Project Evaluation

OVERLOOK

For this project we have been looking at composition in great detail from the jazz of the 50s to the pop of the 2000’s. The detail we went into these decades gave me great understanding of what made their sounds identifiable. As well as other people’s compositions we also started making our own. We were tasked to make our our composition to a video of temporal distortion, we used Beth’s theme by Olafur Arnolds as a temp score for inspiration. To help us with our composition we learnt basic theory including the cycle of fifths to gave us an understanding on how to compose on sibelius. We also learnt more about logic and how it works , when we learnt how to mix and make music on it we were tasked with making our own song. We had 6 hours to make a song through all the knowledge we had accumulated through the project.

WRITTEN WORK (exelent)

This project was a lot more successful in terms of written work because I made and effort to stay on top of it all. This gave me the time to redo pages in more in detail to show my understanding of topics in music. I also have time to research a range of extra themes such as; other music by Olafur Arnolds, different types of composition, chance composition and maybe even a harmonic evaluation of the songs I did for my first project. Hopefully the work I put in to this project pays off with higher grades than last project. With the heavy parts of my research such as music in context, I believe that I have explained the decades to a great standard and the fashion. I have improved from the last project by explaining topics in more detail and doing extra work that isn’t necessary. BY presentation has been very good for this project with bolder headings and bigger images. I have been taking more notes so I havn’t needed much help through links. To improve my research I could have used Harvard referencing in the cases where I used links to get higher grades. My reference to context and use of links has decreased which might mark me down, but most of my information has come from my tutors.

TEMPORAL DISTORTION (good)

I thought the temporal distortion composition was successful and I am proud of it. To improve it I would make minor tweaks such as adding more articulation and think more about dynamics, because these features were a bit rushed because I was running out of time. If I was more successful in doing this I would be delivering more expression through the piece which is always good. One of the first things I would do to improve my composition would change a part in the A section were the dynamics suddenly spike from mezzo forte to forte which sounds terrible and is intimidating. The B section creates A darker atmosphere which I said I was going to try and do in my earlier writings, because of my interpretation of the video I think it went well.The A sections rhythm is not bad, it just doesn’t fully fit with the A section. To change the rhythm I would make it slower in quavers, and make the notes play ascending apreggios.

LOGIC COMPOSING (good)

My logic composition has been successful because it maintains the structure of a basic song and dance track. I thought about the beat, rhythm and instrumentation when making the song that is why I think it was successful. Obviously it could be improved though. A few ideas I had for improving my work were adding dynamics to make it sounds more professional as well as interesting to the listener. I could of also added more harmony. The song in my opinion was good for a first try and showed that i can make a song, however the harmony, dynamics and other key features were missing. Making it a boring song. If I had more time on this project I would add instruments to the track such as chords, percussion and strings because dance tracks tend to have more texture than mine did.

SUMMARY

My written work has vastly improved since the first project, because of my increase in detail included on my pages. My logic song is good for a first attempt because I have shown my ability to form a song, but because of lack of advanced features such as dynamics the song is boring and bad. The temporal distortion video was also very good, but for it to be better it needs little tidy ups such as dynamic spikes. For the whole project I think I got a grade good. To improve in my next project i will try my best on what Harvard referencing is and how to implement it. I will also reference the source of everything I get from the internet, such as images which I have not referenced the source on,