Wedneday 28th October-First Music Lesson
This was my first music lesson of this term. Today two people from Romania came and played and shared with us there cultural music. Romanian music is mainly designed as dancing music, though today we were just listening. The pan-flute was the most used and unique instrument that they played, often being used in Romanian music. They had many different types of pan flutes designed in different ways to give different pitches and sounds. The pan-flutes were nearly always used for the melody. There were two types of tones that they were using with the pan-flute, one was a clear sound and the other was a more muffled airy sound, which was normally played in softer parts of the songs. to give a different softer effect. Other instruments that were also used were guitar, voice and percussion. They played a lot of well known songs from there cultural folk genre, but arranged them differently and put a lot of improvisation in it. Romanian music is defined by the rythm in the songs and also the scales. The scale which is most often used for Romanian folk music is the Romanian minor scale which is an altered Dorian scale. This is what the formula looks like this 1 2 b3 #4 5 6 b7. I very much enjoyed listening to the music played and the unique rhythms, scales, structure and instruments used in Romanian music.
Monday 31st October
Today we were going to start to create our own composition in a chosen folk genre. I decided my composition was going to be in the genre of Irish music. Throughout the lesson when completed the sheets on Irish music, I listened to Irish music to get more of a feel of it. Irish music has very unique rhythms, the most common rythm being the jig which is often danced to. Other rhythms often used are the double jig, reel, hpipe and the slide. The other thing that makes Irish music distinct is the modes. There are four common modes which Irish music is played in, the Ionian, (major scale),Mixolydian scale, Dorian, and Aeolian. The ionian being the major mode, the mixolydian which is major sounding, the Dorian which is minor and major sounding and the aeolian which is a natural minor scale. These are what gives Irish music its distinctive sound. For my composition I will either use Dorian, mixolydian or both. In my composition I would like to experiment with different time signatures and tempos. I will have a melody being played on violin, and an organ or piano playing chords and maybe sharing the melody with the violin. This is what I will be doing in my composition.
Tuesday 15th November
After missing quite a few lessons of working on my composition, I had to go straight into the lab and start composing my composition. First I listened to a bit of Irish music to refresh my memory. I decided to compose my piece using the mixolydian scale in a major. I started experimenting with an organ. I created a bit of a repetitive melody on the organ to have as my opening part which I would build upon with drums and then a violin playing a counter melody over the top. after this I decided I would add drums in. No loops seemed to work with the rythm and timing of my melody on the organ so I had to record in my own rythm which I played on drums. I started to fiddle around with violin over the top of my organ part, though didn't record anything with violin today. I did though decide the structure of my piece, I would have the organ melody played once by itself, then drums added in when repeated a second time, then having a counter violin melody over the top of the organ and drums when repeated a 3rd time. After this I decided to have a violin solo, then have a section where violin and organ are talking back to each other. After this going back to the original organ melody and slowly taking out the violin then drums so it ends exactly how it started.
Monday 21st November
I continued working on my composition and tried to start adding in the violin counterpart melody, though it didn't sound how it sounded in my head, after continuing to try make the violin melody work over the organ melody, I realized the two wouldn't work together. Because of this I left it and decided to move onto the violin solo and come back to what I would do in the opening. I started to fiddle around with the violin solo and then I recorded it, when I played it through there wasn't a smooth transition into it. Going back to the opening I was still stuck as to what else I could add to the organ melody, because no loops seemed to fit with the style and my violin counter melody didn't work with it. After thinking, I was still stuck. The bell rung and I decided to come back in 3rd period to finish it, having a bit of a break to think everything over. At recess I decided I would completely restart my song as I wasn't happy with it and didn't know how to fix the problems that I had with it. I thought it would be much easier to restart my song. In 3rd period I restarted my song. I decided to have a violin and organ song where there were both playing melodies, but not over each other and instead playing melodies as if they were talking to one and other. I started with a violin melody which was slow, and an organ part to play chords behind it, then I made an organ melody after the violin part which was very much like the violin melody which was slow and had a string section playing chords behind it. After this I constantly was speeding up the tempo with a particular riff having the organ and violin playing the same riff and slowly speeding up while talking to each other, playing around 2 bars then swapping. Then I did an organ melody which was quite up tempo and was long, having strings play chords behind. Then I had a violin solo which had the same structure as the organ solo going for around the same length and having the organ back it up with chords. After this the organ and violin kept swapping between who was playing the melody for around 5 bars each nearly repeating exactly what the other one was playing. After a while of this, while still talking to each other I slowed the tempo down gradually using the same riff which I sped the tempo up with, before ending with the violin soloing and the organ playing chords. I finished the composition in 50 mins, so I had a bit more time, so I tried to add a drum backing track, none of the drum backing tracks worked with the style of music so I left as it was. I was semi unhappy cause i thought it needed some percussion to have a fuller sound but with the loops to choose from it sounded better by itself. Over all I was happy with what I did in period 3 as I completely restarted my song and finished it in that time frame. All my song was improvised as in the time I had I didn't plan it out exactly well. I feel restarting the song was the best choice as after playing around on garage band with the other song which i decided not to do I had a more clear idea of what I wanted to do with my music. I feel if I were to do this song again I would get an idea with that I wanted to do with the melody but actually record chords and a backing track before I recorded the meldoy/s. Over all though, I feel I did well and can take what I did here and use it differently and make it better as I have now experienced what works and what doesn't with this genre of music