Comment from: Puck [Visitor]
Puck

For some reason, this post makes me happy. Maybe because you sound happy. Maybe because it’s sorta rambly. Maybe it’s because the ’small town girl done good’ thing. Maybe all of the above.

07/23/10 @ 20:41
Comment from: diana [Member]

Thanks, Puck. I like making you happy…particularly right now. Hang in there. You’re a good friend and I’m proud of you. We’ll do what we can to keep you as chipper as possible.

d

07/23/10 @ 20:51
Comment from: Judy [Visitor]
Judy

I like it - particularly the bit about playing for Grandaddy. :) Those are the bits and pieces of our family that I don’t know. And, I wish I played guitar… yes, I read how to fix that. :) But in the meantime, maybe my daughter will play. :)

07/23/10 @ 21:11
Comment from: Aunt Bann [Visitor]
Aunt Bann

Well, I, too, took piano lessons for a while. But I never got very good at it, and soon left for college. After that, it was never a priority in my life. I’ve also played a French horn (which is what Margie played in the band at Nac., but never got much past the scales with it (fifth grade only; we changed schools the next year, and it didn’t have a band).

But, like most of the family (except your father, who Grandmama wouldn’t let Daddy put in the quartet) I also sang from about the age of six. By the time I was ten or eleven, I was singing in the family quartet. Singing has always been one of the things I do for enjoyment; reading and writing are two others (also like many in the family!).

07/23/10 @ 23:11
Comment from: diana [Member]

Mama wouldn’t let Daddy join the quartet? What quartet? and why?

This is new to me. :)

d

07/23/10 @ 23:17
Comment from: Aunt Bann [Visitor]
Aunt Bann

Diana, I guess I thought that you knew about the quartet. It was formed shortly after we all went to the singing school, when I was about six. It was held in the Baptist church that we attended, and a friend of ours was the teacher. The entire family attended, and it was similar to the singing schools your grandfather later held, with the introduction of “shaped” notes, the scales, etc. After we got used to reading the notes, we had an assignment to “write a song” of at least one line, with two parts or more. Although I wasn’t expected to write one, I did, and even sang it to the group on the night the songs were due.

The last night of the school, other singers were invited to come for a singing convention, and the Round Robin Singing Convention was born, with Carl Lindsey as the president. We met on the Saturday night before the second Sunday, of every month, for many years; I don’t think it meets any more.

Any way, the family gospel quartet began from that school, and continued to function until after I left for college. When the older ones married and left the area, Daddy just moved one of us into the gap. But when he put me in, Mother said that he couldn’t put Lynn in at all; she wanted him to stay home with her! (She had quit going on a regular basis a couple of years before that.

Basically, your father was her pet, especially after Eddie and Terry started dating. And she really didn’t want him to come to Nacogdoches, because he would probably find a girl to marry. And he did—your mother. She even refused to go to their wedding, but that’s another story.

07/24/10 @ 19:17
Comment from: diana [Member]

Interesting! Thanks for sharing that. :)

I don’t remember anything about any of that. I know Daddy can read shape notes, and like most of the Blacks, sing any part of harmony, but…wow. (He tried to teach us to read them, and his lessons may have “took” with Noel, but I never really got farther than understanding that the shapes somehow corresponded to do-re-mi-la-so-la-ti-do.

He was the pet, yes. But he was the baby, too. I hear that happens a lot with the babies. :)

d

07/24/10 @ 20:33
Comment from: Aunt Bann [Visitor]
Aunt Bann

Yes, and she never really accepted your mom as part of the family, of course, because she had “taken him away from us"! As for me, she didn’t care much how soon I got married. In fact, she told me that I didn’t need to go to college, because (all you need to do is get married and have a family, anyway!). Too bad about that! lol

07/24/10 @ 22:24
Comment from: Lorraine [Visitor]
Lorraine

Hi Diana and Ms. Bann,

Could you tell me what shaped notes are, please? It is a little like the notation in Walker’s Southern Harmony?

Lorraine

07/24/10 @ 23:13
Comment from: Aunt Bann [Visitor]
Aunt Bann

Lorraine,I’m not familiar with Walker’s Southern Harmony, but I’d almost bet they are the same. For instance, instead of the notes that are all shaped the same (as ovals), each note on the scale has a different shape. There is DO, which is shaped as a normal triangle, with the bottom line; re, (pronounced ray), which is a closed “u"; mi, which is a diamond; fa, which is a right triangle; la, which is a square; ti, which looks almost like a cone; and the next note is another do. Many religious groups still use those notes instead of the “round” notes in their music.

By using these shapes, almost anyone can learn to read music in a very short time. My father taught music schools for several years, using this method, and in one or two weeks, everyone who had paid much attention could pick up a song book and be able to sing a song they had never heard before. (And the lessons were usually only 1-2 hours each weeknight!)

Does that help explain what I was talking about?

07/25/10 @ 14:31
Comment from: Lorraine [Visitor]
Lorraine

Yes, absolutely. And you are right, it does sound a bit like Walker’s Southern Harmony. Walker used a notation so that those with no music education could learn to do what he called, “big singing” at camp meetings. Many of the beautiful melodies that Ken Burns used in his Civil War PBS series sounded a lot like those Walker collected in the late 1800s in the Southern US. They are beautiful, lilting tunes that I would surmise have folk song roots.

I envy you your family’s sharing of music together.

Lorraine

07/26/10 @ 00:26
Comment from: KathyG [Visitor]
KathyG

Aunt Bann said,
“By using these shapes, almost anyone can learn to read music in a very short time. My father taught music schools for several years, using this method, and in one or two weeks, everyone who had paid much attention could pick up a song book and be able to sing a song they had never heard before. (And the lessons were usually only 1-2 hours each weeknight!)”

Ummm…
Isn’t that long enough to learn how to read _regular_ music notation? I really don’t remember it being all that tough.

What am I missing here?

K

07/27/10 @ 19:41
Comment from: Aunt Bann [Visitor]
Aunt Bann

Sorry, Kathy! Back in the 1940s and 50s, many people really couldn’t read the notes, because they had never had “music lessons"! That was something that we didn’t have in the school that I attended; we only had music one day a week, for less than an hour, and the teacher would play the tune and have us follow her lead. Very few people even had a musical instrument, especially in the area I grew up in. (Southeast Texas) The schools started students in band only at the fifth grade level. So most people just learned from rote, and would only look at the song itself to get the right words.

Yes, if you know the lines and spaces, which many people do now, the rest is faily easy, IF (and it is a big if) they know what how far to move up or down with their voices in that particular song. To do that, they also have to know the key signature, and what that means, the time/rhythm that the song is written in, etc. Daddy taught all of those things in the singing schools he taught; and unlettered people loved to learn how to read music—-for the very first time in their lives, they could pick up a piece of music and sing it!!!

07/28/10 @ 21:25
Comment from: diana [Member]

How does learning the key signature (time/rhythm and sharps/flats) work with shape notes, Aunt Bann?

I just know the basic notes. :) I have been studying music theory, but not with shape notes.

d

07/28/10 @ 21:36
Comment from: Aunt Bann [Visitor]
Aunt Bann

Actually, Diana, the time/rhythm is the same, with the numbers as in the “round” notes. The sharps and flats are also shown as sharp or flat, just as in the “round” note clef. So the only real difference is in the SHAPE of the notes! And that makes it much easier for uneducated people, especially, to learn to read music! They can SEE the note, and since every key STARTS and ENDS with the DO, the rest of it is fairly easy to pick up. And once a person is familiar with the shaped notes, that person should be able to learn to read the normal notes with only a little help.

07/28/10 @ 22:56
Comment from: Aunt Bann [Visitor]
Aunt Bann

Remember the song in Sound of Music? That is exactly what we did; we SANG the Do, Re, Mi, etc. I think it is Primitive Baptists who sing the notes instead of the words to the songs! And they do it all without instruments, much as your family does it.

07/30/10 @ 00:04


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