Saturday, June 25, 2005
Party Piece
We performed a solo "Party Piece" today, which we were supposed to be able to play while "dead-drunk", according to Michael at least. It had to be 3-5 minutes long. Mine was like - 1 minute? I was endlessly debating in my mind over what piece I should perform for today. Since my major instrument was the electone organ - and the facilities in school didn't provide for it - I was in a dilemma over whether to improvise the chords of a moderately-difficult piece or stick with a simple piece. I eventually decided to keep things simple and did a medley of
Vanessa Carlton's A Thousand Miles and the Super Mario Theme on the keyboard. Nice, short simple tunes. Fortunately for us today we were not being graded. My medley, however, was spoilt by the rhythm when I went too fast, resulting in several bars of notes not being played. And of course the whole medley was an improvisation - meaning that you'll not hear the same exact notes again when I play it another time.
Another major thing happening this week was the opening of ICT Recording Studios B and C - the ones we had been waiting for - for like, 1 month at least! Complete with a baby GRAND piano, sound-proof rooms, drum sets, ProTools with mixer/configuration (with 2 VERY LARGE LCD monitor screens), the whole multi-million dollar project cost like - ya, a bomb! Even before the piano was tuned, it was already being played by several of us.
I managed to get more piano scores from various sources, but I realised that it was not much of a point because firstly, I don't have a piano to practise on - and secondly, I put my assignments before my keyboard practices in priority.
A notable song that I have heard in this week is Jacques Offenbach's Can-Can, which I admired for its dexterity and eccentricity.
Straying slightly off topic, we're halfway into Term 1 already and the pressure of our assignments (including THIS performance journal) is already building up, with projects and due dates every week. The workload never ceases! I feel I'm getting rather overworked by the assignments... it's like from morning to night I only have less than 1 hour's rest - so much time spent on ASSIGNMENTS! From doing the Musicianship Textbook every morning in the long 50-minute MRT train ride, to only 1 hour of lunch break most days in school, to CCA activities in the afternoon, and coming home late in the evening/night - only to rush and finish MORE assignments and squeezing in practice time for my keyboard skills - AND finally sleeping past midnight most of the time - THERE IS HARDLY ENOUGH TIME! Hopefully I can adapt quickly to the hectic schedules of polytechnic life. I once thought that only in JCs was there such an amount of stress - polytechnic life has shown itself to be otherwise (after all, it's a tertiary institution). Oh well. Trying not to stress myself out too much!
1:25 pm *
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Rhythm
Notable songs I have listened to during Week 3: F.I.R.'s "Lydia" and Ronan Keating's "When You Say Nothing At All". The tunes of these two songs stuck in my head. They had simple tunes - which probably proved that sometimes the simplest tunes are the ones that making the longest-lasting impression. I liked the clash of Eastern and Western instruments in "When You Say Nothing At All" and the free improvisation part in "Lydia".
For this week, we focused on Rhythm, which was something that was essential for all good performers, an ability that many have yet to perfect. My performance group (with me on the harmonica) did not make much progress in the first rehearsal (because of disorganisation and time constraints). We did not have a wide range of instruments as well - four recorders, two harmonicas, a pianica, a small Chinese drum and some jingly bells made up the ensemble.
The lecturer from the room directly below us complained about the noise we made during our performances (e.g. banging of metal pipes on the ground), so we had to put Plan B into action. Thus, we ended up in the pungent-smelling Visual Effects Room where my group went first. The rhythmic pattern of our piece was quite monotonous as we realised later - but I felt that this was not because we had not improvised enough, but because of the clash of the timbres which the instruments made. For example, the recorders, no many how complex the improvisation, all produced roughly the same sound (though they were on different pitches) - resulting in a garble of tones. Later the class (or rather the whole course - there's only 43 of us) was astounded by Puay Chin's rendition of "The Flight of the Bumble Bee" on the chinese Zhong Ruan.
As for the piano piece I'm currently practising - it's Chopin's Fantaisie Impromptu. Have to get used to my strained left hand because it was formerly not used to so much turns and movements (I learned music the organ way - left hand played triads/chords). I've only gone as far as half of the first page. Another thing that's troubling is that I've no piano to practice it on - only my electone organ - so I've to make do with two layers of keyboards for each hand (very uncomfortable considering that it's a piano piece with a wide range of notes that I'm playing).
12:33 pm *
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Texture
The music dimension of Week Two is Texture - basically the number of musical lines and how they interact with each other. As usual, we were split into 5 random groups and asked to rehearse a fragment which showcased qualities of various stages of complexity of sounds such as monophonic, duophonic, polyphonic and unison (rhythmic).
10.06.05 - the actual performance. My group, Jamming Production Studios, aptly performed an improvised piece, "Texture with a Jazzy Twist". It started with a solo monophonic texture of the bass guitar, built up duophonically with the keyboard, resulting in a homophonic mix of the sounds of bass guitar, keyboard, Chinese flute, acoustic guitar, snare drums and clapping. Present in the piece was also the textural quality of octave unison and rhythmic unison. Overall, none of the groups prominently featured the polyphonic texture in their pieces. Then again, our lecturer Michael reminded us that most pop songs (around 90%) featured homophonic textures. The only downfall of my group's piece, besides the lack of polyphonic textures, was the low volume of the keyboard I was playing (with Yan Xi). I initially thought that the high volume of the keyboard would overpower the rest of the instruments (especially the guitar) - so I lowered the volume intentionally. Once the piece started, I realised my mistake - but it was too late to turn up the volume - well actually I could if I stopped playing for a while and adjusted it higher, but that would be awkward because we were being filmed on camera.
11:46 am *
Saturday, June 04, 2005
Timbre performance
Today I started this blog as part of the individual assignment of the DMAT Performance module. Well, it was also Friday - which was the last day of the first official week I had in polytechnic. Yippee... polytechnic life rocks! However, life's not all-perfect. It's the hectic timetable, which ranges anytime from 9am to 5pm that bores/tires me out.
This week's performance "theme" (music dimension) was "Timbre". It's basically tone colour - the different qualities of sound that different instruments make, although a single instrument itself may have various timbres according to whether we hit it, stroke it, blow it or use it in a different way.
My performance group, "Climax", had only TWO real rehearsals prior to the actual performance - one the day before and the other minutes before the actual show. We had an array of pipes, kitchen utensils, pianica boxes (strangely!) and a few other percussion instruments.
1st try. Overall, we kept to a constant rhythm strictly, but we found out that we were supposed to focus on "timbre" instead - as it was the theme. Our piece was too monotonous - not enough variations. One good part we got right though was the climax - the finale of our piece.
2nd try. This time around, everyone's performances were better after we were given some time to brush up on our pieces. The significant change for my group's piece was, of course, in the timbre. We started with vocal timbres of a major scale. Thereafter, we experimented with more ways of using our instruments and split ourselves up into parts (with different parts playing at one time) so that the piece would not sound so "draggy". I felt that my group bonded together well during the rehearsals and actual performance, proving that we had TEAMWORK, one crucial and essential aspect of any group performance if it were to be successful.
12:04 pm *
Saturday, June 25, 2005
Party Piece
We performed a solo "Party Piece" today, which we were supposed to be able to play while "dead-drunk", according to Michael at least. It had to be 3-5 minutes long. Mine was like - 1 minute? I was endlessly debating in my mind over what piece I should perform for today. Since my major instrument was the electone organ - and the facilities in school didn't provide for it - I was in a dilemma over whether to improvise the chords of a moderately-difficult piece or stick with a simple piece. I eventually decided to keep things simple and did a medley of
Vanessa Carlton's A Thousand Miles and the Super Mario Theme on the keyboard. Nice, short simple tunes. Fortunately for us today we were not being graded. My medley, however, was spoilt by the rhythm when I went too fast, resulting in several bars of notes not being played. And of course the whole medley was an improvisation - meaning that you'll not hear the same exact notes again when I play it another time.
Another major thing happening this week was the opening of ICT Recording Studios B and C - the ones we had been waiting for - for like, 1 month at least! Complete with a baby GRAND piano, sound-proof rooms, drum sets, ProTools with mixer/configuration (with 2 VERY LARGE LCD monitor screens), the whole multi-million dollar project cost like - ya, a bomb! Even before the piano was tuned, it was already being played by several of us.
I managed to get more piano scores from various sources, but I realised that it was not much of a point because firstly, I don't have a piano to practise on - and secondly, I put my assignments before my keyboard practices in priority.
A notable song that I have heard in this week is Jacques Offenbach's Can-Can, which I admired for its dexterity and eccentricity.
Straying slightly off topic, we're halfway into Term 1 already and the pressure of our assignments (including THIS performance journal) is already building up, with projects and due dates every week. The workload never ceases! I feel I'm getting rather overworked by the assignments... it's like from morning to night I only have less than 1 hour's rest - so much time spent on ASSIGNMENTS! From doing the Musicianship Textbook every morning in the long 50-minute MRT train ride, to only 1 hour of lunch break most days in school, to CCA activities in the afternoon, and coming home late in the evening/night - only to rush and finish MORE assignments and squeezing in practice time for my keyboard skills - AND finally sleeping past midnight most of the time - THERE IS HARDLY ENOUGH TIME! Hopefully I can adapt quickly to the hectic schedules of polytechnic life. I once thought that only in JCs was there such an amount of stress - polytechnic life has shown itself to be otherwise (after all, it's a tertiary institution). Oh well. Trying not to stress myself out too much!
1:25 pm *
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Rhythm
Notable songs I have listened to during Week 3: F.I.R.'s "Lydia" and Ronan Keating's "When You Say Nothing At All". The tunes of these two songs stuck in my head. They had simple tunes - which probably proved that sometimes the simplest tunes are the ones that making the longest-lasting impression. I liked the clash of Eastern and Western instruments in "When You Say Nothing At All" and the free improvisation part in "Lydia".
For this week, we focused on Rhythm, which was something that was essential for all good performers, an ability that many have yet to perfect. My performance group (with me on the harmonica) did not make much progress in the first rehearsal (because of disorganisation and time constraints). We did not have a wide range of instruments as well - four recorders, two harmonicas, a pianica, a small Chinese drum and some jingly bells made up the ensemble.
The lecturer from the room directly below us complained about the noise we made during our performances (e.g. banging of metal pipes on the ground), so we had to put Plan B into action. Thus, we ended up in the pungent-smelling Visual Effects Room where my group went first. The rhythmic pattern of our piece was quite monotonous as we realised later - but I felt that this was not because we had not improvised enough, but because of the clash of the timbres which the instruments made. For example, the recorders, no many how complex the improvisation, all produced roughly the same sound (though they were on different pitches) - resulting in a garble of tones. Later the class (or rather the whole course - there's only 43 of us) was astounded by Puay Chin's rendition of "The Flight of the Bumble Bee" on the chinese Zhong Ruan.
As for the piano piece I'm currently practising - it's Chopin's Fantaisie Impromptu. Have to get used to my strained left hand because it was formerly not used to so much turns and movements (I learned music the organ way - left hand played triads/chords). I've only gone as far as half of the first page. Another thing that's troubling is that I've no piano to practice it on - only my electone organ - so I've to make do with two layers of keyboards for each hand (very uncomfortable considering that it's a piano piece with a wide range of notes that I'm playing).
12:33 pm *
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Texture
The music dimension of Week Two is Texture - basically the number of musical lines and how they interact with each other. As usual, we were split into 5 random groups and asked to rehearse a fragment which showcased qualities of various stages of complexity of sounds such as monophonic, duophonic, polyphonic and unison (rhythmic).
10.06.05 - the actual performance. My group, Jamming Production Studios, aptly performed an improvised piece, "Texture with a Jazzy Twist". It started with a solo monophonic texture of the bass guitar, built up duophonically with the keyboard, resulting in a homophonic mix of the sounds of bass guitar, keyboard, Chinese flute, acoustic guitar, snare drums and clapping. Present in the piece was also the textural quality of octave unison and rhythmic unison. Overall, none of the groups prominently featured the polyphonic texture in their pieces. Then again, our lecturer Michael reminded us that most pop songs (around 90%) featured homophonic textures. The only downfall of my group's piece, besides the lack of polyphonic textures, was the low volume of the keyboard I was playing (with Yan Xi). I initially thought that the high volume of the keyboard would overpower the rest of the instruments (especially the guitar) - so I lowered the volume intentionally. Once the piece started, I realised my mistake - but it was too late to turn up the volume - well actually I could if I stopped playing for a while and adjusted it higher, but that would be awkward because we were being filmed on camera.
11:46 am *
Saturday, June 04, 2005
Timbre performance
Today I started this blog as part of the individual assignment of the DMAT Performance module. Well, it was also Friday - which was the last day of the first official week I had in polytechnic. Yippee... polytechnic life rocks! However, life's not all-perfect. It's the hectic timetable, which ranges anytime from 9am to 5pm that bores/tires me out.
This week's performance "theme" (music dimension) was "Timbre". It's basically tone colour - the different qualities of sound that different instruments make, although a single instrument itself may have various timbres according to whether we hit it, stroke it, blow it or use it in a different way.
My performance group, "Climax", had only TWO real rehearsals prior to the actual performance - one the day before and the other minutes before the actual show. We had an array of pipes, kitchen utensils, pianica boxes (strangely!) and a few other percussion instruments.
1st try. Overall, we kept to a constant rhythm strictly, but we found out that we were supposed to focus on "timbre" instead - as it was the theme. Our piece was too monotonous - not enough variations. One good part we got right though was the climax - the finale of our piece.
2nd try. This time around, everyone's performances were better after we were given some time to brush up on our pieces. The significant change for my group's piece was, of course, in the timbre. We started with vocal timbres of a major scale. Thereafter, we experimented with more ways of using our instruments and split ourselves up into parts (with different parts playing at one time) so that the piece would not sound so "draggy". I felt that my group bonded together well during the rehearsals and actual performance, proving that we had TEAMWORK, one crucial and essential aspect of any group performance if it were to be successful.
12:04 pm *
