Coyne MUE332; Fall, 2021

Class Notes and Reflection for Tuesday, October 26, 2021 1. Announcement and information about the Final for the Technology Component: specifics are on D2L under Discussions. 5-minute demo on Tuesday, November 9. 2. Creating loops on Soundtrap Three layers: Beat Loop, Bass Line Loop, Harmonic-Oriented Loop My creation used Disco Twist for the Beats, Synth Drop 3 for the Bass, and Synth Brassy Prophet for the harmonic structure. https://soundcloud.com/eric-coyne-65528956/new-wave-creation?si=4c9065cb8c1745ada03b79145c8ac677   3. Soundbreaking miniseries from 2016. Briefly touched on what this miniseries covers (how recording has changed composition in the past 60 - 70 years). 4. "Modern Band" movement/Little Kids Rock/TeachRock This is a movement that's only been going on for about the past five years, and it sprang up in response to the fact that only 20% of public school students are enrolled in band, chorus, or orchestra. The goal is to offer music-creating opportuniti...

The title of my musique concrete creation is "Be a Good Girl, Sheba". She's my dog and we have back and forth exchanges, she likes to be vocal! In this selection, I start off the conversation and Sheba's barks begin at :10. I recorded myself saying "hey, you be a good girl Sheba" and I slowed down the speed of that track to 60% and used the reverse option. I also sampled the first 1.5 seconds of this to track to close the piece, after the dog barks end.  For Sheba's bark, I turned up all of the reverb settings to their highest, used soft distortion, slowed the sample to 10% speed, and brought the pitch down by a perfect fifth. When I first tried reversing it (the first effect I tried) it still sounded distinctly like a dog bark, just of a different breed. I chose to bring this element in after a few seconds to reflect me engaging her, and finally getting a response. The speeding up that occurs in the barking :18 - :28 reflects her increasing enthusiasm, ...

In this class we covered a bit of history of recording: wax cylinders to vinyl to cassettes to CDs to streaming, analog and digital, and the music concrete movement that began in the 1950s. For me, it was interesting to finally hear the specifics about what qualifies as "high-fidelity" versus "lo-fi", "bits", the fact that "CD-quality" is at least 44K samples per second, and how MP3s condense files to 1/12 of their original size. We did comparative listening to what sounded like an 80s/90s infomercial jingle at various recording quality levels: 44K samples per second, 22K samples per second, 8-bit, and 4-bit. Very informative! We covered how to use Audacity and SoundCloud for the Musique Concrete project. Like Soundtrap, I found that these platforms are straightforward and non-intimidating. I look forward to starting this project, the variety of sounds is limitless, and it will be my first music concrete creation.  I've performed several work...

It was a pleasure doing this assignment. As a cellist and someone who frequently plays gigs where Canon in D is on the list, the piece quickly becomes cliché. This assignment definitely made it more interesting!  There's such a variety of sounds and settings for those various sounds (volume, reverb, pan, etc), that it was a bit tough to narrow down exactly which synth-sounds I wanted to use. After listening to numerous creations of my classmates, I feel my version is in need of being expanded by a couple more times through the two-bar ostinato. I did what was expected of the assignment, but feel that it just ends too abruptly! Soundtrap is straightforward and easy to use, too. As someone often intimidated by technology, I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was navigate the various features. Eric Coyne · Canon In D - 2

Friday, October 8, 2021  My initial thoughts on this portion of Methods II are that it's going to be the impetus for finally getting around to being in touch with 21st century music-making technology. I graduated high school in 1996 and college in 2000. At that time, and the half-decade or so that followed, one could still easily coast by as a career musician without being technology-savvy. Even for pedagogical purposes, say a music theory test or sight-reading examples, hand-written  assignments were acceptable, as long as one had legible, presentable penmanship. One could easily find an audio engineer for recording purposes, too.  As times changed and technology advanced, I did not keep up with it. Laziness? Commitment to the "old days" and the belief that doing it like the old days was still acceptable? Probably a combination of both. I mostly taught private lessons, music theory classes, sight-reading lessons, chamber music coaching, and a busy schedule of gigs/perfor...