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Podcast Ep.5 - How to approach a Whole Beat "Discussion?"
🕑 Added 2023-08-19 09:11:02 +0000 UTCHi everyone,
No historical sources in this episode today. With Alberto's recent interview in mind (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tHPeP4F2Cc), the next topic came to mind: how do you actually approach a conversation (or even a discussion) about Whole Beat? The first natural reaction is to prove the existence of this metronome reading, but that is very difficult, mainly because of the fact that there is a very good chance that your conversation partner is not aware of all those sources through self-study. That immediately reduces such a conversation to a yes-no game that is of no use to anyone.
There are other ways to approach such a conversation, one of which is the reversal of the burden of proof. Something like: ok, suppose the WBMP is complete nonsense, can you show me what your solution to the problem is? And what do you think is the problem?
I go into more detail about this in the podcast. Why is that important to you? Well, for the musicians among us sometimes opportunities arise to make music with someone, a singer, violinist, ... and then you soon come to the subject of "tempo". You can avoid it or... you can try to win a musical partner for life!
Share your experience and thoughts in the comments below and as always, if you have a topic in mind, let me know!
Hartelijke groeten,
Wim
Comments
Looking forward to listening to this. I'm currently listening to a world famous pianist playing Schumann's op. 22 sonata, which I've been practising. It just sounds like a garbled mess to me now that I have the WBMP perspective 😳 It's brilliantly executed but is simply way too fast to comprehend (IMHO).
Wim, I really enjoyed listening to this podcast. Thank you for posting it.
The funny thing is, whenever I bring up the tempo to people who're not playing classical music or aren't musicologists, it goes in 3 phases, or 4 if I give a demonstration to conclude things (hey, a free music recital!). This usually takes 10-15 minutes at most. 1. When explaining the problem. "Is there a problem? I didn't know, classical music feels so inaccessible." 2. Illustrate the problem with numbers in terms of notes/second in single beat. "Yeah of course, X notes per second is impossible, that can't be right." 3. Explain the whole beat solution. "Uh-huh, that makes sense, and you say it solves the problem? Sounds like you're onto something." 4. After demonstration, usually with a known piece. "Damn, I never knew it could sound like that! It's weird but... deep." One of my colleagues is also a musician and he was convinced just a few minutes in.
