Events

Today in the Blogging A-to-Z challenge, I've used a bit of sleight-of-hand to sneak in a discussion of a large topic by highlighting one example of it. A cadence resolves or pauses a musical phrase. The simplest cadence, called the authentic cadence, uses only the 1st and 5th notes of the scale: You have a C major chord, followed by a G major chord, ending in a C major chord: tonic, dominant, tonic; I-V-I. (If you need a refresher on what those terms mean, read Monday's post.) The second-most-common...

Last night, Chicago elected its first African-American female mayor: After waging a campaign focused on upending the vaunted Chicago political machine, Lightfoot dismantled one of its major cogs by dispatching Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, whose candidacy had been hobbled in part by an anti-incumbent mood among voters and an ongoing federal corruption investigation at City Hall. Lightfoot’s campaign, which started last May as a long-shot bid to replace the city’s clouted politics with...

Theresa May has fewer and fewer options available to complete the one job she signed up for today after EU President Jean-Claude Juncker flatly rejected May's request for a second short Brexit delay: Speaking to the European parliament, Juncker instead set an “ultimate deadline” of 12 April for the Commons to approve the withdrawal agreement. “If it has not done so by then, no further short extension will be possible,” he said. “After 12 April, we risk jeopardising the European parliament elections, and...

Today in the Blogging A-to-Z challenge we'll take a look at clefs. Yesterday I introduced the concept of a bass line, but skimmed over how that gets written down. Let's take another look at it: Take a look at the first symbols on each line. The top one is called the "treble" or G clef: It's actually a highly-stylized letter G. Notice how it wraps itself around the second line up from the bottom, which is the G line. Thus the name. The bottom line starts with this symbol, called the "bass" or F clef: It...

After a Parliamentary session yesterday demonstrating that no one is able to compromise with anyone else, in which MPs voted down four more proposals for Brexit, PM Theresa May today said she'd seek talks with Opposition Leader Jeremy Corbyn to see what kind of a coalition they could cobble together: In a brief TV statement inside No 10 following a seven-hour cabinet meeting, the prime minister said she would hold talks with Jeremy Corbyn to seek a Brexit plan they could agree on and “both could put to...

Yesterday's Blogging A-to-Z challenge post introduced the four principal scales used to create melodies in Western music for the past five or six centuries. Today I want to talk about the opposite of a melody: the bass line. Take this familiar melody: It's pleasant enough, but a little thin. It needs...more. So let's add a bass line below the melody, just using the notes C and G: Hey! It's almost music now! So what's going on here? Without going too much into how harmony works (the topic for next...

My flight is slightly (20 minutes) delayed, so I have just a bit more time on this gorgeous morning to walk around Bryant Park. Here's the view from my hotel's terrace: Busy week ahead. There's a reason I wrote the A-to-Z posts ahead of time.

Welcome to the Daily Parker's first entry in this year's Blogging A-to-Z challenge on the theme "Basic Music Theory." Today: A is for A. In Western music, A represents the note that all other notes are based upon. The other notes in Western music are B, C, D, E, F, and G. Putting all those notes in sequence is called a scale: That scale is called "A natural minor," and sounds like this. The first note in the scale is A; in the attached midi file, and generally in music today, it has a frequency of 440...

When I started the 30-Park Geas in 2008, I didn't expect it would take more than 11 years. Yet here we are. And in that time, both of New York's baseball teams got new stadia, making the 30-Park Geas a 32-Park Geas before I got halfway done. Well, this season, I'm finishing it. And wow, it's off to an inauspicious start. Today's game between the Orioles and Yankees at *New* Yankee Stadium didn't start for 3 hours and 15 minutes past its scheduled first pitch because it's March. A cold front pushed...

When you book through a discounter, you get what you pay for. After my spectacular view Friday, and my meh view yesterday, this is what I got today: Once the rain stops (in about an hour or so), I'm going to head up to Park #28, restarting the Geas after a two-season hiatus. Photos this evening.