WEEK 4: RHYTHM CONTINUED (WEDNESDAY 14TH OCTOBER 2015)

Learning more about rhythm!

Throughout the session we explored more research on the idea of rhythm and to re-fresh our memories we suggested a few things that we had remembered from last weeks session e.g how rhythm gives music a drive and direction, you can create a song without the need for melody or harmony, rhythm can be a form of communication (talking drums/morse code), what certain rhythm styles/performances originate from.

Then, we moved on to share our group rhythmic performances. This is a link to my group's performance https://soundcloud.com/musicianship-1/per-fection-by-curly-twirly

It was great to see how the other group had incorporated a dance element to their piece and I think that they really captured what rhythm is and showed us that music and dance are closely related to one another.

We then began to look at some notation. We looked over the basics so that everyone has an some idea of note lengths and names. Collectively we tried to clap out some of the rhythms given and we noticed one problem, when clapping out a rhythm you can't hold a note on, so we then realised this must be the same for using some percussion instruments.

Later on in the session we looked at various videos that used rhythm. Here are my notes:

'Brooms' from Stomp
 Scenery is urban - looks natural and easy to watch
Acting to the audience and making them feel involved
Using different parts of the broom to make different sounds
Rhythm slowly builds up throughout the piece
Adding more people with brooms as the piece goes on
Adding voice (based on everyday chat)
The sigh (pause/break) in the middle of the song gives some texture and effect
Unison sections are effective because it contrasts the rest of the piece
They made it visually appealing (the cannon etc)
Microphones are at the front of the stage - hierarchy of sounds
Massive performance element
Nice combination of loud and soft
Structurally interesting
Their use of silence is a good way to grab attention
Keeping people interested and holding attention so not to switch off

Cups (Spring 2012) - THUD
Visually effective not only with sound but with hands as well
High comedic value (having a drink in the middle of the piece)
Look like they are having fun
Sense of structure
A little bit too long
Rhythmically, needed more added to make it interesting and more enjoyable/exciting to watch
Good use of call and response
Then progressed to using two cups which was exciting

As a group we watched a Samba video and jotted down lots of ideas for when we make our Samba piece. I noted:
Dancing
Bright colours
Pauses
Unison rhythms
Contrasting rhythms and sounds
Solo sections
High pitched at some points
A build of sounds
Fast paced
Exciting
Performance
Choreography
Conductor/leader
Changing beats
Pauses
Mix up of tempo
Bouncy
People playing different instruments and rhythms
Making the audience feel involved
Energy

Later after watching the Samba video we were given some Samba music notation to distribute parts and perform at the end of the lesson. This was difficult at first because we had to make sure we were reading the rhythms correctly and in sync with others playing synchronising parts. Eventually we learnt these rhythms and then added performance and some basic movement! It was also a lot of fun.

For next week, we are creating a 'junk percussion' instrument in groups and presenting in lesson!

WEEK THREE (WEDNESDAY 7TH OCTOBER): DISCOVERING RHYTHM

During this session we recapped on what we done last last just to jog our memories, then we had a presentation of our song writing task (finding our way around protools). I didn't manage to show mine in this session because I saved my piece in the wrong file. For next week I will save my piece in the correct file - an MP3. 

We then discussed what makes a good piece of music? In smaller groups we came up with lots of different ideas to make an assessment criteria; meaningful, memorable, varied pitch (accuracy), harmonies to build texture, technique - quality, rich in instruments/found sounds, experimental, have a journey, vary in fundamental elements, prioritsing sounds, engaging, imaginative, have a strong bass line, blending timbre, have a sense of direction, energy and a range of dynamics.

We decided on the most important and made a top five; A journey/story/context, variation, technique/talent, energy, harmony/texture.

The history of rhythm tells us that music evolved at the same time as verbal communication and that rhythm was used as a form of long range communication by using drums, cow bells, horns etc... 

The rhythm of the sounds then determined what was being communicated e.g Morse Code.

Further into the lesson we had a look at different kinds of drumming from around the world and discussed what they originated from and what was the reason for doing so. 

For next week's lesson we have created our own piece using just rhythm!

Levitin Reading Notes

UNDERSTANDING AND GIVING FEEDBACK ON THE READING ‘WHAT IS MUSIC? FROM PITCH TO TIMBRE’ FROM ‘THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON MUSIC: UNDERSTANDING A HUMAN OBSESSION’ BY DANIEL LEVITIN.

The very first thing I noticed was that it is written in first person, so a lot of the text will be his own opinion, also I realised very quickly how wordy it is. I found it tricky to ready and I ended up googling pretty much every other word so that I could understand what I was reading.

I highlighted the text that I thought was the most important and I circles or underlined any words or phrases that I couldn’t understand even after googling. Words/phrases highlighted in yellow are what I couldn’t find meanings for/what I still don’t understand.

·         Music can mean different things to different people.

·         The Catholic Church banned music that contained ‘polyphony’ (more than one musical part playing at a time) because they feared it would cause people to doubt the unity of God.

·         The Catholic Church also banned the Tritone (Devils Chord) It was considered so ‘dissonant’ (a harsh, disagreeable combination of sounds) that it must be the work of the Devil/Lucifer. The named the chord ‘Diabolus in Musica’ which means the Devil in Music.

·         I noticed that there was/is racial and cultural differences between music styles and sounds. White suburban parents maybe fearful that African rhythms would cause a permanent mind-altering trance in their innocent children.

·         Avant-garde (new/experimental ideas) composers stretch the bounds of what most of us think music is. Instead of using melody and harmony they use recordings of found objects such as jackhammers, trains and waterfalls. They edit is to an organised collage with the same emotional journey as traditional music.

·         Compares avant-garde composers to the Cubists and Dadaists Picasso, Kandinsky and Mandrian.

·         Edgard Varese defined “music is organised sound”.

·         This book focusses on the neuropsychological (a specialist in relationships between physical brain and behaviour) perspective on how music affects our brains, minds, thoughts and spirit.

·         The basic elements of any sound are; loudness, pitch, contour, duration/rhythm, tempo, timbre, spatial location and reverberation.

·         Our brains then organise these basic elements.

·         This chapter is to define the musical terms and quickly review some basic ideas in music theory.

PITCH

Pitch is a psychological construct (a measurement by question and evaluation rather than what you can see and the actual position of the music scale.

We call a single sound a note, scientists call it a tone. Tone is what you hear and note is what you see written. Frequency and musical scale combined. I.E ‘Mary had a little lamb’ the first 7 notes, differs in pitch not anything else.

Pitch can define a melody or a song

RHYTHM

Duration of a series of notes and the way they are grouped together into units. I.E The Alphabet Song, the first six notes ABCDEF are equal in duration and G for twice the length.

The Beatles have several songs in which the pitch is held constant and only the rhythm varies across several notes.

TEMPO

The overall speed or pace of the piece.

CONTOUR

Overall shape of the melody.  When a note goes up and down and how much by. I.E Rising Melody or Arch-shaped phrase.

TIMBRE

Distinguishes one instrument from another.  Tonal colour that is produced in part by overtones from the instruments vibrations. Also describes the way a single instrument can change sound.

LOUDNESS

Psychological construct that relates to how much energy an instrument creates – how much air it displaces.

REVERBERATION

Perception of how far away the music is from the listener in combination with how big a room/hall is. Often referred to as an ‘echo’.  It has an underappreciated role in communicating emotion and creating an overall pleasing sound (Doesn’t get enough credit for portraying).

PSYCHOPHYSICISTS

Scientists who study the ways that the brain interacts with the physical world.

WHAT HAVE PSYCHOPHYSICISTS ‘DISCOVERED’?

All of the basic elements are separable. I.E You can play the same song on a different instrument (changing the timbre) without changing the pitch. You can change pitch without changing rhythm.

·         The difference between music and a random set of sounds is by the way basic elements combine and form a relationship in a meaningful way.

METER

It is created by our brains, extracting information from rhythm and loudness cues. The way tones are grouped together with another across time.

KEY

Hierarchy of importance between tones in a musical piece. Only exists in our minds with our experiences of a musical style.

MELODY

Main theme of a musical piece, the part you sing along with, the most noticeable in your mind. It differs style across genres.

HARMONY

Relationships between the pitches of different tones, expectations for what will come next. A skilful composer can meet or violate these expectations for artistic and expressive purposes. Can be a parallel melody with the primary one (two singers harmonise) or chord progression.

·         The idea behind combing primitive elements also is in visual art and dance

·         Music is created the same way as visual art, art and dance

·         Miles Davis (trumpeter) described his improvisational technique the same as Picasso his use of a canvas.

·         Not the objects themselves but the space between.

·         Miles Davis said “Most important part of my solos is the empty space between notes”.

·         To non-musicians terms like Diatone (right notes for the key), Cadence (a progression of chords that ends a phrase/song), Key and Pitch can be an unnecessary barrier.

·         Some musicians and critics use these terms sometimes and it can come across pretentious.

·         We really want to know if what was performed moved the audience I.E the characterisation, previous performance, or another act.

·         More interested in the music that the technical side of it.

·         Some people that study music, musicologists and scientists disagree with what some of the terms mean.

MY OPINIONS

·         Most of the chapter discusses technical terms and how academics view the subject compared to what an audience would think about music.

·         It has helped me to understand terminology.

·         I found the majority of the text too technical and it came across as well written blabber.

·         It is written in first person so it only really has one person’s opinion.

·         Full of extended statements.

WEEK TWO (WEDNESDAY 30TH SEPTEMBER) : WHAT IS MUSIC? GETTING TO GRIPS WITH PROTOOLS

What is Music?

At the beginning of the session we all wrote down something that we could remember from last weeks class. I wrote down that 'music can mean lots of different thing to different people'. What I mean by that is for example; someone could consider heavy metal as 'proper' music and an other may think music to be how birds sing. I appreciate lots of types of musics and I like to listen to various genres.

Further to this, in small groups we discussed our opinions ad understandings of the Levitin text which was set to read and understand as a NCT. Finding out others thoughts on the text was really interesting as not all of us agreed on the same points, for example; one member of our group agreed with the statement 'anything made before 1940 or after 1960 isn't really music at all.' I do not agree with this as I believe music to be many sounds and not in particular one kind of style. (I have attached a full copy of my notes from this reading and the highlighted text itself.)

The next task was more tricky than what it came across at first.  Referring back to the text, we looked at the fundamentals of music; harmony/dynamics, key, rhythm/meter, structure/themes, lyrics/melody, tempo, instrumentation/motif.

Then we associated what these elements can portray.

Key: happy/sad

Harmony/dynamics: emotion

Rhythm/meter: style

Structure/themes: story

Lyrics/melody: meaning

Tempo: fast/slow

Instrumentation/motif: character

Regarding this we listened to three tracks; the first was Summertime from Porgy and Bess (1935) by Gershwin, the second was Royals by Lorde (2013), and the third was A Day in the Life by The Beatles (1967). All of these tracks were completely different from one another and we could pick out some of the fundamental elements and begin to understand what the song is trying to tell us. The hardest song to work out was The Beatles song because it had loads of abstract sounds and the voice was often distorted. 

After our break we began having a look at protools. I have never used recording software apart from audacity which is very basic. I found it so confusing to work my around the programme never mind begin to record something. We done this in pairs and were asked to make a song of our own based on a quote or a poem. We didn't have enough time to complete this during session time so this was set as a task to complete before next session.

Before my next session my partner and I met up to complete this task. At first we thought we would never get anything done. We managed to get a little bit of keyboard recorded but I didn't know how to alter the pitch! We also added a drum beat in. Hopefully it will sound okay for the session on Wednesday 7th October!