Will Taylor

Class of 9.4

3/2/2014

Second Trimester Music Reflection

1. What was the most interesting part to this course? During this course I most enjoyed actually making the music with multiple voices in it. This is because I already know a lot of the stuff we talked about in class about rhythms and notes however in creating and composing music I was a clean slate. I think I enjoy making the music so much because I already play and have been playing for music for ! years and I"m ready to stop playing and hearing what other people make and see if I can make something good like they can. #. What did you find the most difficult? $or me the most difficult part of the unit was the composition. %ne because we don"t have a lot of time to do it &I actually did almost half of it at home over ski week' so it is hard to get onto the score what you actually want to put on it or what you hear in your head. This is because the time is so limited that if a section doesn"t sound particularly how you want it to you don"t have enough time to go back and fi( it. )nd second I had some trouble staying in the theme of the composition. *ultiple times during my composition I wasn"t e(actly on the type of sad that I heard in my head that I wanted to be in my song. )lso I kept varying the style of music. )t first it would start out on straight eights &like eights that sounded too straight' with the melody but then on the bass riffs would switch to a swing feel because I put in some dotted eights with si(teenths following. This was my side that enjoyed that swing feel coming out and I found it very difficult in the beginning to stay away from this style of music. +. What did you learn through out this course? I think that one of the most invaluable things I learned in this course was that when having two different instruments playing at the same time it can sound really really good but also really really bad. ) good combination of instruments must have the same keys being played and should try to have the playing of one instrument lead up to another one. $or e(ample in my composition all the instruments were on a ,oncert -b major key with accidental concert Db"s. This similarity made sure none of the instruments sounded out of place. There are also instances in my composition where I have notes on one

instrument leading right into other instruments playing all in the same key. $or e(ample at bar #! the melody led right into the left hand piano"s riff and at bars .# and ./ the left0hand pianos notes led right into the melody"s entrance in the ne(t bar. This created a very nice sounding organi1ed few bars. .. What do you think you could have improved on? I think that out of all the work I did the way I presented it and the amount of reflection on it I put on my Weebly site could have been better. What happened was I was so focused on finishing my composition &which I did 12 minutes before it was due' that I ignored my weebly site. I did the easy things like making a music page and all the stuff for the *usic *y 3arents 4ike section but when we got started on our compositions I stopped working on it. It was only during the last two days before we turned it in that I started to work on it. )nd at that time I was more worried about turning it in than making it presentable and detailed in my reflection of what we did. !. What can the course change to make it better? 5onestly I think the course has nothing major to change. It is a great introduction to people who have no musical background and also in depth enough to keep people who do play and know about music interested. The only thing I would suggest is trying to work more on cooperation in the small groups for rhythm riot because I know that my small group had a lot of arguing and it was very hard for any one student to assert authority over the entire group and get everyone to stop yelling at each other and stop messing around. 6. In regards to the criteria &knowledge skill application reflection personal engagement' what could you improve on? The thing that I could improve the most as I already said is reflection. What I need to do is reflect on what we did in class at home on the same day or in class because if I go to reflect on it later I will not be able to remember the finer details of what we did. If I did this I would have also had more time to work on my composition in class. This is because at first I didn"t have 7ibelius / downloaded on my computer at home so I couldn"t work on my composition at home. This would have been the best time for me to upload everything to my weebly site and reflect in detail on it because I couldn"t work on my composition.

/. What was the impact of talking with your parents about the music they liked? $or me talking to my dad about the songs he liked as a child didn"t have a major effect on me because after living with him for 1. years I already had ) pretty good idea about what kind of songs he liked. %f course I was a little bit more surprised to learn about what he listened to today because it has changed a bit since his childhood. %verall I think since he still enjoys the music from his childhood it shows me that once a 3ink $loyd lover means always a 3ink $loyd lover. 8. What did you enjoy like9 dislike about the :hythm :iot? *y favorite part about :hythm :iot was that it was interactive. We actually got to see what we made sounded like in real life and try to perform it. 5owever during that section I felt very rushed to complete the :hythm :iot task and I felt that if I had more time our group could have produced a composition that actually sounded good and not just a bunch of people hitting drums at the wrong time. ;. What did you learn from completing the 3oetry in <motion $inal ,omposition? I learned that it is a lot harder to place the right words on the right notes at the right pitch and have it sound good. If I had to create my own composition with original words it would sound much worse than the other way around. <ven finding the right pitches and rhythms for the notes was very difficult for me and it took a few going up and down the scale to get the right one. This e(perience showed me that when composing my favorite type of music doesn"t have words. 12. Were you able to convey the emotion in your final composition? I feel that I conveyed sadness enough in my piece but it could have been better. I"m sure it will take any audience at least a minute and an unsure guess at whether it is sadness in my composition. This is because even though it isn"t an emotion my piece almost has a mysterious feel to it possibly because the chords I use &con. -b Db and $' are also the 1 # and ! chords of a -b blues scale. -y sharing these chords my composition gets a slight ja11y shady feeling to it

making it not always sad. -ecause of this I would say I wasn"t very successful at portraying sadness. 11. What about all the IT software and hardware? Difficult? Would you like more e(planation in this area? I really enjoyed using 7ibelius si( and seven and would even buy them if they weren"t so e(pensive however I have to say that I feel that they could be a bit less complicated to use. $or making basic music they are very good systems and they definitely serve their purpose with our classes. 5owever if real detail wanted to be put into the music they aren"t the best systems especially the fact that it is hard to specify the dynamics a key part in music with the systems. If I were to want to use the finer points of 7ibelius I would at least need a visual and audio demonstration of how to use them because the actual system itself doesn"t e(plain very well or most of the time at all. 1#. Did you have fun? $or me this was the most fun rotationary class of the year. I especially enjoyed how we actually got to create music in the class with fun instruments. I will certainly choose this as one of my semester classes ne(t year.