Vocal Composition

Reflection

Our first inspiration for this piece had come from yours truly, Svyatoslav Koshukov. He was our inspiration because he usually makes a certain noise and then decides to repeat that noise over and over again which gave us the idea of the repeated "Doh!" in our piece. Slava, in my honest opinion, is known for his specialty which was making the sound "Doh!" from the TV show Simpsons. Afterwards, Khalid recorded Slava saying "Doh!" and we decided to put it into our piece. We then started planning the structure of our abstract piece and making "Doh!" the chorus and therefore the main part of our piece. To make sure that everyone in the group had contributed something, we found a guitar piece with a similar beat and rhythm to Slava's voice so then we decided to try and reincarnate it. Khalid had made a constant duck quack noise that fitted in well with the other voices. After a lot of time and effort into editing the final product, we were able to create a proper abstract composition from all of our voices put together.

Abstract music piece

The purpose of this piece is to understand the pattern of Elmer's vibrant colors. In this piece, we have used only 1 instrument which was a grand piano. Regarding the ciphers, I think we have done an amazing job because each color on Elmer's body has a certain code. Using Morse code for our ciphers enhanced the ciphers within the abstract piece, which made them even more detailed and overall greater. We used ciphers instead of serialism and minimalism because we had initially thought that it would have given our piece of music more complexity and the whole group had understood the term more so it would have been easier to make our piece. We got our first inspiration from an abstract piece of art which had squares, rectangles and a variety of colors (you can find the image in a previous post). However, as time passed by and by miraculous the advice of Ms. Cross, we decided to use Elmer the Elephant as our inspiration. The ciphers we made, which are within the piece, stood for each color and that specific note would be repeatedly played in different places throughout the piece, using Morse code. We did this for each color and eventually editing it into the shape of Elmer the Elephant.

Composition Task Week 1

The first lesson of the week, we were told to make groups and make abstract music so we decided to quickly finish our work and used the following picture as the stimulus of our music from which it gave us ideas to finish our abstract piece.

The next lesson however, after discussing our ciphers and how we were going to do our abstract piece with Ms. Cross, we were able to realize that the piece of abstract music would be better if we did it with Elmer the Elephant instead of the rectangles as he is made up of different colors. That was a critical advice from Ms. Cross because I can see that our music would have been a lot worse if we had only used the rectangles.

What is a cipher?

In cryptography, a cipher is a process for carrying out encryption. It includes sequences of detailed steps that can be completed as a method. Another way is, a not as much of collective term is encipherment. To encipher or encode is to change info into cipher or code. A cipher is any technique of encoding text. It is also occasionally used to mention to the encoded text message itself though the term cipher text is more frequently used. Its origin is the Arabic sifr, translating to zero.

What is Minimalism?

Minimalism is a huge movement which occurred during the 1950s in sculpture and painting. In music, it is typically seen by the multiple repetitions of diverse repetitions of short phrases which consequently created a mysterious hypnotic effect through the slow and steady changes. Minimalism is amazing as it is created from something to small, simple and fragile but it progressively changes to a more complex and hypnotic piece of art.

Minimalism started when composers attempted to tackle the wall of the traditional rules and effects that the music at that time had. Music started to grow excessively unrealistic and out of the box from around the early 20th century. As time passed, American composers said that it was best to go back to the basics of making music where the more popular formula was rhythm and pitch equals music. However, this decision was not efficiently used in a long long time because of the innovation and development of music in other composers.

By the middle of the 20th century, classical music was becoming less popular

MYP The Sound of Art: Inventing Abstraction

Key Concept: Communication

Global Context: Scientific and Technical Innovation

Statement of Inquiry: Symbols and conventions used to convey meaning can be transformed through new technological tools to create new contemporary art forms

Inquiry Question: In what way ways can the arts influence or even change a society?

Reflection

Here is the reflection: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d7j3Vmr3t-d0Mtsz0AdrmbQNiQ5tGc-VGKQKHY7bNag/edit?usp=sharing

Abstract building

Blog Entry 2: Experimental Workshop - Visual interpretations of abstract music

My first piece -
I did my first artwork on the 2nd group. On that table, we had to use water paint to interpret 1 or 2 musical instruments within the abstract music. When I was on that table, we had to listen to Travelling by Meredith Monk. I focused on the piano and it was very calming. It also had a very nice rhythm/pattern to it. In my painting, I had put a variety of shapes according to how loud the piano was. The value of the shapes also varied according to how hard/light the piano was played. Furthermore, I have used a pattern of shapes whenever there was a repetition in the music. When I was listening to the music, I felt both uncomfortable and surprised as there were some really weird tones. However, the tones evoked a couple of different emotions. For example, I felt happy at times during the music.

My second piece -
I did my second artwork on the 3rd group. On that table, we had to use paint to interpret the theme within the abstract music. When I was on that table, we had to listen to Webern Variations. I focused on the piano and it was very disturbing. It also had a very weird rhythm/pattern to it. In my painting, I had put a blue background to describe how disturbing the piano was and red lines. The value of the lines also varied according to how hard/light the piano was played. Furthermore, I have used a pattern on the red lines whenever there was a repetition in the piano. When I was listening to the music, I felt both uncomfortable and surprised as there were some really weird tones in the piano.

My third piece -
I did my third artwork on the 4th group. On that table, we had to use paper to interpret on how the music sounded within the abstract music. When I was on that table, we had to listen to Sequenza III.Overall, it was very disturbing. It also had a very weird, eerie and creepy rhythm/pattern to it. In my sculpture, I had put a variety of shapes according to how I thought the music was. When I was listening to the music, I felt both uncomfortable and surprised as there were some really weird tones. However, the tones evoked a couple of different emotions. For example, I felt happy at times during the music because it brought out my weird self and I could somehow relate to it.

Reflection on PowerPoint

So far I have learnt that abstract artists are influenced by the events happening around them and that helps them produce artworks that reflect their reality and life, also the artists hobbies and interests play a part in what they decide to produce and make. In addition to that i have deducted that most artists prefer a certain style and tend to stick to that and that is apparent in all their works



In my opinion the way i used the looking at art process was adequate and nothing too special. To improve i think i could go into more detail about the artwork and make references to the events that might guide me towards the context of the art work to make better use of my analysis.



I used the elements and principles of Art & design to be able to analyze and deduct the information i needed from the art pieces to be able to create a solid explanation for the artists acts and decisions and to be better able to describe the way he created each piece.
Our Powerpoint