Week Six: 28/10/2014

Arrangements, Authorship and Performance

Today was the day we had to present our abstract task from last week. The stimulus given to us was a meditation egg:

Stimulus given

 

The inspiration we got from the stimulus was that we didn’t actually know what it was and what to do with it, it felt heavy but in fact the sound was quite empty which gave us the idea of spreading the sound around the room, as the egg looks quite ornamental we though that using everyday objects to create the piece would be effective. When using the whole class to perform the piece we were conducted by Jennifer Cunningham. At random points she selected people to play their instruments meaning that we did not know what the overall outcome of the sound would be. It also meant that we were including the element of chance music, it was chance because no one knew what the overall outcome would be. The structure of the piece was improvised and it was in a fluid form. However there was a pre-meditated idea in our head with the given stimulus. The group responded well to our performance and each had our own input into the piece. The overall outcome of the piece sounded like rain and created a really good weather effect that was created from everyday objects showing once again that you can create music from anything. The piece turned out like this:



In today's session we focused on the arrangement of music as this is what will be done for our group assessment task. ''Arrangement' denotes a version of a piece of music with specific reference to the instruments involved, the manner in which they are played, and the order of the sections of the piece.' (Shepard, J. (2003)) Arrangements are different to the original and different to a cover of the song, they are modified in some way whether it be technically modified or vocally for instance making the instruments into voices an example of this is from our performance in first year where we arranged Gotye's 'Somebody That I Used To Know'. This is a clip from one of our rehearsals:

 

Another question there is to think about arrangements is whose piece is it once it has been arranged? Personally I thought that the original artist would be the owner of the piece as they created the idea based around the piece meaning that they came up with the whole creative perspective of the music. However, when creating an arrangement it is vital that you have your own creative input and ideas too therefore the 'arranger' should be credited for their work.

Individual learning:

As mentioned previously, I started to learn myself theory. But I have took it upon myself to learn not only the theory but practical side too. When at home I found that my brother, who is also a big fan of learning music is currently learning the ukulele as he is a bass player. I took it upon myself to ask how he plays and I have began learning how to play. This has inspired me to buy my own ukulele and learn to play more as I really enjoyed the excitement of learning something new and picking it up was fairly easy. Since then I have researched more on learning how to play and watched videos such as:

JustinGuitar (2013). Get started on Ukulele! Easy chords, strumming and songs! (Uke Beginner Lesson UK-001). [online]. Available from: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Qh2JQwkhjk>. [Accessed 28/10/2014].

Shepard, J. (2003). Continuum Encyclopedia of popular music of the world: volume 11 performance and production. London, Continuum.