Music - Rotation

Music

 Introduction:

Hello, my name is Dina and I am in the 9th Grade in Emirates International School, Dubai. I am in the arts rotation system, now rotated to music from art. Through this term we will be analyzing and creating our own abstract music to share in an abstract painting, which makes this task a collaborative project. 

During this week we have been introduced to an abstract artist and musician who have collaborated. These two artist's were Wassily Kandinsky (Artist) and Arnold Schoenberg (Musician). Kandinsky and Schoenberg created a collaborative piece where they were inspired by each other and their different styles of art. An example of their collaborative work can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ypu3Knxl-B4

They surely have inspired each other in their tone of work. An example of a similarity between their work is, in the abstract art piece, you can notice sudden buildups, and you can also spot this in the usic. These pieces were created to favor each other instead of mirroring each other to create tone of the music. This doesn't entirely match the abstract art however you can spot the similarities.

Wassily Kandinsky: (Portrait)

 

Example of his Abstract Art:

 

Arnold Schoenberg: (Portrait)

Example of his Abstract Music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEY9lmCZbIc
 "Arnold Schoenberg - Piano Concerto, Op. 42"


Week 2-3

During the past two weeks I have been set a group task with my partner, Nehal, to complete a power-point of any artist and musician that have a collaboration with their abstract pieces. Nehal and I researched the famous American musician John Cage, and Jackson Pullock, an American abstract artist. We completed this project in the form of a power-point presentation that is shown below: 

 Week 4
Peer Evaluation:
During this past week in music, we have been presenting our power-points to the music and art class and we have been giving and receiving feedback. In  this week we got to see 6 group presentation however Nehal and I didn't have time to present. Observing the other power points in comparison to ours, I could tell that ours needed a little more improvement because there was good informaton however we could've added detailed text to achieve a higher grade. My partner and I spend a decent amount of time working on this, this is shown by the number of sources used to create this powerpoint (references). 

Week 5-6
In these two weeks we seperated classes and learnt about ciphers. We explored and created our own ciphers. After that, we learnt about simplicity and how musicians used simplicity in their pieces to create abstract music. In week six we learnt about the 12 tone note and how it is arranged, as well as how it can be changed.
  
Final Abstract Music Piece & The Creative Process
 

 

After working on our abstract music for a long period of time, I have come to conclusion that they are many difficulties to face and challenges to take, to make a music abstract piece. During these past few weeks my partner, Soroush and I have been trying out and practicing different techniques which would be compatible to the art piece I have chosen. At last, we chose to produce a music piece comprising of serialism and create a 12 note range (A D F C G B E A) and played it with different tone settings on the keyboard. We experimented with many different instruments which were suitable with the played 12 note range on the keyboard. We thought it would be an interesting concept to play the same tune on many different instrument settings. The instruments we played with were the cowbell setting, organ setting and the gong. The compilation of these three sounds expresses different layers of the art. This would compliment the art reasonably as making it a statement rather than just being in the background.

We used many collections and experimented with moving around all the recordings. This would create a different effect of a new tone. However, my partner and I were not entirely pleased with how our piece turned out, therefore, we tried to cut out the pieces of music and distorting it which would create a cipher. We created the cipher to see if the listeners could spot the 12 note range hidden throughout the piece, which is an different, interesting new challenge. We ended up cutting the different audio clips and made them into singular notes, then assorted them up until we had a unique piece which we were happy with.

Our main goal throughout our whole musical piece was to keep the listener confused. We wanted to create that effect in the listener’s mind so they would question the art in many different ways. (We were aiming to use my art piece however, since it has been moved to an art festival we do not have access to it therefore we have changed our inspiration for the music.)