See ya later!

My Creativity and the Arts class; my reason for having a blog, is over. And because I don't really have anything to write about for the moment, I'm done blogging for now. Enjoy my blog and my creative projects. *My favorite entries have asterisks around the titles.* Toodles!
~Christie

O my Christian ducats!

I found UNC’s performance of The Merchant of Venice to be very good. Going into it with no previous knowledge about the show, it was still very easy to understand what was going on because of the wonderful cast. I didn’t have any trouble finding the plot among all of those “how nows” and “thous”. My personal favorite was Eric Ritter’s performance as Bassanio. The whole show, especially the second half, was absolutely hilarious. They really made Shakespeare come alive. I love the irony of this play and the loopholes. It has quite the dramatic twist.

While the actors were awesome, I’d have to say the star was the set. There was a beautifully painted background, a floating balcony, a fountain, a ship and the stage was raked. I have never before seen an actual performance on a raked stage, it was a very cool effect and it also makes me wonder if the actors fall on it a lot. I really liked how subtle changes on stage put us in a completely different scene. Definitely two thumbs up.

Zittoun

First of all, I had a very difficult time understanding the guest speaker because of her accent and because she spoke so softly. Also the subject matter was a little bit over my head at times. All of these add up to not very much understanding, but there were some concepts she spoke on that I did grasp.

All the talk about time taken for granted, ruptures and transitions really hit home for me because there are definite times I’ve seen that in my life. Coming to college is the classic example and really was a hard transition for me. And now with college coming to a close and real life looming I worry about this transition again. I still have a semester before that one hits, but I feel like I’ve definitely taken a lot of my life for granted.

I also agree with Zittoun that youth is not merely a transition between childhood and adulthood. It’s an important part of everyone’s life.

Essay: A Peircian Semiotic Theory for Music

This is a chewy reading. So chewy in fact, I almost broke a tooth. Although what parts of this article I could intellectually chew on were quite interesting.

The section I most enjoyed and related to was the one entitled Signs of Experience and Emotion. The section discussed how one musical sign could contain a lot of different meanings in a single sign. They use the example of a romantic couple’s “our song”. When the song first occurs, during their first dance perhaps, it’s a meaningful and emotional sign. Then every other time they hear it while still in the relationship it may have taken on additional objects to go with the new occasion. Then if the couple breaks up and one of them hears the song it will continue to have a powerful emotional effect. The old memories of that first dance, times together and the heartbreak that followed will all be felt simultaneously creating a complex contradictory meaning. I can completely relate to this, not necessarily in a romantic sense, but in general.

I am a very musically minded person. The article states that “Indices often carry personal meanings, and thus our emotional investment in them tends to be higher than for general signs, especially when attached to significant aspects of our lives.” I couldn’t agree more. For me, almost every song I know I have something connected to it. If I hear Bleeding Love I think about the summer I spent at Disney World. If I hear anything by The Fray I think about Red Rocks. If I hear I Won’t Say I’m in Love from Hercules I think of my friend Alyssa. And most of them make sense to only me. I can’t just listen to music: music is an emotional experience for me always tied to memories. So in this instance I am living breathing proof of this theory.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

This assignment was initially a challenge for me in the autobiographical portion. The thing I often use when talking about myself is music, but seeing as traditional musical notation was out I had to go to the next best thing: the fact that I want to be an elementary school teacher. My composition is basically a picture book with a sound setting. This is something I could easily adjust and use for my elementary students. I love coming up with different musical activities for my classroom. I love music and I think it is vitally important to everybody especially children.

My piece begins by everyone channeling their inner first grader and all of us singing our ABC’s together. (It is crucial that everyone know their ABC’s for my piece.) The book is Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. I will be reading the story and every student in class has a part. Everyone will receive a copy of the “score.” My non-traditional notation is color. There are 14 instrument parts that correspond with letters or groups of letters of the alphabet. When we come to a letter, the person assigned to it will play their instrument. The instruments are ordinary objects you could find in any elementary school classroom. Individual instrument parts are highlighted in pink. When a word is highlighted in blue every instrument is played at the same time. There will also be about 4 people doing a chant underneath my reading. The chant and its rhythm go like this:


The chant goes on throughout the piece and occurs under any line highlighted yellow. There will be a line of just chant by itself after the ABC’s and before I being the story. The chant will pause at the end of each line to allow me to turn pages. I will then cue the class on each line by taking a big breath before I begin reading. If a phrase is highlighted orange, it will be spoken aloud by everyone in class. The piece is rather slow, about 60 or so, to allow everyone to play their part easily. This is what my notation is going to look like: (it's okay that you can't read it, everyone will get copies in class.)

What to Listen for in the World

I began reading What to Listen for in the World by Bruce Adolphe thinking he was just another author. But very early he beings talking about when he went to school with Yo-Yo Ma and speaking in depth about a piece with Itzhak Perlman. Now I’m like “who is this guy?” I have never before heard of him, but I love his writings about music. Because I hadn't heard of him, I looked him up and I very much like the fact that he shares my birthday. The way he speaks about and explains inspiration and how he describes pieces of music as tomatoes or chocolate cake I absolutely adore. I think as a musician it is necessary to have a visual to go with every piece of music you play. After I finished playing a piece, my cello teacher would often ask me what I saw. Sometimes it is almost given to you, such as in a piece I played called Papillion. In Italian it means butterfly and it certainly sounds like a butterfly to me, with fast paced sixteenth notes flying all over the place throughout the piece. I am very curious about the piece of music Perlman called “chocolate cake.” I think this work of writing does a very good job of demonstrating that every person has their inspiration come from a different place, and creativity and imagination are in everybody in very different ways.

Yo-Yo Ma
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89sFEuEuTYM&feature=related

Itzhak Perlman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16XQTpm_OIk

Put some radio static in your music

When you picture a composer, one usually thinks of a Caucasian white haired guy. You think about the great classical composers: Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart among others who fit this description. When our guest speaker composer Paul Elwood walked in the room he fit this description as well, but his music was not very Mozart like and definitely not what I was expecting. He plays and composes mostly bluegrass and Appalachian music on the bowed banjo. I have never seen anybody play a banjo with a bow before. To me, the sound was an oriental one with some Beatles influence. The piece he played for us was him singing and playing his banjo both with and without the bow. And in the background he had a track of him playing banjo and a track of air to ground traffic control from an airport. This at first seemed rather strange to me but it had quite an interesting effect. He has composed many pieces. One of which he was telling us about was a banjo concerto with hand bell accompaniment. He believes music is organized intentional sound. And his good piece of advice to all of us soon to be armature composers was to work around our limitations and don’t be afraid to write something bad. Hearing him speak was a very interesting experience, but I think it will make my composing experience a better one.