amyhcpsarts-blog

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Pentathlon 3

Before the Artfest Coffeehouse, I went into the Stamp Art Gallery to take a look at the art. I saw these monochrome works and couldn’t find an explanation for them. There seemed to be inanimate objects in the place where there should be a human female head. On one wall these objects were on a depressed piece of black paper with a lighter color frame. On the other wall were large environments where nature seemed to flow and mesh randomly into everyday human objects. One of these works had the object in a dress on layers of paper that gave it a raised dimension and made it pop out. It seemed free and surrounded in light colors. There were flowers everywhere and also what seemed to be oil cans dumping liquids into what seemed to be a river so I thought there could be themes of feminism or environmental concern. 

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Update 4/18

I had a 15 minute composition lesson with my Music Theory professor for a composition for music theory class. I had an extra 5 minutes left of my lesson so I had him listen to a part of my first movement. He said that my piece had direction/ that I had built it up well, but he was wondering why I rely so heavily on the piano. He told me I could get a lot more color from all the noodly things by using the bassoon. To which I replied that I chose many of the instruments based on the friends that I had. Piano is the most versatile instrument I have.

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Update 4/8/17

Currently recording Denial and facing difficulties

My Facebook Status: 

It's simple to sit at the piano with your earbuds or headphones in and record. It's easy to do the same with percussion and clarinet and oboe.. It's even easy to do that with horn (playing the horn is another difficulty haha) and manageable with violin and viola, I've figured out how to do it with guitar..

but cello, you can't wear headphones with a cello, those things hit the pegs, and then you get all kinds of disoriented X'D and even if you're wearing earbuds, the wire gets in your bow arm's way or hits against the body and creates unwanted sound.

I've figured out a few complex ways of taping the wire in a certain angle and hanging a scarf on the wire as a weight and also as a muffling agent.. This might work for my background cello parts but as solo part...ehhh... There must be a less limiting way of playing the virtuosic cello and wearing a device that brings sound from your laptop to your brain without the laptop recording itself.

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Update 4/2/17

Okay the best way I can approach this is to be reasonable

I can probably only get the first movement recorded in time, but will continue with this project even after scholars is done.

Music majors have an extremely busy schedule. And with juries approaching, this makes us even less available. 

I want the composition to be done, that’s what matters most. That the complete set of all four movements and stages of Grief are completed.

And when I continue with this after scholars is done, I might even add in a 5th movement in the middle, for the stage of grief “Bargaining” .

Depression has a good 4 and a half minutes of good ideas and should be all set once I get them organized and then orchestrated.

Acceptance is still barely started but I have an overwhelming 20 minutes of audio recorded loose ideas that I will have to put into Noteflight and decide what stays.

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Sorry for double reblog I forgot to tag.

It’s on the last picture, but credit to theoatmeal.com

perfectly applicable and simplified via chubby marshmallow characters. Big labels had a choke hold on artists basically because of their leverage with marketing, and because of that they could make it so artists would only make pennies on the dollar from their own record sales. Now that the internet lets anyone reach a huge audience through social media and essentially be their own marketing team, that leverage the the major labels had is sort of lost and a lot of the reason people would sign with those major labels is disappearing.

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A connection between my project, (which is a original composition that is to be partially performed) and those of my peers in my small group is that all our projects were about music in some way.

Somin’s project is about Korean traditional music and music editing.

Amrita’s project is a choral arrangement of some pre existing piece for her choral group, Faux Pax, mixed with Carnatic style which really gives the arrangement its uniqueness.

Justin’s project is about 3D printing brass mouthpieces. I find this really amazing.

And Joe’s project is about the music industry.

I found the support that I got from everyone really helpful because it motivated me to finish my 2nd movement. I am kind of headed into a slump as everyone, including myself, has high expectations of my project and I intend on meeting them! I feel like I may have been over my head, but I’m going to power through it.

I found Somin’s suggestion of having a printed out version of my sheet music with a legend so people could listen and follow along with the music simultaneously when I present it at ArtsFest useful, especially since I already have the musical score of my composition color coded.

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Small group reblog:

Wow! This was really eye opening and informative. Using a comic as a medium to educate makes things much easier to understand than reading a bunch of text. As a Musician, I totally agree that musicians should be paid directly and there shouldn’t be any intermediates benefiting from them. And it’s great that we are headed in that direction due to the rise of the internet and social media. I’m very interested to see your final project as I know nothing about music as and industry. Your project ties into the “power” thing by studying the empowerment of the musician, does it not? 

It’s on the last picture, but credit to theoatmeal.com

perfectly applicable and simplified via chubby marshmallow characters. Big labels had a choke hold on artists basically because of their leverage with marketing, and because of that they could make it so artists would only make pennies on the dollar from their own record sales. Now that the internet lets anyone reach a huge audience through social media and essentially be their own marketing team, that leverage the the major labels had is sort of lost and a lot of the reason people would sign with those major labels is disappearing.

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Mvmt 2 completed?!

https://www.noteflight.com/scores/view/3d0370b60378674e263ee9c07d4d51e139aaa03e It's pretty much done. Feedback is greatly appreciated! So, how did I do on being angry? Could be angrier indeed... Symbolic things worth noting. look at the motifs. some of them are from the first movement.I gave them all namesred is "dead"- pitches DEAD of course.blue is "resolute"- symbolizes the desire to improve ochre/mustard is "time"- scale degrees ti to me in some important key.magenta is " memory"- symbolizes remembering back to a time before the griefpurple is "no"- every time you see it, it's the character saying "no" symbolizes denial. Green is when something about one of the motifs is off, perhaps the character is lying to themselves (The person that caused me grief is an oboe player, thus the oboe in this piece does more green than the other instruments) cello solo is basically you/ the protagonist/ the thought process e.g measures 100-107 the protagonist starts remembering the past (memory motif) and so the oboe is messing up your resolution.Throughout the piece, you want to be in D minor. The oboe is playing your resolution in the parallel major, making you feel like it's okay. But it's not okay. It's all weird and stuff. I feel like there's a better word than motif for the longer melodic lines. "Themes" perhaps? If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, anything else constructive, please talk to me I'm super glad to talk about my composition!

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Progress Update 3/21

So I was originally supposed to be done composing today but....

Mvmt 1: Denial.

I got my snare drum today so I recorded the percussion and rhythm parts.

It was much harder than I thought it would be staying on track because my piano part wasn’t steady. 

I don’t have any cymbals so I used a cheap 1$ triangle I bought for fun at Target and honestly it sounds pretty good.

I recorded the measly two chords I wrote for guitar. 

Mvmt 2: Anger and Patience

I finally put down all my ideas that I had. Bad news though, I had to delete a lot because all my ideas spanned about 8 minutes and I had to trim down unnecessary repetition. It felt like a lowkey waste of key having to delete my hard work. At least this caused me to feel the emotions that I intended to convey in this mvmt! 

I can’t think of passion sounding melodies like the one I had in the first mvmt. Only cliche ones that are closely based on the chord progression.

I’m proud of how I weaved the two pun motifs in. It sounds pretty badass where it’s more thick in texture. It’ll sound even awesomer once I add a drum part.

Mvmt 3. 

It sounds beautiful and really full (in the orchestration sense) so far. But it’s only 8 measures. I’ve got ideas, but I’m still thinking about them.

Mvmt 4:

I’ve started putting down my ideas. I’ve only got 4 measures in print though. Eh it’s a start.

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Small Group Repost:

Sounds pretty good so far! I like your attention to detail. It’s really great that you’re “putting your own creative spin” on the song by putting in Carnatic style. Sometimes, writing music is actually easier without music theory. From personal experience, music theory may help you get somewhere when you’re totally stuck and it will do something that is typical and expected, but it also might restrain your ability to create something totally unique. Overall though, I think it’s good that you’re educating yourself in theory. Music theory is a bit western centered though. If the musical cultures class you took was MUSC220, I took that too! Don’t let Western rules bog you down. Do what you feel is right!

This a screenshot of the sheet music of my arrangement of Real by Brayton Bowman, and a sample from the MIDI file for the music. I spent about 3 weeks to a month finishing this arrangement, as I was very careful with it, because it is my first attempt at arranging a piece of a cappella music for my group, Faux Paz, by myself. My main struggle with this process was not letting the song be an exact transcription of the original. In a cappella, many groups will sing songs very similarly to the original. Faux Paz likes to set themselves apart by putting their own creative spin on songs. Implementing the styles of Carnatic music into the arrangement has helped a lot with differentiating the arrangement from the original song. Another challenge I had stemmed from my less than extensive background in music theory. After spending a lot of time with my keyboard and going on educational music theory websites, I was able to overcome this obstacle.

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Pentathlon Fine Art

Before the show began, I headed downstairs with my family and found an Art Gallery. Thus I decided to take a look. I couldn’t find any explanation for most of the pieces. My uncle remarked that the ochre one looked like a packet of gum. My sister laughed along. I insisted that we just didn’t understand the art. I told them about how atonal music also sounds like a collection of sounds but when you analyze and understand them, your mind will be blown by the genius that arises from the simplicity. My precocious 8 year old cousin pointed to the top left corner of the mix of blacks, yellows, and bloody reds and remarked “Look, it’s George Washington!” She is probably correct as that does look like George Washington and because we were in George Washington University. We then began to notice the hand holding a sword and the wagon wheel in the bottom right corner. We also noticed the horse leg and the horse head in the top right.

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Pentathlon: Film

Last night, I watched Nufonia must fall, a love story about a robot and a woman who turns out to be the inventor of the other robot who keeps replacing the protagonist at all his work places. All the sound was created live by the DJ Kid Koala  (who actually graduated from the same high school as I did) and the Afiara string quartet. And all the sets and puppets were on stage as well, but they were projected onto the big screen. You could even see the tiny puppets and sets moving on stage as they were being projected onto the screen. I noticed how during certain scenes, there would be a specific musical theme that would correspond to it. For example, every time the other robot appeared, the same ominous four chords would play. Nobody was voiced except for the boss; it was mostly a silent film.

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Small group repost:

1) I’m also way behind schedule, two movements in fact, and I find it really comforting to hear that someone else is also behind. Time flies by so quickly. I’m also planning to catch up during spring break. We can do it!

2) I don’t have much research with my composition project, but I do have several ideas, and the issue with all these ideas is that I need to synthesize them and I am reluctant to get rid of the ideas that aren’t put to use.

Good work. Getting started is the first step to getting it completed. Your project seems quite interesting.

Final stages of research...

I am in the final stages of my research and I have come across a couple of things:

1) I am definitely not on schedule, but that’s alright. As long as I finish up the research before Spring Break I will be good to go.

2) A problem that I have encountered that I did not see happening is actually having too much research. Because I feel as though everything is important, I’ve been wanting to include everything. This means that I will have to go back and revise and trim down the research that I have (not necessarily a bad thing).

Overall, I am happy with the progress I have been making. I have started collecting ideas for my CAD drawing of my mouthpiece so that will be ready to go by the time I get back from Spring Break. I hope to have my mouthpiece printed and all of my research done so that I can focus on finishing sketches and composing my research together.

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Small Group repost:

I’m also using Audacity for my project and I have to agree it’s pretty user friendly. I love how it’s free too. I haven’t watched many videos about how to use audacity, I kind of just jumped right in. It’s really cool how you can manipulate the imperfections of sound with Audacity.  If something is just slightly off like the timing, rhythm, pitch or dynamic you can just edit it! I also recently found out that you can do reverb in it. If you have any tips to share feel free to provide them to me. I still don’t know what many of the tools are.

Tutorial Time

So now that I have the majority of my midterms out of the way, I decided to spend today watching a ton of tutorials on Audacity, which I’ll be using to edit my audio. I have to say that when I downloaded Audacity, I was immediately brought back to the early 2000s and Windows XP just by the design and look of the software. Since I’ve never actually used Audacity before, of course I watched a couple of tutorials on how to use the program. I found a website-http://www.freeaudacitytutorials.com-that had a bunch of tutorials on using Audacity. I watched the beginner tutorials, which mainly took me through how to navigate the software, what all of the buttons do, and how to start a new project, import and export files. I also watched a tutorial on using the editing tools such as zoom, cut/copy/paste, and the selection tool. After watching all of these tutorials, the prospect of editing music doesn’t seem too daunting since it seems that Audacity is pretty user-friendly and simple to navigate. 

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Progress Update 3/17

Mvmt 1 “Denial and Guilt”:

I set up my recording materials in a practice room at 11 AM and had my friends come in at times and record their parts. Took me my whole afternoon, but it was quite productive. 

I got the oboe part, most of the clarinet and a bit of the violin and viola parts. My laptop is a bit old and it started lagging from all the takes that were on it. I’m currently listening to the takes and keeping the cream of the crop. 

There are some noises in the piano part due the pedal squeaking. However the piano part is the skeleton and altering that part may mess up all the other parts as they are all based on that original piano tempo.

After 2 or 3 hours. I’ve finished organizing the huge amounts of samples I’ve taken.

Mvmt 2 “Anger and Frustration”:

I’ve got my ideas connected.  I estimate that I have 55% of the overall structure of the piece done. The skeleton is the piano part. Everything else will come naturally.

Mvmt 3 Depression:

Got a few ideas and chords

Mvmt 4:

Got several ideas but none put down yet.

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Update 3/16

After mapping out my first movement in an attempt to try to get the second movement together, I’ve begun typing up notes and analysis for my first movement in order to help me explain and present my piece at Artsfest. 

I used three motifs/themes in the first movement and I’m going to also use three motifs in the second one. These motifs tend to be puns, something symbolic or something that just sounds good. My pun motifs, which I am very proud of, include the notes “DEAD” and a series of notes that range from scale degrees 7 up to the minor 3, which in solfege syllables is “ti” (7) up to “me” (3) and spells “time.” 

~

Today is the Thursday before spring break and all of my classes have been canceled. I still have my rehearsal with my chamber group, and I’m going to ask them to play some parts for me. I’m also going to get my other friends to record some parts for me.

~

I’m currently trying to upload recordings of my composition process to my Tumblr but it doesn’t seem to be compatible. (tumblr’s asking for a link, but my recording is an mp4) Thus I’m writing text.

A way to help you brainstorm is to just play freely for 15 minutes. It’s okay and even good to make accidents. In fact, most of my accidents lead to really cool ideas. I listen to these recordings and use my aural dictation skills to figure out what notes I was playing. 

Overall this is a pretty time consuming process, but I enjoy it and am very determined to get it completed. I’m looking forward to a productive Spring Break!

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Update 3/14.

(I’m now using the tag CPSA Process Progress which I hadn’t before)

I’m quite behind as anticipated. I originally thought I’d be done with 3 movements by now but that’s not happening. 

In terms of recording: The first movement is in the recording process. I’ve finished recording the piano part and aligning the few instrument samples with the piano part. The cello part needs to be practiced and better thought out.

I’ve got more than enough ideas for the second movement, “Anger” but I don’t have my ideas organized. I’ve got to synthesize the motifs and themes in a clever way like I did in the first movement. Since my first movement was quite well received, I roughly mapped out the structure of it and then tried to use that as a sort of template for mapping out/organizing the second movement.

I’ve got a phrase or two down for the third movement, “Depression” but not much brainstorming has been done with it yet. I’m not sure what I want to name it.

I’ve also got ideas for the fourth and final movement “Acceptance” but I haven’t physically written down anything yet.