(Note: About a year and a half ago, I subbed in this same music class for part of the day. But it was on a day when my other district was closed, hence it was a non-posting day.)
Three of the music classes were first-year choir. The regular teacher tells me that these classes are so bad-behaved that he doesn't even bother expecting them to do any work with the sub. And so instead, he has me show them a DVD. It's the musical Newsies -- and this marks the second time this month that I played this movie while subbing.
In one of the first-year classes, there is yet another "Friendsgiving" celebration. But unlike yesterday (at another school), today there is actual turkey along with dinner rolls and other snacks. I end up eating everything but the rolls -- there are none left, because some guys decide to start throwing the rolls at each other! This is the only real behavior problem of the day.
(Well, I guess the only other problem is attendance. Due to a false alarm, one-fourth to one-third of students in each class are absent today. Once again, this is a commentary on the times that we're currently living in.)
The other two classes are more advanced, and so they have actual songs to sing. They are preparing some Christmas songs for performances in a couple of weeks. As usual, whenever I sub in a music class, I add the "music" label and blog more about how to play the same songs in Mocha.
In tutorial, there isn't much to do. Well, since I'm in a vocal music room anyway, I might as well sing some of my songs. Today I choose "No Drens," "Mathematics of Love," and "Ring the Bells" -- a Jingle Bells parody that I posted back on Third Pi Day. That last song makes sense today, since the classes are practicing Christmas songs anyway.
Speaking of Third Pi Day, I've been thinking about pumpkin pie and Friendsgiving. Yesterday I wrote about what I thought was a nice Friendsgiving party, but once again, today was the real party with the real turkey. Meanwhile, last year I subbed at a middle school that served pumpkin pie the Thursday before the holiday -- that was basically a "Friendsgiving" party as well (even though that word wasn't used to describe it.) Thus I'm continuing to think about how I could have incorporated Friendsgiving three years ago at the old charter school.
As I wrote yesterday, the key is the idea of making "Advisory" -- the name of the period between seventh grade music and lunch -- into a real Advisory period. Once again, the administrators gave no suggestions for Advisory other than "do extra math." Well, I assume they wouldn't have minded if I'd gone above and beyond the call of duty by actually, um, advising during Advisory.
And besides, there had already been training in August that could have provided ideas for some activities for Advisory -- the Playworks training. Admittedly, most of this training was geared towards our support aides, but there was nothing stopping me from using them myself. The activity I saw yesterday about lining up alphabetically by name to find a partner sounds just like something the Playworks trainers showed us. (Later on after Thanksgiving, there was also Responsive Classroom training that provided even more ideas.)
I wrote yesterday that the seventh grade was my most important class (due to demographics and test scores -- some scores for seventh grade math could be individually tied to me as a teacher). But this was also the most misbehaving class. Even during Benchmark Tests during the second week of school, the seventh graders were talking a lot -- and things just got worse from there. After giving Benchmarks on Monday and Tuesday of that week, I could have held my first Advisory on that Wednesday and started with one of these activities. Just getting the students to listen to me and do what I say -- even for something fun like lining up in alphabetical order and partnering up -- could have led to more obedience during math lessons.
To celebrate their success during the year, I could give the seventh graders a Friendsgiving. The earliest opportunity for such a party might have been Third Pi Day -- it fell on a Wednesday that year, so the party could be during Advisory. But there was a big problem that week -- the fact that my car broke down the day before Third Pi Day. This made it more difficult for me to get to a store, purchase food for the party, and bring it to school. That week was also the second Benchmark Testing Week -- and those tests would have been completed by Wednesday, but due to complications stemming from the car breakdown, the test was pushed back to Wednesday during Advisory time.
(But ignoring car trouble, Third Pi Day on November 9th-10th might be a great time for math teachers to hold a Friendsgiving party. This is especially true if other teachers at the school might celebrate closer to the actual Thanksgiving.)
The following week, as I mentioned before, was Parent Conferences Week. I look back at old blog posts from that week, and I see that there was indeed some time between seventh grade music and lunch on Wednesday even during that mixed-up week. So a Friendsgiving party might have been possible that day. Otherwise, I could have it the following morning -- the seventh grade class met first on that Thursday.
Most likely I would have just served pumpkin pie -- maybe I would have done something similar to yesterday's party with various snacks. But a potluck party similar to today's -- one student bringing a turkey and others bringing other foods -- might have been awkward. (It's probably in bad taste to ask students in such a poor neighborhood to bring turkey and other potluck foods.)
Students in other grades might not have liked seventh grade getting the party. But recall that eighth grade had a pizza party on the first of November to celebrate success on the square root test. And later in the year (when SBAC Prep) began, the schedule was changed so I had the sixth graders during Advisory instead of seventh grade. This would have been just in time for the original Pi Day -- and as I wrote that year, sixth grade ended up getting the Pi Day party anyway.
OK, so let's get to music. I heard several songs performed today. One is "Let It Go," from the original Frozen movie -- this is performed by the girls' choir. (I know that Frozen II comes out tomorrow -- actually tonight.) A mixed-gender choir sings "I Remember December" -- I've never heard of this song before, but it is a Christmas song as the holiday is mentioned in one verse. This group also performs the "Hot Chocolate" song from Polar Express.
But the song that I want to code today in Mocha is "Frosty the Snowman." I have a Christmas music book at home that contains many Christmas songs, including Frosty. And since I have the score, I have something to work with. Even though Olaf might be the more popular snowman these days (with tonight's movie release), I'll be converting Frosty into Mocha today.
(Oh, and today the girls' choir adds in embellishing lines such as "Hey, Frosty boy!" But we'll just be coding the original version of the song.)
We must begin by choosing our EDL scale. Our score is written in the key of C major (and indeed, the girls sing Frosty in C major today as well). The span of the melody is a major ninth, from middle C up to a high D.
Now we've seen the c'-d" range before for other Christmas songs -- except that those songs were in the key of F major, not C major. It turns out that the C-D range is convenient for EDL -- we code middle C as Degree 20 and the high D as Degree 9. Then the F major triad (F-A-C) appears as 15:12:10, which is the simplest possible major triad in EDL. The in-between notes G and Bb can be estimated by Degrees 13 and 11 -- these differ significantly from their 12EDO equivalents, but at least the 13/11 interval is close to a minor third.
(Actually, I won't write our standard scale as 12EDO any more, if only because 12EDO looks so much like 12EDL. Instead, I'll refer to the standard scale as 12TET, which really stands for "12-Tone Equal Temperament.")
But this doesn't quite work as well for C major. Our emphasis needs to be on the C major triad (which is C-E-G) rather than the F major triad, so we don't want the way-too-sharp G at Degree 13. Thus letting C be Degree 20 (which is essentially 20EDL) might not work.
In the past, I wrote that for songs in major keys, the best possibilities are 18EDL and 20EDL. Neither of these preserves a major triad on the root note. We recall that 18EDL has a perfect fifth ("white fifth" or "wa 5th" using Kite's colors) with a supermajor third ("red third" or "ru 3rd"), while 20EDL has a just major third ("yellow third" or "yo 3rd") with a 20/13 fifth ("thuyo 5th").
Thus we must check the score to see whether the third or the fifth is more important. We see that in our Frosty song, not only is the first note G, but there are many more long (half or dotted half) notes that are G's than E's. And so we conclude that the fifth is more important to keep perfect at 3/2-- we must choose 18EDL rather than 20EDL.
In some Christmas songs -- notably "Feliz Navidad" and "First Noel" -- the final note of the song is actually the third, not the tonic. We wouldn't want our song to end on a 9/7 third, and so we would choose 20EDL for these songs so our songs can end on 5/4.
Notice that Degree 20 is (green) C, while Degree 18 is (white) D. But it's more important to focus on the thirds and fifths rather than what key the score is written in. Thus Frosty needs to be in 18EDL even though it's in the key of C -- we can have Mocha transpose it to C later if we want. (Ironically, the two songs "Feliz Navidad" and "First Noel," which sound better in 20EDL, are usually written in the key of D major in most scores.)
And so here is the song:
https://www.haplessgenius.com/mocha/
10 FOR V=1 TO 6
20 N=9
30 IF V=1 OR V=4 THEN Z=27
40 IF V=2 OR V=5 THEN Z=59
50 IF V=3 OR V=6 THEN Z=29
60 RESTORE
70 FOR X=1 TO Z
80 READ A,T
90 SOUND 261-N*A,T
100 NEXT X
110 IF Z=27 THEN SOUND 261-N*13,4:SOUND 261-N*12,12
120 NEXT V
130 FOR X=30 TO 59
140 READ A,T
150 NEXT X
160 FOR X=60 TO 90
170 READ A,T
180 SOUND 261-N*A,T
190 NEXT X
200 DATA 12,8,14,6,13,2,12,4,9,8
210 DATA 10,2,9,2,8,4,9,4,10,4,11,2,12,
220 DATA 10,2,9,2,8,4,9,4,10,4,11,2,11,
230 DATA 12,2,9,4,14,6,12,2,11,2,12,4,1
240 DATA 16,4,18,12
250 DATA 18,4,11,4,11,4,9,4,9,4
260 DATA 10,4,11,4,12,4,14,4,13,4
270 DATA 11,4,12,4,13,4,14,12
280 DATA 14,4,16,4,16,4,12,4,12,4
290 DATA 10,4,10,4,8,4,8,2,10,2
300 DATA 8,4,9,4,10,4,11,4,12,8,12,8
310 DATA 12,2,12,2,12,4,12,4,12,4
320 DATA 11,2,12,2,12,4,12,4,12,4
330 DATA 11,4,12,4,14,4,12,4,16,16
340 DATA 12,2,12,2,12,4,12,4,12,4
350 DATA 11,2,12,2,12,4,12,4,12,4
360 DATA 12,2,12,2,12,4,11,4,11,4,18,12
As usual, we click the Sound button before we RUN the program.
This song plays through six times. The song is in AABA format, so the first pass is A, the second is AB (B for "bridge"), and the third pass is A. The fourth through sixth verses are for the second verse, repeating AABA again.
Notice that first A ends with the notes F-G "of coal," while the other A's end with D-C "one day." To code this in Mocha, I have the first A end two notes early (skipping D-C), then include the two desired notes (F-G) by hand in line 110.
Finally, the song ends with a C part (C for "coda"). This is the "thumpety thump thump" part. To code this in Mocha, we skip over the B part (which is why I put RESTORE at the start of the loop in Line 60 rather than the end -- after the sixth pass, we just finished the A part, so all we need to do is skip over the B part to get to the coda). Then the C part plays.
This song is quite long to code, but notice that Lines 130-190 and 310-360 are only there to code the coda part. If you don't care about "thumpety thump thump," then you can just skip those lines. It's also possible to change some of the eighth and quarter notes in Lines 310, 320, 340, 350 to a few whole notes. Since most of the notes are G's, "thumpety thump thump" is still singable over the G's as whole notes. We would then change Line 160 to reflect there being fewer notes than 90.
Here is the full scale used in the song. (Using N=1 or N=8 in Line 20 keeps the song in the key of D, while we use N=9 instead to move it to the desired C major.)
Degree N=8 N=9
18 wa D wa C
16 wa E wa D
14 ru F# ru E
13 thu G thu F
12 wa A wa G
11 lu B lu A
10 gu C gu Bb
9 wa D wa C
8 wa E wa D
While the thu and lu notes sound distinct from their 12TET counterparts, the most controversial note is the gu Bb used instead of a B. Most of the lower EDL scales lack a true leading tone. But in my score of Frosty, the note B is usually played over a F#dim7 chord. Neither B nor Bb is actually part of an F# diminished chord, so this will sound dissonant no matter which note we chose.
There are a few more future projects with Mocha and EDL scales that I'd like to explore. First of all, I make so much emphasis on how some just intonation is possible on Mocha (so that our thirds 5/4 and 9/7 are just, as opposed to the major third of 12TET), and yet Mocha plays one note at a time (that is, melody rather than harmony). If we can't play more than one note simultaneously, then we might as well just use 12TET.
Well, there really is a trick to make Mocha play harmony. We open Mocha in a browser window and then type in the following line:
SOUND 101,255
This plays a very long green middle C note. While this is playing, we open another window (not another tab -- I tried it and the sound is blocked), load Mocha, and then type in (remembering to click the Sound button here as well):
SOUND 133,255
(I couldn't do this on the actual computer back in the day!) This is a long white E note, and so the two notes are a just 5/4 apart. (Oh, and if you couldn't get the second window ready in time, just prepare two browser windows and not press ENTER on one window until the other is ready.)
My other project is to imagine how to fret a guitar to EDL scale. I'm still intrigued by the 18/17 interval and its name "Arabic lute index finger" -- implying that the oud was once fretted to 18EDL.
This is what I wrote last year about this review worksheet:
OK, here is the Chapter 6 Review worksheet. I've made changes to the worksheet in recent years, including the activities I give the same week as the worksheet -- and due to these changes, I didn't have much to say about this worksheet last year. Since this week's activity was already given as a multi-day assignment the last two days, there is no activity to give today, so students should just ignore the instruction to perform an activity.
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