Music on TV

While watching TV, there is a lot of music incorporated into the shows and the commercials. Without paying very close attention a lot of the music is overlooked. I noticed that the music in TV is used in a very similar manner to music in movies. There was some kind of music during the majority of the time that I watched. Some of it was very quiet and completely in the background, while other times it seemed to rule the scene. It also was used to change the mood of the scene and make the scene more believable or more intense. When the show went to commercials or came back from commercials there was usually a certain music that played introducing the show. Nearly all of the commercials had music in them and a lot of them were very noticeable tunes that we link to a certain companies, shows, etc. Overall I noticed a lot more music than I normally do and I heard music being used in the same manner as the music in movies.

Music in Movies

I chose to watch the movie "Transformers" to see how music is used in movies. During the opening scene it was easy to see how the music portrayed the mood of the movie. The music seemed valiant and it gave the sense that it was going to be an action movie. The music also helped give information about one of the first scenes. A middle-eastern type of music began playing while the movie showed U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. This gave the audience more of a sense of where the location of the scene. Another instance of this could be how Bumblebee changes the radio station to fit the mood, or to express a certain emotion. There were not many instances where music was a transition from one scene to the next, but I did see how music was "attached" to certain characters or events. There was specific music that was played whenever the government was attempting to figure out what to do next, when the decepticons were winning, when the autobots were winning, or when more decepticons or autobots were landing on earth. Throughout nearly the entire movie, music was playing whether it was background music or a main part of the scene. Overall music plays a very important role in this movie. The audience's emotions are affected more with the music than they would be if there was not music in the movie. I never realized how much of a role music played in movies until really concentrating on the role it plays.

Historical Recordings

The advancements in recordings over the years is quite amazing. Now we seem to take advantage of how advanced our technology is. If music is not completely crystal clear, there are complaints. While listening to "Sounds from the Sunny South" by the Metropolitan Orchestra, I realized just how far technology of recordings have come. The recording was very scratchy sounding and the noise was even louder than the music that was recorded. Although this was easy to notice, it didn't sound as loud towards the end of the recording because I began to get used to it and only hear it as background noise.

Notation

Although there are many ways in which a musician can read or write music, there are thousands of additional ways that are not as common. While thinking of a new way to write music, I was able to come up with a few different ways, but chose the one that was easiest to understand. My new notation is composed of letters and numbers written in one straight line, read left to right. The letters correspond to the pitch of the note, whether it is an A, B, F, etc.. The number correspond to the length of the notes. For example a quarter note is represented by a 4, and an eighth note is represented by an 8 and so on. The music is still separated into bars with a time signature. So a piece of music written in common time could have four letters with four numbers written above them. The piece could have the letters A, B, C, and D written in one bar with 4s over each letter, the notes would then be played as quarter notes. Likewise, a single bar could have 8 letters in it, all with the number 8 above them. This type of notation would benefit people who have a hard time reading notes on a staff, but this could also be confusing since the numbers above the letters get higher as the notes shorten in length.

Rhythm and Structure

Listening to a song carefully allowed me to find many details about the song. Although this was much harder to do with classical music, I was still able to find a few details. I chose to listen to "Sympathy" by the Goo Goo Dolls for my choice of music. I was able to find that the song was written in common time. This was easy to figure out because the lead guitar played the same rhythm repeated throughout the song. The structure of the song was easy to spot because of the lyrics. I found that the chorus repeated three times with slight changes. There were also three different verses with bridges after two of them, and an outro at the end of the song. Identifying all of these details was quite easy since the song has lyrics, but I found out that songs without lyrics make it much harder to identify structure. I listened to J.S. Bach's "Overture (Partita) in the French Style in B Minor." I listened to Movement VII. Sarabande. This piece was played by a single clavichord. I believe this piece was in common time as well, but it was hard to tell. I had a hard time figuring out the structure of this piece since it was a single instrument with no words. I believe that I heard one part repeat one or two times within the piece. Overall I found that structure of songs is more difficult to distinguish than many other things that we have identified so far.

Electrophones Role in Music

With technology becoming more advanced there are many new additions to how music is being composed and performed. The addition of electrophones has changed music a lot. While listening to 4 different types of music I was able to hear electrophones in three out of the four types of music. I didn't think I would be able to hear as many as I did. Many of the instances when I thought I was hearing a violin or symphony-like sound, I believe I was probably hearing a sound made by a synthesizer. This occured in alternative-rock and pop music. Another sound that I heard frequently in the music was bell-like tones. I was able to hear these distinctly in alternative-rock and pop music as well. The majority of the songs from these two groups used some type of electrophone in their music, which was somewhat surprising to me. While listening to rap, I heard nearly all of the music being produced by an electrophone. There were hardly any real instruments in the songs that I listened to. The last type of music that I chose to listen to was country. I was not able to hear any electrophones in this type of music, but I was not expecting to. Overall, I was surprised by the number of songs that use electrophones. The same concept holds true to this instrument as well: when you are not consciously looking for a certain type of instrument, the listener often overlooks exactly what instruments make up the songs they are listening to.

Aerophones

After listening to an hour of classical music, I began to hear many more aerophones in classical music than I ever have before. Since many are not very noticeable over the power of the string instrument I overlooked them before. The first piece that was played was a cello piece written by Bach, but the entire piece was played on an acoustic guitar. This song was a solo piece and did not include any aerophones. The second piece that was played was Symphony #85 written by Heiden. This piece had a few aerophones present, but not very many. I was able to hear an oboe very clearly in the piece. Since this instrument has a very distinct sound, it was easy to recognize amongst the violins. I was also able to identify a flute in a few parts of the song. Lastly I was able to identify a bassoon in this piece. Most people would overlook this instrument in this piece, but I am familiar with the sound of the bassoon since I played it in middle school and high school. The last piece of music that I listened to included a variety of different aerophones. Throughout the piece I was able to identify a french horn, oboe, bassoon, piccolo and a trombone. This was by far the most variety of aerophones in all of the songs that i listened to, but it was still difficult to identify the instruments included without listening very closely.

Keyboard's Impact on Music

With the invention of the keyboard, music changed quite drastically. I believe that the biggest change was that bands did not have to find as many musicians to create the type of music they wanted. Since there was one instrument that could produce so many different sounds, there was no need for bands to find many talented musicians. As long as there was one person in the band that was able to play a keyboard, the band could produce hundreds of different sounds to incorporate into their songs. The keyboard also changed the type of music that was being produced. Many sounds that can be produced by a keyboard would be very difficult to reproduce with actual instruments. This allowed musicians to become much more creative with the music that they were composing. The keyboard had an extreme impact on bands and the music that they created. Although some may think that the keyboard lessens the talent of music, I believe that it opened up hundreds of new doors for musicians.

The Guitar's Role in Different Genres

While listening to an hour of music in four different genres, I realized that while guitars play a key role in some music, they are not even used in other music. I decided to listen to rock, pop, country and rap. While listening to rock I found that for the majority of the songs played guitars were the main instrument, however there were still some songs that relied heavily on the piano with the guitar being used as a background instrument. I did not know what I was going to find while listening to pop music. I was surprised when I was able to hear small guitar parts mostly as background; I never noticed this before and I was expecting not to hear much guitar at all. Country was the only genre in which guitars were in every single song that I listened to. Guitars play an extremely important role in this type of music. I was able to hear acoustic and electric guitars in nearly every song, and bass guitars in a couple other songs. The last genre that I listened to was rap and I was not able to hear any guitars in this type of music, but I was not expecting to. Overall I was able to find guitars in more music than I thought. I found that when listening to music where guitars are taking a less powerful role, they are often overlooked.

Chordophones

While listening to DPR I was able to identify a variety of different instruments. Although not all of them were chordophones, each had a very distinctive sound. While listening for one hour I was able to listen to 5 or 6 different pieces. The first piece was an orchestra with two oboe soloists. In this piece I was able to hear a clavichord, and violins very easily. There were no other instruments that really stuck out but after listening carefully I was able to hear either a cello or bass. The second and last piece were performed by an orchestra. I could hear a lot of violins along with a variety of other stringed instruments like cellos. The remainder of the songs were performed on the piano. One of the songs was mainly performed on a piano with a small orchestra in the backgroud. The orchestra had a violin and a lower range string instrument. All of the songs that I listened to were performed by the newer string instruments, other than the first song that I listened to in which a clavichord was used. This goes to show that since technology is improving constantly there is no need to use instruments that are difficult to play or keep in tune.

Membranophone

For my membranophone I used a cardboard paper towel roll and wax paper. I cut the tube into 3 different lengths and pulled the wax paper tightly over the top of each one. I then put a rubber band around the tube to hold the wax paper in place. Since I have 3 different heights of drums I was able to make 3 different sounds.

Idiophone

For my idiophone I used plastic cups as the main material. Using scissors I made eleven cups of different sizes. I then connected them all together in height order. In order to make the sounds different and audible I had to suspend the cups using some cardboard and I used pencils as my mallets. I was not able to take any video of my idiophone but I have included a picture.

Better Days

I chose to describe the song "Better Days" by the Goo Goo Dolls. After listening to the song several times I was able to find out some information about the sound, harmony, rhythm, melody and form. The texture of the song was clearly homophonic in its entirety, there was one single voice with many instruments accompanying it. The harmony seemed to be in major with a diatonic key; the music harmonized well and always seemed to sound "happy." The rhythm in this song changed a few times from fast to slow and back again led by the accompanying instruments. While the lead singer was singing, the piano that was accompanying him used a lot of up to down contour along with both stepped and skipped notes. The lead singer sang the chorus nearly the same everytime, but there were a few changes to the lyrics in each chorus. The rest of the lyrics are contrasting because they are all very different from each other and the chorus. The accompanying instruments seem to be playing repeated portions, with some additional contrasting parts. While listening and trying to find details about the song I heard the song differently than I ever have before. I was concentrating on what the individual instruments were doing and how they were the same or different from how the lead singer was singing. This exercise gave me a new respect for how complicated music is.

Music All Around

It is amazing how many sources of music there are in just one day of my life. When I am not looking for music it is easy to forget about how much music is actually involved in my day to day life. As I concentrated on where I heard music I was surprised by the variety of places I found it. When I woke up in the morning, I woke up to music playing as my alarm went off. After receiving the assignment to listen to where music comes from for 24 hours, I did not think I would hear much music during the beginning of my day, I overlooked the fact that my day always starts out with music. Even while I was eating breakfast, there was music playing on the TV during commercials and the news cast. During the rest of the day I heard music from my own stereo, my roommates stereo, a house down the street and many people's cell phones ringing. There were so many sources of music that I overlooked since it is a usual occurrence in my everyday life. Music is such a big part of everyone's lives, but I do not believe people realize the impact that it has on our lives.

Music In Silence

While sitting in silence for a short amount of time I began to find a variety of noises that were happening around me. Whether most people would consider these noises music is debatable, however it seemed to me as though the variety of noises were like a variety of instruments in a band. While sitting in my apartment that I would have normally considered extremely quiet, I was able to focus on very subtle sounds that I don't normally notice. I heard the low hum of the air conditioner, my roommate typing on her computer, someone cutting paper with scissors and cabinets opening and closing. These noises ranged in pitch and loudness depending on where they came from. They were all very different but all came from things that we would not normally consider to be musical instruments. In some aspects these noises could be considered music. This would be true if we define music as a collection of sound and silence. However, this would not be true if our definition included having a rhythm, chorus or singing. I do believe that these noises could be considered music, it just involves a little bit of imagination.