Inspired or Insipid?

https://soundcloud.com/sophie-carlson-uni/wallsend-community-choir-one-day-more

For my Individual Music Assessment, I have chosen to change a song from a musical soundtrack into a choral piece. 

As I am part of a choir, I look to them for a lot of inspiration - hence my individual assessment choice. As part of our rehearsal for our upcoming summer concerts and shows, we have been rehearsing One Day More from Les Miserables and Seasons of Love from Rent. Les Miserables is the most rehearsed of the two musical numbers we are rehearsing so I asked the choirs permission to record the rehearsal of the song to use on my blog and to use as inspiration when creating my own piece.

Obviously... They said yes... 

Girls Really Do Just Wanna Have Fun...

For our 70s piece we have chosen to take a well-known song by a female artist and turn it into a Glam Rock piece. The song almost fits with our theme of Women's Rights and Equality. The trouble I think we will face with taking a pre-existing song is changing the melody to suit a different genre. As the already existing melody is so well remembered and catchy, it will be difficult to change it and for the audience to recognise. 



To help overcome the dilemma of the melody, I showed the group another version of the song which uses a similar melody as the original but it has a twist to it. This helped a little bit as it stopped us going back to the original melody as much. 

Glam Rock...

For our 70s piece we are aiming to look at women's rights/equality and perhaps flipping the ideas that David Bowie and Kiss had with make-up. Since Kiss and David Bowie used a fairly feminine make-up idea, we thought maybe we could do the reverse of this and have a more masculine make-up idea for our performance. Some research to be done around this area is: the changes in women's rights, writing styles of Glam Rock artists - such as Blondie, looking into Art Rock and looking at Glam Rock artists such as Kiss, David Bowie, T-Rex, etc.

Motown Madness...

For our 60s inspired piece we have chosen to create a Motown song. Our research points around this idea are the portrayal of women, women in music - modern day artists like Emeli Sande, Paloma Faith and Amy Winehouse and Motown artists such as; The Supremes, Donna Summer, Gladys Knight and Tammi Terrell. We also need to look at the vocal techniques and style of these artists and other Motown artists. 

70s Music Genres...

I decided to take a look at the popular genres of the 70s to get a better understanding of the Music choices made within that time. 

70s Music Analysis...

Song/Artist/Date: Brain Damage/Pink Floyd/1973

List of Instruments: Guitar, Drums, Bass, Synth, Organ, Bells, Laughter (Voice)

Time Signature/Tempo: 4/4 Slow

Tonality/Key: Major Key

Genre/Style: Psychedelic/Prog Rock

Lyrical Meaning: It is believed that this song was partially inspired by Syd Barrett - a former Pink Floyd band member - who endured a mental breakdown. 




Analysing this song allowed me to look at what went into psychedelic rock songs and allowed me to be able to tell the similarities and differences between the other genres.

The Kinks...

We were given a research task to look at a rock band from the 60s. Donna and I researched The Kinks. We looked at some basic information about the band and their success and the influence of their music nowadays. 



This gave us an insight into The Kinks and the kind of popularity the musicians had in the 60s.