Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Amy, What you Gonna Do?

On radio today I heard "Amy, what you want to do?" And as I listened to the verses, they were simple chant, with exactly the types of ornamentation you find in the Triplex, IF you interpret it the way I do, with many of the square notes intended to be ornamentation.

When you look at it from the other direction, St. Gall notation is EXACTLY what a singer needs if he/she wants to record the nuances in a pop vocalist's renditions--the ornamentations that the simple shape of the melody can't convey, the part that (if you try to notate it in standard notation) comes out looking like unbelievable rhythmic complexity.

But it's not really complex. Any child can sing it, if it's learned orally.

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