Week 3

Dissertation

After consideration I have decided to continue with the theme of exploration of musical perception in young children as a topic for my dissertation and to discuss whether a collective response to music in young children might be used to argue towards the concept of music as a universal language. My worries in regard to this line of research stem mostly from the fact that there is an awful lot of reading to do. I’m not necessarily concerned about the sheer volume but more by the fact that much of the material deals with the topic from a neuroscience viewpoint; a subject of which I have relatively little (ehem... no) knowledge of. Another concern is that the notion of music as a universal language is largely a philosophical debate; can I, in this short space of time, fully understand the science enough to support or attempt to disprove a philosophical notion? Thirdly, this could potentially be a huge topic to cover! Will it be possible to thoroughly discuss the issues arising from my research and also present the findings of any study I conduct in only 5000 words? I shudder at the thought!

Ensemble

I have set up a group page on Facebook – “The Take 5” so that we can discuss ideas and post videos and try to sort out the mess that is our Jazz Ensemble! It is proving almost entirely impossible to justify including the entire broad sweep of tracks that we wanted to cover in this band. Our research paper is limited to around 3000 words and to attempt to cover the development of Jazz from 1920’s to present is a tall order within these boundaries. All of us have brought different songs and artists to the table that we really wanted to include in the set such as tracks from Dave Brubeck and Herbie Hancock, songs from the early swing era such as ‘It Don’t Mean A Thing’ by Duke Ellington, along with jazz standards popularised by the likes of Nat King Cole such as ‘Nature Boy’, right through to modern jazz artists.; Jamie Cullum and Diana Krall. I have been racking my brains to find a way that we can justify all this but to no avail! This has led to practice this week being more of a discussion of possible avenues to pursue. Regardless of which route we take it seems that we will have to cut many of the songs we had originally intended to include. Another issue that I am aware of is that I am probably more familiar with the genre than other members of the group (by their own admission). I include a lot of standards in my set outside of college and due to this I am quite comfortable in attempting to play in this style (but by no stretch of the imagination an expert in any way!) I feel like this familiarity is a plus point in so far as at least one of us has some working knowledge of the subject, however, I hope that this does not make it seem as though I am overly influencing the direction of the group as this, being an ensemble, is meant to be a group project. Also, although familiar with many of the songs concerned, as a solo pianist I am used to carrying both the melody and accompaniment along with including many prominent elements of the bass parts. This means I will have to greatly adjust my style of playing in order to accommodate and compliment other instruments as part of a band.

Music Production

This year our production unit luckily coincides and mirrors a unit in the BA Sound Production course. This has meant we have been able to meet with sound production degree students in an attempt to merge our projects in order to meet the specifications and outcomes of our respective units. There is actually little contact between the individual courses during degree year so this is not only a fantastic opportunity to work on this production project with the aid of an experienced sound engineer but also to network and meet other students. However, as fate would have it, I already knew one of the engineers from outside of college and after a discussion we elected to work on our projects together. Not, perhaps, the best attempt at networking but Dave is not only a fantastic engineer but also a brilliant musician and someone who I have wanted to work with for some time, so, what better opportunity to do so?! We went over the aims of the project and I now need to come up with a production time scale and also put an interim band together. Stress!