pop music pd notes

Making it happen

What is timbre? (vid)

• Timbre is more than just ‘instrument’

• Timbre is the key element in pop music

• Students need to describe what they’re hearing as accurately as possible:

– Piano

• Keyboard

– Electric piano

» Rhodes with phaser

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Focussed Listening 1

• Title: Postcards from far away

• Artist: Coldplay

• Album: Prospekt’s March (EP)

• Label: Parliophone

Describe the timbre/s

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Focussed Listening 2

• Title: Lovers in Japan (Osaka sun mix)

• Artist: Coldplay

• Album: Prospekt’s March (EP)

• Label: Parliophone

Describe the timbre/s (particularly the piano)

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Composition pretask

• Getting to know garageband.

• Your task is compose a piece of music 20 secs long.

• You can only use cr78, tr 606 tr 808 or tr 909 sounds.

• You must upload an mp3 to moodle to hand this work in. This the only way this work can be submitted.

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Show and tell #1

• Garageband demo

• Garageband is basically a composition tool

• Garageband is free with an apple computer

• It only runs on an apple

• It’s the main reason for getting apple computers

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What to teach?

• The bad news: Unit standards are on the way out

• The good news: proposals for music tech achievement standards are in the pipeline (levels 1-3)

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Draft Performing Arts Technology Standard Matrix

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An ‘aside’

• Which comes first? The assessment/standard or the course?

• The course (of course!)

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Until the end of 2010:

• 20747 Perform music based on research of recorded compositions (the ten credit monster)

• Research 20 pieces, 4 styles, play an example from each style

• The moderater tells me that this is on the way out

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Performance assessments

• Pay attention to the performance setting

– Is a classroom appropriate?

– Lunchtime concerts

– Rockquest finalist requirements…

• Pop performers are almost always standing

• Singers must have a mic

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Points of clarification

• Accuracy can be assessed with the help of a recording

– Sometimes note-by-note perfection is not appropriate

– Sometimes (often) there is no score

– A recording of the original will suffice for moderation

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With a friend

• Choose 4 genres that you would study as part of a pop music course

– These genres should be:

• Easily and clearly defined

• Likeable

• Then:

– Choose one piece to be learnt/studied from each genre

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Repertoire choice

• (I) very closely supervise the selection of repertoire across courses

• For the ten credit monster (20747)

– Is it playable?

– How ‘ordinary’ is it?

– Is it a good example of this style?

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My TCM repertoire

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Guitars

• Comment to students on their tone/timbre

• Always use a tuner

• New strings

• Check your intonation (see metalica example)

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Show and tell #2: logic

• Logic is an advanced composition tool

• Logic used to be available for PC and mac

• It was bought in about 2002 by apple, stripped down and released as garageband

• It has had a major overhaul since apple bought it

• About NZ$250 per licence

Viva la vida produced in logic

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Mainstage

• Packaged with logic

• A performance tool

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The wrap up

• Pop music is timbre

• The standards fit the course – not the other way around

• Master your tools one at a time

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One more thing

• Numu.org.uk