Final Film Composition

Now that we are at the end of our term for Music, we had to create our final composition for a film scene or trailer. My group chose Titanic and it was this video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNyKDI9pn0Q
We started the video from 2:40 until the end to fit our composition.
Our recording.

We kept our instruments classic and simple, with the keyboard, piano, xylophone and the shaker for sound effects. What we did was use the actual song of Titanic "My Heart Will Go On" for the melody (that Marcia and Matilda were playing). We didn't have a specific ostinato because the melody kept changing but for the chords I played the inverted root chord A,C,E which is A major. then G,C,E then B,C,E then up to G,C,E and then continued with that (but i played the arpeggio of those chords ) and I played them 2 twice with 4 beats or 8 beats all together for one arpeggio, so all together 40 beats once and then when the scene started to build up I stopped playing arpeggio and played the chords 4 times for 16 beats. Then I played the descending chromatic scales as the ship started to sink. Then I went back to the arpeggio and played that through once and then held the A,C,E chord at the end.
For my other hand I just held the first note of the chords (octave) for a pedal note and to thicken out the volume.

Overall I believe that we definitely could have done better because I think we went out of sync in the chorus. We could have also built up the dynamics and texture more as the video got more dramatic by really emphasizing the chords and playing the melody a lot more forte.

Titanic Film Trailer Composition

For this task my group (Marcia, Fatima, Matilda and I) had to pick a movie and create a backing track that went along with a chosen scene or trailer by using sound effects and instruments. We had the option to either do it on the computer using mix-craft or live, and we chose to do it live.
The movie we picked was Titanic and we decided to do the trailer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCy5WQ9S4c0
Our group only performed a little amount of the final piece because it wasn't completed.

Ok to start of with the beginning, Fatima used the instrument to create the the sound of wind. Then I played my chords on the piano of the actual song in the Titanic, "My Heart Will Go On" then Marcia and Matilda joined in with the melody of that song. Marcia on the xylophone and Matilda on the keyboard.

I could have had better timing with my chords because sometimes it would go out of beat. We definitely should have practiced more but I also could have balanced my first notes as it doesn't sound so clear or its too loud. We could have had some people talking or narrating. Maybe instead of the keyboard making the normal piano sound we could have changed it to a violin to make it softer and give the romantic feel to the piece.
We could have had it build up more as it got to a climax and really emphasized the bridge with dynamic and texture. Overall if we recorded this again and worked on all of the points i mentioned i believe this could be a really good piece.

War Hoarse Composition

We have been creating dramatic or romantic compositions. We started by looking at the theme song on a famous movie called Hachiko. The song was called Goodbye. It was slow and calm and only included piano and violin, it was minor to give it the dramatic feel. Matilda and I chose to do a scene to war hoarse

Our chords were
D minor 
A minor
G minor
C major


The melody was 
D, E, F
D, E, D
F, G, A
F, G, F

The beginning was only the chords (each for 4 counts) then I played the chords broken up which is called an arpeggio and Matilda began to play the melody. 
Then to build up the piece i stopped playing arpeggio and began to play the chords and the melody changed into 

D, E, F, E
D, E, D, E
F, G, A, G
F, G, F, G

We chose these chords because we thought that it suited the movie very well and really gave the mood of it. To end the piece i held the C major chord and have it fade away. For improvements we could have made our composition longer by adding more chords or melodies and for the video we need to make it better as you get the background noise. 

King Kong Human Sacrifice

In music we are learning about the elements of music, such as pitch, texture, dynamics and so on.

My group (Marcia, Fatima, Matilda and I) composed a piece to the scene of King Kong of Human Sacrifice.
We used drones, ostinato and pedal notes.  Marcia and I kept a steady ostinato (repeated musical phrase or rhythm) Our composition starts of thin and as we add on more instruments it becomes thicker and louder to make it sound more tribal
 I think my group did a good job in keeping the tempo of the composition maybe we could have added some more different instrument to make it more eery and spooky.