Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Music Notation, Prokofiev & Super Mario Paint as an Anti-Depressant


A friend and I were discussing music notations in the context of using one to transcribe a fugue (a fughetta technically) and he pointed me to something called a piano roll notation, called that because of a certain similarity to the original player piano "scripts" which were rolls of paper with holes punched in them.  I find this much easier to understand than traditional music notation.

Here is Beethoven's Great Fugue (op 133) in this notation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s0Mp7LFI-k





I am not sure that this notation as seen above has a formal name.  It seems to be a variant on a modern "piano roll" notation but has some additional features as well.

I can not think of music notation without thinking of the brilliant (well at least hilarious) adaptation of Prokofiev's Troika from the Lieutenant Kije Suite as performed on "Super Mario Paint".   And thus obviously Mario Paint has some sort of notation one can use to play music.



Notice the always appealing Mario is the mouse cursor/pointer

The troika as adapted for Mario Paint:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO1FWlbWQWs

I remember the first time I ever heard this piece in its more authentic form at the beginning of the Woody Allen film Love and Death. I was astounded at how appealing it was the first time I heard it, and every time I heard it thereafter.   The first use in film was the movie Lieutenant Kije, produced in the 1930s in the Soviet Union, this music was written originally by Prokofiev as a score for that film.  Music fasns who look down on soundtracks and their composition as not serious should take note.

Does anyone compose music like this anymore?  I find that this piece in any of its forms works as an amazingly effective, if short term, anti-depressant and it is to recommend this music for that purpose that I wrote this post.

Here is a more traditional version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QsRDpsItq0&feature=fvwrel

Music is still a mystery to most Darwinists, there is not a generally accepted theory, so I am told, for why we respond so strongly to it.


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