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Misir Blog 8

In My Time Of Dying is an 11 minute song written and released by Led Zeppelin in 1975 on their album Physical Graffiti. It is a gospel blues song that was originally released by Blind Willie Johnson in early 1928. Originally recorded in 1927, the song was played in open d tuning and was originally 3 minutes long. It was recorded by Willie singing and playing his guitar by himself, making this a solo accompaniment. Led Zeppelin recorded the song in open a, with vocals, drums, a fretless bass and slide guitar, basically instrumental accompaniment, which was drastically different to what the original song sounded like. The tempo changes throughout the song, starting slow in the beginning and gradually speeding up faster and faster, until the end. It was recorded in a similar style to their other cover song, When The Levee Breaks, with an instrumental jam in the middle of the song. This song would fit in Chapter 5 of this unit, Song, because it is a story that is being told with instrumental accompaniment. The story itself is of a man on his deathbed praying to Jesus to take him to Heaven. It’s the same story as Blind Willie Johnson’s, however the chorus is much longer than his, which takes up 1-2 minutes of the song. The song is very different than what WIllie Johnson recorded in 1927 and it shows. Despite that, both versions of the song tell the same story, albeit very differently from each other, so it would also be able to teach more about cover songs and how they can be different from the original song.

Misir Blog 7

I decided to go with Hinduism, which is the religion I was raised with. Hinduism uses Bhajans, which are prayers that are written into song to praise the Gods. They can be done either vocally or with instrumental accompaniment. Usually vocal praise is done at home and in temples there will be instrumental accompaniment. This isn’t for any cultural reason, because, at least in my family, no one plays instruments that would accompany a Bhajan.

The Bhajan I chose is the Hanuman Chalisa, which is meant to sing the prasies of Lord Hanuman. It is sometimes either monophonic or polyphonic, depending on the amount of people there. Singing can be done by anyone. There is also musical accompaniment, a sitar, tabla and harmonium are usually played in any Bhajan.

Misir Blog 5

In the first article, “100 years ago today, ‘The Rite of Spring’ Incited a Riot in a Paris Theater”, the author believes that the riot began after the first few notes of the song. It’s stated that a high pitched bassoon caused the audience to start laughing. It’s stated that the tension started increasing and by the time the dancers reached the stage. The dancers started doing violent and bizzare dance moves. The audience started doing catcalls and it became so loud that Vaslav Nijinsky, the choreographer, started yelling commands from backstage. Eventually two factions formed in the audience, which started a fight in the crowd. The orchestra became under siege by the audience. It’s unclear if the police were ever called, but 40 people were ejected from the building. It was described by Henri Quittard as “puerile barbarity”. It is believed that the “near-riot” that took place may have been overly exaggerated, and was really just a disagreement between people who liked the old fashioned way of ballet and those who wanted something new.

The next article, “Did Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring Incite a Riot at its Premiere?”, the author gives us some background into the ballet, stating it as a ritual sacrifice in prehistoric Russia. It was expected to be a major cultural event. It had many big names attached to it, besides Stravinsky, there was also, The Ballet Russes, a famous dance group, and Vaslav Nijinsky, a famous and shocking dance choreographer. The show itself was like nothing the audience had ever seen before. Ugly costumes, dark music, and heavy choreography shocked the audience. The audience booed them, however some in the crowd defended them and hurled insults at the other half of the crowd. It became so loud that no one, including the dancers, could hear the music. The fighting became so bad that the people resorted to physical violence.

The truth however, may not be so exciting. As rumors are, they tend to be overexaggerated with time and this leads to myths to surround them. The truth of the matter may be that it was more of a political argument that spurred between the two groups. Also, the accounts of what happened that night do not account for any physical fights, despite all the verbal insults that were shouted by the aristocrats. It has also been noted that the dancers took 5 curtain calls, and Nijinsky continued with another ballet, which would not have been possible if a riot broke out.

I really liked the music in the ballet. The dancing was good too, and it reminded me of The Exorcist, as well as the costume. If I was in the audience in 1913, I would have really liked it because of how different is was to everything else at the time.

Misir Blog 4

You Really Got Me is a song that was recorded and released by The Kinks in 1964. It was rerecorded and released by Van Halen in 1978 on their debut album and as their first single. The song themed around love and sex with a girl, as per the lyrics, “I said girl, you really got me now, you got me so I don’t know what I’m doin’. Yeah, you really got me now, you got me so I can’t sleep at night”. It has a very fast tempo, with there only being two chords throughout the song. Both versions have vocalists that harmonize on the chorus. Other than the different years are people recording the songs, the other differences are the way the song was recorded and the guitar solos, which are extremely different.

The Kinks version was recorded with much older equipment then the Van Halen version, as distortion didn’t exist. Ray Davies cut the speaker in his amplifier to get the distortion that you hear in every guitar today. Van Halen had many of the recording technology and other tools the Kinks did not have back then, making their recording more crisp then The Kinks. Another thing is the guitar solos. Ray Davies was using the standard blues scale, and although a good guitar player, was not known for his technical ability. Eddie Van Halen, considered by many to be the greatest guitar player to have lived, plays a mind blowing solo that uses many techniques everyone after him copied, like tapping.

Misir Blog 3

A soundboard, or mixing console, is an electronic device used to mix audio signals, and is used in sound recording, sound reproduction and sound reinforcement systems. The console includes microphones, signals from electric or electronic instruments, and other devices. The soundboard may record either from analog or digital. The purpose of the mixing console is to process input signals with amplification and EQ, and to combine those signals in many different ways.

I can’t think of anyone that hasn’t used the soundboard in any other way than it was built to be used. I’ve never used this technology, for multiple reasons. Soundboards have been used in music recording since 1958 when EMI records installed one as Abbey Road Studios. One example I can give you for this is Queen’s Seven Seas Of Rhye, which uses many of the soundboard’s techniques.

Misir Blog 2

Cacophony is a heavy metal band formed in 1986 by guitarists Marty Friedman and Jason Becker. Their song Speed Metal Symphony was released on the album Speed Metal Symphony in 1987. It is considered one of the best neoclassical metal songs in the genre, and both guitarists the best in the genre as well. I heard this song in my junior year of high school as I was going into my deep heavy metal trance. I was extremely impressed my it due to how technically demanding it is and how it only took two people to come up with a song like that.

The song is in 4/4 timing, however it is very difficult to tell with how much is going on in the song. The song is basically an explosion of sounds from the guitars, which are at the forefront of the song. Although the song stays in 4/4 time, it does speed up and slow down throughout the song. It starts off slow, speeds up to a mid tempo range in the middle of the song, speeds up towards the end o=of the song, and slows down again, which feels, or sounds, a lot like a rollercoaster. It has a lot in common with most heavy metal songs in terms of rhythm, otherwise, by 1987 standards, this was a completely new thing.

The piece is basically the two guitarists interacting with each other, with the bass and drums keeping the rhythm going. Marty and Jason are harmonizing by playing the same guitar lines, trying to keep up with each other. It uses heterophonic guitar lines. The song alternates between guitarists, one playing single notes on his guitar while the other shreds, and then they’ll switch, letting the other guitarist shred while the other plays the rhythm. At the end it does turn into a cacophonic noise to bring the song to a climactic ending.

Misir Blog 1

The Baroque Era is one of the most eventful periods in human history. On the one hand, it contain’s both the American and French Revolution’s, two of the biggest political movements in modern human history. It also contains some of the greatest composers of the era, like Bach, Vivaldi and Handel. Their influence was so great on music that they have managed to influence people generations away from them, and have even managed to have a era of music based on them, even if that era isn’t technically correct to their time. All I knew about this era was that it had something to do with those composers, however I had assumed it had been named after Bach. The textbook describes the period as extensions of the Renaissance era, however I would consider it one of the high points in music history.

I listened to Vivaldi’s Summer, as I had heard a few things about him, but nothing that I can determine as actual fact or can recite here. I listened to two versions of the song. One was by composer Antonio Janigro and was recorded in 1957 in Vienna. The other version was recorded in 2011 by guitarists Alexi Laiho and Roope Latvala, who were in the band Children Of Bodom. What I expected from the music was for it too be sophisticated. What I didn’t expect was for it to be heavy in the before heavy metal context. What also interested me is that the music was able to translate over too different instruments, and that it managed to sound the same despite this.

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