Homework 2014-2015 C2 #25-27

Homework #25
Answer the following questions about making a music video:
1. What do you think about most music videos you have watched?
2. What was the best one you've ever seen?
3. What was different about it?
4. What is one thing you've learned in this class about making videos?

Homework #26
Answer the following questions about the song, "We Shall Overcome":
1. What was this song originally about?
2. Who first publicized the song?
3. What year did SNCC start using the song?
4. What singer sang it for Obama at the white house?

Homework #27
Answer the following questions about James Brown:
1. What was he known for outside of music?
2. What was he known for during his shows?
3. What happened when he was young that changed him?
4. Where was he born?

email me: albertwestside@gmail.com

Homework 2014-2015 C2 #22-24

Homework #22
Answer the following questions about framing shots:
1. What consists of a close up?
2. What is an extreme close up?
3. What is the rule about focal length?
4. How do you get the foreground to be in focus and the background blurry?

Homework #23
Answer the following questions about editing:
1. What is the critical thing about editing from a medium shot to a close up?
2. How can you make small adjustments to the timing of an edit?
3. What do you do if an edit doesn't work?
4. What is the most important aspect of editing?

Homework #24
Answer the following questions about Jimi Hendrix:
1. Where was Jimi Hendrix born?
2. What was the first R&B group he played with?
3. Who did he play with when he came to NYC?
4. How did he come to go to England?

email me: albertwestside@gmail.com

Homework 2014-2015 C2 #19-21

Homework #19
Answer the following questions about Storyboarding:
1. Who developed the storyboard form as we know it now?
2. What was the first movie to be storyboarded?
3. What did filmmakers do before that?
4. What was the first feature length movie to be completely storyboarded?

Homework #20
Answer the following questions about Music Video treatments:
1. What is the first step a filmmaker must do to create a video treatment?
2. What are the two most popular interpretations for a music video?
3. What part of the treatment may not end up in the video?
4. What other details should be included in the treatment?

Homework #21
Answer the following questions about lighting a video:
1. What was the lighting technique we studied that was used in Schindler's List?
2. What was the lighting technique used in Terminator?
3. What happens if you set the white balance of your camera to tungsten under fluorescent lights?
4. What happens if you set the white balance of your camera to tungsten in natural light?

email me: albertwestside@gmail.com

Homework 2014-2015 C2 #16-18

Homework #16
Answer the following questions about storyboarding:
1. When the angle of a shot is low what is the effect?
2. What is the role of perspective in shots with multiple characters?
3. What kind of focus effects can you create?
4. How does lighting influence the feeling of a shot?

Homework #17
Answer the following questions about green screen effects:
1. What is the concept of the "Bleed It Out" video?
2. How was this effect achieved?
3. How was the single take effect achieved?
4. What are some other common examples of green screen effects?

Homework #18
Answer the following questions about Bob Dylan:
1. Why was Bob Dylan first considered a folk artist?
2. How did moving to NYC affect his songwriting?
3. Why did he switch to electric guitar?
4. What was unusual about him as an artist?

email me: albertwestside@gmail.com

Homework 2014-2015 C2 HW #13-15

Homework # 13
Answer the following questions about the early life of the Beatles:
1. Where were the Beatles born and raised?
2. What was the German Blitz?
3. Why was Liverpool a target for the Germans in WW2?
4. How did conditions after the war affect the culture there?

Homework #14
Answer the following questions about Beatlemania:
1. How many people in America tuned into the Ed Sullivan show on Feb. 9, 1964?
2. What was unusual about the Beatles first record chart success?
3. Who was instrumental in shaping their image?
4. How did Ringo get the job as their drummer?

Homework #15
Answer the following questions about a storyboard:
1. What is the purpose of a storyboard?
2. What is the first thing you need to do before making a storyboard?
3. What information should you include in your storyboard?
4. What is the least amount of time you can spend on a shot?

email me: albertwestside@gmail.com

Homework 2014-2015 C2 #10-12

Homework #10
Answer the following questions about Garageband:
1. How can you record using the keyboard shortcut?
2. What is the only time that the recording shortcut doesn't work?
3. When you start recording how do you know where you are recording?
4. When you punch in on a track how can you hear a bit of it before you start recording?

Homework #11
Answer the following questions about Garageband:
1. What are some ways to change the sounds?
2. What does a audio compressor do?
3. What are the controls of a noise gate?
4. What is the purpose of an equalizer?

Homework #12
Answer the following questions about "Televeision & the Twist" Lesson"
1. When were the first TVs sold?
2. What was the first national TV Dance show?
3. How did Chubby Checker get his big break?
4. What are some things that made the Twist unique?

Email me: albertwestside@gmail.com

Homework 2014-2015 C2 HW#7-9

Homework #7
Answer the following questions about Apple's Garageband:
1. Why can't you drag a blue loop into a green track?
2. What is the advantage of a green track?
3. How do you erase something in Garageband?
4. How can you erase an entire track in Garageband?

Homework #8
Answer the following questions about Apple's Garageband:
1. How can you fix the timing in your track?
2. How can you hear yourself if you're recording a vocal?
3. How do you get the t-pain effect on your vocal?
4. Why is the key of your track important?

Homework #9
Answer the following questions about Soul Music and the Civil Rights Movement:
1. Who was Andrew Young?
2. What were some of the songs the Freedom Riders would sing?
3. Who was the main song writer of the Impressions?
4. How did music influence MLK when he was imprisoned in Birmingham and wrote his most important letter?

Email Me (albertwestside@gmail.com)

Homework 2014-2015 C2 #4-6

Homework #4
Answer the following questions:
1. When you create a new track in Garageband what is the first thing you must do?
2. In Garageband where are the transport controls located?
3. What's that clicking sound I hear when I'm trying to record?
4. After you've created a track how can you change the tempo?

Homework #5
Answer the following questions:
1. How do you get the loop cursor for a single track?
2. What does the solo icon look like?
3. What do you have to do to play the keyboard with your computer keys?
4. How do you save your track in iTunes?

Homework #6
Answer the following questions:
1. How can you put loops in your favorites folder?
2. Where is the zoom control located?
3. How can you add a vocal track in Garageband?
4. What is feedback in Garageband?

EMAIL ME: albertwestside@gmail.com

Homework 2013-2014 C2 #1-3

Homework #1
Answer the following questions about songwriting:
1. What are some ways songwriters get their inspiration?
2. What is the most popular kind of song throughout history?
3. Why are lyrics important in songwriting?
4.What is the standard format for blues lyrics?

Homework #2
Answer the following questions about the 10 Step Songwriting Process:
1. What is the first thing you must do in this process?
2. What kind of descriptions do you need to include?
3. What kind of words do you need to make the song interesting?
4. What kind of details do you need to toggle?

Homework #3
Answer the following questions about the Girl Group/Brill Building Era:
1. What was the Brill Building?
2. What were some factors that gave rise to the girl groups?
3. What was one thing that all the girl groups had in common?
4. When was the girl group era?

email me: albertwestside@gmail.com

10 Step Songwriting Process by Andrea Stolpe

This is a great article on a cool songwriting technique.
THE 10-STEP PROCESS TO SONGWRITING
FROM COMMERCIAL SONGWRITING TECHNIQUES
BY ANDREA STOLPE
Andrea Stolpe has collaborated with great artists such as Mike Reid, Don Schlitz, and Stephen Robson, and penned songs for pop and country artists including Faith Hill, Steve Azar, Josh Gracin, Shonagh Daly and Daniel Lee Martin.

We songwriters are constantly looking for great song material. We’re also looking to express our ideas with an artistic voice that is as unique as we are. Furthermore, most us want to simplify the process and expand our marketability. One important key to marketability in the hit song market is, of course, content.
Effective songs paint rich images for the listener. Imagine that your songs are paintings. Are you the proud creator of stick figures scrawled across construction paper, or does your palette of texture, color, and light capture the desires and deepest wan- derings of those gazing upon it?

To ensure that the latter is the case, you can use a writing process called destination writing. In destination writing, we begin with one key word—a place—as the momentum for your song content. The key to destination writing is to use all of your senses—touch, taste, smell, sight, sound, and also movement—as springboards for creativity. When those senses are involved, the writing springs to life.

SIX KEYS OF CONNECTION:
1. touch
2. taste
3. sight
4. smell
5. sound 
6. movement

The connection that your audience makes with your lyrics depends on the power of this one key word. But how do we build that connection with the audience? By illustrating our piece through specifics and actions. We immediately know the meanings of words like ‘walk’ and ‘say’. But these words are generic and will not engage any audience by themselves. But there are dynamic alternatives. Consider the sentence below.

And I was saying
We know what’s being said, but it doesn’t mean anything.
And I was stuttering And I was stammering And I was blurting out
All of these phrases swapped out the boring ‘say’ with verbs that are emotionally charged. Verbs and adjectives like these that will keep your audience’s attention.

Once you’ve got a handle on what words will draw your audience, it is time to craft a compelling narrative. Any destination writing will consist of two types of detail: external and internal. Assume that your song is centered on a primary character. The external details will be what happens around your character and the internal details will be their thoughts and feelings. Any good song will be a mix of both. Toggling, or the art of combining internal and external detail, is integral to providing balance in your lyrics. Too much internal detail and your song from will be weighed down by the thoughts of the characters. Too much external and the audience will have nothing personal to identify with.

So how are our words going to work with the music? How we expect the melody to move is going to influence how the lyrics move as well. Every new melodic idea presented in a song – a movement from the verse to the pre-chorus, for example – will go hand in hand with a new lyrical idea. I’m sure you’re familiar with “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

Mary had a little lamb
Whose fleece was white as snow Everywhere that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go

These fours lines contain two musical and two lyrical phrases (“Mary had... white as snow” and “Everywhere...lamb was sure to go.”). But this isn’t the only way to attack these four lines. We could have kept describing the various attributes of Mary’s little lamb over all four lines. In that case, we would continue the same melodic idea for the entire verse. We could also change ideas with each new line if we have a new melodic idea to accompany these ideas.
The melodic phrasing determines not only where the topics begin and end but also where a rhyme might occur. For ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb,” the rhyme was occurring between the two large musical phrases.

Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was white as snow A
And Everywhere that Mary went the lamb was sure to go A

If the four lines were all representing four smaller melodic phrases, the rhyme scheme might look more like this. Note that wherever the melodic phrase closes, rhyme occurs.

Mary had a little lamb A
and Mary had a pony too B
the sun was rising on the land A 
and May was slipping into June B

Once you have your primary lyrical sections in place and developed, it is time to contrast. Imagine if every section of a song had the same number of lines, the same rhyme scheme, the same rhythm and the same toggling pattern. Sounds boring. By changing up the rhyme scheme, changing the rhythm, adding or subtracting lines, and altering the toggling pattern, a songwriter can keep things interesting over the course of their work.

Just from these short exercises, it’s clear to see that the process of commercial songwriting is based on a number of patterns. These patterns make up the content of hit songs and these are patterns that a songwriter can reproduce while still maintaining a unique voice. Knowing these patterns is critical to the success of both beginners and experienced writers. With this in mind, the best way I’ve found to approach commercial songwriting is through something I call “The 10-Step Process.”

THE 10-STEP PROCESS.
Step 1: Destination-write. 
Step 2: Find rhyme pairs.

Step 3: Choose a rhyme scheme and toggling pattern.
Step 4: Add prepositions and conjunctions.
Step 5: Choose a plot progression.
Step 6: Destination-write again using thought/feeling language.
Step 7: Look for titles and write the chorus.
Step 8: Write a second verse and pre-chorus.
Step 9: Write the bridge.
Step 10: Assess verbs, tense, and point of view, and conversational quality.

By utilizing all of these steps, you’ll be able to craft commercially viable songs with ease. You’ll notice that I didn’t go over every step in the process. It wouldn’t make much sense, commercially speaking, for me to share everything I know here, would it? 

Homework 2014-2015 C1 #19-21

Homework #19
Answer the following questions about the History of the Electric Guitar Lesson:
1. When did people start trying to amplify their guitars?
2. What were some problems with amplified acoustic guitars?
3. What was the first truly electric guitar called?
4. Who were the first two people to invent the solid body electric guitar?

Homework #20
Answer the following questions about playing the piano:
1. Why do your wrists and arms need to be straight?
2. What are the black notes called?
3. What are the numbers of the fingers?
4. What note is the dividing line between G and A?

Homework #21
Answer the following questions about the songs we played last week:
1. What two keys does the right hand part of I Got a Feeling start with?
2. What position does the left hand have in I Got a Feeling?
3. What key is "Heart and Soul" in?
4. Who wrote "Heart and Soul" and when was it first a hit?

email me: albertwestside@gmail.com

Homework 2014-2015 C1 #16-18

Homework #16
Answer the following questions about the Country Blues Lesson:
1. Where did you start your road trip through the sharecropping south?
2. When did the great flood of 1927 start and how long did it last?
3. Why was the South so poor after the Civil War?
4. Why was Mississippi a good place for cotton?

Homework #17
Answer the following questions about drumming:
1. What kind of notes are counted 1and 2and 3and 4?
2. How do you count 16th notes?
3. What do you call a long series of patterns in drumming?
4.What is the symbol to repeat several bars?

Homework #18
Answer the following questions about the drumming in the movie "Drumline":
1. What did the drummers have to stabilize the drums when they marched?
2. What is the usual formation of the drum corps?
3. What was the point of the new drummers playing in the rain in the beginning of the movie?
4. Name 3 tricky moves that the drummers did in the final drum-off?

email me: albertwestside@gmail.com

Homework 2014-2015 C1 #13-15

Homework #13
Answer the following questions about drum rudiments:
1. Who invented drum rudiments?
2. What are the 5 kinds of rudiments?
3. How can you make them sound smooth?
4. How do you play a flam?

Homework #14
Answer the following about reading drum music:
1. What does the drum clef look like?
2. What do the two numbers of the time signature stand for?
3. What are the 3 visual components of an eighth note?
4. What is the purpose of rests?

Homework #15
Answer the following questions about the Country Blues lesson:
1. What does Amiri Baraka say in his quote?
2. What were some of the problems sharecroppers in the South have?
3. What did these problems have to do with the blues?
4. How do these songs relate to current day music?

email me: albertwestside@gmail.com

Homework 2014-2015 C1 #10-12

Homework #10
Answer the following questions about the guitar review:
1. What happens to all the other strings when you tune one string higher?
2. What do the guitar parts of I Got a Feeling and Use Somebody have in common?
3. Name 3 main differences between electric and acoustic guitars.
4. In TAB which guitar string does the bottom line represent?

Homework #11
Answer the following questions about the Drumline movie:
1. Do you think the movie was an accurate representation of college life?
2. Do you think the hazing of the freshmen was excessive?
3. What is unique about Devon's situation at the college?
4. How does the love interest play into the plot?

Homework #12
Answer the following questions about the history of rock:
1. Where did rock and roll come from?
2. What are Chuck Berry's contributions to the genre?
3. How old will Chuck Berry be on this October 18th?
4. What surprising thing did Chuck Berry do when he was 17?

email me: albertwestside@gmail.com

Homework 2014-2015 C1 #7-9

Homework #7
Answer the following questions about the Thematic Lesson: Love Songs:
1. Why was the Flamingos lead singer crying?
2. What did the Flamingos song and Led Zeppelin song have in common?
3. How did Dion feel about singing love songs for his friends?
4. How did Leslie Gore switch up the love song?

Homework #8
Answer the following questions about the Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feeling":
1. What kind of tuning does this song use?
2. What fret does the guitar part start on?
3. What happens after you play the part on the 8th fret?
4. What's the hardest thing about this guitar part?

Homework #9
Answer the following questions about the guitar parts to "Lose Yourself" and "All of Me"?
1. What kind of chord do you use for Lose Yourself?
2. What technique do you use to make the part sound full?
3. What do the guitar parts to both of these songs have in common?
4. What other skill did you learn in order to play All of Me?

email me: albertwestside@gmail.com

Homework 2014-2015 C1 #4-6

Homework #4
Answer the following questions about the movie Cadillac Records:
1. What was it about Beyonce's performance that upset the real Etta James?
2. What famous Chess Records star was left out of the movie?
3. Did most of the Chess artists stay on after it was sold?
4. What was Chuck Berry's biggest hit?

Homework #5
Answer the following questions about the guitar:
1. What are the 6 main parts of the guitar?
2. How do you tune a guitar?
3. What frets usually have markers?
4. What is the purpose of a capo?

Homework #6
Answer the following questions about the song "Bubbly":
1. What open key does Colbie Callet use for Bubbly?
2. What fret does she put the capo on?
3. What fingers does she us for the simple version?
4. What picking technique does she use for advanced version?

email: albertwestside@gmail.com

Homework 2014-2015 C1 #1-3

Homework #1
Answer the following question about music:
1. Who was said to be responsible for the western musical scale as we know it?
2. How many notes are in this scale?
3. What is the most common mathematical ratio between the notes on this scale?
4. What are some of the other ratios in the scale?

Homework #2
Answer the following questions about the piano:
1. What are the alphabetical names of the white notes?
2. When you play them what do you call a series of chords?
3. What are the bass notes to "Heart and Soul"?
4. How do you know where you are on the piano?

Homework #3
Answer the following questions about "Johnny B Goode":
1. How does the song start?
2. What is the story line of the lyrics?
3. What set Chuck Berry apart from all the other early rock and roll singers?
4. What was happening in the USA around the time that the song was a hit?

Email homework to albertwestside@gmail.com

Homework 2013-2014 C3 #19-21

Homework #19
Answer the following questions about "I Can" by Nas:
1. What famous classical song is used as the melody?
2. What is different about this version from the classical piece?
3. How are the chords different from the original?
4. What drum beat does it copy from?

Homework #20
Answer the following questions about "All of Me" by John Legend:
1. What does this song have in common with "Ordinary People"?
2. What is one thing that gives the opening chords their power?
3. What are the two notes that the opening chord consists of?
4. What are the only white notes used in this song?

Homework #21
Answer the following questions about the songs we played last week:
1. How was the "Spanish" version of "All of Me" different?
2. What were the 2 chord shapes that we used in the "Spanish" version of "All of Me"?
3. What was the name of the special technique that the drum part used?
4. How was that drum sound achieved?

Email: albertwestside@gmail.com

Homework 2013-2014 C3 HW#16-18

Homework #16
Answer the following questions about drum history:
1. Who invented the drum rudiments?
2. What was their purpose?
3. Why are the two hands different in traditional grip?
4. Who invented the bass drum pedal?

Homework #17
Answer the following questions about drum rudiments:
1. How many rudiments were there originally?
2. What is a flam?
3. What is a drag?
4. What is the sticking for a paradiddle?

Homework #18
Answer the following questions about the drum set:
1. What does the dominant hand do in a basic rock beat?
2. What do they call a beat with a swing to it?
3. What beats does the snare drum usually play on?
4. What beat does the bass drum usually play?

Email: albertwestside@gmail.com

Homework 2013-2014 C3 HW#13-15

Homework #13
Answer the following questions about the guitar:
1. What are some things to make it easier to fret the guitar?
2. What are downstrokes?
3. What is double picking?
4. What do an A minor chord and an E major chord have in common?

Homework #14
Answer the following questions about power chords:
1. What well known rap song uses power chords?
2. What is the shape of a power chord?
3. Why do they call it a power chord?
4. What is palm muting?

Homework #15
Answer the following questions about TAB notation:
1. How many lines are used for TAB?
2. How do you know what notes the strings are tuned to?
3. Which string is which in TAB?
4. What is one thing not noted in TAB?

Email: albertwestside@gmail.com