#polyphonicme

[willdavispom]

Final Assessment Performance For Polyphonic Me!

[maddieluckes]

Task 5 – Evaluation

 As I joined Rosie & Charlie’s group we decided to go with an original song by Charlie. The genre of the song and the style we wanted to go for was pop.

 As a group we were all inspired by a third year at the University of Gloucestershire being Will Mackmersh,. We have all attended his local gig’s here in Cheltenham and we all like the way in which he sound’s live and the way in which his music flow’s. When I first joined the group Rosie & Charlie had a small idea of what they wanted to work on for the live performance, they had the idea of performing an original piece using either the guitar or piano for the main instrument. Charlie had the idea of using the push pad for adding the bass line but as a group we decided to use a MIDI keyboard this is where Abelton came in,

we then added a bass line and back beat, using the piano and the MIDI keyboard we structured the song be able to clearly hear the bass line while playing the melody.

 In the live performance we used the platform Abelton with some bass lines and drum sequences already recorded and mapping everything on to each instrument making sure when it was time for us to perform everything was set up and in working order.

 I think as a group we could have developed our song by changing the beat up a bit as the same bass line and drum line is being played throughout the whole piece. I also think we could have memorised the structure of the song better, making sure there was no nervousness as we were performing. I think maybe the changes on the chords on the piano could have been changed a bit crisper as there were some wrong chords played.

[kieransmusicblog]

short percussive track for polyphonic me, created with the concept of development in rhythm 

[bridgetholmespopularmusicblog]

A short ‘electronic etude’ using a step sequencing approach.  I have used three layers, bass and 2 topline instruments and I alternate the key between B pentatonic minor and E pentatonic minor. The sound is synthetic rather than organic.

[rachelirwinmusic-blog]

Polyphonic Me MD4312- Module Task 3

In this assessment I am working with Dylan Evans and we were hoping to use Ableton to work on a song that I had previously written. The song would be stripped backed so that so that we will be able to use Ableton to create a new arrangement using layers. This will be done by using Ableton’s looper function to control the instrumentation of the song. This style would be similar to the way Ed Sheehan uses foot pedals and loops in his performances.

[msuyac-blog]

Catherine Msuya

23/05/17

Polyphonic me 

Final Live Perfromance (Hello) 

[marie-tau-blog]

Module Task 5 - Evaluation

The song that we sang was ‘Say something’ which was originally written by A Great Big World and Christina Aguilera. The genre of this song falls into the pop category although the tempo of it isn’t as fast as typical pop songs. We decided to do a loop cover to this song as we had previously seen one being done by someone on YouTube. We used the video that we saw as something that we could build upon and improve.

The equipment we used was a foot pedal, two vocal mics, and an effects mic. We created a simple beat on Ableton using the preset drums and used it as the foundation of how we would start our performance. As later on in the YouTube video we watched he begins to start beatboxing. On my vocal mic (which was mapped to the 1st pedal), I was building up layers and overdubbing over my own vocals and Luisa’s mic was mapped to the 5th pedal and she was mainly focused on the ad-libs and backing vocals. We mapped the 3rd pedal to the stop button, which we used at the end of the performance to sing the lyrics “Say something I’m giving up on you, I’ll be the one if you want me to” a cappella.

In our final performance, everything went to plan and it went how we intended it to. I think if we were to develop it we get someone else to join our group who knew how to play guitar or piano so that there is more variation in our performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2U0Ivkn2Ds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AL3kvEz3Hw

[ophelianeville]

A playlist of reference tracks that apply an approach I may take with the Polyphonic Me module.. I've inlcuded artists who utilise some of the different techniques that we have covered.

[willdavispom]

Task 4 Developmental Performance 

Video from the first session that we practiced our final assessment piece for Polyphonic Me Assessment 2.

[willdavispom]

Track Analysis

Song = Oh Ms. Believer by Twenty One Pilots of their first album which is self titled.

The immediate noticeable factor of the track is that it sounds a bit christmasy with the bells they have used.When listening to the track what really stands out to me is the strings and the piano and drums. The strings add such a powerful sound that I find really carry the song and even though they drop out it only adds more impact for they re-enter later in the track. The drum sound is natural and has a nice punch to it, holding down the main groove of the song. The piano has a lovely tone and has an especial nice reverb sound that sets of scene of the sort of space that t may be in. Its also nice how at certain points the piano follows the vocal melody for reinforcement. The songs structure is fairly simple and doesn't have many complex changes. As well as this they haven't been afraid to have long parts of the songs with only a few instruments being played at a time.

[willdavispom]

Sampling 2.Sample is of a can of air freshener hating a quarter full jar of coffee. Original sound can be heard at the start 

[bridgetholmespopularmusicblog]

My first time working on logic. The piece is called “Meditation”.

[rachelirwinmusic-blog]

Polyphonic Me MD4312 Evaluation- Module Task 5

In this assessment I decided to work with Dylan Evans who I have worked with quite frequently throughout the year so it was nice to do more with him. Although we were used to standard song writing, this assessment demanded a bit more than creating a straight forward song. In the beginning we both hated Ableton and I wasn’t keen on relying on technology to take control of most of our performance. I was clueless as to what we should for the assessment and that was definitely reflected in the meetings with our tutor (most likely giving him a heart attack in the process). We procrastinated quite a lot and left the assessment to the last minute which effected our work as it became more of a race to get something done rather than exploring what we could do with Ableton. We came up with a simplistic idea, to create a track that use layers to build the texture of the song and then use it as the bass for a more soloist part on Dylan’s guitar.

Our setup consisted of:

-A Fender 50’s Reissue Telecaster: recorded by Ableton.

-A Fender Mustang IV guitar amp with a line into Ableton live: recorded by Ableton.

-A microphone: for myself to sing vocal lines.

-A Behring FCB1010 foot controller: for Dylan to control the starting and stopping of the track and also his record arms and record buttons for his guitar parts.

-An Akai APC 25 Key MIDI keyboard: for myself to record keyboard and also control my record arms and record buttons.

-An iMac computer: to run Ableton Live.

Although I thought the performance went very well, I know we could’ve done more if we hadn’t left the work so late. As well as that the performance itself didn’t have much of a stage presence about it. The two of us were fixed on the computer screen most of the time but we could’ve payed more attention to our audience and try to look like we were enjoying ourselves more. Despite this I am quite pleased with how the performance went, especially since there was a little bit of last minute improv implemented before our set. Although Dylan learned to enjoy Ableton I am still not keen on using it as a performance tool.

Performance Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XBdsD5glnw

[rachelirwinmusic-blog]

This is my second Polyphonic Me task where myself and Dylan Evans used the looper in Ableton to put together a pretty cool song.

[rachelirwinmusic-blog]

Polyphonic Me MD4312- Module Task 1

This is my first Polyphonic Me task in my popular music course. It consists of a few clips of different instruments repeated but controlled using Ableton.

[kieransmusicblog]

Polyphonic Me - Performance Development

Since first writing my first proposal, and since our meeting’s with our lecture, we have taken a slightly different approach towards the performance.

The initial idea was to just have a simplistic acoustic track with use of the Cajon for the percussive element, however now we have decided to incorporate more elements from Ableton that we have at our disposal such as using the instruments and the drum tracks, so we could essentially create backing track for us to play over. 

We began to add instrumentation likes keyboard pads to create a spacey, atmospheric sound throughout the verse, then we added drum sections which we programmed ourselves using MIDI keyboards. 

All that was left for us to do once we were happy with the backing track was just to eq’ the individual tracks to create a polished sound.