May
13
Sound
May 13, 2018 | Leave a Comment
We started off the class jamming. I really loved the music you played by James Brown. However, there is no reason for Make it Funky to be 12 minutes long since he was not doing a lot of melodic singing. Brown isn’t saying anything of substance. Brown’s music is filled with strong rhythmic beats. The rhythm of the 1 is the emphasis on the first beat. A key characteristic of the funk genre is “the one.” The emphasis of the 1 consistently grabbed my attention in every song. Modern music uses less and less chords which can be traced to Afro-Cuban music. I then moved from being in a lecture about the digital past to getting a lesson in physics. I learned about sound being pressure waves traveling through the air. The pitch of a note is determined by its frequency. The higher the pitch, the faster the sound wave is oscillating. I’ve always been fascinated by the various sounds different instruments can make. Every instrument has notes that they produce call overtones. Apparently, different instruments sound different because they have different overtone series. There is a fundamental middle note that is used to make sure they are playing the same note. I’m guessing this is how different instruments are in tune with each other. Another interesting fact I learned today was that if you pluck a guitar string half way, it divides into a note an octave higher. With each successive division, the octave gets higher and higher. Is this like going up a scale on a piano? One of the most confusing parts of lecture today was the idea that architecture could be considered frozen music. I don’t understand how harmonic ratios relate to room shape.
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