The class opened with a more somber atmosphere, at least to me. There wasn’t a lot of noise form pre-class discussions, and the screens showed the Final Project that we need to accomplish by Monday December 17th. “It doesn’t need to be perfect, it needs to have a purpose”, Professor O’Malley said. We went over what the expectations are for the Final Project, including some prompts on how we can being an analysis.
As somebody that struggles with thinking of music as something beyond entertainment, I don’t know if I will be able to do well on this assignment. The part of this class that deals with the history of these genres was something that has always interested me, so I hope that I can make a project based on what I can do. “There are some parts of this course that are more interesting to you than other parts.” It was something Professor O’Malley noted, and nobody really had questions, but it was probably because nobody really knew what to ask. I certainly didn’t, but I hope Professor O’Malley will be open in the coming weeks for giving advice about the final project.
Thankfully, Professor O’Malley started to guide us on ways we could use GarageBand, teaching us how to change the length, volume, and velocity of a note. It is interesting go over, since I haven’t use GarageBand for at least five years. I’m glad he went more in depth on MIDI files, since I had no real idea what those were, including how to map sounds to them. Thankfully he also went over how we can do our essay as an annotation, taking notes while making the song.
We also have a lot of option that we can go through, which is a freedom that I enjoy. These different music styles, the history we can discuss, the songs we can use, even the programs we can take advantage of all ties into what we discussed in class. It makes for a nice retrospective on all that we’ve learned in class. It was also nice to see all of the work that Professor O’Malley has done to provide us with examples, as it really helped me understand GarageBand and what we needed to do better.