Week 3

We listened to each other's simple compositions today.  It was great to see what everyone had come up with.  Here is what my final composition looked like.

I received some pretty positive feedback and had a lot of fun with the composition.  Our challenge is to post both the score (above) and the audio and that I am having trouble with.  I have looked at so many websites explaining how to do this and have tried many different things, but still can't get my audio uploaded.

MIDI

As part of our homework for week 2, we were asked to read "MIDI 101", by Scott Wilkie.

You can view an online version here.  This is a very in depth article explaining Musical Instrument Digital Interface, otherwise known as MIDI.  It was developed over 20 years ago now, as a way for synthesizers from different manufacturers to be able to communicate easily.  

Before reading this article, I didn't realize just how much there actually was to MIDI.  Sure I had heard the term and understood that it was a digital music communication tool and even learnt a little bit about it in another unit I studied, but I never really took much notice of it!

I particularly like the fact that you can play around with the tempo with a MIDI and this wont affect how the music sounds.  If you slow down or speed up a normal audio recording you end up with music that sounds like its from another planet.  MIDI's can be slowed, or sped up, with no alteration to the pitch, which is fantastic!
I think that most people would think that MIDI is sounds or audio that travels through the MIDI cables, however this it not true.  MIDI is really a system of sending instructions between MIDI devices.  So if you play a 'C' on a keyboard, an instruction is sent that the c key has been pressed and the same when you stop pressing the key.  The simple "note on" and "note off" instructions tell the output device what to do.  Even how hard you press the key is detected and the information sent through to the device via a 5 pin MIDI cable.

Week 2

In this weeks class we talked about the elements of musical composition.  To compose music you should take into account four elements.  The essential three elements include rhythm, melody and harmony.  The rhythm is the timing of your music or the beat it follows.  Melody refers to the main tune of your music and harmony is really the other notes that complement your melody when it is all put together.  The final element, timbre, is the quality of the sound and the character of the instruments.

There is not really a 'one size fits all' way of composing and musical composition is somewhat a kind of a mystery, but if you make sure that all the elements fit together then hopefully you will compose music that sounds good!  Jack Tinapple described it as like going on a journey.  You start out on the journey, then you go through some ups and downs and then finally you come home from your journey.

After class I worked on this weeks task of composing a short piece of music made from a beginning phrase. I copied this phrase three more times and altered each one.  I called my piece Violin Dance, as I composed it using the violin and have hopefully made a tune that is dance like, with a simple triple time signature.

Sibelius

For the beginning of the unit we are using a program called Sibelius.  We downloaded a midi file, I chose Abba's Mamma Mia, then played around with the score in Sibelius.  The first weekly task was to chose a phrase in the music we liked and repeat the phrase 4 times.  Then play around slightly changing the notes etc to change it a bit.  Quite fun!

Here is a screen shot of part of my "Mamma Mia Modified"

Week 1

Yesterday I attended my very first class of New Media Intermediate Studio.  What a thoroughly enjoyable class.  I am very excited to be studying this unit and learning new skills.  The class was very small and it seems to have a great mix of people and abilities.  Here's to an exciting semester ahead!