear the printer firing up in the
>next room!!
>
>o
>
>
>--
>Owen Daly Early Keyboard Instruments
>557 Statesman St. NE
>Salem, OR 97301
>503-362-9396
>http://www.dalyharpsichords.com