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Limo Blog 9

The presentation I choose to talk about is Susan Impellizziari’s playlist. Her topic was music and grieving. In her presentation Susan did a really good job by explaining what grieving is in a short and simple understanding way. She chooses songs that show different stages of grieving. I find this very interesting because a song that can connect to grieving the loss of a loved one can also relate to a different stage of moving forward from it. In her presentation Susan talks about the song “Ave Maria” by Franz Schubert, she relates to this song because it was her and her grandfathers song. After he passed away she listenings to this song to remember him, but most importantly the song brings back specific memories that helps her grief in a healthy way because while music holds memory music also hold emotion. the second song Susan choose is “I’ll See You Again” by Westife, this song demonstrates the acceptance phase of grief and is a great choose to close off her playlist topic.

I did not choose this topic but if I did a song that I would have put on my playlist would’ve been “Suppermarket Flowers” by Ed Sheeran. I would’ve chosen this song because it speaks about grieving someone and compares the passed loved one to an angel. The song is written from the acceptance stage of grief and we see this when Ed Sheeran sings, “He’ll say, ‘Hallelujah, you’re home'”. But the song also helps listeners get to that stage of grief where they can move on. The second song I would’ve chosen to put in my playlist would’ve been “Wake Me Up When September Ends” by Green Day. This song speaks about the passing of one of the bandmates father, but in the song the lyrics mention, “Seven years has gone so fast Wake me up when September ends”. This lyric stands out a lot because it shows how much of an impact the lose of a loved one can make on someones life. People take different amount of time to grief a passing and sometimes before they even realize years have gone by, and this is an experience that the band shares in this song. This song stands out a lot compared to the rest of the bands songs because instead of sounding so pop-rock it sounds very soft and very similar to The Beatles.

Limo Blog 8

The way I see it, “good” music is anything that creates a connection to the listener’s emotions. The piece of “good” music that I choose to talk about today is “All Too Well” by Taylor Swift. This song was originally written and released in 2012 as a 5-minute song. But this year Taylor Swift rerecorded the song as a 10-minute version. The purpose of this music is to connect to the listener’s emotions of going through a breakup by Swift sharing her detailed personal experiences. The original song had such a significant impact on her fans that they requested Swift to release the 10-minute version she’s been keeping in the vault for 10 years. This piece of music has the expectation to tell a story in detail, and that’s why the music video for the 10-minute version has won a handful of awards already due to meeting those expectations. This song is “good” because of how personal it is. Swift talks about her own personal experiences about her breakup with Jake Gyllenhaal, while making the poem she also made it original. Her poetic lyrics and ensuring everything ties in together make her a skillful composer and all of her lyrics have a big impact on her fanbase and new artists today who write personal songs like her. This song would fit best under Unit 2: What is Music? and the unit we are in right now Unit: 13 What is Good Music? This song would help people understand how to judge good music since it targets all 5 questions a person asks when grading what a good song is like. This would also help a student understand how to categorize music in Unit 2.

Limo Blog 7

I decided to do some research on the Christian religion to learn more about how they use music within their religious practices to express and share their beliefs. I myself am Catholic and I know that some Catholic beliefs in fact overlap with Christain beliefs since they originated in the same place.  According to the textbook, “Within Christianity, there are a variety of chant styles, including Russian Orthodox chant, the Byzantine chant of Greece, Ethiopian Orthodox chant, and Anglican chant.” Christianity was known as the dominant religion of Europe since the 4th century. This is mainly the reason why this religion has many chant styles since they had many religious followers located all over different parts of Europe that spoke different languages. The language was never a problem for religion because it can always be translated. These types of chants were spread through oral tradition and passed through generations of families. This also gave the chants the opportunity to be spread through trade. According to the textbook, “A monk or priest could then bring the chant to a distant community and teach it to the Christians there. This was risky, however, for music in the oral tradition usually changes over time and distance as individual musicians forget how it goes, commit errors, or make intentional alterations.” At the time these chants were being spread through Oral tradition when the Roman Catholic Church was becoming powerful over people in Europe. This led to many religious wars over who was or wasn’t catholic in catholic lands that were ruled by catholic royals. The ideas of Martin Luther impacted the power of the Catholic Church by stating his 95 theses. His main purpose was to write about what was wrong with the Roman Catholic Church. One of his concerns was how the Catholic hierarchy was preventing Christians from experiencing a direct relationship with god. 

A Christain chat that is well known since the late 1700s is “Amazing Grace”. It’s categorized as a Christian hymn written by John Newton. He wrote this song for Christians to sing and express their religious beliefs. It can be expressed as a harmonic singing song that creates a gateway for spiritual experiences. This song is part of the Georgian chants and part of Christianity. This piece of music expressed religious belief because the lyrics can be sung from the perspective of a person expressing how they communicate with god. Often people who follow. religion pray to their god to praise him or thank him, and this song is a perfect example of just that. 

Blog 6 Limo

When I think about concerts I think about one of the concerts in the One Direction “Where We Are” movie. I remember when I watched this I wished I could’ve gone to this concert. One Direction was a worldwide famous pop boyband. In this film, they performed at the San Siro stadium in Milan, Italy. The performers dressed casually, not in your typically matching boyband outfits, and the audience dressed casually as well. Throughout the concert, the members of the band would take some time to interact and talk to the crowd as much as they could. Due to the size of the stadium, they couldn’t interact with everyone but in the film, you can see them try to talk to people farther away than just the first few front rows. As a One Direction fan, this didn’t really surprise me because I know this is common for them to do, and this definitely matched my expectations. This concert compared to The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky is completely different. Stravinsky’s concert had way fewer people, but most importantly his concert had people who went in with expectations that weren’t fulfilled by the end of the night. Something that One Direction didn’t do, the fans had an expectation and they gave it to them always.

Limo Blog 5

In the article “100 years ago today, ‘The Rite of Spring incited a riot in a Paris theater” by Amar Toor, Toor believes that the ballet’s performance was meant to cause chaos. The way he describes it is that Stravinsky knew what he was doing putting in pitches that would sound violent and frenetic. The type of opera that was going to be performed on the night of May 29th, 1913 was not what anyone expected. This was something completely new compared to Stravinsky’s old work. But this opera itself turned into a nightmare when the ballerinas didn’t know what they were doing. The high-pitched bassoons and the pounding percussion caused even more issues. With the loud pitches, the ballerinas weren’t able to hear and follow the orchestra, leading the choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky to shout commands from backstage. This caused anger and the crowd didn’t know who to blame. Was Stravinsky to blame because of the musical choice? or was Nijinsky to blame for creating a violent choreography? No one knew how to feel, but at the time the anger was so strong they chose to go on a riot to express how unhappy they were for an opera show to be like this.

In the article “Did Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring incite a riot at its premiere?” by Linda Shaver-Gleason, the author argues that the famous riot never happened. According to Linda the only evidence that we have from the “riot” came from the people who attended the opera and specifically sat on the balcony. Their seating arrangements, Linda brings up to question if their seating arrangements had anything to do with how intense the music sounded, maybe people sitting on the bottom floor didn’t experience the music at the same intensity as the balcony. It’s a good question that we will never know but should keep in mind. But the term of the riot itself came to light two years after the opera occurred, “The first mention of physical altercations at the premiere came from eyewitness Carl van Vechten, who claimed that a man sitting behind him ‘beat rhythmically on the top of my head with his fists.’ This evocative quote comes from 1915—two years later, as even firsthand accounts were embellished in the retelling.” When Linda mentions this quote it brings out the truth of how much we really know about what happened that night. What happened at the opera then become a game of telephone. Everyone knows the game of telephone and they know how easy it is to mess up a message. But so far this game of “telephone” that’s connected to that night is all we have. But Linda goes on to inform us, “As Levitz puts it, the myth establishes a “false causality…between artistic revolution and bodily revolt.” It tells a version of music history that people want to be true, of Great Art having the power to make people do things. The extreme reaction of the audience reinforces the reputation of The Rite as one of the greatest works of art of the twentieth century. ” If the riot never really happened then why do we talk about it and why is it talked about as the biggest riot in classical music? The only thing we know about the “riot” itself is possibly broken news or opinions coming from people who didn’t like the idea of change in opera coming from Stravinsky whos originally famous for “The Nutcracker”.

The first time I watched the performance of “The Rite of Spring” I was in shock. Personally, I am not a big opera listener but from what we’ve heard in class I’ve developed an understanding of what that type of music is and how it sounds. The second I heard the first few beats of “The Rite of Spring” I knew it was something completely different and it sounded like the type of music you hear in a horror film or in a bad nightmare. I understand why the people in the crowd could’ve acted that way, when you get used to how something is you develop an expectation. If I were a person in the audience in 1913 I would’ve been left shocked and confused because comparing it to “The Nutcracker” this show could be understood as a scene of chaos. I honestly think I would’ve reacted the same as others because back then the way we saw music wasn’t as broad as we see it today. Back then you didn’t have much to compare it to and it’s clear that people weren’t very open-minded. So it’s understandable for the crowd to react in such a way because many can say this opera performance was ahead of its time. Today if this was performed people would’ve simply labeled it as different and edgy and put it in a different category.

Limo Blog 4

Yesterday (Remastered 2009) https://youtu.be/TQemQRL_YVQ
Katy Perry – Yesterday (Tribute to The Beatles, 2014) https://youtu.be/wfPEhK0vjPk

Today any song that becomes popular on the radio is promised to get a bunch of covers made by hundreds of people on YouTube. I didn’t know what song to talk about in this blog so I did some research and discovered that the song “Yesterday” by The Beatles is the most covered in history. In the past oral songs were typically the ones to be covered by different people in attempts to keep it flowing through family trees. Today we can listen to music repeatedly whenever and wherever we want, this has changed the way we listen to music. With this new technology, it’s hard to change a song completely since there are written or recorded versions of the song lyrics, so the game of broken telephone doesn’t become a problem here. “Yesterday” was recorded in 1965, the song is about a man being heartbroken over a breakup with his girlfriend. They keep referring to yesterday as the day that the breakup occurred and how they wished they knew it was coming, cause yesterday they were so in love before they got the news. The way The Beatles recorded the song it’s clear it has a sad tone making it have a slow tempo. The violin and acoustic guitar are heard throughout the whole song and create harmony when the lyrics are sung over them while keeping the tone the same the entire time. When Katy Perry covers this song at a tribute to The Beatles in 2014, she changes the word man to women (time 0:33) so the song can be sung from her perspective. There isn’t a problem with this because it doesn’t change the message or emotions expressed through the lyrics that tell a story about a breakup. There’s a moment when Katy Perry changes the tone of the song when she adds a high note in minute 2:09 which for a moment changes the song’s harmony.

Limo Blog 3

The piece of music technology that I chose to write about today is autotuning. Auto-Tune is an electronic device used by people who create music to alter the pitch or voices in songs. The purpose of this music technology is to change the sound. Producers can create different pieces with the same beat by adjusting the pitches with autotune. Anyone interested in doing this can easily download a system on their commuter that allows them to alter pitches, bass, and tempos. Anyone can get a hold of autotune software and try it out themselves. This music technology can be compared to photoshop. People can easily autotune their own voice to sound “better”. Many artists today get caught using autotune in all their songs. But there are some artists that use autotune to change their voice in a creative way. Some use autotune to change their voice while they sing a staple lyric in the chorus, at the start of the song with the purpose of being a good hook, or even as background music to give the song dynamics. I personally don’t have any experience with this technology but one of the artists I listen to uses autotune in a lot of his songs, it’s like his thing. Travis Scott uses autotune to make his voice sound faint and “far away” so there’s a change in dynamics when he actually starts rapping/singing the first verse or the actual chores.

Limo Blog 2

The piece of music I chose to talk about today was “All Falls Down” by Kanye West. I really enjoy listening to this song whenever I wanna boost my mood. This is a hip-hop song that demonstrates a great example of rhythm. Kanye West is known for taking time on making his songs unique, as most would say. His whole career started when he chose to add lyrics to the beats he would create for other musical artists. I think making a beat for Jay-Z is what really opened his eyes to take his own music seriously. West would create beats for the rising artists in Chicago and become popular because of Channel Zero. This small news channel in Chicago grew bug once the small town producers on it, one being Kanye West, realized that they could reach their dreams if they kept trying hard enough. That’s when they realized they had a chance to achieve their dream and West didn’t give up. He got so popular there that he brought his talent all the way to New York. He watched other artists receive so much recognition for the beats of a song that he would create. The song I choose to talk about today is actually one of the first songs West took into record label offices to show them his talent. I would say this song shows a good example of texture because it has many beats going on at once, this song would fall best under the polyphony category. This is because the song features two relatively independent voices with Syleena Johnson being the featured artist in this song. Johnson sings the chorus while rapping phrases that he turns into verses. I would say the first verse of the song is what’s most interesting. The song follows the same beat the entire time while the verse and course switch.

Limo Blog 1

The time period of music that was assigned to me was Baroque (ca. 1600-1750). What drew my attention the most about this time period was how important it was to the growth of England, and a bunch of Italian city-states. The Baroque period was when England first started to separate itself from religion and from the church. The people wanted to learn new things, and this became the famous time period that we know as the Renaissance. But during the baroque, many can say was when people started preparing for the shift the age of the Renaissance would cause. The baroque is a time period that many overlook, I know this because the Renaissance holds such great importance in the whole outcome of Europe. If it wasn’t for philosophers in the baroque time period religious conflicts would’ve never erupted. Without conflict, the people would’ve never wanted a change in the lifestyle they were used to. The reading packet describes music from this time period as a romantic expression. During this time period the music we know today as opera, oratorio, cantata, Concerto, fugue, Sonata, and suite were discovered. Another big accomplishment from this time period was the creation of songs for a solo voice, before this time period typically instrumental or acapella. In this time period music began to change from being strictly for the church and about religion to about emotions. From the reading packet, I choose to listen to Jean Baptiste Lully’s music because it caught my eye that he was a composer who dominated music in the court of Louis XIV. After listening to his song “Miserere” from 1664 the music reminds me of opera music without strong vocal power. From the reading, his song is something I expected music from this time period to sound like because it sounds sad while also sounding powerful. This supports the idea that the baroque time period was just the start of the Renaissance. The sadness in the song shows how Europe was before they became educated with ideas outside of the church’s beliefs, while the powerful parts of the song shows how they are ready for new ideas.

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