Musicals

Musicals – To be honest I have not seen a lot of musicals myself, but since I was in choir in the middle/high school called G.A.M.P, I have had to sing in a lot of choir medleys of musicals and attended a few musicals that our school had performed. I would have to say my least favorite Musical we performed was Annie. I don’t know why, but I pretty much cringe every time I hear Tomorrow. I wasn’t there for many Musical’s but I believe the best Musical the school performed would be “The King and I.” The costumes, the backgrounds, the orchestra, and the performers all did an excellent job. Probably the best part though was that after a year of construction the auditorium was finally built for the school, so it was the first Musical to be performed there. I believe the last musical I watched was Sweeney Todd, which I rather enjoyed. It was the movie version that came out just to be clear. Maybe it was because of the violence why I liked it so much, but I just thought it was fantastic. I really enjoy musicals, but I don’t get to see them very often. However, I’m not a big fan of the more over the top musical performances, like the one we watched for the Musical “Hair.” I don’t know if it is just me but I enjoy a musical where the performs stay on stage, and the audience stays in their seats. Also, since we didn't get to talk about it in class I don't see what the big deal about Glee was. I mean I was forced to watch the entire first season of it while staying over my friends house while I was on vacation in Ohio by one of his friends last year, and although I wasn't ready to claw my eyes and ears out like I originally thought I would by the end I didn't care for it at all. Seemed rather boring to me. But maybe that's just me.

Holiday Songs

Since the holiday season is quickly approaching I thought I would just briefly mention some of my favorite and least favorite holiday songs. Now in one of my last posts I brought up two songs that I did like, so I won’t be bringing them up again. One of my favorite songs for the holidays has to be Carol of the Bells. I enjoy both the sung version, bells only version, and love the rock version of the song that I tend to hear a lot. I’m not sure who did that version, but it tends to be heard a lot around the holidays so you are bound to run into it. I guess I really like this song because most holiday songs tend to be in a major key which is all happy and bright sounding but this seems to sound a bit darker adding a bit more dissonance compared to other holiday songs. As for songs I really don’t like that always come up around holidays would probably be the one song from Charlie Brown that tends to play on the radio like a million times during the holidays. Never cared for the show, never bothered watching the Christmas episode, never liked the song, and I get really sick of people asking me to learn it. Another song I tend to hate is that Grandma Got Ran Over By a Reindeer Song. Honestly seeing how most people hate country music in our class I would be surprised if anyone liked it in our class so I feel like I don’t have to explain that one that much. So that is a brief post about the songs I like and hate around the holiday season.

Playing Piano

One of the ideas for blog posts were to write something that you are currently doing with music, so I thought I would try to write one post on that. I’m currently working on a piece of music for my own purposes called Prelude and Fugue in C minor from Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier. To be honest I am having a bit of trouble with it. It isn’t really a difficult piece, but it is for me. Apparently piano majors should be able to play this piece to even be about to audition for Temple. I have thought about learning to play this many times before. I always was worried about learning the Prelude section of the piece. Ironically this has turned out to be easier to learn then the second have. It only seems to be a series of four different pitches for each hand played in a easy pattern that looks difficult. The part that actually will be tough is the Fugue. It is slower than the first section, but since it is a fugue I have to be able to play what seems like three different voices with only two hands. Hopefully I will be able to be able to get better at this piece soon.

My Thoughts on Rap

My thoughts on rap music. I know I’m probably going to get a lot of hate for this one, but unlike most of the class I really don’t care for rap music. Although I respect it as an art form, (well the ones that actually have a meaningful message and not the garbage they produce so people will like it because people like it because its popular, etc.), but my many problem is I feel most of the time it isn’t really music to me. I know this sounds crazy, and I’m not saying this for all rap songs. Sometimes it just seems like rap isn’t technically music. My though of what music is, is a combination of melody and rhythm. From a few rap songs I have heard, they don’t have melody at all. I’m not saying that the entire piece has to have melody, I’m just saying it lacks any melody at any point in the song. It just has lyrics, and a beat. Now to me this sounds more like poetry rather than music because it deals more with the message of the words, the rhythm of speaking those words, and a beat. That is why I respect it, but more as another art form. I will count it as music though if it does have a little melody in it though. Like today we listened to rap, which featured melody during the “hook” of the song, which was sung by female singers. I’ll count it as music, but I guess I just don’t care for rap much because personally I care more about the melody then the lyrics in any song.

Stealing or Sampling

Over the course of this class one of the most memorable conversations the class had, would most likely be the huge debate over Elvis, and the difference between stealing/covering/using other people’s music. A class or so after that we briefly talked about Daft Punk for like two minutes, but it kind of reminded me about something I saw on a similar subject. The video below will show that a lot of popular Daft Punk songs, actually feature samples from other songs throughout the piece of music. So I was beginning to think about where the line of sampling from other artist falls. I honestly do not know if they credited where their got their samples, but I feel like most people don’t do that now adays anyway. Although if I’m not mistake Kayne West did credit them when he made a song based off one of their songs. Pretending that they didn’t credit anyway, would it be less wrong for them to only use a sample rather than taking most of the song like Elvis did, or is it okay because they only used such a small section and changed it. I don’t really know myself, but all I know is I just enjoy their songs, even if they had to sample from others.

Temple Concerts

Over this past weekend I attended a concert at Temple University for another class requirement, and I thought I would just share my experience. I go to Temple’s concerts every year for about three years now, something even twice a year. They tend to have free concerts which are usually very delightful. This year they had a “Sounds of the Season” concert, which was filled with holiday themed music. It included many carols like Ding! Dong! Merrily on High! which is probably one of my favorite holiday carols. They had two choirs, and a full orchestra and jazz band. The orchestra and jazz band managed to something rather interesting by performing both the original version of selections from The Nutcracker, and the jazz band would immediately play the Ellington/Strayhorn versions of the pieces right afterwards. It was cool to hear both versions back to back. Probably the best part of the performance was the Hallelujah Chorus which they saved until the end. If you ever have to write a review for any other music class I would recommend checking out if Temple has any performances, if you can’t find anything at our college.