The music played was that of the late John Denver plus some original compositions by Jim Curry, the principal of this performance. The performers included Jim and Anne Curry who both played acoustic guitar, Anne also played mandolin, Richie Gajate-Garcia on drums who played for a few years in John Denver’s touring band, Tristan Garcia, whose father played with John Denver, on electric bass guitar, Chris Wills played electronic keyboard, and Diane Ireland played flute. Jim and Anne sang all of the songs with backup vocals by Chris and Tristan. The music form was that of an eclectic mixture of John Denver’s recorded hit music plus some of his unrecorded works. Jim and Anne Curry are also composers in their own right and played several of Jim’s personal compositions.
The vocals perform a ‘beatboxing’ technique which consists of lots of breathy sounds controlled by the vocalist to imitate the drums. The beat which is set up is simple and very repetitive, adding to the funky style of the song. The bass guitar then thickens thickens the texture of the introduction, providing bass notes which contrast with the beatboxing. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, an emphasised groove usually drives the piece, in this particular song, the bass guitar’s repetitive motif does this. The bass’s motif is majorly composed of crescendos played from the middle to high register with the
The texture remains fairly constant but with use of panning (bass guitars are panned with one to the left and one to the right. The uses of many smaller motifs that can be repeated and changed were common in this period. Reich used many ostinati, but they all originated from one usually randomly-composed bar. This bar could be altered in many ways such as retrograded, inverted, diminished, augmented or retrograde inverted. Although they all came from one bar, they all sound more individual and unique, although the sense of repetition is still there, it at least creates a variety in the piece to ensure the audience does not get bored.
Michael Hunter Malone Music Appreciation, Mon/Wed 9:30 a.m. class April 10th, 2013 Concert Critique On Wednesday, April 3rd, I attended my first classical concert at Lipscomb University. The concert featured a chamber choir of four men along with their coach who joined them for their last performance. This concert did not have a conductor. As I was the last one to walk in a few minutes before the concert began I was somewhat surprised by the location of the concert. Oddly enough, the concert took place in an average college lecture room, Ward Hall, where I would never expect a classical concert to take place.
KOKO YIRI ASSESSMENT – YEAR 9 KOKO CONCLUSION ESSAY LIAM GRANT 9C Rhythm Yiri by Koko has many good examples of rhythmic techniques such as syncopation and cross-rhythms. Ostinati is another one and is found from bar 14 and carries on until the piece ends. This ostinato played by the djembe is constant and throughout (with the exceptions of occasional drum fills and very small gaps). This ostinato gives the piece a ‘solid’ foundation. For example, without the ostinato being played, the other instruments playing around it would be out of time, as they don’t a solid, constant pulse to listen to.
One of the songs the pair created for the album was ‘Lets Get It On’. Townsend recruited arranger Rene Hall, who he had previously worked with and the pair selected some of L.A’s finest jazz and RnB players for ‘Lets Get It On’. Gaye, who had been struggling for a while on where to take his music, was in need of new ideas and a fresh sound. This is reflected by most of the players who had contributed to the previous success of Motown in Detroit, known as the ‘Funk Brothers’ not being selected for the song. The only member of the ‘Funk Brothers’ that remained was guitarist Melvin “Wah Wah” Ragin.
Mr. Williams started out the first movement witth the rasgueado technique. After a few measures, the orchestra joined in. There are some meter changes between 6/8 and 3/4, which Mr. Williams and the orchestra could execute smoothly with great charm. Moreover, Mr. Williams also carried out the fast challenging scale with unparalleled precision – not even one mistake was heard. Although guitar is a soft-sounding instrument, with help of amplification, the balance between the orchestra and the soloist was fantastic.
The use of constant melody lines, allows for a full and whole sound, giving the impression of a thick texture with no breaks. This is also evident in the Debussy Sarabande. Although it is an arguably sparse texture, with only two parts, the constant busy lines allow for a full sound, and it is only in bars 20-23 and 42-50 where we see a noticeable difference. This is shown by the lack of treble part in bars 20-23 and also the use of just chord accompaniment in bas 42 through to 50, aside from this we see evidence of a continuously dense texture, as shown that at most points there are no less than 5 singular notes playing at once. Also, in the Holbourne piece, the texture is clearly layered so that each part has a clear and regulated range, with very little crossing of parts.
What impressed me primarily was its combination of instruments. Tenor saxophone was in the front line of the band, which controlled the leitmotifs; bass and keyboard accompanied the main melody, and they were in charge of theme sometimes; drum and congas belonged to rhythm section, which were responsible for meters. In addition, a bamboo musical instrument called clave enriched the performance that played a strong beat. These are all typical instruments of jazz music. It seems that there was no need to use two kinds of drums in one band; however, since players showed us different timbres of these instruments and performed alone, each drum sounded thin, flat and unmeaning; in contrast, when these two tones mixed, it resulted a “magic reaction” in music, which was full of energy and great passion.
The third piece “Evalidate” was a fixed media. The author of this piece said in the concert, that it was the dream of many composers. It had different type of sounds. Some of the beats were very long but loud. It kept the same rhythm for the whole piece.