After gaining experience in doing baby steps assessments for Composition in Music Education as well as on prac – I think I’ve kind of gained a kind of knack/style for them. I strongly prefer using manuscript and working at an instrument, which I think is reflected clearly in Baby Steps 1 and Baby Steps 2.
If you refer to my reflection on prac here, you’ll see I kind of accidentally did Baby Steps before I knew it was a real thing. I learnt many valuable lessons, including the fact that it’s actually REALLY difficult to write and talk at the same time! I decided to be a little smarter and do a voice recording over the top. SO much easier.
The baby steps I did for mu previous prac was very scripted – which actually, for me, was too restricting. I think dot points are better, and if you can reinforce the main points both visually and speaking, then you’ve really covered your bases.
My drafts:
Baby Steps 1 draft:
Baby Steps 2 draft:
So I did the instructed process myself, which really helps refine and cover all the bases needed for the baby steps. Once that draft was done, I simply film myself writing/copying out the result but in a much smoother and efficient manner than on the first go. Then, I do the voiceover and edit in bullet points/title cards as needed. As I’ve attempted in the past, speaking and writing as actually really difficult! Would definitely recommend the voiceover route, I think it sped up the process to take half the time I would say.
For the third baby steps activity, I found easy to dive right in, given that I already had quite a lot of pitch material from Baby Steps 1 and 2. I don’t know if this is me being a dumb violinist that tends to only think melodically, but I reflect back on my own HSC composing and the struggles my classmates went through and often found myself being:
Much too concerned with pitch and melody
Not thinking enough about tone colour, articulation and dynamics
Thinking in a very individual, macro, orderly left to right manner
This was all compounded by the fact that we worked a majority of our ‘composition’ lessons in a computer lab, staring at blank pages of Sibelius. I really like to encourage all composing to be done with immediate feedback from authentic sound sources – whether that comes from a DAW or real life musicians.
I found it quite intuitive and freeing to use this aleatoric sort of style of music to go ambient and experimental with my loop tracks. As stated in the video, I didn’t need to spend a lot of time thinking of the specific pitches I would use and could play around a lot more with instrumentation/tone colour, filters, effects, register, ambience etc etc! I’d say this is a pretty fun way to go about composing, plus it ticks all the boxes with the technology stuff.
Worksheets are not the funnest way to go about things, but in terms of analysis, I personally find diagrams and tables a useful way to collate information in a somewhat visual manner. In Year 11 and 12, often we would fill in tables of our analysis – which come exam prep time, was really useful! You don’t have to go searching through your books/notes – it’s already there in the one sheet.
What I did NOT find helpful was the given template’s spacing – often my writing was much TOO crammed in the small, elongated boxes with very little room to write out the analysis or evidence itself. It would be a waste of time to put in the analysis work in but spend ages trying to decipher what the point itself is, or what musical example scribbled in would match.
I have spread the tables out to two sheets, so if printed double sided it is still only one sheet; I have given options for students to be able to write on a stave (especially useful for pitch) but also have left room to draw melodic contours and other visual representations of structure and texture. To encourage information recollection and to accommodate as many learning styles – I would really encourage this table to be printed and then hand written in. It can be used in word, but students may waste time worrying about formatting rather than the content itself.
Hopefully this is a new and improved version that will prove helpful for students!
I knew I wanted to make something similar to wix-sites I’ve done in the past to give some background and insight into Aurora Eora – however, I’ve known that Wix in the past just takes FOREVER to fix up, especially in that usually you just chuck it to the students and they should be able to navigate it completely themselves. This usually takes a lot more bubble-wrapping and safe-guarding against mishaps of information overload/info lacking sense because they’ve gone ‘out of order’ and clicked on something they can’t make sense of (yet!).
This time I opted for Powerpoint slides as a more grounded, fixed template as well as it does open up the possibility of this resource being used in a more presentation-based setting.
The info was not hard to find although the background on Aleatoricism did take some time to get my head around and collate together in a simple easy-to-understand way. I was pleasantly surprised to learn new knowledge whilst putting this together! I didn’t want too much focus on the aleatoricism background but I felt it was important for students to understand where it comes from, to some degree. As I realised on my last prac – as the teacher, you usually control how far that rabbit hole goes! I didn’t want a whole in-depth dive, just a quick dip in.
Inserting online videos is super handy – bless whoever put that feature in. Hopefully this listening guide/background info resources is helpful and a much more convenient/fun way to go about it more than just score-reading whilst listening.
The need to transcribe parts of a modern composition was a little daunting – with existing centuries old works like Vivaldi and Mozart it’s not hard at all to find existing Musescore arrangements. Typically I would download the xml file from Musescore website and fix it up in Sibelius – you can even import midi files this way and voila you have an editable score.
Converting a pure PDF is a whole other beast. I know of Photoscore – the Con library computers don’t have it, and it’s pretty bloody expensive to buy. Being the cheapskate I am, I investigated if there was some sort of free trial program that would do the job!
I have tried:
Using Musescore (program already installed in my own computer)’s inbuilt pdf convertor (in some kind of beta stage of testing) – unsuccessful. They straight up tell you not to try again if it is unsuccessful, and I wasn’t too surprised given the complexity of the Aurora Eora score.
Installing Scanscore lite trial – worked to convert the pdf to their program, but have to buy a full version to convert to xml. Again unsuccessful.
Installing Photoscore demo trial – one cannot save, save as xml or send to Sibelius or print 😦
(Although I can envision once you can use it, the send straight to Sibelius option would be really handy!)
PROS – you can edit within and transpose, and hear playback within the trial – possibly a helpful practice tool for singers who want to test out if a piece works in a certain key for their voice capabilities
Looks like old-fashioned manual input will have to do the job.
As part of my presentation, I thought it’d be a fab idea to bring in an actual pipa to pique people’s interests. I’d chatted to Lulu Liu and she was generous enough to lend a personal pipa to even save me from the paperwork that I’d have to fill out if I borrowed one from the Chinese Ensemble! Even though I understand erhu is one of the most accessible Chinese instruments, I figured pipa would be best, as I can actually demonstrate the instrument properly and talk about it in much more detail.
So it’s time to start presenting our stuff – and I’ve done a huge rookie error and forgotten to export the iBook! So as I’m setting up, I realise I’ve put the wrong file on my google drive, and need to go down to the computer labs to fix it all up.
I make another rookie error, as I thought I had to publish the whole thing as a whole official iBook! This took me through a very lengthy and annoying process of having to sign up for an iTunes account, connect my card, and it didn’t even end up working! Because what I needed to do was actually just export/share it. Silly me. Went through a whole lot of trouble that I didn’t need to do! So top tip from me – just export it, no need to actually publish the iBook! Also do that much earlier than I did – I had definitely left it too last minute.
Once it got going, it was fine. Next time, I think I should make sure a smaller pair of earphones are handy, the ones we had were quite high quality but far too clunky. When I got up to do my presentation, it was a shame the sound wasn’t working, because I did really want to share that video from Our Shining Days with everyone – it’s just such a good way in! But it’s ok, I guess everyone could just come watch it at my table instead. I hope I was able to gain interest from my peers and other guests in Chinese music – I honestly love it so much and think both students and teachers could gain a lot from learning Chinese music. It’s music of another culture, but still relatively accessible, and relevant to the ethnicity of a lot of students in our classrooms. Check out some of Connor Malanos’s snaps from the night:
Showing of the final product
Jameson having a go at the pipa!
This is me attempting to speak with some kind of clarity and sense
What would I do differently?
I would have definitely organised myself to allow more time for technical difficulties and preparation for the PoL itself – a lot of people seem to come in in the earlier stages of the night, rather than stay later. I personally think more people should have gotten up to present! It was excellent to see my peers’ research projects, and I wish I could have explored them more thoroughly. I also quite liked the ‘snapshot’ method that Kristen and Louise employed, in that they circumvented the fact that people couldn’t necessarily leave their stalls, so they handed out pieces of paper summarising their project plus ways to access it/contact them. I think more of us could have addressed this – for example Gary Watson was asking how he could access these resources – of course there’s James’ website composerhome.com but it would also be nice to have a gateway offered by the creators themselves.
Despite technical difficulties, I had a fabulous time and it was great to see to wonderful ideas and projects my peers had to offer! 10/10, we should do this more often!
Drawing close to my recording session, I fleshed out the structure, articulation and dynamics enough for someone to make sense of it and play it. The ever lovely Crystal Bai obliged my request for a pianist – and boy oh boy, was it helpful to bring her in!
Although I had fleshed the notation out to much more detail than when I presented by first draft to the class, Crystal brought up many suggestions and questions of phrasing, style and articulation to me. I had specific ideas in my mind, but had not detailed it quite enough on the page. It was good to ask a pianist how they would notate such details (I do play piano but I only ever made it to Grade 6); Crystal also offered options and demonstrated for me to pick and choose from.
I always cannot emphasise enough how important it is to work with musicians on your composition drafts!!! I had always known it since HSC, but this assignment is a timely reminder that Sibelius is only a tool and that the end result always happens with real, living and breathing musicians. Prioritising the violin part (as I’m much more adept at violin than piano) meant that I hadn’t really played the piano part, and when Crystal had a go at it, she had found several note overlaps/crossings. I would have never realised how much articulation and detail was still missing if Crystal hadn’t provided me with her time and expertise – we discussed a great deal on articulation, phrase marks and pedalling in relation to intention, mood and style. Likewise if I hadn’t played the violin part properly like I needed to for my recording, certain bowings, articulations and corrections would have not been put in.
Crystal kindly workshopping my piece
See if you can spot the annotations!
I also did some composing on the fly – when we did a run through, I actually found that I didn’t like the ending as much as I thought I did. We rejigged it a little and ended up scrapping the second-last bar, and then chucking in another vibrato crescendo as the third last bar. Still symmetrical (as intended) but with better flow.
Having recorded the audio and marked up the scores with all sorts of scribbles, I sat down and made it my job to transfer those scribbles into Sibelius. I solved the problem of graphic notation for the ‘vibrato crescendo’ by cropping an image from Google and then inserting it using the ‘Graphic’ tool under ‘Notations’ tab. Easy peasy!
I also discovered a Sibelius shortcut – pressing the W key lets you open up an individual part (very useful seeing as my version of Sibelius doesn’t actually have a Parts tab). Also with some Googling, the quickest way to extend a slur is to press space bar. You learn new things every day!
Originally, our group started as 5 people and at our first meeting, we decided to do the jazz standard ‘What a Difference a Day Made’. We concluded that we should divide the work by having 2-3 people on the arrangement, with the other 2 delegated to doing research of relevant literature, plus one person to take responsibility for the recording and mixing of the track. That way we hoped to avoid the cliché of having too many cooks in the kitchen regarding the arrangement itself. Crystal and I decided to take on the arranging ourselves. Based on what we had seen with class with the Cheap Thrills/Shape of You mashup, we decided that it wouldn’t be productive until we had a ‘skeleton’ score to work off. Crystal and I, having discovered a piano/vocal score that we could use to help us, set off to split it into 5 parts – Soprano 1, Soprano 2, Altos, Tenor and Bass. You can view that skeleton score here. (It’s very basic and lacked a lot of voice-leading considerations).
I suspect, had we been a group of singers with a wealth of experience, we would have had a great time experimenting around with our different parts and harmonies; however, given the relatively basic level of expertise (save for Sarah Percival) and complex jazz harmonies it turned out that Crystal and I were going to have to be a lot more prescriptive with our score. At this point Erin had also jumped into our group, which helped with her expertise as a singer as well. You can view an earlier draft (plus annotations) here.
That being said, I did find the experience of working on this arrangement a productive learning curve – I am used to arranging for string instruments, where arpeggiation and leaps are not particularly a concern. However with singing (especially when singing myself), two things became very clearly important – voice leading, and starting notes (especially after rests). Even as someone with perfect pitch, I found that large leaps can be troublesome to sing and rehearse, so it’s best to leave them out – plus, starting notes are very difficult to pitch without a reliable reference point. Therefore a lot of the piano arpeggiations that we referenced were either removed or simplified. Also, string arrangements do not have syllables in them, but in an acapella vocal arrangement, syllables are all important! Additionally, string instruments have a very wide range and not many limitations; whereas consideration of vocal ranges and tessaturas was very important in vocal accapella arrangements – for example I was singing Soprano 2 but my tessatura does not go beyond an E so I made sure we didn’t go higher than E5. Another example was that we didn’t check the ending and ended up putting a very high C (C6) which was definitely out of range for Sarah Percival, so we put it an octave down (Callahan, 1995). You can see how we worked out approximate ranges:
Given we had come up with a skeleton score, the main concerns were to a) make it interesting and b) have smooth voice leading. We used strategies to create interest in the arrangement without over-complicating it such as:
Echoing lyrics in a call and response fashion
Using softer/harder vowels as appropriate for the energy of the section of the piece (e.g. in the intro – doos -> bah, bass changes from doo to dm)
Using mostly homo-rhythmic figures in the accompanying voices to fill in the gaps of the soprano melody
(Callahan, 1995; Ades, 1966)
We instinctively gravitated towards a doo-wop style of singing, employing slides and vocal syllables reminiscent of the doo-wop style. I thought this was very stylistically appropriate and matched the original song well. We were already reworking a standard (as done in doo-wop). Incidentally, we were also rehearsing in a very doo-wop aesthetic by using the Con’s Music Café as our rehearsal space, rather than a private practice room (Goldblatt, 2013). This models an accessible method of rehearsing and arranging, usable by school groups who may not an abundance of resources or easily access private practice rooms.
As the score became much more fully fleshed out, another priority came up – c) simplifying it. Given the complexity of the jazz harmonies and lengthy score, we decided to cut down the piece to simplify it.
Only when I had done this crafty mini-version to help me visualise the structure of the piece was when I really realised how long this draft was!
First I had reworked in a repeat, instead of writing it all out (see image) but even by the end, Connor had opted to take out the repeat and just have it go once through. Getting very close to the deadline, we realised the score still needed a lot more tweaking with the voice leading and syllables used – and thankfully, Sarah Percival jumped in with her composing expertise and bashed it out to 90% completion in about an hour’s time. Note to self: best to leave arranging with the composers or consult them earlier in the process!
In our rehearsals, it was noticeable that we had a fairly good blend but certain people sang more in tune on their own than in a group, so we decided to record ourselves as individuals, to be mixed in together in Logic. We opted to go bass upwards, as having the bass as a harmonic and rhythmic point of reference would be helpful. Intonation wise, we had mixed success in the recording. Perhaps if we had time for another try, we could do Bass recorded first and then sing as a group ensemble together. I commend Sarah Percival for jumping in to fill in Connor’s spot to do the recording and mixing at the last minute!
If I may, I would like to provide a critique of this assignment – arranging is very much an individual thing – and the way we tried to do it for our assignment was admittedly, very inefficient. Different people have different tastes and visions, and I personally thought we ended up with a ‘too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen’ situation as it ended up having Connor, Sarah Percival, Crystal and I being involved with the arranging. I would think be most efficient with one person arranging it, and that person either a) knows the song very well or b) is a composer/someone familiar to vocal arrangements. If I had to do this process all over again, I’d get Connor (with his thorough knowledge of the song) and Sarah (with her compositional and vocal expertise) to do the arrangement together.
That being said, having create input available from all members of the group did help, and created a sense of overall ownership of the arrangement. For example, our muted trumpet sound in the introduction was something I could never come up on my own – it was thanks to Connor’s creative thinking that we could put it in. It was enjoyable and valuable to rehearse and sing the arrangement together as a group – I think on an extended basis, it would really help singers to really develop their physical and creative voices, as they would be free to experiment in a safe space. I personally would love the chance to work in a group of close friends, all relatively confident at singing – think of how many things we could come up with! Not only do students develop their singing and creativity in acapella groups, but the bond of singing naturally helps students to socialise in a positive and productive manner.
Finally, a quote from Berglin -“In a full arrangement, you are only limited by your imagination and the constraints of the human voice” (2018).
REFERENCES
Ades.H. (1966). Choral Arranging. Delaware Water Gap, United States of America: Shawnee Press Inc.
Berglin, J. (2018). Beyond the Repertoire: Incorporating Contemporary A Cappella Process Into the Secondary Choir. The Choral Journal, 58(11), 10-19.
Callahan.A. (1995). Anna’s Amazing A Capella Arranging Advice: The Collegiate A Capella Arranging Manual. United States of America: Hal Leonard Corporation.
Goldblatt, D. (2013). Nonsense in Public Places: Songs of Black Vocal Rhythm and Blues or Doo‐Wop. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 71(1), 101-110.
So I’m working on the mixed bag arrangement of Horse Racing – I’m using a basis of someone else’s arrangement from musescore.com (link) but obviously it’s not 100% accurate, plus it’s only for piano but it’s saved me from having to spend time inputting those notes into Sibelius!
Corrections/changes made:
Adding a bassline
Adding a completely separate piano part
Adding a second melody line
Changing some of the chords (some are non-existent/inaccurate)
Couple of bars are missing
This was mostly done with Lang Lang’s interpretation of this piece [link].
I also have to figure out how actually put it in the iBook itself… seems like 2 pages on one horizontal screen will have to do, as I don’t think I can change the setting to go vertical. If I’ve got time, maybe I’ll try and figure if I can just do a single page vertically.
I’m also thinking of all this footage I have of Lulu when I interviewed her…but seeing as time is tight, have I really got the time to review that footage and edit it all? So on a bit of a whim I search YouTube for ‘Lulu Liu Pipa’ and it turned out that she’s actually got a lot of professional stuff there already! Having looked at a couple of her videos, I’m going to pull extracts from her documentary made with the Chinese Pipa Association; plus the one from the ABC that I already had in mind.
So I’ve vaguely decided on which instruments to provide a brief history and audio on, but I know that’s not enough detail. I was planning to focus a lot on pipa (seeing as I have the most knowledge on that!) But, especially hearing Lofimaker’s remix of Horse Racing, and having already decided on making a mixed-bag arrangement of Horse Racing – it would be a no-brainer to include more in-depth information on the erhu as well!
If I had more time, I would also go back and add a section for the guzheng as well. These three instruments are almost the equivalent of violin, piano and flute in how frequently they are learnt.
I was basically researching as I was constructing the iBook, summarising various sources to neatly put into the one spot. If anything, Chinese music has so many books and websites talking about it but it just all needs to be put in the one place!
I also find that a lot of the websites themselves are not super-well designed, which highlights the need for my iBook even more.
It’s becoming clearer and clearer that the trajectory of activities will lead from listening to Horse Racing, to performing an arrangement of it, to doing a remix of it. Seems logical and effective to me!
I am hoping to somehow include some of Tan Dun’s work (I did a bit of research into his stuff early on) – especially the Pipa concerto would be nice; but seeing as this iBook is more of an introductory resources rather than totally comprehensive of all Chinese musics we’ll just have to see how I go….
Sarah's blog [music tech] 