Emotions and Inspiration (What we talked about today - 4/19)

Review of what we talked about:

After doing the survey, we presented our pieces, which were all very enjoyable - a very nice start! :)

This then led to the main discussion - Composers find their inspiration from:

• Events and Experiences from Life
• Other Works of Art (ex. writing a piece based on a folk story, or writing music to dance, etc.)

All these things elicit (causes us to feel) certain emotions, and the composer's job is to convey that using sounds!

"Assignment: Part 1" (Project 2): I know I said not write a piece, but I take that back - please compose a short piece (30 second to 1 minute) that is based on the six emotions that we discussed in class (by the way, the American Psychologist who did research in this area is named Paul Eckman). This was how we distributed the emotions:

Anger - James

Happy - Katie

Disgust - Joe

Fear - Jonah

Simon, I made a mistake - excited wasn't one of the basic emotions; it's actually "Surprised" - I hope you're ok with experimenting with that! (I'm sure you'll come up with something...er...surprising!)

Sad - Me

But before you write the piece, please answer the following questions in your blog:

1. How do I feel when I am [insert emotion here - angry, afraid, etc.]? Describe using full sentences.
2. Does this emotion feel fast or slow, or somewhere in between?
3. What about the other parameters (Dynamics, Articulations, and everything else)?

After that, go and write your piece - again, we're not focusing so much on writing a melody; it's more about a general feel (high vs. low, loud vs. soft, connected vs. disconnected, anything in between, etc.).

"Assignment: Part 2": This is mainly a blog entry - find a piece/song on youtube and post it in your blog and talk about what the composer/artist was trying to convey. Pay attention to things like the title of the piece and if there are any program notes or historical notes (feel free to surf Wikipedia!). Then, write about what you hear. How is the composer conveying these things?

EDIT: I realized how much work this is - Assignment: Part 2 is now optional. Do your best and focus your attention on the first part :)