GGBPB

        My personal favorite type of music to listen to is jazz. The best band that I have heard so far is Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band. Their style of music appeals to me in several different ways; they always have a good groove and they always make me feel alive through their form of jazz. 

The first song I ever heard is called “Hunting Wabbits.” My brother had me listen to it and ever since that day I have always enjoyed hearing GGBPB. The first part of this song starts out with a saxophone soli; it got me interested in them because I play the saxophone. This soli was appealing to me because there were so many different moving parts that were executed so well it sounded almost like one saxophone playing four different registers. As the song goes on, each section gets a feature before finally the solo section arrives. 

The solo section in this recording has inspired me to work harder to sound better. These solos were fairly simple but the complexity of all the moving parts locking in together made me want to get to their level of musicianship. 

After the solo section the song continues to build to its climax. Once the solo section is over, the piece goes to a simple sax beat and, slowly but surely, every section keeps building on until you are sitting listening wondering how the piece will ever end. And all of a sudden, when you least expect it, the band sneaks back to the beginning melody and it is over before it seems it should be. The full effect of the band hits you as you hear the trumpets blaring, the saxes sweet tones, the mellow trombone line, and the rhythm section make a simple title a song. 

As I continue to study and rock out to Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band, I notice that every song of theirs is like a well oiled machine with the gears clicking on all levels. In every piece there is an awesome groove and feel that makes me want to pick up my sax and start playing with them. If you have time check out GGBPB here https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nr3pY_uaO98 and be amazed.

Marching Band

        Marching band is a bizarre exercise that cannot be replicated in any other fashion. The main goal of marching band is to play music, at varying tempos, in time as well as to move your feet in time. With these two combined, you get a physical workout of your muscles and lungs. 

To make a show effective, a band has to choose music that will appeal to a wide variety of audiences as well as music that can be executed well. If a band chooses music that is too difficult, the show will fall apart and it will make that band look terrible. It is important to sound good but if the show is too easy, then without visual appeal, the show would become boring and uninteresting. It can be difficult for band directors to choose music that will fit the band as well as make them look and sound good. This year, for Kennedy, the theme is Doctor Who. The music is the perfect fit for our band as it is slightly challenging and it also could make us sound good if we execute it well. The musicality is important in a show but that is only half of the story.

The challenging part of marching band comes when you have to move in time. Depending on the show, you could be moving at 160 beats per minute (bpm) and then change on the next song to 80 bpm. Obviously, the faster a song goes, the more difficult it becomes to march without bobbing up and down as well as keeping your feet in time. To make it even more difficult, there are moves called halftime moves. In a halftime move a person would take one step for every two beats. This can make the show a little bit more difficult to execute but if it is done well, halftime moves can add points as well as visual effect in a show. In our show this year, the first big hit is a halftime move. By making this a halftime move followed by a hold, the audience is wrapped into every second of the show. The opposite of a halftime move would be a double time move. This is where people take two steps for every beat. In the second song of our show, the whole band starts out with a double time move which makes the simple move more interesting. Without different tempos and visual effects, marching band shows would be boring and nobody would pay attention to them. 

To make a show effective a band has to do several different minor aspects that change the whole show. The music choice is important because music that doesn’t fit the band’s talent would make them look bad. The visual appeals and different tempo choices also affect how the audience sees the show and whether or not they like it. 

  

Jazz

         Jazz is the most interesting and one of the most complex forms of music. There are so many different styles that only a few musicians are able to effectively sound good. Jazz takes many different forms and each kind is different from the other.  

Jazz is the persona of America. Just as America is the melting pot of different cultures, jazz brings together all different kinds of people and style and mixes them into one. Jazz wasn’t invented by one person but changed over time. In a way, jazz is alive; it grows, it dies, it changes, and it stays the same. No one person completely invented all of jazz, it had to change over time as different influential people added their ideas in the pot. Jazz was formed somewhere in the late 19th to early 20th century when African slaves, brought to America, intertwined their music with classical European music. The only aspect of slaves that their owners couldn’t stop was their music. Africans brought their style of folk song and it later evolved into what we know as jazz. In the 19th century, drumming wasn’t allowed in most slave quarters; this means that the African rhythms continued and were passed on through stomping, slapping, and other rudimentary forms of drumming. Throughout time, those rhythms were translated into instrumentation and thus jazz begun. 

New Orleans is the epicenter of an earthquake that is jazz. New Orleans was the only place that allowed drumming for all people; this allowed African beats to finally take hold of America. New Orleans was the place where the bright sounds of European instruments met the dark, soulful beats of African drums. The two mixed together is like sweet and spicy, fire and ice; two opposites that shouldn’t mix but are amazing together. New Orleans jazz brought a feeling of freedom, it made people feel alive. Every jazz musician in New Orleans put their heart and soul through their instruments. This style of jazz, this effect, could not be found anywhere else; New Orleans was at the top of a mountain and other cities were the poor villagers at the bottom trying to reach the top. Without one element or the other coming together, music today would sound differently. Rap or rock and roll may not ever have come into existence. 

The style of many different people created new forms of music; an example would be swing. Swing is thought to have originally started with Papa Jack Laine’s band in New Orleans. His band was said to have ‘ragged time.’ It might have been said that his music swung. Through this syncopation of the beats is one way that the style of music changed by the influence of a group. Through this syncopation, swing was created and changed the whole course of human history. 

Another style of jazz that was transformed in New Orleans was the Latin feel. The combination of Spanish music with jazz is what transformed the beat. People from the Caribbean and New Orleans mixed together. 

The evolution of jazz was not by one person, but by many groups that would interpret every piece differently. The reason jazz is so interesting and diverse is the fact that multiple people changed and affected the different styles. 

Interpretation: Part II

        Dynamics are usually the key to how the piece of music sounds as well as the overall effect of the piece. Dynamics are the changes in volume of each note. Without dynamics, a piece of music would sound monotonous and uninteresting. The lack of dynamics in a piece would be like listening to a teacher giving a lecture and not interacting or changing the pitch of their voice. Everyone uses dynamics in everyday life; without changing the inflection of your voice, the point of the discussion would not get across. By starting a phrase soft and building up to the peak of quality tone is more interesting than if the phrase was all soft or all loud. The inflection of every pitch grabs the attention of the listener but the musician has to know when the appropriate time to do that is. 

On some instruments, and all vocals, the next technique to add would be vibrato. Vibrato is a part of interpretation that can either sound good in a piece or it can ruin it. Vibrato is a rapid, slight variation in tone that gives the tone a fuller sound. Based on the time period in which a piece of music was written, as well as the composer it was written by, and where the composer was from, different kinds of vibrato are necessary. I play the saxophone and any piece that is French requires a constant feel of vibrato; whereas a modern piece would not necessarily require vibrato on every note. Knowing who, when, and where a piece was written changes the sound the composer intended. 

Most interpretation is solely knowing what style the piece is in, who wrote the piece, and when the piece was written. Without knowing these key facts, all music would sound the same and be ineffective to all the listeners. Interpretation separates the good musicians from the world’s finest. 

Interpretation: Part I

        There are many ways that a musician can make a masterpiece come to life. Changes in the music, such as dynamics, note and rest durations, tone, etc., take hold of the listener and can either softly caress them into deep sleep or make them notice the skill of the musician. The different styles  in which a musician attacks the piece is called interpretation. 

Interpretation takes many different forms. One way a musician can make a piece of music sound better is by changing the endings of every phrase. For example, a quarter note followed by a rest can be played differently based on what the musician wants it to sound like. If the musician cuts off the sound quickly, the effect would be different than if they cut off right on the next beat. In some styles of music, such as jazz, it is proper to cut off the notes a little shorter than if it was a classical piece. The endings of notes depend entirely on what kind of genre of music is being played. How a note ends is a simple, yet complex, part of interpretation that changes the whole overall effect of the piece. 

Another simple factor that changes the sound of the piece is where a musician starts and ends phrases. Music is divided into sections called phrases. Phrases usually separate different ideas, and they also tell musicians where a good spot to breathe is. An absolute way to kill the affect of a piece is to breathe in the middle of a long note. By breathing in the middle of a long note, the musician is basically taking any strong phrase and making it as ineffective as congress; it makes every breath, every dynamic useless. To end a phrase properly, musicians have to go through every note and decide where a good place would be to take in a breath and not disturb the effect of the piece. 

Rest Duration

       Musicians have to learn to interpret how a piece of music will sound before they play a single note. Part of this interpretation is by identifying rests and their duration. Without rests, music would sound long and uninteresting. Rests help to identify where the first melody ends and a new strain begins. Rests can also help to keep the tempo even. Good composers realize that rests are just as important as the most complicated run. 

For every note division, there is a rest division of equal value. To match a whole note there is a whole rest that takes up the whole measure. A whole rest looks like a box and it fills up half of a space between the staff lines and it is touching the top of the line. Half rests are the equivalent of a half note; it takes half (or two beats) of every measure. The half rest looks like a whole rest but it touches the bottom of the line in the space of a staff. A quarter rest matches up with a quarter note and takes up one beat in each measure. Quarter rests look like a squiggly line that is perpendicular to the staff lines. The next smallest rest value is an eighth rest. Eighth rests are the same length as an eight note; a half of a quarter note. Eighth rests look like a 7 except the top of the 7 is more curved and ends with a circle at the end of that 7. Rests keep going down the line and match up with every kind of note division there is. Lengths of notes each have opposite rest values, just like the opposite of addition is subtraction. This is important because without equal and opposite values, songs wouldn’t sound right because every piece of music would have to be continuous and lacking variety. It would also be difficult for musicians to catch their breath or get any breaks if there were no rests.

The whole point of rests is to make a piece more interesting. It also gives the musician and listener different views as to how each note is stopped and how each new melody begins. Without rests, music would be less complex as well as more physically and mentally exhausting. 

Used: http://www.circleoffrets.com/

Time Signature and Note Division

After the time signature is figured out, different looking notes signify the division and length of each note. The longest note duration is a whole note; a whole note looks like a bold O on one of the lines. In four-four, a whole note would be held for a total of four beats. Whole notes will usually only be found in four-four as most musicians see it as four beats and not any other value. Another note duration value is a half note. A half note is half of a whole note, hence the name. A half note looks like a whole note with a stem on it. In four-four, there would be two beats to every whole note. The only time a half note is one beat is in the time signature where a two is on the bottom; that is why knowing the time signature is important. One of the most common note lengths in music is a quarter note. A quarter note is half of a half note or a quarter of a whole note; again, musical terms are pretty self-explanatory. A quarter note looks like a half note, only the circle is filled in. In four-four, a quarter note is the beat and lasts for one beat. Going further into divisions, the eighth note is the next value: it is a half of a quarter note, a fourth of a half note, and an eighth of a whole note. An eighth note looks like two quarter notes connected by one solid line. In four-four, an eighth note gets a half of a beat which means there are two in one beat. The next division of a note is a sixteenth note; in four-four, there are four sixteenths in a beat. A sixteenth note is half of a eighth, a quarter of a quarter, an eighth of a half, and a sixteenth of a whole. Sixteenth notes look like four quarter notes connected by two black lines. The division of notes continues like this up to 64th notes. 

   

        

There are also more complex note divisions; notes can also be divided into thirds. These notes are called triplets. Triplets can be divided into quarter, eighth, and sixteenth notes . A quarter note triplet doesn’t take three beats but two. This can be confusing as regularly three quarter notes take up three beats. Eighth note triplets take up one beat and three notes are played within that beat. A sixteenth note triplet also takes up one beat but it is usually broken into two groups in an eighth to have a better sense of time. Triplets can be more confusing to subdivide but they change the music to create a different sound of a melody. 

       

Divisions of notes are important in music because they give the listener something new and interesting to listen to. Different lengths of notes keep the audience sitting on the edge of their seats because the different divisions provide new insights into the composer's mind.

Used  http://www.musictheory.net/