jovino santos neto

Educational material

As an educator, I spend a lot of time sharing the music I learn with other musicians. I teach piano, rhythm, composition and music notation software at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. I also lead the Samba Combo at Music Works Northwest. When I travel to perform, I often give lectures and workshops on a wide variety of music topics. I created this page to provide access to useful material for musicians of all ages and styles. The files are in PDF format. Click on the title to download and read the documents. Most of this material was found on the web and is presented here for educational purpose only.

Ginga: a Brazilian Way to Groove: I wrote this paper for the IAJE Conference in 2007 in New York. It addresses ways to build a better rhythmic interpretation of Brazilian grooves, with detailed analysis of 4 styles: samba, baião, marcha and maracatu.

Brazilian jazz scores - A collection of 20 great Brazilian tunes, ideal for jam sessions, improvisations and arranging. 25 pages of cool music...compiled by myself. PDF file, 1.16 MB.

Brazilian Piano Styles - This was written by myself for the clinic on Brazilian piano that I gave at the IAJE Conference in Toronto in 2003. It contains various references to important players, composers and it also features several styles notated for piano.

A Very Brief History of Choro - by Chris McGowan and Ricardo Pessanha. An Excerpt From The Brazilian Sound: Samba, Bossa Nova And the Popular Music of Brazil (Temple University Press, 1998).

The Mystery of Harmony - Duke University perception scientists David Schwartz, Catherine Howe and Dale Purves have presented evidence that variation in the relative harmoniousness, or "consonance," of different tone combinations arises from people's exposure to the acoustical characteristics of speech sounds.

What is Music? - a very interesting site by Philip Dorrell with his theories about the nature of music and its relationship to speech.

Musicians' Brains - from the BBC News site. Professional musicians have more grey matter in a part of the brain involved in processing music, scientists have found. The discovery could explain why musical virtuosos tend to be born not made.

Speaking In Tones - Perfect pitch
By Alan Hall -Vietnamese children, who speak a language in which the meaning of words is conveyed by their tone, acquire perfect musical pitch at an early age.

The Right Ear is from Mars - in a new study, scientists have found that the left and right ears process sound differently. From birth, the right ear responds more to speech, while the left ear is more attuned to music, according to the study, published in Science

We Got Rhythm; the Mystery Is How and Why - by Nicholas Wade - Music is an indispensable ingredient of life. Yet the ability to enjoy music has long puzzled biologists because it does nothing evident to help survival. Why, therefore, should evolution have built into the human brain this soul-stirring source of pleasure?

Music Lessons Enhance IQ - A research report by E. Glenn Schellenberg from the
University of Toronto at Mississauga, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada

Hand to Ear link in Brain - Hand-to-ear link in brain established after minutes of piano learning.

Exploring the role of music in human life - By Robert S. Boyd - Scientists are trying to understand why music – a pleasurable but seemingly unnecessary part of life - is universal in all human societies, ancient and modern.

Enhanced Response to Music (Society for Neuroscience) -- In new studies, scientists are uncovering the factors responsible for an enhanced brain electrical response to music; the effects on the brain of growing up in a musical or non-musical environment; and which areas of the brain process different aspects of music including speaking and singing.

I will add more files soon, including sound bites of grooves and interactive instructional pages...please come back soon!