Week Three: 7/10/2014

Creative Task

So after the given task of creating our own piece of music, it was now time to present these. It was important that before we listened to each composition that we thought thoroughly about what the made the compositions a good piece of music and what we should improve on musically. We made a list of some points we thought should be considered when assessing a piece of music.

 

Assessment Criteria

Musicality was the first point and this was one of the main points that came from the discussion. Musicality should be the organisation of the sound. Questioning if the piece is actually music or if it just noise or sound. A piece must have this to even qualify as music, and this first point links to other aspects of assessment criteria, such as emotive lyrics, concept, originality and effort. When giving other groups feedback it gave us an essential outline of what we were listening for, did their piece have use of dynamics? Was it structured? And did it use devices such as harmonies? Could the audience emotionally connect and understand their reasoning for lyrics or was it just music to them? Each one of the point was used for most groups which will only help them to improve their composing skills.

We also looked for these in our own piece:

 

We received both positive and negative feedback for our performance as it was so different and creative. Each piece of feedback was helpful to our group as we understood some points such as balance in the volume. However some points, personally I disagreed with although they should be taken into consideration too like creating more lyrics. We used little lyric to infuse the culture and depth of African society and struggles. Which is why we didn't want to take that away with lyrics. We wanted the audience to hear each household 'instrument' used and for them to understand reasoning behind the idea, which I thought was portrayed well throughout the song.

Overall I agreed with most comments and was pleased to hear and be given useful feedback from peers and Hayley.

After attending the last few sessions, I have really enjoyed the in depth discussions about music and what music is. It has gave me inspiration to start to think about what I want to gain from my lessons and how I could achieve this myself. As I am only a singer and have only ever known this I thought about challenging myself and so I bought a book:

Usborne (1996). Music Theory for Beginners. 1st. ed. London: Usborne Publishing Ltd.

I have always wanted to grasp the knowledge of the theoretical side to music, but I have never been confident enough to teach myself. I decided to do this as I sometimes feel like I know nothing, I feel as though I cannot do anything when given a task or just asked a question because I am just a singer. So I am hoping that this book alongside digging out that old keyboard that I will be able to gain confidence and talent by the end of this year.