Blues

May 27 - 2013

This lesson our band started playing together. It started of with only drums, base and keyboard together. We learned how to play a variation of the 12 bar blues progession so we didn’t only play shuffle beat the whole time. At first it was challenging but then it worked out fine. However when we played together we could only play the 12 bar blues progression twice, but in totally we have to play it about 7 or 8 times. At the end of the lesson the two singers joined us and we were able to play it with them as well. I found it challenging to play with the whole band because I just learned how to play the 12 bar blues progression with the both hands and then I had to play it without stoping to change chords. This meant that I sometimes played the wrong chord with one hand and it sounded very weird.

May 20 - 2013

This week I preformed my solo. I think it went pretty well. However when it was recorded I played it slightly wrong. When I play it I play the original version twice and then a variation of it once etc. However, instead I played the original version three times but I just kept on going and I did not stop. The feedback I got was that it was very good and that it sounded good/ bluesy when I played two notes fast after eachother.

Once we had finished that, we went on and decided our bands and what we were playing. I am playing keyboard. Then we went on practicing. A friend and I, who were both playing keyboard, practiced toghether. Since we had been working on our solos we had both forgotten the 12 bar blues progression slightly but it was not too hard to refresh it. I started learning how to play the advanced 12 bar blues progression for keyboard where you have to play cords with your left hand as well as your right. It was quite challenging at first since you had to move both your hands at once without moving to the wrong chord. 

May 13 - 2013

This lesson we finished our solos and some of us preformed. Since I had missed one lesson I was not one of them. Instead I will preform next week. I changed my solo slightly and decided on a final way of playing it. Before, I had always played the variations randomly but during this lesson I decided in what order I wanted to play them.

This lesson I was able to play my solo to the 12 bar blues progression without starting on the second phrase too early. Since I did not preform my solo this week I did not get any feedback. 

May 6 - 2013

This lesson I started making my solo. Everyone else started last week but I had to go to the dentist and therefore I missed the lesson. This lesson we had a substitute teacher so I did not know exactly what to do. The only instructions I got from the substitute teacher was that I had to create a solo that was 12 bars long using phrases. He also said that it was good to use rests as well. It was only after asking my friends that I found out that the solo had to fit to the 12 bar blues progression, therefore it has to fit to the D7 chord, the G7 chord and the A7 chord. I started by making up a phrase that was 8 beats (2 bars) including a long rest. Then I asked a friend to play the different chords while I played my solo.

I thought this was pretty easy since I have played piano for a really long time. I was able to make up my solo quite quickly since I created one phrase and then repeated it with some variation. When I was playing my solo with the full 12 bar blues progession I found that I was not very good at keeping the rest for as long as it was supposed to be. I started playing the second phrase way to early so  I did not finish when the blues progression finished, I finished about a bar before. However as I kept on practicing I managed to do this better but it was still not completely perfect. 

Apr 8 - 2013

Last lesson we started playing on the drums. Since we did not have enough drums for everyone we were divided into groups. In each group we took turns on playing the drums and while you were waiting you either practiced on your knees, like we had practiced before, or we practiced playing on the base guitar. The rhythm we played was a  basic drum rhythm but to make it more sutiable for blues we made the eight notes syncopated. when you were playing on the base guitar you played the developed 12 blues bar progression (D7, G7, D7, D7,G7, G7, D7, D7, A7, G7, D7, A7). However we only played the root of the chord.

I think all of this went pretty well. I knew the drum rhythm on my knees by heart so it was just to apply that onto the drums. For the base guitar we had to find where the notes were on the base but otherwise it was not too hard.

Feb 25 – 2013
The blues music originated from the African slaves that were brought to America. These people had hard life and sang to make their days go by faster. This was the beginning of blues music! Blues music most often expresses sadness because the slaves were very unhappy.

Robert Johnson was a famous American blues musician who only became 27 years old. He made his own songs and both sang and played guitar. He has influenced generations of blues musicians. Robert Johnson had a very famous myth about himself. It is said that he sold his sole to the devil at a crossroad in order to become successful.

"Robert Johnson." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 23 Feb. 2013. Web. 24 Feb. 2013. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Johnson>.

"Where and How Did the Blues Start?" WikiAnswers. N.p., 21 Feb. 2012. Web. 24 Feb. 2013. <http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Where_and_how_did_the_blues_start>.

Percussion Unit

14/01/13

I think that over all my preformance was pretty good. My piece was pretty hard since I used ties and repeat signs with a first and second ending. This made it harder to play because you always have too look at what to play next. My piece was also 3 pages long and they didn’t fit next to eachother on the stand so we had to change page in the middle of the piece. However there is a whole rest on bar 21 where we could change. However that made me loose count of the beat for a second. Luckily Jacek was the one to start playing next so I could get back on the beat again eventhough the rest was a bit too long. When we started playing the triplets in bar 22 I got the feeling that everyone was waiting for me to start playing even though we were all supposed to play at the same time. Also it got a bit messy in bar 24 when we were supposed to slow down and play quarter notes and then half notes because we weren’t playing in unison as we were supposed to. However we got back together pretty soon after that. I think the accuracy in preforming the rhythms was good. Maybe we could have been better when we were playing the triplets in bar 22 because some of us thoguht it was hard to keep count on how many triplets we had played and that made the rhythm wrong. Most of the time I thought we were synchronized. Again the only time we could have improved were in bar 22 to around bar 25 when we were playing the triplets. Anohter thing that we could have improved was playing in different volume. The piece was supposed to start of very quiet and increase in volume. However when Jacek started playing he played pretty loud. I still tried to play softly and there fore you cannot her me very well in the beginning.

 

I think the theme of my piece was expressed. However I think it had a bit too many rests in it. All the rests made it seem very slow. Maybe the piece wasn’t really as I had thought of when I came up with the theme but I’m happy with the result! I think my piece was maybe a bit too hard for my group since I used things they didn’t know what it was such as ties. This made it take longer time to practice since we needed to go through all of that before we started practicing. If I would have the chance of going back and changing my piece of music I would change some of the rests to either shorter once or change them to notes so that it wouldn’t be as quiet. Since we were four people in my group I would have liked to get a bit more time to practice our pieces. Some groups got more time to practice their pieces since they were only three. Also we hadn’t practiced ours for a long time when we were preforming. We only got 20 minutes before to get together and practice. I think that we could have done an even better job preforming if we had had a bit more time and didn’t have to wait a long time before preforming. Also I was sick one of the lessons and annamaria was sick one so we only had one lesson where we were all there.

During this unit I have become better at preforming in groups. Before I had only played piano with another person but then you are only two people. Now we had to be three all playing different things. I have also learned how to play and some different instruments aswell. I actuall didn’t know what a triplet was before this unit. After I learned that I realised that I there was a part of the piece I was playing on piano that included triplets!

19/11/12
This week we started practicing our final pieces. This lesson we were supposed to practice mine and Annamarias. However Annamaria was not here so it was hard for us. We started by practicing mine and that went well except we couldnt practice with Annamaria. When we finished we continued with the next one which was Annamaria's. We were only supposed to practice the first page but we finished that and went on with the next page. However once we had finished this we continued and we started on another one which we almoust finished.

We went on pretty fast which maybe could make it harder to remember the different pieces. To develop and improve we could go through the pieces a bit slower and repeat the bars until we know them really well. We also only played the pieces, piece by piece and we never actually went through the whole piece more than once. This can make it harder because if it is difficult changing between two rhythms which are not played together when we play piece by piece then we will think that is hard when we play the whole piece. To make this easier we can play one piece and then the next one. However then we play half of the first one and half of the second one together. Then you would play the next piece and then the second half of the second piece and so on.

12/11/12
We have written a composition for three insturments. We spent about four weeks on this. Down below you can see my finished composition. We will now spend another three weeks on practicing our compositions in groups of three. I will upload a video of when we are preforming the compositon  later.

Here is my final composition:



The theme of my composition is a ghost story. The story starts with a ghost entering pulling chains. For this I used a tambourine because it has a similar sound. Next the ghost stops and waits. at this point it is completely quiet. After that you can hear a heartbeat. This will become the background "beat" once the ghost starts to do something. This is the next part of my composition. The scream is the next thing that will happen. This happens in bar 26. After this you repeat the section where the ghost starts doing something. After this the ghost exits pulling chains.


I got the whole idea of doing a ghost story as my composition from a rhythm that I had in my head. The rhythm that I had in my head was a rhythm that changed in volume a lot. It started of very quiet and a couple of times there is a very loud note. This rhythm is inspired by a ghost scaring someone else.
Then I folowed my plan of events and figured out rhythms for each of them. For example I wanted heart beat and then I created a rhythm which sounded like it but I still wanted it to be like a beat in the background. I created these rhythms from playing on the instruments and not by writing down random notes on the paper. Once I had a good rhythm I played around with syncopation, complementing rhythms, taking turns, unison rhythms and call and respons. In my piece I am not using any call and responce nor taking turns. I think I have syncopated rhythms and sometimes they complement eachother. When there is a scream ( starts at bar 26 ) I am using a unison rythm.

 

 

When I decided which instruments to use I had a pretty hard time doing so. I was playing around trying to think of what would work best for the different parts of my piece. For example I wanted an instrument which sounded like someone pulling chains for the beginning and end. I also wanted an instrument which stood out in comparison to all the others for when the ghost is doing something. The last one was the hardest since I didn't know what I wanted. In the end I decided on a hand drum since that instrument sounds like a background beat which I wanted to use for the heartbeat.


The feedback I got on my piece was that it was overall very good. I had used different rhythms and I had played around with different volume. He said I had used syncopated and complementing rhythms well. I had also used unison rhythms well. The only thing I could make better was that I could simplify how I had written some rhythms to make it easier to read.


24/09/12
In this unit we will have to create a piece of music together in a group. We will then preform this piece to the rest of the class using percussian instruments. We will learn different note values, and consepts.

So far we have learned different note values and concepts. We learned concepts like what a bar is and what a beat. The note values we learned was: whole note, half note, quarter note, eight note and the rests.  We also learned what a dotted note is and how it is played.

We also did preformances in groups. For the first one we got a paper with music which we had to play. For the second one all of us created one bar of music and then we put them all together. In class we played two bar rythms to improve how we read music and how to count.

I play piano so I already know all the different note values and concepts that we learned. However I learned how to play differnet percussion instruments like the cabasa and the hand drums. I also improved how I play in groups. When I play piano I play alone or somethimes with a parter. When you are two it isn’t that hard to play toghether but when you are many it becomes harder. This is because if only one person plays something wrong it will be heard and the chance of someone playing something wrong is higher when there is more people.

I would like to improve how I play together with other people. I would want to be able to listen to how they play in order for it to sound like we are playing together instead of many people playing alone at the same time. To be able to play good you have to be able to play together so that it sounds like you are playing one piece of music.

This is the piece of music my group created together. This is both the paper and the video of how we played.

     

If you listen I think the first two bars are good. Everyone is playing together and at the same tempo. However after the second bar the low pitched instruments stop for one beat and plays the first note in the bar on the second beat when it is supposed to be on the first beat. This meas that they are behind for the rest of the piece. After the second bar the low pitched instruments aren’t playing together any more. One is plaing faster than the others and another is playing slower. Because they are behind in the song they will be playing when the high pitched instruments  have stoped at the end of the song eventhough the high pitched instruments are supposed to be the ones playing last. It also sounds like there is two notes after the high pitched instruments have stoped but that is because the low pitched instruments aren’t playing at the same time.