Week 9

This week was all about mixing up and mashing up. I tell you what, this has given me a new found respect for mashing up and electronic music in general. It's REALLY HARD. Before I move onto what we actually did this week, I'm going to discuss some thoughts I have been having recently, particularly this week.

I find composing really daunting and difficult. Doing the 2-3 minute composition for HSC music took me so long to write anything I was proud of. I went from voice and piano, to strings, to winds, before finally settling on SSA a cappella choir. I think one of the reasons I find composition so difficult is that I don't trust myself to know what sounds good. (There is also that fact I have not composed regularly, everything needs practice). I am always trying to write something which has "musical merit" and something which would be deemed worthy of someone who has had 10 years of classical music training. I did all the levels of AMEB musicianship, and essentially the only composition I have done is four voice counterpoint, and melody writing with a modulation. The problem with this is there is a right and a wrong answer, which is not like writing music in the real world. This kind of thinking has even come to impact how I listen to music. I have gotten into a really bad habit when listening to music (particularly new music) where I try to analyse its worth or its standard to determine "good or bad" music, rather than just listening to it to enjoy it. Its made me really not enjoy new music or listening to music in general. The truth is, I don't know what makes music good or bad, so I should just stop worrying about it. Part of this is a little of the culture surrounding music listening. There is an awe and respect for people who have "good music taste" and you really don't want to be someone with bad taste. For me as someone who spends most of their life studying music, I really don't want to be deemed as someone who has bad taste, that's just embarrassing! These are of course all very self absorbed thoughts, because in reality no one cares, everyone is much more focused on worrying about themselves than they are about anyone else, so I should just do what I want to do! Thing is, I don't know what I want to do, but I've got time to figure it out. In the mean time I am trying to change my listening habits. I have asked a friend in the contemporary music course to make me a playlist, and I am just going to enjoy it. I WILL JUST ENJOY IT. No analysing. I don't have to love every song, but I will just have fun.

This is not to say that I think musicianship or musicology are bad or unnecessary. I actually love them. Musicianship was so valuable to me as a high school student. I wasn't an amazing performer like everyone else. I picked up bassoon fairly late in my musical career, and musicianship gave me something I could work on that felt like an even playing field. I did musicology for music extension, and I was super close to doing a musicology degree instead of education. Classical music or Western Art music does bring great benefits to those who study it. I witnessed at my high school our choir go from 30 to 90 members over my time there. We performed we performed everything from Haydn to Stanhope, but all would fit into the broad "classical music" genre (with the occasional gospel). The passion and determination that 90 high schoolers had for this music was incredible, and that amount of dedication on that scale I really didn't see else where at my school. I don't really think we could have gotten these results for the choir if we were more focused towards popular or contemporary music. So, I do think it is possible and important to get large amounts of students invested in western art music, but I think it is equally important to do the same with contemporary music (particularly if it is composed by Australian artists).

I am yet to make up my mind on anything yet and I am still keen to learn new ideas and perspectives on music education and music in general. I am listening to James' podcast at the moment, and I am finding it incredibly thought provoking. I am loving this course and how it is showing me new ways of understanding and teaching music. Wester art music has a problem that it has become (and kind of always has been), only for the elite, only for those who can afford it. How can this be when music is supposed to be universal? I do agree with James' philosophy of a pluralist music education, and I think philosophies like that combined with embracing technology in the curriculum will help take steps towards bridging that gap. (It also would be nice if the government would support us a bit more instead of us having to fight tooth and nail, wouldn't it?)

Anyway, that's my rant for today. I don't know if I said too much or not enough. It's basically a whole lot of "I DON'T KNOW!" Guess that's why I've got another two years at the con and beyond to learn some more stuff. Learning stuff is good. Here's what I learnt this week:

1. Do not try and mix tracks on Soundtrap. Don't do it!

2. Do mix tracks in Ableton Live, although no software does everything for you. Ableton is a very powerful program and has a lot of features to help you mix tracks, including changing the tempo and key of a track. I do however find the interface of Ableton fairly unfriendly. For me personally, I find technology so much harder to use when its not user friendly or aesthetically pleasing to look at. This is one of the reasons I go for Apple rather than Microsoft products, because the user-interface is just so much more intuitive.

3. We looked at a really easy way to make beats and then export to Ableton using this page https://learningmusic.ableton.com/make-beats/play-with-beats.html . We also looked at how you can make beats within the Ableton program itself. I had a look through the rest of the website above, and its got really fantastic introductory pages to music theory. I think this would be brilliant to use for late primary or early secondary, as a way to get kids engaged in music theory.

4. We talked about how electronic music production and mash-up culture is a valid form of music and music education and why we should care about it. It has all the same basic elements of Western Art music (pitch, rhythm, duration, blah blah blah) but created in a way that can be self driven, and also get kids engaged in music (who might otherwise not be if we forced Mozart and Bach down their throats! sorry Mozart and Bach ily).

5. We looked at the awesome projects and workshops being run by LiveSchool. I really want to look into if they have any short courses in the holidays that I could do, I think it would be super valuable to me as a musician and a music educator. As you will found out below, I really struggled with Ableton. I love working with other people, and I think being in a class environment would be really fun when learning this program (obv after Miss CaRona has left town). The thing I find really interesting about a lot of electronic music production is that nothing is written down (in traditional music notation I mean)! In any composition I've done, I play something (usually on the piano) and write it down immediately, so I can work chords and things around it on the paper (AMEB musicianship is that you? Harmony and Analysis?). I think learning the program and composing on Ableton would really push me out of my comfort zone. I don't know if my aural skills are good enough to be able to listen and compose in that way, and I always second guess myself (AP is a struggle).

6. We took what we learnt from synths last week and played with how we could use them in Ableton.

Here is what I managed to create during lesson time:

Now onto other things I have done. I download the SynthOne app and its so fun! There are so many features on there and I don't know what all of them do yet but I have figured out a few! It also comes with a tonne of preset synths and ostinatos which are so fun. It also gives you the ability to create and save your own synths. You can also play on the app and record what you are playing and save it to your drop box, or message it to someone. Basically its full of cool things, and its free!

Here is me messing around with the app:

Experimenting with different mixing of synth waves:

The keys are touch sensitive how exciting!

So, I created my own synth rather clumsily and it sounds kinda like a thunder storm!

Then I decided that I wanted to record some synths and then use them in Ableton to make a mini composition. And oh. my. goodness. I have never done anything more frustrating in my life. I just hit barriers at everything I wanted to do, and I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. I was saved a little by the Youtube video linked down below, was a great video. But the main problem I had, which I still haven't fixed, is that every time I drop a file into Ableton the tempo just goes crazy and its almost impossible to get back in time? I literally have no idea what I'm doing wrong. I'm also not a person who loves working by themselves, I much prefer to collaborate and learn collectively and be able to discuss and share knowledge and ideas. That's where a short course in Ableton would be great and I really hope I get to do a course in that one day (or something similar like music production, I just want to learn more about what I don't know). So here is what I managed, it took me way to many hours to get only a few layers in, but hey I did learn a thing or two.

During all this, I have also been developing ideas and researching for the final project for this course. I'm working with Larissa Neuhoff! But more on that in another blog.

Here is the video that was super helpful in showing the basics of Ableton: