Ethan Wang IB Music Blog

My stimulus piece is Tobu's Candyland. Tobu's songs are very distinctive. main melodies are usually not too melodically complex, hence my decision to use a simple 5 bar loop. He usually uses major keys to write his music, and his songs are always very bubbly, catchy, and uptempo. For Candyland, he composes in E major, and uses a tempo of 110. I have two main takeaways from the stimulus. The first aspect of Candyland I decided to incorporate into my composition is to compose an uptempo composition with a strong beat. I decided to crank up the tempo to 138 for my composition, and plan to use a strong drum beat. The second takeaway is the addictive melody component:  I thought I could get the same "addictive" melodies by composing in Eb minor, since I already had the melodic idea before starting my composition. My melody revolves along a simple 5-bar call and response structure, with a homophonic texture, similar to the stimulus piece. 

  The pieces I chose for the Experimenting with Music Performance are Folk Song and Shanty, and Incantations, both composed by Richard Meyer. The reasons for choosing these pieces are simple—at the time of selecting my “Music performance” pieces, these were the only two pieces I was working on for string orchestra. However, we just started learning a score for “Coco,” so that may be my third piece for the experimenting with music performance section. Although I know I am capable of playing more challenging pieces, the pieces provided in string orchestra help to reinforce fundamentals, and some sections of the pieces are also pretty difficult. Folk song and Shanty is in the British folk song style, a style of music I am not at all familiar with. For my excerpt from folk song and shanty, I re-selected measures 1-37. As for performance techniques I can use in my composition, focusing on articulation and spacing is important, as that translates to making sure my composition has space i...

  For the music creation rationale, I chose Tobu (styled as 7bou)’s Candlyand. Tobu, an electronic music producer from Latvia, creates EDM songs with addictive melodies, and always exerts positive energy to his listeners. His music prominently features bubbly and melodic synths, and usually minimal drums, allowing his melodies to remain the defining feature of his song. He usually uses major keys to write his music, hence the “catchy” nature of his songs. In Candyland, and with many other songs of his I listened to, he usually uses 110+ BPM, so most of his songs are uptempo.  I usually do not listen to electronic dance music—I listen to a lot of different music genres, but electronic dance music is not a genre I am familiar with at all. I enjoyed his songs quite a bit, and his version of “feel good” music is one I would listen to in the background while working. Although the music originates from Latvia, it was surprising to see the global reach Tobu has, since his biggest sin...

  First Piece: Medium: Voxes, synths, piercing sine waves, assorted drum sounds/percussion, random sound effects, sirens, synth bass, bells. Melody: Not very melodic / No melody Harmony: Practically none.  Meter: 70 bpm  Form: Not much structure, goes from series of noises to the other.  Style: Electronic music, unconventional. Musique concrete: a type of music composition that utilizes recorded sounds as raw material. Sounds are often modified through the application of audio effects and tape manipulation techniques, and may be assembled into a form of montage. It can feature sounds derived from recordings of musical instruments, the human voice, and the natural environment as well as those created using synthesizers and computer-based digital signal processing. Compositions in this idiom are not restricted to the normal musical rules of melody, harmony, rhythm, metre, and so on. It exploits acousmatic listening, meaning sound identities can often be intentionally o...

 For my composition project, I decided to use Breath of the Wild's Main Theme, or simply known as "Track 1" in the game's track list, not only because Breath of the Wild is one of my favorite games of all time, but also because I consider the Main Theme (along with the rest of the soundtrack) to be iconic. Melodically, the piece is very complex, but I thought I could tackle the challenge. In order to stay true to the original purpose of the stimulus piece, I attempted to borrow the exact same chord progression, with some minor changes. The original score I used did not have the most accurate chords, so I had to figure a lot of it out by myself. I also took out some of the more complex chord progressions in the piano part—either due to my limited technical skills in MuseScore, but also to give room to the Double Bass solo; for example, in measure 29 of my composition, it looks something like this:  Whereas in the original, it looks something like this: Given the contex...

Medium: Piano and Double Bass Tonal Center: Goes through many different key changes, switches between major and minor keys. Piece starts in Eb Major, ends in C Minor.  Time Signature: 3/4 Tempo: 101 BPM Texture: Polyphonic Form: 32 bars.  Melodic Devices: Mostly conjunct, but there are also some disjunct intervals in the piece. Compromised of 8-bar measures. Uses the pentatonic scale.  Main Harmonic Ideas: Borrowed Chords -Given that there are so many key changes, it's often hard to tell what key it's in -There are borrowed chords being littered throughout the song: the most prominent example is the chord being played last: for instance, despite being a D minor chord, there is a B-natural being played, which is an accidental.   

Analyzing Video Game Music: Breath of the Wild’s Main Theme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPWBG6_jn4Y The music I will be analyzing is Breath of the Wild’s “Main Theme”, simply listed as “Track 1” in the official soundtrack. Composed by Manaka Kataoka in early 2016, this was initially written for Breath of the Wild’s trailer at the E3 of the same year. This is a super unique piece that I’ve never heard anywhere else, and is one of my favorite video game themes to this day. Although it utilizes an European orchestral theme, modern synthesizers and ancient traditional instruments, such as Shinobue and Ehru, are also blended into the composition.  The piano opens and closes the piece; European orchestral instrumentation such as strings, horns, and percussion are also present in the tune. There is some special instrumentation, with the Shinobue, a Japanese flute is traditionally made of bamboo and characteristically gives off a sweet, high registered sound, and an ehru , a double ...