JohnMuTech

KAME week 2

I have the chords I need to learn on keyboard printed out for simplicity and though I know what all the chords are comprised of, it takes me a while to realise them on keyboard. I have been working on I vi IV V in the key of C and G still using ‘Live it Up’ by Mental as Anything but will probably change to a different song… something completely different later in the week. I have also been working on different progressions like Em, Am, Dm so I don’t neglect minor chords. I’m getting better at transitioning between the ‘white note’ chords and will soon start adding extended notes like 7ths and 9ths though I may need to watch some YouTube tutorials to find some good voicings.

I’ve also been practicing my Curwen Hand Signs; somehow I got through my whole life without knowing what they are :).

Lights, Camera, Rolling

All about setting up an audio/visual recording of a performance where to my surprise… I would be one of the performers. I learned a lot about microphones, cameras, lighting and general things to look out for if I ever wanted to do a recording myself. There are condenser microphones that are awesome as they will pick up every nuance of a performance, their only downside is that they will pick up every nuance of a performance 🙂 so that means they can easily pick up environmental sounds like air conditioners and other performers which may over power your desired sound. Dynamic microphones are not susceptible to external sounds so are good for the stage but offer inferior sound quality compared to a condenser microphone. We learned some camera basics, like how to set them up, hold them and the importance of camera ‘composition’; you generally have a ‘fixed’ camera that captures all the action and other cameras to zoom in and out. When thinking about composition (in the sense of capturing people’s faces), you must know how far away you are from them, the direction they are facing, the ‘story’ you are trying to tell. With lighting I learned that you could put filters over lights to reduce shadows and that top to bottom fluorescent lighting without external sunlight is the worst lighting you could get; this is due to the shading it creates on people’s faces especially around the eyes. A victim of poor lighting can be seen below.

I shared this action shot below in a music education Facebook group.

KAME week 1

I can play a bit of drums and bass guitar but I would consider myself competent in only one musical instrument, the guitar. As I’ve progressed through my music-learning journey, I have realized the importance of being able to play keyboard/piano as a classroom teacher as it is excellent for: accompanying orchestras/choirs, learning music theory (letters laid-out on the keys logically) and is useful for demonstration purposes. I learned this all too well when I was on prac and my piano playing gave students the impression that I didn’t know anything about music. To begin my keyboard practice journey, I thought it would be more useful to play through songs rather than learn a multitude of chords so I decided to learn ‘Live it up’ by Mental as Anything. I tried to keep the chords close by using inversions instead of moving root position triads around; chord transitions are my weakest point at the moment. As you can see in the video I need to work on correct fingering and moving through chords more fluently. The chords I played were Am, Bm, C and D for the intro all in root position, and G Em C D for the verse; for Em I played the right hand as a first inversion to keep the harmony close. I also played this song in the key of C to practice more chords.

Soundtrap

It’s the first day of Music Tech and I’m looking forward to experiencing the POWERRR of music technology! I am one of those people who inexplicably got through life with sub-par technological knowledge and understanding; I’m forever stuck in the 90s. Today I got some fundamentals under my belt in a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation … newly acquired technological term 😉 ). We used Soundtrap https://www.soundtrap.com to create our own tracks using techniques like automation for fade ins and MIDI manipulation. Below you can see automation in the 4th track and a mixture of wave files and MIDI files; the track also features a custom made drum loop and synth part using the MIDI keyboard interface at the end of the track. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1XYStddli5ZeR15TF9crhZ3z3BMuZ7FdN Here is the audio!

Learned a lot of Soundtrap mechanics and applied them which gave me a whole lot of creative ideas, though I’m far from knowing how to implement all of them. I was shown the setup of instruments, mics and MIDI keyboards to audio interfaces and then the device (which is most likely a computer) and can’t wait to start recording my guitar compositions into a music program and see what the program can do for me. It was easy enough to make simple compositions and I can see how this could be a fun teaching activity for me to use at schools.