Last week we talked about a composer named John Cage. We watched some videos about him and looked at scores he composed and got a feel for how he is as an artist. He’s famous for “reinventing the musical playing field” (Malachy).  We tried some of his scores in class together because we have been invited to perform at the Arsenal on March 23 as part of a Cage Centennial concert.

This week we planned our performance. We picked durations for each of the scores we will perform by picking dominoes out of a pile. The numbers on the dominos told us for how many minutes we would perform each score.

We are most excited for eating cereal and bringing skateboards to the stage!

 

 

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For end of year Performance Party!

[audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Take-Him-Home-Leonids_Perseids-21.mp3|titles=Take Him Home Leonids_Perseids 2]

[audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Castle-on-a-Cloud-Orions-_1.mp3|titles=Castle on a Cloud Orions _]

This recording is down an octave!

We started to work on a new project.

First, we sat in a circle and made a recording of our voices.

[audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/ClassNoises.mp3|titles=ClassNoises]

Then we each took this recording to make new pieces, using LogicPro.

Here are the 6 directions for the piece that we made:

1. The length of the piece will be no shorter than 1 minute & no longer than 3 minutes

2. No use of pre-made (by someone else) sounds

3. Use at least 3 different sounds, including 1 new live recording

4. Make this piece “rhythm/beat oriented”

5. Include at least 1 peak point in the piece

6. Don’t loop everything, but repeat something

And here are the pieces!!!

Aiden – [audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/swagaiden.mp3|titles=swagaiden]

Brandon – [audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Brandon1.mp3|titles=Brandon1]

Emily – [audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/EmilyC.mp3|titles=EmilyC]

Liam – [audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Liam-pizzicatto-21312.mp3|titles=Liam pizzicatto 21312]

[audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Liam-mvmt.-2-21312-1.mp3|titles=Liam mvmt. 2 21312 1]

Malachy – [audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/ChickenNuggetsBySnakeSquadMalachyH.mp3|titles=ChickenNuggetsBySnakeSquadMalachyH]

 

 

Play along with your E natural minor scale – get ready for your solo improv March 30th!

[audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/02-Track-02-31.mp3|titles=02 Track 02 31] [audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/E-natural-minor-bossa-nova-JazzTracks.mp3|titles=E natural minor bossa nova JazzTracks] [audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/E-minor-Latin-Jazz-Rap.mp3|titles=E minor Latin Jazz Rap] [audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/2-09-E-Minor1.mp3|titles=2-09 E Minor]

 

 

 

 

We watched a documentary about “the changing concept of copyright”  RiP!: A Remix Manifesto, over a couple of classes.

After watching this documentary we discussed what we learned and what inspired us. We talked about copyright, open source and how remixing music (or any other media, such as film, literature etc) has been done.

Then we decided to work on our remix project.

Each of us picked any pieces of music we wanted to remix, from the genre of “classical music” or “christmas songs”. We Imported the songs to LogicPro and altered them. We worked on this for an hour- couple of hours.

Here is the remixed songs!

Aiden S [audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/such-a-tyler-christmas.mp3|titles=such a tyler christmas]

Gabriel V [audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/gabrielremix.mp3|titles=gabrielremix]

Liam H [audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Liam-Noitorious-.mp3|titles=Liam Noitorious]

Malachy H [audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/MalRemix.mp3|titles=MalRemix]

 

 

Today we had a class of vocal & instrument improvisation with a local composer/musician, also a leader of the women’s choir group Assembly of Light Choir, Chrissy Wolpert.

Chrissy started the class with voice warm up.

“As loud as possible”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then we sang a round: “Ah Poor Bird”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the warm up, Chrissy took us into the Media Lab where she set up microphones with effect pedals. Each of us got a microphone, and experimented with vocals (singing, talking, whispering, making funny and unrecognizable sounds) with different effect pedals such as distortion, octave, reverb, echo. We also tried to sing “Ah Poor Bird” again through the pedals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then Chrissy introduced us to a loop pedal. Everyone separately recorded 3 seconds of vocals and ended up with layers of vocal loop recording. We did this a couple of times – one of them turned out to be all speaking words (which sounded like a poetry reading battle), and another one turned out to be a tower of complex harmonies.

After that, we were introduced to contact microphones.

We each got one homemade contact microphone, which we first taped to our throats and then taped to our instruments. Contact microphones are much more sensitive than regular microphones because they directly attach to the sound-making object and delicately pick up all the vibrations made.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What a class! Possibilities of finding different ways of sound making, even on the same instrument, seems to be limitless. Our experiment with sounds and music making never ends. Big big thanks to Chrissy!

 

 

Listen to some samples of what we made here:

[audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/1_9_12-634-PM-Voice-Memo.mp3|titles=1]
[audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/1_9_12-635-PM-Voice-Memo.mp3|titles=2]
[audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/1_9_12-720-PM-Voice-Memo.mp3|titles=3]
[audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/1_9_12-725-PM-Voice-Memo-1.mp3|titles=4]
[audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/1_9_12-725-PM-Voice-Memo.mp3|titles=5]
[audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/1_9_12-727-PM-Voice-Memo.mp3|titles=6]

For our January 21st Performance Party!

Swallowtail Jig:

[audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Swallowtail-Jig-Fast.mp3|titles=Swallowtail Jig Fast]

Kesh Jig:

[audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Kesh-Jig.mp3|titles=Kesh Jig]

Ash Grove

[audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Ash-Grove.mp3|titles=Ash Grove]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr7lUw-X5UE

 

Today we started our experiment with chance music.

In chance music (also called aleatory/aleatoric music), some element of the composition and/or the performance of the piece is left to chance.

For a starting piece, we made a simple system which is a list of musical notes that are picked based on our birth months. There are 12 different notes in a chromatic scale and 12 months in a year, so we numbered the 12 notes then picked everyone’s birth month number notes. Then the performers (2 people this time) played their instruments using this list of notes. The performers were composing a piece as they played together, only using those picked notes, and all the rest of elements of music including rhythms, range of the notes, duration of the notes, space between notes, dynamics, mood of the music.. etc. were completely up to the performers.

Then we each made a graphic music score (a graphic score is a score that’s not only written in modern musical notation). There was no rules or directions to make these scores, except they were made on a piece of paper, and they were for musical pieces. Things we used to make graphic scores included drawings, words, numbers, maps, and scraps of pictures from a magazine.

 

“A map for a conversation of 2 people” by David Lee

watch?v=HK-H10nx0u0&feature=youtu.be

 

Sakiko also brought in a 4-track recorder, and we took turns recording ourselves (creating multi-track compositions). Here’s a photo of us working together on a track:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 

We have been working on our music individually in the last 4 classes, using our field recordings from Day 1. Here is what we did in our fourth class:

1. Went outside to get field recordings
2. Edited those field recordings in the music program LogicPro
3. Started to put together those edited recordings, and as we put them together some of us recorded additional sounds like voices, instruments, hand clapping etc. in the lab.
4. Kept working!

The results are here!

Aiden S [audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Aiden2.mp3|titles=Aiden S]

Brandon L  [audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Brandon.mp3|titles=Brandon L]

Gabriel V [audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Gabriel1.mp3|titles=Gabriel]

Malachy H [audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/MalachyField.mp3|titles=Malachy H]

Sofie L [audio:http://www.communitymusicworks.org/medialab/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Sophie.mp3|titles=Sofie L]