I choose Music and Romance, in the first song, basically connected socially because of a direct relation to a song intended to his wife and throughout the song he just talks about his love for his wife. He sang” What would I do without your smart mouth? / Drawing me in, and you kicking me out / You’ve got my head spinning, no kidding, I can’t pin you down”. John Legend is just saying all the things he loves about his wife and it’s romantic. The tempo is slow which is closely associated with love. Her second song is similar to the first song with the tempo and musical characteristics and lyrics that quite literally means intercourse such as “I know you wanna love, but I just wanna fuck” and just constant context of coitus.

The song I would pick is Los – One and Only because it is talking about traditional love and romance with lyrics like “you could be my one and only / I could be your one / we could take it slowly”. This meaning if they are meant for each other, they could go through the steps in the relationship. It is created with intent of finding true love. The next song is Izzy Bizu – Diamond which is talking about the same context as the first song with finding true love and it’s rare to find a perfect match as said in “You’re a diamond in the rough I can’t fight the feeling / You’re a diamond / I can’t touch”. It also has the slow tempo and exaggerated sounds like All of Me from John Legend.

I think the main purpose of this song is to clear the confusion and give his take on the black and white diversity in America. There are multiple moments in the song where a black male and a white male express their emotions as if they were representing their races. The musical genre of this song is rap, the genre itself is derives politically from hip hop. It was developed in 1980s as a way of using rap to create a political activism.

In the song, they discussed their stories and the rebuttal from each side. The white male said

Yellin’ “nigga this” and “nigga that”
Call everybody “nigga” and get a nigga mad
As soon as I say “nigga” then everyone react
And wanna swing at me and call me racist ’cause I ain’t black

this basically means that why would black people complain about saying the n-word even though they use it themselves and then the black male responded later in the song with

We shouldn’t say it but we do, and that just what it is
But that don’t mean that you can say it just ’cause you got nigga friends
Nigga, that word was originated for you to keep us under”

He admitted that blacks shouldn’t be using the words as is, but they do and there is a double meaning under when white males say the word and that it was because whites used it originally to undermine blacks. There are also a lot more different situations that they exclaimed in the music relating the the divide between blacks and whites adding different political standpoints and different point of views in general. In the song, they used a beat to keep the music constant throughout the whole song to emphasize the lyrics more than the background.

The music in the Mevlevi Sema Ceremony creates a calm, harmonic unison that everyone that participates in the ceremony can feel. it’s role in music is to bond everyone in that ceremony with that piece of music, to be able to follow along as it plays. It is also a spiritual connection by speaking prayers, dancing to the rhythm and learning the ethnics of that culture. As shown in the Mevlevi Sema Ceremony video, you can see underlying tone of the music and the peace of mind the practitioners are feeling.

like in the Catholic Church, according from the textbook “As with the chanting of the Gyuto monks, plainchant was a tool for connecting with the sacred.” (p.296). This shows the connection between the two traditions, having a chant or a underlying tone to connect the people spiritually to god or to each other. They are slightly different because of the there are unique dances and tones based on what ethnicity you belong to. Your ethnicity could determine the instruments used, the form of the music, and how it is performed via dance or some movement or position.

My parents originated in Malaysia, but similar to America there are some diversity in Malaysia with Indians, Malaysians, and Chinese people dominating the majority of the race in Malaysia. When I do visit them, they mainly still listen to Chinese Pop. Traditional Chinese people would wear a Hanfu similar to a Japanese Kimono and perform their music but in the modern era, this tradition is not as popular.

To my knowledge, Chinese people listen to pop music like western English music and Chinese pop music or C-pop similar to western pop music but in Chinese. In some Chinese pop music like others, uses English words in their lyrics quite often. However, mainly in old traditions they mainly use string instruments like the Erhu, Guqin, and Dizi.

So like K-pop the formatting is similar, but the C-pop is mainly appreciated amongst our own community, unlike K-pop which has a heavy influence in western society currently. They mainly create a smooth flowing tone throughout the music, especially with the string instruments. The traditional Chinese music is different from the current Chinese pop because it’s leaning towards a mix between Western Pop and Traditional Chinese Music. However, this Chinese pop shows the string instruments mainly used in Chinese culture and modern Chinese pop.

I think I would be most comfortable in the Jazz performances because you can do whatever you want with the music. If you’re having a bad time, you can just hang around at the bar or whatever, if you feel like dancing, you can jump around and listen to the music. I would just see everyone enjoying themselves and moving around without a regulation. I would probably just listen and just chill with the music just being laid back.

I would be most uncomfortable in the Chamber Music because everyone is close together and it won’t be as comfortable as moving around as I please. It would be in a more professional setting and everyone will be quiet and wear proper clothing as well. It would seem more precise and civilized in my opinion. I would probably sit there and listen without moving awkwardly.

The opening scene I chose is from Get Out(2017), the movie is about white people stealing bodies from black people because they think the bodies of black people are superior to their white bodies. In the opening, it shows how the black male is kidnapped after talking to the girl which manipulated him to go to that white neighborhood.

Some diegetic sounds are the male talking to himself and the non-diegetic sounds are the dog sounds or the music from the car.

The music sums up the entire movie, but without letting the viewer know unless they’ve seen the whole film. However, it is foreshadowing later into the film, when another black man is talking to a white person and gets invited to their white neighborhood. The opening shows that the movie is about racism because it is a black male in a white neighborhood and we know that because he is not familiar with his area and says “white” named areas with the white car and “white” music. He also says how he’s scared of the car because he is in that neighborhood. I think the old country music is a good musical component that shows the era it would have been in.

The mood is very spooky yet calm, there is a moment at night with the dog barking, car following with music like baby music in horror movies and then it gets classical and calm while he is kidnapped.

The musical technology I will be selecting is the piano, a large musical instrument that is played with 88 keys: 36 black and 52 white. There are different variations such as a grand piano and electric piano, with spin-off versions like the melodica.

The piano was created to provide a keyboard that could play both soft and loud, sustain notes, and do all this with the given set of keys. The way it’s created, there is a pedal that allows you to sustain the music or change the dynamics when it is pressed. My fastest reaction to the question “in a way it wasn’t designed for” is a comedic use of dropping the piano on top of something or someone in shows and such. I used to play the piano slightly, but school causes depression so I got lazy. It is, however, a wonderful instrument!

Although it was a simple piece, I chose Nocturnal Waltz– Johannes Bornlöf because it only uses the piano throughout the music and the use of the piano allowed the piece to flow because it sustained notes to overlap and left a consistent hum.

I listened to Missa IX (Cum Jubilo) and Gloria – Missa Papae Marcelli – Palestrina and used Texture, Harmony, and Rhythm to form a connection between the two pieces.

Harmony is the sound of two or more pitches at the same time, Texture is the ways the musical parts connect with each other, and Rhythm is how long the pitches last for.

In terms of Texture, Missa IX (Cum Jubilo) is a monophony because it is a single independent voice with a harmonic beat behind him. In Gloria – Missa Papae Marcelli – Palestrina, it is a polyphony because it is a mass with different independent lines singing different volumes of pitches which relates to Harmony because with multiple connections of pitches it can create a consonant which sounds pleasing because the pitches aren’t far apart. In the first song, it is a single pitch, however, there is a consistent humming in the background as well as an echo within his voice which mixes well with each other to form a consonant. The humming can relate to the beat of the song, which is part of Rhythm. In the first song, the tempo is consistent throughout, but in the second song, it changes every other second with added pauses in the middle.

When I listened to the songs, I just focused on one sound throughout and repeated it with each voice when I replayed it. I would check off the elements that were included as well and focused on that one element and see how it would connect to the song and repeated it with other parts.

The Classical Period was an era of great enlightenment from 1730-1820 and generally thought of when you think about olden music. This time intrigues me because of how golden that time was, everything was developing, it was surely a time of great prosperity with different inventions and great figures. There were different laws passed, organized government, and overall exponential growth towards political, social and economic aspects of the age. I happen to be really interested in classical music in general because it is what I was told to learn when I started playing the piano. It really stems from classical music, to get better, classical music was the way to go.

The textbook describes the music to be an “international” style that originated from German and Italian tastes. Music as a whole was growing in popularity going into public performances and expanding into symphonies and other new instrumental types. However, there were always three main composers that were well known throughout the classical era: Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), and Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827).

I chose Beethoven because he’s background is pretty unique and his music is grand. As one of the greatest composers during that era, he went completely deaf, but he had to experience that gradually as he aged. However, he still managed to create amazing pieces like the Symphony No.5 with its many different tones from the feeling of urgency to a slow comeuppance which could have originated from his fear of going deaf. His music does sound like what I expected, it sounds “classical”, there is no other way to put it. For me, I have only known it to be classical, so there wasn’t a certain expectation of listening to music.