Paul asks…
Music project ideas (college level)?
I need some ideas – my brain is shorting out today. We were assigned a music fieldwork project, and as long as it has to do with music, any topic/idea goes. Some suggestions my teacher gave us were:
If there is a kind of music you really love, learn about a local group that performs it
Look for an instrument maker or repairer and learn about them
Test a hypothesis (Does everyone hear minor key music as sad? Does music help you work out?)
Does anyone else have some unique (but still fun!) ideas? Thank you so much :)
ConnieManuel answers:
I’m not sure how nerdy you are/are willing to get, but showing how popular “Top 40″ music uses the same chord structures over and over again could be fun. You’ll have to play guitar/piano and sing at the same time, but if you’re used to performing at all it’ll be a breeze.
Simply, taking a basic I-IV-vi-V progression (or any mixture of those) and sing a medley of popular songs over that repeated progression. Like this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM
If that’s not your forte (every pun intended), you could show how certain intervals between notes or chords are pleasing or completely awful to hear.
For example: C – E is nice. C to F# is not. A low D – Eb repeated sounds like “Jaws.” A major 7 chord (A – C# – E – G#) sounds like a love song. A diminished chord (A – C – Eb – Gb) sounds like a 1920′s damsel in distress tied to train tracks.
If music theory isn’t something you’re comfortable with, just playing clips of music from different genres can show the breadth of the universe of music. Rap, Country, Heavy Metal, Baroque, Eastern Tonality (Middle East, Asia, etc.), Electronic, and Big Band/Swing are all wildly different yet still all part of one big emotional family that is music.
Mark asks…
guitar advancement question?
I have played guitar for 5 years and im pretty good but i dont know alot of the mechanics/technique stuff like scales,appregios, and chord structure. what do you recommend i study and learn and if im leaving out anything let me know. thank you!
ConnieManuel answers:
Hello there,
That is natural. Some one else’s solo is more difficult to master. This is more than mechanics, more than knowing scales and modes, the solo is that persons expression. It is difficult to capture how someone else feels about a song and duplicate his playing technicues to reproduce it. I have always thought solos to be very personal things. When I learn someone else’s solo to a song, I really do not try to reproduce it exactly as he played it, I try to inject my own feelings into it. Therefore, my solo will vary slightly from the original. I think that is proper. Too many young guitarists try to duplicate someone else’s solo. They may have the notes right, but have no idea of the feeling.
Enough rambling. You want to get better at soloing. Right? Everyone does. You need a good solo teacher. I suggest Joe Satriani. In addition to being a great guitarist, he is an excellent teacher. He can explain things quite well.
Here are some videos to get you started.
Http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTQolymKmDA&feature=related
Joe Satriani has a lot of good videos on Youtube. Those are just a few of the many.
Also, check out the theory lessons at Wholenote.com. Lots of good material on modes and scales. Here is a sample.
Http://www.wholenote.com/default.asp?iTarget=http%3A//www.wholenote.com/cgi-bin/page_view.pl%3Fl%3D754%26p%3D4%26a%3D0
I should have given you this link. It is sort of a starting point for modes at Wholenote.
Http://www.wholenote.com/default.asp?src=l&l=4230&p=1
Also, this may help, over at Guitar Nuts. Click the diagram to go to the scale maker. Handy device.
Http://www.guitarnuts.com/theory/index.php
I noticed the scale maker does not seem to be working right now. I hope John gets that fixed; it is handy. Check back on that one later and see if he gets it working again.
Later,
Joseph asks…
Is their anything wrong with not making a big deal out of your child’s grades,etc?
Our twins are only three so its a while before they start school but at nursery today I was talking to this woman and she brought up her oldest son who is 11 and is going to the grammar school in september and how her youngest daughter was going to get in when she is old enough. She asked me if I thought my twins would be going to the grammar school. I said no because me and my husband don’t make a huge deal out of academic achievements but focus more on creative achievements as we both come from a long line of creative people. He’s a musician and an artist and I’m clothes maker and an artist as well. We both don’t think much of academic achievement because anyone can read a book and recite some facts but not everyone can paint, sew or play good music.
In all honesty I can see us home schooling rather than sending them to a mainstream school which are all academic based and have little time for creative achievement. The mother I was talking to sees to think this way of parenting will damage our children’s intelligence. Do any of you parents have any opinions on this?
We wouldn’t just teach them creative subjects if we home schooled them. We would give them a proper education but we slightly more creative subjects than you would in a mainsteam school.
ConnieManuel answers:
Im a headteacher at a high school and personally I favour kids going to school instead of homeschooling.
I feel that at school you learn a little about a lot of subject, and then children can make an informed decision about what they want to do.
And Academic Studies are important even for creative achievements for example how mathematics influences music with chord structure, scales and sequences, or how English helps song writers. Physics and the structure of Colour helps Artists.
I feel that all subjects tend to overlap slightly and that school is the best place to get a well rounded education form several teachers who each specialise in their own subject.
What if you home schooled you kids, and then they decided they wanted to be a Doctor.
At school they can choose their own path.
My 16 year old daughter wants to be a musician, she is a brilliant Flautist, and is intending to Study Music and Music Theory in 2 years at University, but to get in she need to pass 4 highers at least and for them to include Maths as well as Music
Robert asks…
wat skills are needed to design a Airplane?
Can u tell me wat skills are need to design a Airplane..
aerodynamics, structures, controls, mechanisms, and possibly engine design and anyother??
And will a Master degree in Aeronautics give me those skills to design one??
i want to apply that to design a propeller based single seat airplane…
Well i know i need a mechanical engineer to build it…I have my friend a mechanical engineer…but the start is from designing it aerodynamics n etc….
plzz help me
ConnieManuel answers:
Being a mechanical engineer would certainly help. Being a Masters in Aeronautics would also be very helpful and would most certainly give you the skills to design a basic plane if not more.
There are plenty of designers out there who are self taught. Look at Chris Heintz of Zenith aircraft which is one of the most successful small kit plane designers and manufacturers. A lot of this you learn by working with another designer. Mentorship is almost always better than formal education. Of course you need to have some smarts to begin with, so a degree especially in engineering would make you a more likely candidate for some aircraft designer to take you under their “wing”, (no pun intended)
One of the best ways to learn aircraft design is to start by building remote controlled model aircraft. It will give you a natural feel for the forces holding a plane in the air, how structure and light weight have trade offs, how chord and wing length effect lift , center of balance in a plane etc. When you fly a RC plane you are actually working the flight surface controls and will get a feel for how yaw, pitch and torsion all effect the plane.
If you ever saw that old movie with Jimmy Stewart in it, I think it was called “The Flight of the Phoenix”, you will see that the plot revolves around a pilot crashing a plane out in the desert with about 10 passengers on it.There is no hope of being found in the desert since they are way off course because of a sand storm. A plane designer happens to be one of the passengers. He draws up plans to take the wrecked twin engine plane and rebuild it by tearing off one wing and centering both wings around one engine with no fuselage. The passengers are to lay down on the wing and just hold on to some bars and hopefully the one engine plane will fly them to survival. Everything is fine until the Captain of the Plane (Jimmy Stewart) learns that the plane designer isn’t one of the designers from Boeing or McDonnell Douglas, but that indeed he is a model plane designer. The Captain says he isn’t going to let some toy maker take the life of his passengers with some childish untried design. The model plane designer reminds him that there is no other options, and the plane will work. He goes on to explain how all the structure and powerplants and aerodynamics of a small model plane are identical in scale to the big planes.
He even insults the pilot by reminding him that when they design models they have to design them without pilots which takes more precision and reminds him that it was pilot error that made the plane crash.
But anyway, you don’t need a Masters in Aerospace to be proficient at design. You can get a magazine called Kit Airplanes, which gives a lot of information and even has ads for courses that are specific to aircraft design and especially small aircraft. You might even find someone looking for help in building their kit airplane as there is lots of classified ads in the back giving lots of info and merchandise about kit airplanes.
I myself took a few courses from Kent State University which has a pilots license bachelors program so in the College of Physics and Technology there were courses in airframe design, aerodynamics and power plant design. All these courses were very helpful in getting a foundation in understanding what keeps a plane in the air. But building and flying model airplanes really gave me a much better feel for how small movements of the rudder and aileron controls make major changes to flight stability. It teaches you center of gravity of a plane and compensating for changes in the center. You can monitor performance with bigger engines and winglets and other modifications in perfect safety and scale. Just like Flight of the Phoenix, if you can keep a model airplane in the air, chances are real good that you can keep a big one in the air
Maria asks…
what do you think is…?
stephen spielberg’s purpose to film the movie Schindler’s list?
ConnieManuel answers:
Schindler’s List: Meaning and Motive Within the Film
by writecorner, Mar 7, 2009
Driven by motives neither pure nor simple, the characters of Shindler’s List challenge each other and their audience to weigh their intentions versus actions and outcome. Yet the grim scenario, namely using modes of death to preserve life, is as compelling concept in cinematography.
“The List is life.” Those are the words spoken by Schindler’s accountant and right-hand man Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) as he holds the completed list of names of Jewish prisoners Schindler is attempting to rescue from the death camps. In a cinematic story set in an era filled with death and despair, images of life in Schindler’s List transcend the grim statistics as if they, too, ar survivors. Director Stephen Spielberg doesn’t omit reminders of the horror: the piles of bodies ready for incineration, the scenes of brutal murders involving helpless victims. But the charisma of Schindler himself, played by Liam Nieson, defies the atmosphere of death which surrounds himself and his Jewish workers. The brief, intimate glimpses into the lives of these workers–watching their progress throughout the movie as they are rounded up, forced into labor, shipped off to camp, and retrieved by Schindler–make them symbols of life in contrast to the doomed masses.
Schindler’s motives are monetary to begin with, including his deals with the Jewish community to obtain their property for his growing business plan in exchange for (less valuable) goods for bartering on the black market. Itzhak agrees to help him with his business venture, and uses the platform to recruit workers and forge work papers in order to save the lives of Jews doomed to the gas chambers. Schindler’s factory of enamelware, emphasizing military supplies and kitchenware among its many uses, is structured to maximize Schindler’s profits–hence the employment of cheap Jewish labor and the deals with the black market operatives. Schindler’s interaction with others, while charming and friendly, is distant in terms of emotional interaction. He is estranged from his wife, keeps most friends on the basis of political and business needs, and his most sincere relationship seems to be with Itzak the accountant.
Schindler is not without human affection for life however; his interest in the human aspect of war and business grows as his life grows more intertwined with those of his workers. He toasts Itzhak at one point during the movie and tells the offended Itzhak “I’m trying to thank you.” His regard for Itzhak is great enough that he rescues him from being shipped to the death camp, helps him barter to stay alive in the camps, and even tries to gain his freedom from the Nazis camp at one point. Despite his obvious concern for his Itzhak‘s welfare, he maintains the business presence in almost every scene. Upon rescuing Itzhak from the Nazi train, he declares in gruff business-like tones, “What if I got here five minutes later? Then where would I be?”
The images of death only spur Schindler to save life. The girl in the red coat who is driven out of the ghetto and later burned along with other corpses which mark the Nazi’s brutality, strikes a chord in Schindler’s heart. The one-armed worker callously assassinated by a group of Nazi soldiers is aggressively defended as “an essential worker” by Schindler in a German office one day later, even though he himself had questioned the man’s usefulness prior to the incident.
The casual and business-oriented attitude with which Schindler regards the war serves to keep death at bay for the lives depending on him. He negotiates for their lives with a German officer explaining that he needs those workers in particular because of their experience working under him. He seems bored by the story Itzhak shares about the hinge maker in the factory facing a grim fate, but gives Itzhak a lighter with which to barter for the man’s life. When a young woman begging for him to save her parents declares that his factory is “a haven” and declares “everyone says so,“ Schindler grows angry over her claims and rants that such a reputation is dangerous. Yet he sends for the woman’s parents as additional workers to the factory. When the young girls are torn away from their mothers at a concentration camp by German officers who refuse to return them to Schindler’s factory because they are too young to be useful, Schindler intervenes and saves them from certain death “for business purposes.” He declares authoritatively to the soldiers that their small hands are perfect for polishing the insides of shell casings as he claims the children for the factory. “How else am I to polish them?” he asks the soldiers.
“You know the meaning of the word ‘gratitude’. That it’s not some vague thing with you as it is for the rest of us,“ Goeth, the arrogant German officer, says of Schindler at one point during the film. Schindler understands gratitude initia
Sandra asks…
Monism and Islam…..?
I have 1 slide of a powerpoint to do.. It has to do do with islam and Monism,
Any ideas how they’re connected?
ConnieManuel answers:
(30:22) And of His Signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth and the diversity of your tongues and colours. Indeed there are Signs in this for the wise.
That is, “Although your vocal chords are similar, and there is no difference in the structure of the mouth, the tongue and the brains, yet people speak different languages in different regions of the world. Even in the regions where the same language is spoken different dialects are spoken from city to city and from town to town. Moreover, the accent and pronunciation and the style of speech of every person is different from the other. Similarly, although the semen and the formula of your physical structure is the same, yet your colours are so different that, nations apart, even the colour of the two sons of the same parents is not exactly the same. In this verse, attention has been drawn only to two aspects, but if one looks around one will notice an unite variety everywhere in the world. One will find countless differences in the species of man, animal, plants and other things in spite of the basic uniformity in their different members; so much so that no member of the species is exactly identical with the other. Even the two leaves of a tree are not exactly alike. This shows that the world is not a factory in which automatic machines might be working and turning out things in mass production bearing the stamp of their own separate species. But in this factory there is a Master-Artist at work, Who gives individual attention to everything and produces it on a new design with new embellishments and proportions and qualities, and everything thus produced is unique in its own way. His inventive genius is turning out a new model of everything every moment, and His creative power abhors repeating the same design the second time. Anyone who sees this wonderful phenomenon with open eyes, can never be involved in the foolish misconception that the Maker of the universe has gone to sleep after having made it go. This is, on the contrary, a clear proof of the fact that He is ever engaged in His creative activity, and is giving individual attention to each and everything in His creation.
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