Unit 15 - Live music workshop

UNIT 15 - LIVE MUSIC WORKSHOP

In this unit we have been asked to create a visual and musical piece to a given stimulus which is 'Conflict.' We have been asked to perform a 2-5 minute piece which involves us selecting visual resources and creating a stimulus in the form of music and video. We have to produce a report, evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the performance.

LO1 - Be able to interpret ideas for performance material

In today's lesson we discovered our theme for the unit is 'Conflict.' Once we found this out me and my group (Natalie, James, Teddy and Louis) went into a room to discuss some ideas.

Here's what we wrote down in the form of a spider diagram on a sheet of paper:

We decided to to do a musical interpretation of the theme conflict because we are confident musicians so we felt it would be a stronger performance if we used are musical skills. As we chose music we decided to explore the idea of African tribal wars. The reason for this was because we felt there was a lot we could draw from the historical events which have heavily influenced music. We  researched into three sections, musical aspect, historical and conflict.

The History of African tribes

As I started researching African tribes I came across the Zulu. The Zulu are a Bantu ethnic group of Southern Africa and the largest ethnic group in South Africa, with an estimated 10–11 million people living mainly in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Small numbers also live in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique. Their language, Zulu, is a Bantu language.They remain today the most numerous ethnic group in South Africa. The Zulu were originally a major clan in what is today Northern KwaZulu-Natal, founded about 1709 by Zulu kaNtombela. At that time, the area was occupied by many large Nguni communities and clans. Nguni communities had migrated down Africa's east coast over centuries, as part of the Bantu migrations probably arriving in what is now South Africa in about the 9th century.

Here is a link to all the tribes in Africa known:
http://www.ezakwantu.com/Gallery%20Tribal%20Names%20-%20African%20Tribe%20Names.htm

 Source of information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zulu_people

Source of image - http://buzzsouthafrica.com/zulu-tribe/



As i researched into tribes and the Zulu people i discovered that they would sell there own people into slavery. Africans became enslaved in several ways. Sometimes slave traders went into their lands and captured them. Other times, African chiefs sold their prisoners and dregs to slavery in the Americas. The first slave-owners were European from England etc. The African people were "rounded up" by their own tribesmen and herded to fortresses on the western coast of Africa. They were beaten, forced onto the ships and chained. They had to use the restroom where they were chained, they ate practically nothing, they were treated worse than animals, many women and young girls were raped, they were treated beyond any cruelty that anyone can imagine. Many people did not survive. Once they reached the West Indies, they were forced to work on sugar plantations, etc. Then, they were shipped to Galveston, Texas, the outer banks of South Carolina, even New York. They were put on auction blocks to be sold to plantation owners. The treatment of slaves on the majority of plantations was beyond cruel and humane. Many people died or became deathly ill. They were property. Passed down in family wills.

Source of information - https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071205171539AA9n8I2


African Tribal Music

Our first idea of conflict was to study into African tribal wars and music. Here is some research I put together on the musical aspects of things.

Traditional Music from Africa is passed down orally and is not written. It frequently relies heavily on percussion instruments of every variety including xylophones, drums, and tone-producing instruments such as the mbira. The first known musicians in Africa were the San people, whose language is filled with unusual click sounds and who produced a variety of musical instruments. As new western cultures came to settle, all tribal music types were mixed to create African music today. Although the original music was not lost, each tribe still has its own musical history and sounds.

Eastern South Africa was home to the proud Zulu warriors. There are two distinctive styles of Zulu music, Maskanda and Isicathamiya. Maskanda is the music of a man walking long miles to court a bride or to meet with his Chief. It is the music of the man who sings of his real life experiences, his joys and sorrows, his observation of the world. Isicathamiya is a beautiful musical form which gained international recognition through Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s collaboration with Paul Simon. May be best described as a male choir led by a main singer, who is generally the composer of the songs they sing. The form works on call and response.

African music also helps to connect people together in a variety of ways, strengthening the fabric of the community, which in turn reinforces people's commitment to support each other and the community, toward mutual health and prosperity.

Musical Components:

Form: The most frequently used form in African musical traditions consists of the use of ostinato, or repeated short musical phrases with the accompaniment of melodic-rhythmic patterns.

Rhythmic Structure: Four basic elements characterize African rhythmic structure. They are an equal pulse base, a metric time arrangement, a specific organizing principle uniting a diversity of simultaneous rhythmic patterns together, and an exact starting point for rhythmic groupings.

Texture:  Ornamental devices, either vocal or instrumental, are commonly used to create additional layers, providing a richer density to the texture. Another important feature of African music is its related movements or body percussion, such as hand clapping, foot stamping, and dance.

Text/Lyrics: Based on historical events, passed down from generations.

Repetition: Most African composition is based on the repetition of a musical unit. It is that repetition that holds together the other musical units of the composition. These other units are structured with great freedom relative to the first unit, producing their own rhythmic pattern with a basic pulse. 

Call and Response: A vocalist or instrument will sing or play a phrase, and the other vocalist or instrumentalist will answer with another phrase creating a lively response. We liked the idea of using call and response because its a common theme within African culture and if we incorporated this idea into our piece it would add authenticity that the audience could connect with.

 http://www.wildland.com/news/tribal-music-in-southern-africa.aspx

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Music_of_Africa

Conflict within Africa

We chose to expand on African Tribal wars and research into the conflict within different tribes. I researched into the Anglo-Zulu war; on the 11th of December 1878, agents of the British delivered an ultimatum to 11 chiefs representing Cetshwayo. The terms forced upon Cetshwayo required him to disband his army and accept British authority. Cetshwayo refused, and war followed at the start of 1879. During the war, the Zulus defeated the British at the Battle of Isandlwana on the 22nd of January. The British managed to get the upper hand after the battle at Rorke's Drift, and win the war with the Zulu being defeated at the Battle of Ulundi on the 4th of July.
Slightly more recent was the Libyan civil war in 2011, the armed conflict in North Africa, fought between forces loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and people looking to oust his government. We chose slavery because recently in the cinemas '12 years a slave' had come out, so slavery had become highlighted in the media. We also picked it because we felt we could portray it in a creative yet sensitive manner. Teddy and James had done this unit the year before so they knew that we couldn't use an existing song, but as we were talking about slavery Teddy suggested that Jordan and him find an old slave song sample and implement it into reason and then they could produce over the top of it. Another reason for using slave song samples and producing over the top of it was meant to signify that slavery is still a modern thing going on in the world today, so we wanted to mix the old, chain gang vocals with the new technology that we have today to show that. I did some research on the slave trade and I found that the Europeans, mainly the Spanish and Portuguese, didn't capture slaves themselves. Africans were captured by other Africans and sold to the white slave traders who acted as wholesalers. This shows that the conflict was occurring within the continent and the people of that culture. 

Once we got into the realms of slavery we started looking at images of slaves and we came across groups called chain gangs who were slaves mainly in america. There were well known because of the fact they wore chains around their legs with a weight on the end. I liked the image i found above because it represented well what we wanted to convey to the audience. The image above shows two chain gang slaves in a street with brooms and it shows that these slaves were alone and had no one to look after them but they had to work cruel labor and this shows how poorly the slaves were treated. We wanted to get this across to the audience that's why i chose this image.

After researching African tribes we looked into the realms of slavery because  In the end we settled on Slavery because recently in the cinemas '12 years a slave' had come out, so slavery had become highlighted in the media. We also picked it because we felt we could portray it in a creative yet sensitive manner. As Teddy and James had done this unit the year before they had told us that we couldn't use an existing song however as we were talking about slavery Teddy suggested that me and him find an old slave song sample and implement it into reason and then we could produce over the top of it. I thought this was a great idea because using the sample and mixing it with some of our sounds could sound really nice.

After discussing we decided we were going to put our performance into a timeline showing a progression of the evolution of slavery however we couldn't do this due to time constraint and with the time we had we wouldn't have been able to show the small steps on how slavery has changed over the years. In the end we decided to simply have two sections, one being old slavery and the other being modern slavery we did this because we felt it was symbolic and also it still showed our audience that slavery is ongoing.

LO2 - Know how to apply ideas creatively


The next lesson we came together Teddy  had been looking at old chain gain songs (chain gangs were groups of slaves chained together and were used to complete labor work.) Here are a couple of examples of chain gang samples that we looked at:

Sample 1

We felt this sample sounded too modern already so it wouldn't fit with our idea for an older sounding slavery song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es-5VEFM49Q

Sample 2

We didn't choose this one because we felt the tempo was too quick and it wouldn't suit are idea of a more relaxed song and performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTkxHboqRR8


In the end we settled on this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G5KtQynWvc

We settled on this one because we all felt it sounded most suitable for sampling and also it sounded like the most authentic chain gang song. Me and teddy went into the studio and put the sample into cubase and then opened up reason connecting the two programs together. This meant that we could  implement the better drum loops from reason and put one over the top of the sample in cubase. In the end we decided to use a djembe drum and shekere which are instruments from west Africa  The reason we chose these instruments to put over the top of the sample is because we wanted the sound to reflect the indigenous African tribes which as a culture was one of the roots of slavery.

Here is an image of a chain gang working on a railway in 1915. The picture is actually from a postcard. This image was also used in music video we found on you tube which was the sample we used.








Source of image: http://ncpedia.org/chain-gang

Here are screenshots of the sample me and teddy edited using Cubase and Reason:

Through Cubase we managed to find a way to make it so that the tempo of the track follows the sample of the chain gang song because we found that the tempo of the sample varied because of how old it was. By doing this it meant that when we added drums and shakers they followed the same tempo of the sample.

Here is the link to our Conflict sample: https://soundcloud.com/teddyc29/conflict-song


The lyrics for our song

Here are the lyrics that James and Natalie wrote for our song. According to Natalie the song lyrics stemmed from something James said which was: "Just because its not excepted doesn't mean it doesn't exist." We wanted the lyrics to have a impact on the audience. For example the line "Suffer in silence" means metaphorically that these slaves don't have a voice and they cant speak up for themselves and they have to suffer by working cruel labor. In this lyric we wanted to make the audience picture what is was like for them to suffer and provoke an emotion within them.



James and Natalie running through lyrics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fjVLBOHWHU

In the link above it shows James and Natalie running through the lyrics they have written for the song we all decided that they should write the lyrics has that is a strong skill of theirs as is mine and ted's skill using cubase and reason. They related the lyrics to our theme of slavery. Within the lyrics Natalie and James used call and response mainly in the chorus and this is in response to the sample because in the sample they also use call and response.

James and Natalie running through lyrics 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeFDGgQzWxA

In the link above it shows James and Natalie during our next session working on the lyrics again but this time adding some new lyrics. These lyrics metaphorically related to slavery, for example the line "Born and raised to die" meant that the slaves were brought up by their families who were slaves and then grew up not knowing any different from being poorly treated and having to work very long hours eventually dying either due to exhaustion or starvation.

First practice with lyrics and sample:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGk4adr4ER8

In the video above it shows us playing the sample with James and Natalie singing their written song over the top to see if he two of them sound good together, I feel like they really fit well also you can see that teddy is also playing along with a improvised riff he came up with. Me and teddy figured out that the key of the chain gang sample is B minor so we decided that both the singing and our instrument playing has to be in that key to fit with the sample also this key sounded sad and made the tone of the song thought provoking. In this session we had to use studio 1 due to the fact that the main live room was occupied however by being in the studio it meant that we could continue to work on the sample and integrate it with James and Natalie's lyrics.

Very early on version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMU56oAxNIU

The video above shows us doing our first attempt at our song. When we did it a couple of problems cropped up, for a start the music me Louis and teddy was playing sounded too happy for the original idea of the song we had and the lyrics that James and Natalie had written alongside the sample didn't fit the happy sounding music. We had a discussion and decided that we should change what we were playing back to the original chilled vibe the song had. So we changed my bassline into we thought was more chilled and instead of Louis playing piano we gave him a shaker.

Developing the rift further:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9M_ju0AsG8

In the video above it shows me and teddy coming up with another new bassline and guitar riff because we still felt the one in the last video wasn't chilled enough. The one we came up with in this video we stuck with because all of the group felt it was most appropriate. The riff and bass line that me and teddy came up with was a minor pentatonic. In today's session Louis wasn't in so it meant we couldn't work on his piano sections which played a major part in the second section hence why me, Teddy and Natalie worked on the riff as this was a key factor to the song itself.


Coming up with a second section to our song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a29ycQFpJx0

In the video above it shows me and Teddy and Natalie trying to figure out a second section to our piece because once we had nailed the first bit with James, Louis and Natalie's singing and mine and Teddy's playing we wanted the piece to evolve into something different because we wanted to show the transition from old slavery into modern slavery. We came up with an idea of Teddy starting the play chords because we felt that this showed conflict between the bass and lead guitar. Also it reflected the transition into modern slavery because the way Teddy was strumming the chords sounded modern.


Our storyboard:

Below is an image of a storyboard we came up with because once we decided we wanted to add another section we then decided we wanted another section so the song and video became a three piece performance with each new section showing an evolution in slavery.




Our discussion about our video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M56VLUuyi8I

In the video above it shows James giving his ideas about our video. He talks about using the clip of a donkey tied to a wheel walking in a circle which in turn would work the machinery in mills. The reason he suggested using this clip was because he felt it represented the fact that slaves would work all their life and the cycle of slavery seemed never ending. Later that evening him and Teddy worked on editing our final video. In this session we couldn't use the room for ages therefore because people were recording in there so we spent the time in there discussing our ideas for the video and then Teddy and James went home to complete our video whilst me, Louis and Natalie worked together on our timing during the second and third part of our piece. This helped a lot because Louis wasn't very confident in knowing when to come in.


Final slavery video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pGZzKciJLE

Above is the video for our finished edited video that will be playing alongside our live performance. it integrates Martin Luther Kings famous civil rights speech against racism titled  "I Have A Dream" which was a massive influential moment in history. We used this video because we felt it set the tone of our piece perfectly and informed the audience that we wanted our piece to be inspiring. After the speech it moves into images of chain gangs and photographs of slaves working on big plantations. These images represented the history of slavery and this was also reflected in our music because it has more of a chilled tone to it. The images then start moving into moderns slavery which also represented the change of our music into a more modern sound for the last two sections.


Final run of our performance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz2wcCqItc4

In the video above it was our last run before we filmed our final version. In the video however we only show section two of the song as we had already finalized the other two sections. This section is the mid point and we wanted it to show the transition into the modern slavery them for our performance. We were all pleased with the new section because we all felt the sound of the music remained similar to the previous section but also showed a clear transition into the modern slavery section. One new factor about section 2 was that Natalie played the drums, which we all felt added a fuller sound to the piece and showed the intensity of our topic slavery and that we need to stop and the only way we can do that is if we all pull together in a large force.

Altered final storyboard:

After performing our piece we had a discussion amongst ourselves and decided that section 2 didn't add anything to the piece and we all felt it sounded too out of place compared to the rest of the piece. Even though before we all felt it sounded good and showed a transition when played with the other two sections it didn't sound right. We wanted our piece to sound chilled throughout but still have a clear transition into the new section. In the end we decided to shorten our performance to two sections the reason was because we all decided that it didn't flow with the rest of the performance and it changed the whole emotion of the song, so in the end section three of the piece became section 2. However we kept themes from section 2 for example Natalie moved onto the drums in the new second section whilst singing backing vocals.

LO3 - Be able to take part in workshop performances


Our Live performance workshop:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDJqD66yJMQ



LO4 - Be able to evaluate the workshop process in light of performance

Good points

I feel our final piece was very different in a good way for example the way we utilized the sample gave our song more character and depth. I feel like it really reflected the emotion we wanted to convey in our performance which was the fact that slavery has affected everyone around he world and everyone should be aware of it so we can stop it. Also we wanted to get across the fact that out of slavery has spawned blues music and certain types of country music. The way we conveyed this musical aspect was by me and teddy playing a blues sounding riff and bass line.

Our stimulus was conflict so at the beginning we felt that simply writing and making our song sound and revolve around slavery was enough for it to represent the stimulus but eventually we realized that we could convey the idea of conflict through our actual playing and singing. So for example during the crossover from section 1 of our song to section 2 me and teddy carried on playing our guitar and bass bit but then Louis started playing the piano and James changed the way he sung. This showed an evolution in our music and also reflected what was going on in the video because the pictures changed into images of modern slavery and our music changed into sounding more modern.

A particular part about our performance that reflected our stimulus of conflict was when James and Natalie sung over the top of the sample. As James and Natalie were singing their vocals contrasted with the vocals in the sample thus it sounded like the two vocals were clashing with each other but were still in harmony. if we didn't have a time constraint i would have suggested that we used different old chain gang samples and then written more lyrics to match the different samples this would have then shown that we can adapt our musical skills to a different paced beat.

Another thing that represented the theme of conflict within our piece was during the second part of our piece when James was singing solo and me, Teddy, Louis and Natalie were playing instruments as well as Natalie supplying backing vocals. The conflict comes from James singing louder to match his volume with the level of our playing, and it was like James represented the slaves trying to be heard and stand up for themselves whilst us the slave owners were overpowering them with our power.

Things we could have improved

If we were to perform the piece again there would have been a couple of things i would have changed. The first being the flow of the music, as of time constraint it meant that once me and Teddy had come up with the guitar riff and the bass line we couldn't add anything else. Although we added a second section where teddy did change from playing his riff to strumming chords, I still had the same bass line throughout both sections. If we were to do it again i would have suggested that after the first section we came up with an entirely new guitar riff and bass line that then would have reflect an entirely new set of images playing in our video. My reasoning behind this is because once our song moved into section 2 the images didn't reflect the slight transition in our music. So by having a clear change in the music it would have been more clear that we had progressed into modern slavery. We looked into modern examples of music that represents slavery and music that talks about slavery. One of the biggest examples of this was Hip-hop/Rap we used this genre of music as inspiration for the second section of our piece which focused on modern slavery and from it we go Natalie to play the drums as heavy drums or a heavy bass is common within the Hip-hop/Rap genre. We would have also liked to develop integrating this genre further because the drum beat played a significant ole in the second section. For example in Hip hop they use a lot of real life sound effects to let the audience feel pat of the music so what we could have done in the second section is added sound effect over the top of our playing and the video. We could have used the sound of a whip cracking as slaves were commonly known to be whipped by their owners. Another thing we could have looked into is the idea of using real life objects to make a beat for example a table or chair or even something like a tree. The reason for this would be to make the music sound like nature, and back when slavery was a lot more common they did use things like rocks and pickaxes to make beats to which they would sing to.  By having the images of modern slavery and the more modern sound to our music it tied the two together for the second section and let the audience know that the song had now moved forward in time.

Another thing i feel we could have improved was the layout of our performance. The first reason for this is because we focused so much on making sure our song professional and worked with our stimulus that we spent no time really figuring out how to position ourselves during the performance and thus on camera it looked messy. The second reason for the set up not being very good was because of the room we were in. All of us had to stand/sit around in a round formation so that we all fitted within the camera constraints. I feel this affected our performance because it didn't feel like we were performing as one. If we were to do it again i would have suggested us contacting a local venue or even asking if we could perform it in another room (preferably empty) so that we could arrange the room how we wanted and that way we could have positioned ourselves in our desired way. A couple of things that could have been better, had we had our own space, would have been we wouldn't have had to stand by the computer to play the video because in our actual performance James had to stand by the computer to play our video and i feel like it made the beginning of the performance look unpolished. To rectify this we should have asked someone to stand by the computer and press play for us that way all of us could have been in our positions ready to perform. Another thing that could have been prevented had we our space was that fact that some instruments drowned out the other instruments so you sometimes i couldn't hear what i was playing however if we had our own space we could have positioned every instrument in suitable positions and sound checked them so that the whole sound of the performance was balanced.