bibliography

Bibliography

      http://www.abrsm.org/regions/fileadmin/user_upload/syllabuses/pracComplete10.pdf

 
      leveitn, D. (2008). this is music. In: this is your brain on music. london: atlantic. p13-36

   
       Rowbury, C. (02.10.11). sing like you speak. Available:        http://blog.chrisrowbury.com/2011/10/sing-like-you-speak-folk-voice-or-how.html. Last  accessed 13th dec 2015


      Alan rich. (6.8.15). Harmony . Available: http://www.britannica.com/art/harmony-music. Last    accessed 7th December 2015.

evaluation of group performances

overall as a group i think that we work well and cooperatively together during the process of devising the two pieces. i think that we created two contrasting pieces with a shared theme, and made them the best we could to our abilities.

despite us nearly being a member down for the official performance, i believe that we executed the performances almost as well as we could've seen as we didn't get the chance to have full run through's of each performance. despite this, during both we all managed to keep good chemistry with each other to make our way through the pieces effectively. we managed to keep in time with each other during reflection which during rehearsals was difficult as we were all playing completely different rhythms to one another; with us all maintaining in time it allowed us to keep up the lively tempo meaning that the piece didn't drag. this was the same for man in the mirror as we played around with the tempo in places to make it more entertaining and interesting for the listener and the audience. we had problems with this in rehearsals but on the day we pulled it our of the bag and i felt we did a good job.

for me personally in man in the mirror i was very happy with my performance and the fact that i didn't get the lyrics wrong. in almost every performance we had done of the song i got the lyrics of the pre-chorus mixed up and confused so it threw me and my other group members off however in the actual thing i got them correct which was a huge sigh of relief for me and for my group.

some things i feel that we could've improved on in our performance was the way we possibly staged both of them to make them more visually interesting as i feel it may have been a little visually boring for the audience as there wasn't much movement around the stage. also i feel we could've worked on dynamics more in both pieces as the dynamic changes between sections didn't sound as noticeable or dramatic as they could've been to make it more interesting and give the piece more shape. if we could've had longer on reflection, i feel we could've changed the way that some instruments were playing their notes as it could've sounded a lot more lively and a lot more different from the original if we had more time.

group assessment; 2

group assessment part 2

as said in the previous post, for our assessment we needed to do two pieces that had an intertwining theme that linked them together. we decided for our second piece to completely change disneys song 'reflection' from Mulan into a folk song. we felt this would put our arrangement skills to the test as it is difficult to change such a popular song especially Disney into a style so that its almost unrecognisable.

we decided to have every individual on a different instrument in order to create an interesting and thicker texture and to show a variety of skills for each person. one person stayed on the vocals however made changes to her singing style to suit the genre. to do this she watched clips, tutorials and researched the technique to folk singing in order to make it an authentic performance. the folk style of singing tends to have a natural speaking element to it. where youre from and your herritage and background can depend heavily on how your voice as a folk singer sounds. Rowbury, C. (02.10.11) sing like you speak. 

for me personally, i've played the viola since the age of 7 so being able to incorporate my skills into a piece was great! we used the viola to an advantage as it was one of the most folk instruments we hand amongst us to play which would add extra impact from the piece onto the audience. i had a play around at first with some different rhythms and melodies to play for the introduction and ending to create a lively and upbeat tempo. along side this we had the chordal piano playing a block chord, the drum playing a steady accented rhythm and the guitar strumming along side. this gave the piece a vibrant ad upbeat introduction which is a huge contrast to the original which was our intended aim fro the piece. 

Group assessment: 1

Group assessment

For our group assessment we had to create a 5 minute performance of two songs that had a running theme between them. The initially choose our songs we played through and sang a variety of songs to find one we felt we could work with well and completely change the sound of the song but keep it true to the origional. We eventually chose the song ''man in the mirror" by Micheal Jackson. We chose this song as it showcased each of our talents effectively and allowed us all to have a 'moment to shine' each within the song. For this song we decided to do a vocal arranger with guitar accompaniment so we could use the different timbres of each voice to it's strengths to create an origional blend for this song and for guitar it allowed him to show his playing skills as he was free to add little ornaments where he or we felt needed  to add more dimension and interest to the song.

When adding and finding harmonies for the vocals, it took time as we tried to make them more interesting and not too simple to make it interesting for the audience and to show how well we could harmonise as a group and how well we could put the harmonies together into the peice. We spent a lot of time working on these harmonies as we needed it to be very tight and together for it to give the intended sound to the audience, if one note was out of tune or one rhythmical element such as a "ba ba" was off it wouldn't sound clean or nice to the ear so it was essential to nail these. Another aspect which we added into the piece to mix it up and change it from the origional was to add a rap section instead of the origional verse which would have the same message and meaning as the origional verse. We thought that by adding a rap into it would make it our piece instead of just an arrangement of Micheal jackson's song. It also allowed one of our group members to show complete versatility from what she has been trained on which was great to show in our assessment.

"I've been a victim of a selfish kinda love that's left me scarred and it is time that I realise we are falling apart. That there are some with no home and I guess I've always known that it's not only me pretending their not alone. and I'm seeing all around me that people are getting scared. People are getting scared of people who said they cared. And I'm seeing on the news that things just ain't right. love turned into hate and hate turned into fight" 

Harmony; vocal arrangement

Group task for harmony

Following the session on harmony. We split off into small groups to begin our task. Our task was to create a vocal accapella harmony arrangement of any songs of our choice. Me and two others created a mash up of singing in the rain and umbrella, we used the idea from Glee's performance of the two songs and combined then in a different arrangement to theirs to suit each individuals vocals. We felt it was important to take our abilities into consideration in order to achieve a good sound.

The most difficult part of this task was managing to fit the different together to create the piece as the songs had different tempos meaning that the way the rhythms were formed were different and collided with each other. This was a mini battle between ourselves as we struggled to find a way to combine and bring together the rhythms in a clever way that will be pleasant for the listener.

When we performed this piece, we felt that we did a good harmony mash up as the harmonies were tight and sounded accurate and suited the key and tone of the piece and they showed off both melody lines in an effective way for each vocalist. We also managed to showcase ourselves in the performance which meant we could put across our strengths to the audience in a pleasing manner. In the end the combined rhythms of both melody a from both songs complimented each other well as they didn't over power one another and create a main focus on just one melody line, they blended well. The finished arrangement can be found on the link below on the blog.

http://cmu105musicianship201516.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/summer-erin-and-yahya-vocal-arrangement.html?m=1

Harmony 1

Harmony

In this session, we began to understand how l to create harmonies and to make them sound good to the ear of the listener. Harmonys are what can make an accapella vocal arrangement go from nice to breathtaking with just the addition of one or two additional notes.
The oxford definition of harmony is "the combination of simultaneously sounded musical notes to produce a pleasing effect." I agree with this as harmonies that sound pleasing make us feel involved and make us enjoy certain parts of a song more as it bay give you goosebumps or shivers up your spine however harmonies in some pieces clash sound very unpleasing but are still a creative expression of music. For example in Schoenbergs chamber symphony no.1 op.9 there is the constant use of clashing notes within the harmonies which create a menacing tone to certain moments within the piece which some people may find unpleasant to the ear yet it is till considered a great piece of music. It's complicated harmonies show great talent from the composer which is respected as it is a specific time period and genre of music. 
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jhkytzoQpW4

Harmonies in pieces aren't always necessary but the majority of world famous pieces use harmony. Alan rich. (6.8.15). Harmony . 
These harmonies are normally made from the major scale of the key of the piece. The notes used to create the harmonies of the piece tend to be the chords 1, 4 and 5 as they sound the most pleasant to the ear. 

These chords are the main chords you will hear in western pop culture music as they are the most simply yet effective chord progressions to use that satisfy the ear of the listener. The varmints tend to be a created from the 3 notes of the chords however in a four party harmony, you would never okay the middle note of the chord twice or more old than once in a chord as it doesn't sound harmonious. 

There are different ways to harmonise with the chords for example you can play just  the chord it's self in a strong  and domination fashion or you can break them up like in Adele's 'someone like you'  or in a  vocal arrangement you can have each not of the chord or just the tonic note as  a basis for a counter melody which is in harmony to the origional melody.. 

Meldoy 

The definition of melody is a musically satisfying sequence of notes and in western  music it is the most memorable feature of the song; like Rebecca's blacks incredibly painfully catchy song 'its friday', the melody is always stuck in your head no matter what you do to try and get rid it. 
melody can with words or without and tends to always have a meaning behind it whether it be a place, feeling, character or story etc. 
melodies can be distinguished by the use of different instruments for example, in a choir you normally get the soprano's singing the melody and the altos singing the counter melody also in an string orchestra you normally get the violins playing the melody and the viola playing the counter melody with the cello,piano and double bass playing the accompaniment. every instrument that plays a melody and every individual will bring their own individual flavour to it to make it unique to them and to distinguish it from others.
there are different ways in which melody can interpret different emotions. one way, for example is a rising intonation of the melody represents a happy and uplifting mood whereas a descending intonation of the melody represents a sad and gloomy mood. 

“I believe that this [communication] is such a fundamentally important function of music that it may

 even have been the root of the first song.” (Levitin, 2009: 141-2)
For example in the piece... The use of intonation on an ascending and descending scale distinguishes the difference in characters. A happy and major key with a rising intonation portrays the chirpy little boy and the minor lover intonation shows the wolf. 

Rhythm


This  week we looked at the musical element, rhythm and how it can be used. The oxford dictionary definition of the word 'rhythm' is that it is a strong, regular and repeated pattern of movement or sound. To a certain extent the statement is arguably correct, however it has been shown through a variation of rhythmic patterns that it can be weak, irregular or syncopated.

Ethnomusicologist; someone that studies the cultural context in music i.e it's origins, they try to understand what music is, what it means to people and how it conveys it's meaning. Music and rhythm was used century's ago as a hunting call through tribes using aural sounds or making rhythms by hitting trees etc, this is still the case today in parts of Africa in the rural tribes. Also within these tribes music and rhythm combined with dance are a way of creating harmony within their communities and a coming together of the whole tribe. They use music and rhythm for a variety of things within their communities like bringing back good, worshiping food, marriage, welcoming of people etc. these rhythms are normally lively, upbeat, fast and energetic which instantly creates a sense of togetherness and enjoyment.
In other parts of Africa within the townships, music and song are used in everyday life and are often religious as they pray for and thank god for what they have with them today.  They will sing for their food, sing for their friends, sing for their families, sing for their house to show love and respect for what they have been given even if it isn't much.

Across other parts of the world rhythm is used in a wide variety of ways using multiple instruments to communicate ideas.
Japanese taiko drumming is a war call, this style of strumming is very aggressive , loud, and powerful.
Melanesian water drumming originated from women washing clothes in the river as they would beat the clothes it created sounds and now this style of drumming is where women only will stand in the sea and will beat the water creating a variety of sounds , it is normally performed for tourists.
Indonesian gamelan is a form of pitched percussion which accompanies shadow story theatre. The sound this creates maybe unpleasing to some ears as they enjoy the music and instruments to be slightly out of tune creating an off key sound

Our task this week was to create our own rhythmical piece to present to each other. So in a small group we decided to create a military styled drumming piece, using four small; drums 3 snared drums. We wanted to reflect the military style so we incorporated the synchronised arm movements with tight and precise rhythmical phrases. We also wanted to experiment with different sounds we could make with the drums and or surrounding areas to see how much interest we could add to the piece, this involved using the sticks, the floor and other parts of the drum to create sounds.

What is music?

So this week was week 1! This is where we explored the concepts of music and musicianship.They both are similar in meaning however one is defined as "Vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion" (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/music) and the other as "The ability to ‘think in sound’ (http://www.abrsm.org/regions/fileadmin/user_upload/syllabuses/pracComplete10.pdf) which portrays that one is  a persons physical ability to perform music and the other is the creation of music, in some respects. Some may argue that music is the "human organisation of sound" (edgard varèse) as in order to listen to such an art it has to be put together and recorded using human technology, Meaning that every form of music in the world from what we know of is music. However others may only consider music  of  Beethoven or Mozart (levitin,D(2006) chapter 1  page 13)  and others to only consider the music of tchami or the music of guns n roses to be real music but surely in a modern music industry, anything that is played in the charts or  that brings people together or creates emotion is class as music?
In this session we composed our own piece of music in which was to resemble what music is. The title of the piece was "this is music", within this piece we tried to unite as many styles  of music as we could in order to portray the meaning of what music is.  I think we did this effectively by listening to and cooperating with one another when planning and playing.