Assignment Essay

Answer each question thoroughly and completely. Each question is worth up to 5 points, and the complete assignment is worth up to 30 points. 1. The first task will be to introduce yourself and let me know what your background is in music and online learning. Give your name, if you play (or have played) an instrument or sing, and if you’ve ever taken an online class. Answer: My name is Huy Huynh and this is the third year of me in Golden West College. I have not had a chance to take choir nor any music-related classes before so my knowledge about music is not as wise, but I really like to listen to music and I’d love to know more and learn about the development of music. I have taken online classes before and I know that it requires self-study, self-discipline and independence more than on-campus courses. 2. Explain why you have decided to take Music Appreciation online, and what two things you would like to get out of this class by the end of the course (besides a good grade). Answer: I have decided to take Music Apprecation online because I am curious about how has music developed and how are the music in the past and present different. By the end of the course, the two things I would like to get out of this class with are the knowledge and an understanding of music in the past centuries. 3. Part One in the book discusses the elements of music, including musical form. Find a song that you like that utilizes binary, ternary, or call and response form. Make sure you indicate the song title, artist, and how the song matches one of those forms. Answer: Twinkle Twinkle by Jane Taylor is the song that I have thought of at this  moment in which I think is Ternary form because it extends the idea of how shiny and mysterious the stars are in the little kids’ eyes and departure by bringing back the first section. 4. After reading and listening to the examples in the first few chapters, you have hopefully gained a little better understanding of pitch, range, and tone with instruments and voices. Describe the many varieties of musical sounds possible from the human voice. Be sure to consider issues such as range, social function, historical period, and regional styles when constructing your answer. Answer: Falsetto: is the lightest register and requires loose vocal cords and incomplete closure which produces a breathy voice that can sound quite feminine although it is generally used by men rather than women. Falsetto is a higher range than the head voice; it relies on completely relaxed vocal folds and may sound breathy. Imagine the Bee Gees singing â€Å"Stayin’ Alive†, or Terry Jones playing an old woman in Monty Python; that is the sound of the falsetto voice. It is generally more obvious in men using it, but women, in the higher voices, usually use falsetto voice adjustments. It is a difficult register to sing accurately in, and it tends to be rather soft, except when there is amplification through resonance by a well-tuned vocal tract. It also requires an uncomfortable muscle effort for many men. It is a quite distinct range from the head voice, and generally when singers describe their range they exclude the falsetto voice. Falsetto is a singing technique that produces sounds pitched higher than the singer’s normal range. Falsetto can also mean an artificially raised speaking pitch. This often occurs momentarily if repeatedly in males during puberty for psychosocial reasons. The break between voice registers, audible or not, is called the passaggio. The falsetto register is used by male countertenors to approximate the register in classical voice that previously employed castrati, in pieces written before castratism became socially unacceptable and eventually universally outlawed. It is also used by many male rock and roll singers such as Jon Anderson of Yes, King Diamond of Mercyful Fate, Justin Hawkins of the Darkness and the solo artist David Usher to produce their over-the-top soaring vocals. Many people consider women, because of physical differences from males, to not have or be capable of falsetto. However, many female singers, such as Mariah Carey, do employ falsetto to extend their range. Whistle: The physiology of the whistle register is the most poorly understood of the vocal registers. It is known that when producing pitches in this register vibration occurs only in some anterior portion of the vocal folds. This shorter vibrating length naturally allows for easier production of high pitches. The physiological process that causes this is not currently known. Though the whistle register is most commonly used to produce pitches above E6, it can be used to produce lower pitches. By the physiological definition just detailed, it is a configuration of the vocal folds and not a range of pitches. There is, however, no universally agreed upon scheme for classifying vocal registers, so it is common to see other definitions. See the article on vocal registration for a discussion. In the European classical music, the whistle register is only rarely called for. When it is, it is exclusively used by coloratura sopranos to produce pitches above C6. Probably the most well-known example of the whistle register in European classical music is the aria â€Å"Der Hà ¶lle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen† from the opera Die Zauberflà ¶te; it calls for several pitches above C6, up to F6. In the popular music of the West, the whistle register is used more often than in its classical music. It is used with more variety and to produce  much higher pitches than are called for in classical music. It is most often used by females – its best known exponent almost certainly being Mariah Carey – though there are a few male singers who use it. See the category â€Å"Whistle register singers† (linked below) for a more comprehensive list and individual singers’ articles for more detail. There are also non-musical uses of the whistle register. Famously, a properly pitched whistle register tone can shatter glass. It is also common for children of all sexes and for young women to shriek loudly in a way that sounds much like the whistle register, though it is unknown whether the physiological mechanism is in fact the same. Yodeling: (or Yodelling) is a form of singing that involves rapidly switching from the â€Å"chest voice† to the â€Å"head voice† making a high-low-high-low sound. This vocal technique is found in many cultures throughout the world. In Swiss folk music, it was probably developed in the Swiss Alps as a method of communication between mountain peaks, and it later became a part of the traditional music of the region. In Persian and Azeri Classical musics, singers frequently use tahrir, a yodeling technique that oscillates on neighbor tones. In Georgian traditional music, yodelling takes the form of krimanchuli technique. In Central Africa, Pygmy singers use yodels within their elaborate polyphonic singing. Yodeling is often used in American bluegrass and country music. To yodel, one sings a scale continuously upwards, until one’s voice â€Å"breaks† (switches octaves) into one’s â€Å"head voice† (also known as falsetto in men). This point is one’s â€Å"voice break†. Then one must go back down a note, and up again, over the voice break. This is done repeatedly at a loud volume. 5. Choose four musical instruments, each instrument representing one of the four families of instruments. Describe the physical appearance and how sound is produced for each instrument, and what the most common use of each instrument is in music. Answer: Four musical instruments : Trumpet: brass wind musical instrument of part cylindrical, part conical bore, in the shape of a flattened loop and having three piston valves to regulate the pitch. Its origin is ancient; records of a type of simple valveless trumpet are found in China from as early as 2000 B.C., and it is mentioned in the Bible and in Greek and Roman history. It attained its present shape early in the 15th cent., at which time it became an important ceremonial instrument. It was used in the opera orchestra as early as Monteverdi’s Orfeo (1607) and became a standard orchestral instrument later in the century. At this time the trumpet lacked valves, and a highly developed technique existed for playing in the upper register of the instrument, where a complete diatonic scale was available. The trumpet parts of Bach and Handel were written for such a style. Later in the 18th cent. this bright quality was not desired, and the trumpet was used more in its lower register. The instrument will accept a mute, used to repress some of its stridency. Crooks, additional lengths of tubing, were added to the natural trumpet to allow the adjustment of pitch. This was a fairly clumsy method, however, and was superseded in the early 19th cent., when valves were added. A transposing instrument, it is now most often in B flat. A bass trumpet in C was first called for by Wagner. The trumpet is an important member of most dance and jazz bands. Drum: in music, percussion instrument, known in various forms and played throughout the world and throughout history. Essentially a drum is a frame over which one or more membranes or skins are stretched. The frame is usually cylindrical or conical, but it comes in many other shapes. It acts as a resonator when the membrane is struck by the hand or by an implement, usually a stick or a whisk. The variety of tone and the volume of sound from a drum depend on the area, tension, and material of the membrane that is struck and, more particularly, on the skill of the player. The rhythmic effects of drum playing can be exceedingly complex, especially the intricate polyrhythmic arrangements of Asian and African cultures. The modern orchestra may have as many as five drums under one player, allowing an impressive range of tones. In Western music the kettledrum is of special importance. A metal bowl with a membrane stretched over the open side, it is the only drum that can be tuned to a  definite pitch. It originated in Persia and spread throughout Asia, Africa, and Europe; it was later adapted into orchestral music. The kettledrum was formerly tuned by hand screws placed around the edge; now it can be tuned by a pedal mechanism. The bass drum, especially popular in military bands, is a huge wooden cylinder with a drumhead (membrane) on both ends. The snare drum (sometimes called the side drum) also has a drumhead at either end; across one end are stretched gut strings wound with wire. These strings rattle when the other end of the drum is beaten. The tenor drum is primarily used in military bands and is normally played with small felt sticks. The tambourine, known from Roman times, is a single-headed small drum, usually with jingles attached to the frame; it is shaken and struck by hand. Violin: family of stringed musical instruments having wooden bodies whose backs and fronts are slightly convex, the fronts pierced by two &florin;-shaped resonance holes. The instruments of the violin family have been the dominant bowed instruments because of their versatility, brilliance, and balance of tone, and their wide dynamic range. A variety of sounds may be produced, e.g., by different types of bowing or by plucking the string (see pizzicato). The violin has always been the most important member of the family, from the beginning being the principal orchestral instrument and holding an equivalent position in chamber music and as a solo instrument. The technique of the violin was developed much earlier than that of the viola or cello. The double bass is not a violin but a viol. Flute: in music, generic term for such wind instruments as the fife, the flageolet, the panpipes, the piccolo, and the recorder. The tone of all flutes is produced by an airstream directed against an edge, producing eddies that set up vibrations in the air enclosed in the attached tube. In the transverse flute, the principal orchestral flute today, the edge is on the mouth hole on the side of the instrument, over which the player blows. The oldest known archaeological remains of any musical instrument are those of flutes carved of bone and ivory that were found in SW Germany and are at least 42,000 years old. The oldest complete, playable flute is a nearly 9,000-year-old bone flute that was found in E central China. The transverse flute is also an extremely old instrument, universal in ancient and primitive cultures; it was known in Europe by the 9th cent. During the baroque period both the recorder and the transverse flute were used in the orchestra, the latter by Lully in 1672. In the classical period the transverse flute displaced the less-powerful recorder, which could not match its dynamic range. In the 19th cent. the transverse flute assumed substantially its present form after the improvements of Theobald Boehm (1794–1881), who ascertained the acoustically correct size and placement of the holes and devised an ingenious system of keys to cover them. The flute was originally made of wood but is now most often of silver. It is the most brilliant and agile of the orchestral woodwinds, and it also has a considerable solo and chamber-music literature. The transverse flute has been made in several keys, but the C flute has long been standard. The alto flute in G, a fourth below the regular flute, is notated as a transposing instrument. 6. This is an activity question. For 1/2 to 1 hour this week, you are to pay attention and write down the music you hear; watch TV for one show or go to the mall for a little while and walk around to listen to all the music. Notice how much music is a part of EVERYTHING we do. Now, after you’ve written down what you heard, provide a detailed summary of what you found out. Do you notice a pattern of aggressive music if you are watching a sporting event (even in the commercials)? Is there a lot of percussion and brass, electronic sounds, or? Was there any pattern at all, or just random? Write about what you heard. Answer: While I was walking in a mall and listened to the music in the shopping stores, I almost forgot what was I supposed to do and walked straight to the stores in which I think that music can attract customers by bringing lively engery to them. Yes, I do notice a pattern of aggressive music when I am watching a sporting event. There is a lot of percussion in which people play drums, bells, and brasses are almost every where to cheer up their teams. I heard people are just playing percussion and brass in random to brighten the atsmosphere and inspirit their teams’ motivation.