In this assignment I was tasked with using a DAW to produce a Hip-Hop track of 32 measures that represents a picture.  I chose a picture of various football players kneeling during the national anthem.  Some of the boundaries included using a midi file and a prerecorded loop. A DAW is a Digital Audio Workstation in which you can edit and create audio.  A midi is a Music Instrument Digital Interface.  A midi is a computer generated audio playback file which reads notes in some form and plays them through different sounds.  

The image above of the San Francisco 49ers kneeling during the national anthem represents more than just disapproval of the current state of our nation.  It is a movement.  This movement represents the distaste for police brutality and unfair treatment of Black Americans.  It coincides with the Black Lives Matter movement.  This inspired me to use quotes from our current president on his view on this movement.  I also used audio from a Black Lives Matter protest.  

When I created this piece I took into account many specific musical elements.  Some of the elements I considered were silence, building intensity, and a powerful ending.  When implementing silence I thought it would be good to isolate the words that are most remembered when hearing Donald Trump's speech.  I also used it to emphasize specific words in a news report which make the incident part of the movement.  To build intensity I added more instruments and different drum set beats.  Some of the sounds I chose included, hip hop drums, a synthesized brass sound, and an electric bass.  I chose these instruments because they resemble a loud energetic crowd.  I also worked in different sound effects such as vintage record background noise, a national anthem announcement, and different bass drops.  These effects helped the piece move to a new section smoothly.  I also used fade in and fade out on some of the tracks to smooth the edges and starts of the track.  I actually didn't really encounter any issues as the program I used, Soundtrap, was very user friendly and easy to navigate.  Soundtrap let me physically see how the beats of the track lined up and how the sounds line up with each other.

In this portion of my DAW I created a section "B" to my Kneel on the Seal project.  I used a midi keyboard to create a motive that is passed around the different synthesizers.  The different tracks I used were, a voice over of someone singing This Land is Your Land.  I upped the reverb, flipped the track, and edited the range in which the track is played at.  I also used the announcer saying "please stand for the national anthem".  I distorted the sound by changing the pitch and speed of the track.  The last track is a sound of a record player on loop.  This is supposed to give the song a more creepy, old-timing sound.  I used the EQ and Reverb to change the qualities of sound for each track.  I created the form by doing simply an ABAB pattern, I took out the beginning vocals for the second time the a section was played. 

In revising this work there were many aspects and processes to creating and editing the final track.  I decided that using the format ABA'B'  layout would best fit the merging of the two audio clips from Donald Trump and the news-caster.  I decided that merging the two sound files in the A' section would bring a whole different idea to the song.  I merged the news-caster saying "the unarmed" and Donald Trump saying "son of a bitch" back to back.  I did this because I believe that that is the way that some our high-up officials view the black community.  I used various material from this land is your land and reversed the sound file.  I also slowed it down a ton.  At the end of the song I brought back all elements of the A and B section, I also Isolated the word "my" in This Land is Your Land.  I think that it speaks on behalf of how many African Americans feel.  They feel as if this land was made for the white man. The technology helped shape my work with the limited amount and types of effects I could put on the audio clips.  My final project is very representative of how people respond to assaults on the black community.  There is outburst, silence, then outburst again.  This is unfortunate because without the constant assessment and ridicule of the unfairness and prejudice toward the black community specifically in police brutality cases.  

One of my assignments in Music Technology was to explore a software.  I chose to explore Finale as opposed to Sibelius.  I was tasked with creating a melody (or copy and existing one) adding a countermelody and a percussion part.  The piece I wrote was for Trumpet, Trombone, Tuba, and Drumset.  Its orchestrated in melody, ornamentations of rhythmic motives, bass line, and a half time feel beat.  I titled it Intensity.  The reason I call it intensity is because at the beginning of the semester I feel very hands on and intense about staying on top of things.  

This software was very user-friendly and pretty simple to navigate.  My only issue was figuring out how to add crescendos and how to change tempo. The other issue I had was with playback sounds.  I had to adjust the dynamics to extremes just so the balance wasn't off. I still could figure out how to change the tempo until I looked it up.  I really enjoyed exploring musescore as well.  My biggest issue with musescore is that I couldn't figure a way to edit the instrumentation other that the preset groups. 

This semester I've been assigned to either create a song or create a cover of a song on the Ukulele.  I've decided to cover the song Lean on Me by Bill Withers.  I will have two posts which will show my progress in learning the song.  In addition to these two posts I will have a final product of a multitrack video.  I picked this song because I had an experience making music with a complete stranger on this song that really changed the way I viewed music.  This person and myself sang like no one was listening and talked about how music is about being yourself and not being afraid to do what your heart says.  Some of the biggest challenges I assume I'll be facing include; switching chords fast enough, getting all of the correct pitches consistently, and lastly syncing all the videos up together for a tight recording.   Some of the chords used in this song are C, D, Em, F, G.  I will aim to incorporate percussion techniques and other elements scubas a bass line in my arrangement.  

Originally I thought this experience was pretty silly and wouldn't teach me much of anything.  Through the process of check ins, and really just learning the instrument I realized what this project means to me.  So often as music majors in college, we tend to perform at such a level where we forget what it is like to learn.  We preform all of the hardest and most popular repertoire and not the grade 1 repertoire which is just as important.  We forget what its like to learn, and how to learn.  Learning the ukulele put us right back in kindergarten.  I felt as if I knew nothing about the instrument and wouldn't progress without a ridiculous amount of time and private lessons.  Through this process I developed a sense of individual want to succeed.  I began to be feel accomplished.  As I accomplished more I wanted to continue expanding my knowledge.  I ended up learning more chords than I needed on ukulele and guitar.  Learning a new instrument is very difficult and time consuming but the pay off is indescribable.  That feeling of accomplishment and self pride is what we need to strive to get our students to feel.  We can achieve this by teaching multiple methods and searching for ways to implement more individualized learning.  The ukulele project also allowed m to work with technology and tested my mastery of it.  Recording the ukulele project took many attempts either for tuning or synchronization.  I enjoyed using Bandhub as it is an easy program to navigate around.  The only limit is that you have to wear headphones so that is cancels out the other sounds.  Lastly, this experience is one of the few projects that I've taken on in college where I truly feel that I have retained past the flashcards (terms).