Ahhh... after one week of sabbaticals, I am totally refreshed. I week of 'slackness'. I am ready for anything! NO! NOT READY FOR EXAMS OR HOMEWORK! I HATE THEM! Well, who knows, we have our LA test on Monday. Aargh!!! We also have our Chinese common test on Thursday. Darn it! Anyway, lets stick to the subject. Perhaps we should use super glue to stick ourselves to the subject in the future instead since it is not sticky enough.
Now, just in case you don't know, my course is actually "Electronic Music Composition". Sounds pretty cool right? In actual fact, I was attracted to it by the cool name, not the course. The word 'electronic' seems to tell me that it is all loud music(don't know why, human instinct I guess). Without a further ado, I picked that as my first choice and badminton after that. To my astonishment, I costs $80! Darn! I forgot to check the price before submitting my choices!
Oh well. On the first day, I was not surprise to find Khang Zhie in the same course(why, I checked the list and saw his name). I was like pretty "darn it!" when he sat beside me in the computer lab. To my surprise, he apologised to me about all the past happenings and we became good friends after that(that was unexpeted). The teacher was a man in his forties I think, and he was so friendly that he did not scold anyone at all. One thing about him is that he likes to use the word 'shiok' (not sure about the spelling) which means cool if you don't know. Yeah, very 'shiok' eh? He he! Well, the course certainly was about composing music except that you have to use computers. And the sounds are already prepared for you and all you have to do is to mix them to make it sound nice.
I am talking about the drum beats, basses, guitars and melodies being prepared for you and you mixing them, not people farting and burping and you recording them down and mix them(that sounds lame). On the first day, we have to create a music and pan it. Panning means to make the sound travel from the right speaker to the left speaker or vice versa. Too confusing? Well, imagine you are wearing earphones on both ears. Imagine in the first place, the sound is coming from your right ear. The next thing you know, the sound is coming from your left ear instead. For this to happen, you need to pan the music.
Sounds pretty 'shiok' eh? I always love this kind of music. The only problem was that I panned the music too much and the teacher told me he felt dizzy listening to my music. Hmm...I wondered what's wrong with his ears, I don't feel a teeny bit of dizziness at all. With that, we moved quickly into the second day, in which we have to add music to a video in order to create some sort of atmosphere for the audience. Well, the video was typically about the 100m race during the Beijing Olympics in which you knew, the Jamaica guy who broke the record with a result of 9.68secs. If you don't know, then I wonder whether you have came from outer space.
Well, yeah, we have to add music to it and to make it sound great. We also learned about volume control in which we adjust the volume of each instrument so that everything can be heard. Hmm...if I haven't been taught about that, I think my eardrums is gonna burst. That day really was short and oh, we also further edited our first piece of music using the newly taught skills.
On the third day, we were taught about MIDI. Hmm...sounds interesting doesn't it? No? Then get out of here! He he! MIDI is the GRANDFATHER of music(no, I don't know what does it stands for), but it doesn't store sounds, it stores data instead and when put into the computer, the computer converts the data to sounds that are stored or found inside the computer. Looks like MIDI really is too dependent on computers to create music, that's what makes it unsuccessful when more music software is created. MIDI is rather like playing a piano on a computer, but you too, can change the instrument. Not just, piano, there are guitars, flutes and basses too!
With that, the third day ends and the fourth day arrived with an OMG! Now comes the real challenge: changing the frequency!!!!!!!!! That's madness! As the teacher drone on and on about blah blah blah.........I was totally in a mess, there wasn't even a pause in between for me to ask questions! That day well, was rather boring you can say, I am not good with frequency. So I guess I should stop talking about day four or you guys might fall asleep.
On day five, the teacher have another video in stall for us to add music to. This time, it is a montage of a bicycle race and tons of crashes here and there too. Ummn......maybe not a lot. There's only three. As the teacher starts to leave, one thing that kept bugging me was that, for five days, he has been teaching us, and we didn't even noted his name! Uggh!!!!!! So I rushed up to him and asked him that exact question. And what do you know, his name is uhh......drum rolls please, he he! Just joking! His name was Job Tan. Hmmm...interesting name. Especially the word 'Job'. Never imagine such a name.
Oh well, we have come to the end of this great post(Not great? Then scram! He he!). May more posts come your way! I have included one of the videos here too for great entertainment! Enjoy them!
Ya, I had about the same sabbatical experience as you, that is to play and interact with music,though my means of doing so is not as high-tech and advanced as yours as I strummed a guitar while you used a computer. However,regardless of how we created music, I believe that both of us have come to appreciate music after that sabbatical week. We know exactly how that particular sound, whether is it a pop or classical, is produced and what it is produced from. We will begin to marvel at musicians and artistes who are able to compose such soothing music and will strain our ears for good music pieces.
ReplyDeleteMusic is, in my opinion, a form of philosophy and art and is a form a expressing oneself, just that this is done so through sounds. It conveys to us embedded messages when we even do not realise it. It is after joining the guitar sabbatical did I know this. My instructor actually told me that through listening to the classical music's emotion and tone, we can roughly understand the life of its composer and also the historical events if his era if we know the history and his identity.