Final Assignment

There are some major concepts that I learned in this class that will help me advance as a cultivated music listener in the future. One concept I learned was texture. At first, before I had taken this class, I did not understand what texture was relating to music. I learned that texture is based on the number and general relationship of musical lines or voices. I learned that every work of music has a texture from thick (many voices) to thin (a single voice). In addition, I learned that sometimes one line or voice is more important and that other times, all the lines or voices are of equal importance. This knowledge I have gained helps me when I listen to music now. Now I can recognize what kind of texture a song has. For example, when I listen to the kind of music I like and I hear just one singer, then I know that particular song has a thin texture. When I listen to my own music, I pay attention to the type of texture each song has so now I think about songs in a different and broader way. Another concept I learned was dynamics. I learned that the same music can be performed at many degrees of volume, from very soft to very loud. Also, dynamics determine the volume of a given work or passage in a work of music. This knowledge I have acquired helps me as well when I listen to my own music. Now when I listen to a song, I pay more attention the volume and I listen if it varies at all throughout the song. Some songs start out soft and then the volume picks up more and more as the song goes on and at the end of the song, the volume is at its highest. There are other songs where the volume stays the exact same throughout the whole song. This does not necessarily mean songs are more interesting if the volume changes and is unpredictable though. Another concept I learned relating to music was form. I learned that a single melody is usually too short to constitute a complete work of music and that typically, a melody is repeated, varied, or contrasted with a different melody. I learned that the way in which all these subunits are put together-the structure of the whole-is musical form. Finally, form is based on repetition, variation, contrast, or some combination of these three possibilities. Now when I listen to my own music, I pay more attention to the form in each song. In some songs, the melody is very repetitive. I find this happens almost all the time in any rap song I listen to. The melody has a repetitive beat and melody that is easy to dance to. In these rap songs, I find that the musical form is based on repetition. In some songs, however, the melody varies so then the form is based on variation. Other songs have contrasting melodies going on at the same time so it can be confusing to listen to but at the same time, the contrasting melodies sound good together. Repetitive, varying, and contrasting melodies in a song can all sound pleasant so it does not matter what the form is based on in a song. Another musical concept I learned was genre. I learned that symphony, opera, and song are all examples of genres and that each one tells us in advance how long it is likely to be, what kinds of instruments or voices we will hear, and what kinds of forms we might hear. I also learned that genre tells us about the function of a work. For example, dance music serves a different purpose from music to be used in a service of worship. I learned more about the genre of jazz because I went to a jazz concert. I learned that the typical jazz instruments are the saxophone, trumpet, trombone, clarinet, flute, piano, guitar, double bass, tuba, drums, vocals, and the vibraphone. I also learned that one of jazz's derivatives is rock n' roll. Now when I listen to my own music, I can recognize that rap and r&b are different genres. This information I have learned helps me become a better listener to music for the future because now I can notice little things in music that I never knew about or thought about before.

Deep Blues: Epilogue

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy2tEP3I3DM

Above is a clip of Otis Rush performing one of his songs called "I Can't Quit You Baby." Rush was an American blues musician, singer, and guitarist. At the top of the blog is a picture of Rush.

Deep Blues: Chapter 7

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CN00Dutuw0

Above is a clip of one of B.B. King's songs called "Three O' Clock Blues." King assembled his own band called the B.B. King Review. King was an American blues guitarist and singer-songwriter. He is known for his expressive singing and guitar playing. At the top of the blog is a picture of King.

Deep Blues: Chapter 6

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4IQuiiAAe8

Above is a clip of Sonny Boy's first single called "Don't Start Me to Talking." At the top of the blog is a picture of Sonny Boy.

Deep Blues: Chapter 5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_7UkcMVzag

Above is a clip of Robert Lockwood performing one of his songs "Sweet Home Chicago." He is one of the last surviving roots bluesman of the twentieth century. At the top of the blog is a picture of Lockwood.

Deep Blues: Chapter 4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5flZN6e7Fb0

Eddie Boyd was a blues piano player. He also played guitar and piano with his group, the Dixie Rhythm Boys. Above is a clip of Boyd performing one of his hit songs "Five Long Years." At the very top of this blog are a couple pictures of Boyd.

Deep Blues: Chapter 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFmFsckTlws

Above is a clip of W.C. Handy's "Memphis Blues." He is known as the Father of the Blues. He was a blues composer and musician. He used folk material in his songs. At the top of this blog is a picture of Handy.

Deep Blues: Chapter 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GznTA-uwQh4

Above is a clip of Charley Patton's song "Pea Vine Blues" he recorded in 1929. It became one of Patton's most popular songs. Patton is best known as an American Delta blues musician. He is considered by many to be the Father of Delta Blues. He is one of the oldest known figures of American popular music. At the top of the blog is a picture of Patton.

Deep Blues: Chapter 1

The Wolof are a likely source of the most popular American musical instrument to have originated among the slaves which is the banjo. The Wolof are Muslim people of Senegal and the Gambia who speak the Wolof language of the Atlantic branch of the Niger-Congo language family. There is close connection between black American banjo music and music played on the Wolof halam. At the top is a picture of a guy playing a Wolof halam and the picture below is of an American banjo.

Deep Blues: Prologue

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgW9HEUL_Qk

Above is a clip of one of McKinley Morganfield's songs called "Country Blues." Everyone knew him as Muddy Waters though. Waters sometimes played guitar in a little country string band, other times he played with a partner, and sometimes he played alone. Waters was a fair success economically too. Waters always worked hard to make sure his songs came out just the way he wanted. The pictures on the left and the right are of Waters.

Classical Concert

On Sunday, July 26, 2009 I went with my parents to a classical concert. The performers were a collection of some of the finest college musicians, alumni in the Southland and beyond, band directors, high school students, and several university instrumental faculty members. They were a wind orchestra. The conductor was Jeff Held who is a professor at Concordia University. There was also a solo singer who participated in a handful of the songs as well. Her name was Natalie Hovsepian. The concert was in Irvine, California at Concordia University. Concordia University is a private Lutheran college university that I attend. The concert itself was called Concert on the Green. This was perhaps because the concert was held outdoors and the audience was organized to sit on the green grass on campus. The time of the concert was at 4:00pm. It was over around 6:00pm. Concert on the Green is an annual concert that Concordia does every summer. The one that I went to was the finale of a series of concerts that this wind orchestra had been performing throughout the summer.

Jeff Held is officially classified as the Director of Instrumental Activities and Assistant Professor of Instrumental Music at Concordia University in Irvine, California. He is also a conductor of the Concordia Wind Orchestra. In addition, Held is a classroom and online professor. He teaches courses in music history, music appreciation, orchestration, and instrumental music education. Held is currently a candidate for D.M.A. in music education at Boston University. He is a graduate of the American Band College at Southern Oregon University, Valparaiso University, and Concordia University. Held is also Vice-President of the Board of Directors of Lutheran Music Program. Personally, Held has a wife, Holly, and two young children whose names are Sam and Amy.

Natalie Hovsepian is a senior Music Education major at Concordia University in Irvine, California. She is president of the Concordia Choir and coordinates the CUI high school choral festival and coaches a club volleyball team at Saddleback Valley Volleyball Club. Hovsepian is also involved in the woman's acapella group at CUI and is a member of the Concordia University percussion ensemble. She states that the thing she is most excited for in life is pursuing Christ faithfully, relentlessly, and unconditionally until she gets to meet him face to face.

The concert was very relaxing. At first the weather was fairly warm, but then it cooled down a little bit. Towards the end of the concert, I could feel more of the cool ocean breeze. Some of the instruments used in the concert were accordions, clarinets, drums, flutes, tubas, trombones, cymbals, and xylophones. The pieces that were performed were The Star-Spangled Banner, American Salute, Adagio for Winds, Laudamus Te (Mass in C Minor, K427), Arioso (Cantata No. 156), Canticle: All Creatures of Our God and King, Overtude to "Candide", Klezmer Classics which included Mazltov, Dem Trisker rebn's nign, Lomir zich iberbetn, Chosidle (slow dance), and Ma jofus (Tants, tants, Jidelech). Other pieces included Block M (Concert March), The Lion King: Circle of Life, I Just Can't Wait to Be King, Be Prepared, Hakuna Matata, Can You Feel the Love Tonight and King of Pride Rock. The final pieces were I Dreamed a Dream (Les Miserables), Old Ironsides, The Ultimate Patriotic Sing-Along, and Star Wars Medley. There was also an intermission. During this intermission, there were games that kids could play and they could win prizes. Also, for the song Block M, the conductor taught the kids how to conduct it so as the wind orchestra performed, the kids conducted it along with the conductor. The concert involved the kids a lot.

The dynamics of the songs varied. They never really stayed the same throughout each song. This means that the volume varied from soft to loud or from loud to soft. This kept the songs interesting to listen to because it was hard to know what was coming next. The range of sound in each song kept the songs mysterious and entertaining. The beats were not repetitive at all in the songs. The beats changed throughout the song but they carried over nicely with each other. In some of the songs, the texture was thin. This means there was one voice. The songs whose texture was thin were the ones in which Hovsepian sang. She had a solo part in some of the songs. She sang soprano in each song she sang. This means that she sang in the highest singing voice that she possibly could. She sounded very nice. She sang while the orchestra played at the same time. None of the songs had texture that was thick. This means that none of the songs had multiple voices singing in them. The only voice that was ever heard throughout the whole classical concert was Hovsepian's. There was rhythm in every song. It varied. The rhythm never really stayed the same. Sometimes it was fast and other times it was slow. It was very hard to predict how the rhythm would turn out to be as each song continued to play.

The Triumph of Music: Introduction

There was a Party at the Palace hosted by Queen Elizabeth in 2002. The concert peformed there was called the Jubilee concert. There was plenty of food and drink that was consumed. 200 million people worldwide watched it on television. The concert was put on DVD and millions of more people have watched it on that. Brian May performed "God Save the Queen" on the roof of Buckingham Palace.

Here is a clip of Brian May performing "God Save the Queen" on top of Buckingham Palace.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4nsifplvpk

At the top of this blog, that is a picture of Buckingham Palace and the picture below it is of Brian May performing "God Save the Queen" on top of Buckingham Palace.

Jazz Concert

On Friday June 18, 2009 I went with my parents to a jazz concert. The perfomer was a saxophonist named Mindi Abair. The concert was in Newport Beach, California at Hyatt Regency. Hyatt Regency is the name of a fancy hotel. The concert was held outdoors. The time of the concert was at 8:00pm. This concert was part of the Wave's Summer Jazz Series held at Hyatt Regency. The Wave is a jazz radio station.
Abair was born May 31, 1969. She is 40 years old now. She is married. She is an American smooth saxophonist. She has a top-40 pop music background. She has performed with people such as Mandy Moore and the Backstreet Boys. She has appeared in their tours as well. Always and Never the Same is the name of her album that she released while on tours with these people. However, then in 2003, Abair decided to change to jazz and give it a try. This move turned out to be a good one. She has been nicknamed "the second coming of Candy Dulfer." Some of her songs are titled "Lucy's," "Flirt," and "Save the Last Dance". She performed all of these songs at the concert that I went to with my parents. "Save the Last Dance" takes its name from the movie with Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas in it. Abair will occasionally sing in some of her songs too. Evidence of this is her vocal cover version of the Eagle-Eye-Cherry hit "Save Tonight" on her debut album. She titled a song "True Blue" and released that in 2006. In addition to singing and playing the saxophone, Abair plays the flute and keyboard. However, she did not play these instruments at the concert. She just stuck to the saxophone and singing. About midway through the concert, though, Abair switched to another saxophone that she decided to play. Abair played with a total of 2 different saxophones throughout the entire concert. She sang in some of her songs too and others she just played the saxophone. She performed with a band that she tours with. There was a drummer and he played the drums and cymbals. There were a couple guys that played the guitar. One guy played an electric guitar. There was another guy that played the keyboard. Abair is also the host of a radio program. This radio program is called Chill with Mindi Abair. This program focuses on chill out music.
The concert was very relaxing. There was a cool breeze from the beach so it was actually pretty cold outside, but it still felt good. The beats were kind of repetitive sometimes in the songs but each song had a different beat and they were all catchy so they were interesting. There were some interesting dynamics in the songs. In some of them, the volume started off very soft, and then it slowly kept getting louder and louder and then reached its loudest point and then went back slowly down to being soft again and ended at its softest point which it began from. In other songs, the dynamics stayed the same which means the volume stayed the same and did not change. The texture of the songs varied as well. Sometimes the texture was thin. This means there was one single voice and that voice was Abair when she was singing solo in some of her songs. Other times the texture was thick because the other band members sang along with Abair at the same time. There was rhythm in every song. It varied as well. Sometimes the rhythm was repetitive. Other times the rhythm would pick up and be very fast and catch the audience's attention and get them out of their seats and start dancing and get in a happy mood. There was one moment in the concert when Abair let the drummer play solo and he showed off all of the different rhythms he could do. He would drum fast beats, slow beats, and in between and his dynamics of the rhythms would vary too so that is what kept it interesting to listen to. Abair would let each band member show off their instrument and use their different rhythms and dynamics with it so the audience could hear the differences of all the instruments. Abair did a really good job of keeping the concert filled with a lot of variety and not just her singing or using the saxophone all the time. All of the three basic forms were used in the concert: repetition, variation, and contrast.

Music: As Feeling

Music is meaningful. It brings feeling to one's self. Bennett Reimer describes feeling as emotions that are nameable in words. Reimer also decribes it as nonverbal crossings into consciousness of felt information. Reimer says feeling is beyond language. Feeling is also knowing through experiencing what ordinary language cannot express. A person can experience something like this through the power of music. Websters gives many multiple meanings of the word "feeling" such as a particular sensation of this kind and the general state of consciousness considered independently of particular sensations, thoughts, etc. A feeling is also described simply as an emotion.
Aside from feeling, human beings always think. Thoughts always cross human beings' minds in a never-ending flow. They whirl around and then shoot off in different directions. It can become frustrating at times. Inner thought cannot be controlled by thinking inwardly. One way to keep thoughts together, though, is to write down what is being thought about. Then once the thought is written down, the thought itself can be reflectively thought about. Writing and reading deepens a person's thinking.
Just like thinking, human beings always feel. Feelings always flood human beings' minds in a never-ending stream. They can overlap and rush ahead or slow down and mix together and shoot out in different directions.
Expressing a feeling through music is very remarkable. This is what makes music meaningful. Human beings can examine the materials that capture the feeling. These materials can be the melody, the tone colors, and the rhythm. With these materials, human beings can decide whether they present the feeling in a good way or a bad way. Generally, human beings can improve the feeling by improving the melody. For example, sometimes when people listen to a melody, they may notice that a particular tone seems to be weak. The melody does not express the feeling that the person is seeking. So as result, the person will try to think of a better tone that will capture what he wants to feel. Reimer states that when we do music, as a performer or as a listener, we are exercising our cognitive capacity to feel, helping us to achieve self-growth, self-knowledge and enjoyment of life.
Music is meaningul. If somone hears a happy melody, the person will become happy. Music is very powerful. It can control one's emotions and feelings. If someone hears a sad song, a person may feel the need to cry or to become sad as well. A person wants to feel what the music is saying and join in with the song. The words in music may relate to what a person is going through and that can attract the listener.

Music in History: Part 1 (continued)

1. There are about 700 violins, violas, and cellos by Antonio Stradivari currently accounted for throughout the world.

2. Martin Chalifour's Stradivarius violin is on loan from collectors who lend the instrument to him.

3. A concertmaster is the leader of the first violins in a symphony orchestra, who is usually also the assistant to the conductor.

Music: In History (part 1)

Mozart wrote some of the greatest music of all time. He is considered one of the most intelligent people of all time. He was born on January 27, 1756. As a child he toured Europe and became famous at a young age in Europe because of his talent in playing the piano, organ, and violin. It was incredible the things Mozart could do with music. He could play blindfolded and would be able to play a piece back he had heard just once. He could read music that was very difficult to understand as well. He composed over six hundred works. However, Mozart did learn from others so he could make his own work the best that it could possibly be. Mozart died on December 5, 1791. The cause of his death is unknown, but record has it that it was because of severe miliary fever.

Music: in aesthetics, science, and "the spheres"

The moral of the story of The Naked Saint relates to how Greeks viewed music. The Greeks believed music could affect humans' behavior. They believed that in order to change a citizen's behavior, all you had to do was change the music. For example, in The Naked Saint, there is a saint who is very depressed and angry with himself. However, once he hears a song for the very first time in his life, he becomes happy.

Music: Improvisation

Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner states that there are many different types of intelligences that belong to human beings. In addition, people are at different levels of their particular intelligence. Bennett Reimer expands Gardner's research. He states seven musical intelligences that people have. They consist of composing, performing, improvising, listening, musical theory, musicology, and music teaching.
Jazz is a musical art form that started around the beginning of the 20th century. African Americans were the first kind of people to use it. The first use of jazz was in the Southern United States. The word jazz started off as a West Coast slang term and was used to describe a particular type of music in Chicago. Jazz's main instruments are the saxophone, trumpet, trombone, clarinet, flute, piano, guitar, double bass, tuba, drums, vocals, and vibraphone. Improvisation is one of jazz's key elements. This is because jazz invented new thought patterns, new practices, new symbols and new ways to act. The music of New Orleans had a huge effect on the creation of jazz. A jazz performer will interpret a tune in very individual ways. The word "jazz" made one of its earliest appearances in San Francisco baseball writing in 1913. There are different types of jazz such as smooth jazz and modern jazz.

Herman Being

Herman-tries his hardest to attain a high interest for classical music.
Jean-is a music major and a graduate student who becomes romantically involved with Herman and tries to help him out on learning to appreciate music
Aunt Irene-the aunt of Herman who introduces Herman to Irene when they all go to a concert together
Ben-someone who also tries to help Herman and goes into much more detail and puts much more time in helping Herman than Jean did
Lyall Pratt- a co worker of Herman who shoots Herman in the leg
Marvin Grossman-Herman's lawyer who tries to help Herman in the case of Lyall suing Herman