First Project - Without Words: Evaluation of Strengths and Weaknesses (Week 2)
We worked much better as a group this week, and rather than last week where we had two people heavily leading the group, we all managed to get our ideas noticed and used. In the end, because the original storyline didn't work very well and we wouldn't have been able to make a 5-minute piece out of it (a man confronting an alien in his dream, and being unable to run away), us and Ant came up with a completely different storyline, which is more interesting and complex, and there was a lot more to compose about.
I managed to contribute a lot this week, and my introduction (a slow, creepy, jazzy-piece), the 'mad-professor' section (dramatic motif), and ending (happy, Queen-esque sounding chord progression) are being used in the final piece. We managed to come up a lot considering that we had more limited time than the other groups, due to a change in storyline, but we managed to adapt some of the music that we had used before to the new one, and it worked quite well.
As an instrumentalist, I think I did quite well. The keyboard in the rehearsal room is slightly dodgy because the sustain is always on, but I worked around it by putting the 'Split' function on (which makes the bottom half of the keyboard a non-sustained bass sound) and by composing what managed to sound well with it. Some of the notes clash because of this glitch but I managed to work around it, and hopefully the keyboard that I'll be using in the final performance won't have that problem.
First Project - Without Words: Evaluation of Strengths and Weaknesses (Week 1)
I think that it is important for other people in the group to give everybody clear instructions and a chance of input, rather than for just two members in the group to be relied on to just tell everybody what to play the whole time. Also, members of the group are taking breaks too often and for too long, and it leaves all the other members still in the booth with nothing clear to do.
In order to add to the piece, I added some distorted, modulated atonal chords, which really helped create the atmosphere of the picture.
I think the most useful suggestion we had was on the first rehearsal. We had a heavy rock piece at this point, and Ant Cochrane pointed out that even though we had a tight sound, the music didn't really fit the picture - so he advised us to make it more dreamy, atmospheric, and uncomfortable, in order to create a more creepy, uncomfortable vibe.
I don't think that there is anything that we need help with because we are capable of acheiving our aim ourselves and are already making a lot of progress, but I do think that we need to work as more of a group, rather than let only two people in the group do most of the work.
First Project - Without Words: 18th September 2012
I came back to college on Tuesday with the motif that I had thought up. All of the groups were assigned to rehearsal boothes and we set up our equipment.
I was on keyboard, and I also used the split function on the keyboard to do the bass, as we didn't have a bassist. Our group also had Liam on acoustic guitar and vocals, James and Max on lead guitar, Ben on rhythm guitar, Brooke on vocals, and Luke on drums.
We discussed the ideas that we had came up with and jammed to them until we got a tight sound, . We came up with a heavy space-rock piece that made use of all our ideas, however, as pointed out by Anthony, it didn't really fit the picture that we were assigned.
He advised us to make the piece more atmospheric and filmic, and less pleasant to listen to, as our piece was a rather commercial-sounding heavy rock composition. After about half an hour of jamming, we managed to improvise a rather abstract, tense and uncomfortable Pink Floyd-esque introduction to the composition, which Ant said sounded a lot better and it suited the picture a lot more.
We were then dismissed, but before we left we recorded it on our phones to memorise what we had done.
First Project - Without Words: 14th September 2012
We were placed in groups and instructed to write a piece of music based on a picture.
My group, Group 2, were given this picture:
We each had to write several words that came to mind: I wrote words such as ugly, psychedelic, slow, uncomfortable, unexpected, trippy, atmospheric and nightmare. We then had to pick a word from our lists, write other words that were associated with that one word, then pick a word from that and associate words with that word. I ended up with 'mystical', and this word became the basis for our piece.
We were sent home to think up a piece of music, or a motif that fitted the picture, using the word that we each came up with. I thought of a strange ascending chordal riff to use in our music, and I will contribute the idea when we come back on Tuesday.
