The Fall

As for The Fall, well, I interpreted the film to be a self-determination/motive kind of film. I can justify my interpretation by saying the film was an example of subjectivity. I came up with the incentive behind the idea when Roy began to tell the ending, while the little girl was in the infirmary. The idea - One makes his own future, and has to be careful what his/her present looks like, this is , if what he is doing a t the moment contradicts what he is intending to amount to in life. Roy came up with the story, and came upon a way to end it. It was him who thought of it, and killed all the characters except himself at the end. He was telling the story through his own interpretation and the little girl wanted to change it. This is where the idea of mine came from. 

Moving Forward.

1)      You've worked on a group film and on your own. In which situation are you most comfortable - group or solo? Which do you work best in?
Solo and solo. The reasoning is quite conceited, though it helps me in the long run. The reasoning is, if I work with others, I seem to be very meticulous and self-demanding- meaning, I need everything to be perfect and my way. I mean that with the greatest degree of benevolence because I do not mean to say I refuse to work with anyone, nor do I believe anyone is anything lesser of what I am. I also feel more comfortable working solo because I like to work on my own projects
 2) What did you learn that you expected to learn?
I learned and became familiar with proper terminology, technique names, examples of famous tenors, and proper techniques through interviews of the singers themselves. I also learned to use proper warm ups, and increased voice projection
3) What did you learn that you didn't expect to learn?  
I learned some Italian… I didn’t intend on doing so when I wrote my initial statement
4) What didn't you learn that you expected to learn?
I learned that through not warming up properly, or not using proper form, resonance would be lost, and the vice itself may be damaged as well.
 5) Praise your amazing achievement and explain your brilliant plan for pulling it off.
Ii realized that through working on my voice, and practicing the new technique I had learned, I would pull of a good project. I had worked on my vocal projection throughout the week, and at the end, I was ecstatic through the results. As compared to my past technique and sound, there is no comparison! It was a success from the start because I had two goals in mind. First was to work on my breathing. Second was to work on my resonance, and they both turned out being a great success. It was all due to my increased breath intake and my improved jaw positioning’s. Now I realize that those two things were one of the biggest challenges in learning that style of music. I pulled it off pretty well, and it has helped me move on to the next steps in improving my voice.

1) How much time did you spend working?
-any moment I had free, I would use to work on the project. I was thinking of it day and night, working on  the sole improvement of my voice. That was the main incentive and motive behind the entire project.
2) How much time did you spend thinking about the work - sort of sitting there and staring at it, or listening to it over and over again, etc.?
as I mentioned before, it was a night and day process. Any time I was able to think of it, I would do so.
3) How much time did you spend doing other stuff that seems like work to that make you think you're working but you're not?
I wouldn’t do this, at all. It was a completely focused project, with the intention of benefitting trough the works of it all. It wasn’t time to play around, at al.

4) How much time did you spend socializing?
none,
5) How did you use your community?
I only asked a singing teacher for advice on an accompaniment, that’s all.
6) Rip apart your awful project and how did such a disaster happen?
First off, the day of the performance was a bad day to begin with. I woke up sick, and almost spending the day at home. My perseverance though it all kept me from staying in bed all day, and pushed me to school. I was not fully functional, at all. I used all my energy during the day for studying, but when singing time came along, I was running on empty. My voice was sore, and I was dehydrated. Once I began to sing, it felt like sand paper was rubbing against my larynx. I felt awful, but apparently the audience enjoyed it very much. I was not self-satisfied at all. My resonance was off on the low notes, and the high notes were strenuous on the voice because of my sickness. I also had bad posture. This, I do not blame on the matter of being ill; I blame this on myself for not keeping good posture. This caused me to have shorter breaths, and made longer notes harder to hold out. I also did not “lift” my throat throughout the piece. This also was the culprit to the stress on the vocal cords, during the higher notes. I also had bad lip positions. Resonance was not at its fullest because of it. The entire piece needed work on the Italian pronunciation. Technique needed work throughout the piece.
7) You've completed a step on your path. What is your next step?

I know exactly what to work on, in terms of my next step. It’s all in the technique and projection. I have corrected my breaths, meaning, I can retain longer breaths, and I have corrected my bad lip and throat techniques. Next step is all about making improvements to those fixed techniques, and solidifying them into concrete forms. Perfection…Perfection…Perfection….

Yo Quiero Bel Canto

Ready set go! today is the big day! I've been wondering how well the song would be received by the audience. I've always had confidence issues when it comes to what others perceive me as. today, I will be doing something I love, and I don't care what others think. I am a bit worried over the Italian, though I think ill be fine. I changed the words to a phonetic lettering, therefore it would be easier for me to make my way around the music.

as for the environment of which I would sing in, I am a bit worried that the acoustics would not properly suit the music. I was thinking if I could possibly sing in the chorus room, or the auditorium. those rooms have a nice echo... I think it gives a bit more flavoring to the salad if you know what I mean... overall, I believe I have worked my voice to its best, and I'm ready.

Day Before the Day Before....

I guess I figured out the accompaniment problem. I am thinking of taking a digitalized analog recording of the piano part, of which I found on YouTube, and somehow put it on my iPod player. I think this will sole al my stress. I am also contemplating on whether I should dress for the part. It might seem a bit too superficial, but a part of me says I should relate to the part. Nothing fancy at all, probably a casual suit? I could possibly wear a nice shirt and pants. I think that'll do the trick. Just the notion of singing this music to other people gives me chills of excitement. I absolutely adore this music, and  I will try my best to make my project something great.

 

9/11 blogging

Today was analyzing day. I looked over the score of the piece and I had the accompaniment. I just realized something...I don’t know what I am going to do about the accompaniment! I can’t play anything while singing this kind of music. it will certainly distract me. I know the boundary line stops at outside help, but would it be possible to receive accompaniment from someone else? A chorus teacher found me in the practice room singing to a recording, and she offered to play the part for me. I told her of the No-Help situation, and she understood. Before she left, she did give me an offer to be an accompanist for the performance. She would be of no musical assistance once so ever, except playing along to my voice. I am a bit stuck here....

 

9/10 blogging

Today, it seemed as if the singing project/intensive was the right choice. I feel it is something of which I can do and it seems feasible to pull off by the end of the week. I took more of a strategic route, rather than singing the song over and over again to learn it. I’m not sure if it's done professionally like this, but I don’t care. It seems more natural, and I memorize faster in this technique of learning. The technique is to learn the song in steps, beginning with the lyrical part as the inceptive, going to the pronunciation, going on to the timing and flow, to the touch ups. I think laying things out like this allows me to view my priorities in an easier form.

 

Intention Statement- The intensive

I will attempt to explore the wonderful world of singing by learning more about a technique called appoggio, which is low larynx singing. I will attempt to learn more of the technique, but at the same time, stay safe in terms of my voice. I will not attempt anything of which could damage my voice, nor will I try anything that could damage my support. This technique was used by many famed opera stars of their day, such as Enrico Caruso, Luciano Pavarotti, and many others. I will also sing a song of which suits the style. The song is called, "Non T'Amo Piu". In this week, I will work on my breathing and jaw positions, making them more natural to my singing technique, and I will work on my tone by recording myself, then listening to my mistakes (to obviously work on them).

 

Questionaire !

• 1. What is the first creative moment you remember?
  
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• Well, I could imagine right around the time I began to notice art mediums such as paint, watercolors, etc. I remember sitting at the edge of my desk in Pre-K, and it was my birthday. everyone was so excited and the teachers passed out paper, glitter, blue, crayons, and markers to each table in the room. i remember wearing  crown because i was the birthday boy, and i also remember my mother sitting next to me, observing the other children and myself included. the next thing I remember is about 5 minutes after we began working, all the students began overlooking my drawing, and my mother began to commend me for my work. That's all i can recall.
  
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• 2. Was anyone there to witness or appreciate it?
  
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•  Yes, My mother, teachers, and other classmates.
  
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• 3. What is the best idea you’ve ever had?
  
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• Taking my singing voice more seriously
  
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• 4. What made it great in your mind?
  
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•  I felt that by focusing on improvement and techniques I could improve sound quality. my music means everything to me. I feel especially close to music, ever increasingly so because of which I am able to freely express myself in the music. I could manipulate my voice to portray passion and feeling. this is what drives me to continue singing because I have no other ways to fully express myself.
  
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• 5. What is the dumbest idea?
  
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• having not painted or focused on my visual arts, not only the performing arts.
  
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• 6. What made it stupid?
  


• because now, i feel, in simpler terms, "out of practice". I haven't painted in a while, therefore at times it is difficult to get back into the drift of things in terms of painting and drawing.




• 7. Can you connect the dots that led you to this idea?

Yes, the music completely took over my artistic life and creativity. I have increased my focus on music, while my focus in the visual arts has slowly drifted away.

My breakthrough/ Plan

I felt so excited today when I finished anther song (lyrically). Normally, I begin writing songs by coming up with interesting melodic parts. Then, whenever I hear a word or phrase that I like, I make that my title. I then write the song around the title, and the song takes off… finishing itself. If the lyrics go well with the music, or the other way around, it’s a winner. Today, as I said before, I finished another, and in the process of writing another. Now, I have around 4-5 songs for the album. I have been a little behind schedule on the recording part of the album. I became so caught up in the realm of writing songs with a narrative, that it dominated my project. I intend to end the week with at least 2 recorded songs. If I follow this plan, I would be following my new schedule. That schedule is to finish the recordings by Thursday of next week, with Friday left to make the album art. In regards to STAC night, I’m thinking my performance would be as follows. I would take a recording of my best song, and mute my voice track, and make a copy of this new data. This audio would be played over the PA system, with me singing into a microphone strumming to an acoustic. If I have a solo in the song, I’d use the electric, but strum with no sound when not in the solo section. That’s my layout for STAC night

Recording... Almost

It’s been a while since I’ve last posted- from the last post until now, I have finished up my songs for my EP. Now, I have 5 completed songs. I am going to start recording them on Monday with some recording equipment that I will bring in. I’m thinking of bringing in a tape machine with a blue microphone, or if bringing in large equipment like that may be stressful, I’ll just bring in a lap top with a USB microphone. I want to make the EP with "full sound", and what I mean by this is to create a recording with many instruments, not just my voice and the guitar. One thing that I need that I don’t know if I have access to are the horns. I need a sax, trumpet, and trombone player if possible. I could try to ask around and see who would be willing to record. With all of this, I will multi- track record the EP, and record everyone one track at a time.
My Recording Equipment:

 This is my microphone, which i will probably use to record everything. I'm thinking of miking the Drums with this, and have a Dynamic Microphone to the Kick Drum. I want to use the Condenser Mic. to capture the brighter tones, while the Dynamic to capture the low ends.

 

This is my Reel to Reel Machine (1/4 inch tape recorder). I enjoy using this over my Computer because me more of a natural bassy tone, like a ribbon microphone, as compared to moderately priced Digital equipment.

  This is my second Tape Recorder. This is a Cassette recorder, but a higher quality recorder than most generic brands or models. It gives me a good balance of Low and High end sound frequencies, and it sounds like the recordings made on Audacity- It’s pretty clean sounding (very little pops and crackles, when using high quality high bias tape). This recorder is quicker to use than the Reel to Reel recorder, but I enjoy the sound produced on the Reel to Reel more than I do of this recorder.

A little Tune

The other day was a high point in my writing. i began noodling on my guitar, then suddenly i came up with something interesting. with this, i began to write a song around it. it came soo naturally that i was very surprised at the end. it morphed all the styles i have l0isten0e0d to so far, in terms of my infuences, and i came up wih something very new to my ears. i then used my comunity by asking them what they thoug0ht. i need a commuinity because it prevents me from wasting my time 0on useless crap, in an audiances opinion. back to the song, i recieved a high review on the song, and i have been working on it since. now, with this song included, i have 4 nearly completed songs. my intention in regards to the project is quality, not quantity. i dont want to write a dozen half-assed songs, while i could write 6 songs with 110% of my ability.

Versatile

Writing new instrumentation parts and lyrics came rather quickly today compared to previous days. I planted myself on the piano playing chords, while humming possible singing melodies along with the playing. I found this rather helpful compared to making songs on the guitar. I feel as if the notes are all directly in front of me, and easier to get sound, rather than writing with the guitar. I accomplished one of my goals today, which was to break a 2 verse intro; such intro could be found in songs such as, "Play That Fast Thing (One More Time)". Breaking such a habit allows me to be more versatile, and also allows me to get a wider variety of genres. Overall today was relatively a good day.

Feelings and Sound

Today, I wasn’t able to get much done at all. I had Art, which delayed my writing a bit. This did come in handy in a way because I began thinking of new themes to write about, and interesting instrumental parts. I want write about people, and their feelings towards family, not just lovers. Family is a strong topic to write about, and it’s very difficult, if not impossible to capture the true feeling of love one has towards a family member. Such a family member could range from sister or brother, to parents or grandparents. This seems quite intimidating. I am also trying to squeeze in one pop song into the album, if time allows. I want to create variation in my songs. I read an article the other day, and I stated, "The reason why the Beatles became so famous was because of their writing, and their chord changes." That clicked for me. I am now obsessed over putting different chords, and interesting/different chord progressions in my songs. Such chord progressions could be like from the song, "Honey Don't" by Carl Perkins. The intro went from an F, to a C... that was so revolutionary in its day, and it has a lasting impact on today's music world. I think interesting chord progressions play major roles in my songs.

Workday

Lately, I’ve been overly concentrated over writing “pop” songs with catchy intros, and all that jazz. I just couldn’t produce anything that would satisfy me. I began talking to Ellen Cooper, and she suggested listening to more music. With this, I went home and I decided to lay out all my records in my record collection and listen for things that would “Grab” me. I listened to artists ranging from Nat King Cole to the Beatles, but the Album that struck me the most was “The Stranger”. This album was so powerful, lyrically and instrumentally, that it blew me away. Now I’ve had this album for a while, though I never paid close attention to it. My eyes were literally glued to the lyrics printed on the paper sleeve of the record. Billy Joel’s lyrics were so descriptive; I must have listened to the whole album 3-4 times to re-picture the stories in my head.

With upon listening to the albums, I decided to take a new route to the songwriting- Story telling. I wanted to tell a different story in each song I wrote. I didn’t want to write the same old freakin’ love songs you hear on the radio that have repetitive lyrical ideas like, “Baby I love you, I’ll never leave you, and we’ll never part….” I wanted to create songs in which when you hear them, you’re automatically envisioning the storyline in your head, like Joel’s styles of writing, Paul Simon, and many others. At the moment, I am intending on making a shortened album of 5 or 6 songs, 3 of which I am in the process of finishing, and the other 2 I still have to work on a bit. The 6^th may be optional, but I may have lost the idea of which I have based the song off of, thus creating a problem. Tomorrow, I am intending on finishing the 3 songs, and continuing the process of working on the others.

Music on fear

My Individual project (Final project of the year) is based upon music. I intend to write and record my own original music that is based on my biggest enemy, fear. My reasoning for not writing much music is because of the fear of writing bad music. I have always tried making a song by coming up with something "catchy" but who is my audience? I have no audience while writing a song, so I have no audience to tell me that it’s bad music. With this, I’m going to face my fear, and write music about it. I intend to create an EP of my music, and design my own Cover.

My Intensive

The third quarter of STAC seemed to be the most productive for me. The intensives were good challenges for me, and I look forward to doing more. In this quarter, with the intensives, my intension was to mainly focus on creating my own music, and expanding my knowledge of music- its origins and future.

With the intensives, I broadened my “library” of music. I did this by trying to listen to as much music as possible, ranging from The Monkeys to Rockplile. Some artists were not included in the assignment, but I listened to them anyway because I realized that they were very influential in the pop music world- such artists included Buddy Holly.  I did this because I needed to have an inspiration in order to start writing my own music. Before the intensives, I was so accustomed to the 12 bar blues, i only wrote the 12 bar blues. I didn’t feel as If I was being a true musician by just playing the same genre over and over again, so I needed a change. With my expanded library, I wrote several songs with the intentions of trying to stay away from the 12 bar blues. I enjoyed my songs so much that I have begun playing them with my band.

The intensives played a big role in changing my band’s sound for the better. Before the intensives, my band only played Rockabilly and 12 bar blues. That’s all we could play because we had not written any good songs that had alternate arrangements, only Boogie Style Rhythms. In order to make the intensives worthwhile, I took the music we received from emails and tried to make new music that was based off the morphing of genres. I would listen to several songs that were sent to us and then record any part that would interest me on my iPhone. I would hum the sounds that I liked and record my humming sounds on to my recorder. With this, I would select my favorite sound, out of all the sounds, and write a song from it. If the sounds sounded like an intro, I would use it as an intro and write a song around it. This was my most productive technique, and I could say this, because I have written a total of 6 songs by using this method which I believe are good.

I feel as if I have grown as an artist and a musician because of the intensives. I have gotten so much out of them, and I hope we could continue doing more of them, or doing something in that realm of assignment.

By,

Scott La Marca

Expressionism

Van Gogh, portrait-with bandaged ear

Soutine’s, Woman in Red

In my opinion, I feel as if expressionism is a medium/art form of describing feeling or a way of thinking. It could describe depression, happiness, anger, jealously, or pain. Examples of this are Soutine’s, Woman in Red. I feel this piece reflec­ts of his inner disturb­ance or of his inspir­at­ion/drive caused by something he would gain out of creating the piece. The colors in his pictures tell the emotions present in the piece. Darker colors represent solemnness, while more vibrant colors represent happiness, and excitement. Another great example of an expressionist with emotional disturbance influenced on his work would be Vincent Van Gogh. As a struggling artist with anxiety and mental issues, he was a compulsive thinker. I know as a person who most probably has OCD, I also think compulsively. I always think about my work over, and over again. A thought in a deep analysis, will never leave my mind until it works out in such a way that I am satisfied with myself. During this process, my emotions seep into the piece I am working on at the moment. At times, the emotions are anger or frustration.  Having to do things over and over again to make them “perfect” is very time consuming and obnoxious. It makes one very anxious, and angry at the piece, causing the artist to want to start over again. I think I understand, to some extent, how Van Gough must have felt while doing his work. When he was admitted into the treatment centers, he would often paint himself. Those self-portraits, to me, reflect his pain and remorse for doing such things to his own body. He seems depressed in these paintings, and it seems as if he also feels depressed due to the fact he was a struggling artist.