Music - Performance Portfolio

19 February 2019

Who Inspires You?

As a musician and performer inspiration is one of the building blocks of being creative. Inspirations come in many different ways, but the musicians that inspire me is Hayley Williams from Paramore and Charlie Puth.

Hayley Williams is the lead vocalist, primary songwriter, and occasional keyboardist of the rock band Paramore. The band debuted an album in 2005, All We Know Is Falling when Hayley was just 16 years old at that time. However, after two years Paramore released their next album Riot! with the 'breakthrough' song Misery Business.

Hayley Williams really inspire me as a junior musician because she's been in the music industry when she was still 16! Recently Paramore got praise through their latest album After Laughter getting out of their shell/comfort zone as a rock band. Longtime fans didn't expect this album being a pop-rock, synth-pop, and power pop album coming from a well-known rock band.

Charlie Puth is an American Singer, Producer, and Songwriter. Charlie Puth's initial exposure and got viral began from him mainly uploading his stuff on YouTube. One of his most famous work is One Call Away, Marvin Gaye and a soundtrack for Fast and the Furious See you Again. 

Charlie Puth inspires me as a junior musician because he does most of his songs all by himself like instruments, beats and vocals. I follow him on Instagram and he posts sneak peek stories of his upcoming albums. The way he produces his music is the way I'd like to produce mine too.

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Progress on Year 11 1.2 Art History

February 25, 2019

Here, is my current progress for Year 11 1.2 Art History assessment. I'm currently doing an artwork by Shepard Fairey known as the Hope poster. Below is an attached screenshot of my document. What I'd love to improve on my writing is to find more description from interviews of Shepard Fairey about the art.

Bright yellow means description.
Orange means interpretation.

Creative Writing (Describe the place)

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Much of Holden’s trek around the city takes place in the Upper West Side—at the Plaza Hotel, the Museum of Natural History and Central Park—and many of his descriptions of New York remain accurate to the way the city looks today.

From the book: “I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go? I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away.”

(source: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/24/book-photos_n_4987041.html)

My version: "New York. Land of the free, but are we really free? Surrounded by tall buildings full of workers sitting on their butts for a long amount of time in front of their computers. Then just outside—still busy—hundreds or even thousands of furious cars drive through the main streets of NYC combusting ton of carbon, which doesn't help to solve climate change by the way. 

I live here, a local. I can see the lagoon in Central South Park while I was looking throughout my window—on the 24th floor to be exact—but I was wondering... If this lagoon froze over time when I've finished work, where would the ducks go? Ironically bodies of water are duck's natural habitat, so where would they go? I'm curious if someone comes from the city council and collect all of them to be somewhere safer or something, or if they just go away as a flock?"

Photo by Denis Jr. Tangney via Getty Images

Music - Group Performance

12 February 2019

1. Your song choice and explain why you chose this song?

-  We chose the song Lost In Japan - Shawn Mendes. We chose this song because we decided to pick a song that is pretty new so all of us could relate to it and learn the lyrics fast.

2. Who you are working with and what is each person?

- I'm working with a pretty big group. It consists of 5 people who are Alyana, Braxton, Cameron, Tina, and Hillary. Cameron is our pianist, Braxton is our bassist, Me as the drummer then Tina and Hillary are mainly with vocals. But all of the instrumentalists can do some vocals too.

3. What is the song about (research) and find out the original composer? 

- There are some interpretations that Shawn wrote this song in connection with his past few songs such as Treat You Better, There's Nothing Holding Me Back, and etc. These songs are all about Shawn being loyal, invested, and in love with a person. But Shawn said in an interview that he had this dream that he was lost in a country and of course as an artist, singer, and musician- he had a piano in the room and decided to play it and the backbone/soul of the song was born. He also mentions that this song was inspired by Justin Timberlake. However, the song was composed/written by Shawn Mendes, Scott Harris, Nate Mercereau, and Teddy Geiger with production handled by Mendes, Mercereau, Geiger and Louis Bell. The song was released by Island Producer. Zedd (German/Russian DJ)  also did a remix of this song.

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19 February 2019

1. What are you finding challenging about this song?

- I find copying the drum patterns of the song. Because most of the time (especially on the intro) the drums weren't acoustic but electric drum pads instead. I also want to add some fills to give it a little flavour that I find kind of hard to copy.

2. What is your rehearsal goal for this work?

- My goals for this work is to practice and practice before our performance.

- Always check in with my groupmates if my drumming fits the whole group.

- Try stuff that are out of my comfort zone.

Similes and Metaphors

In your own words, what is a metaphor?

We all know that metaphor is a part of the descriptive figures of speech, however, metaphor describes someone or something but with a deeper explanation. It gives examples that are harder to interpret, most of the time it doesn't have a connection with the thing that they're describing. It also makes the reader picture/imagine the metaphor.

Example: 

Her eyes were fireflies. 

(Eyes don't have a connection with fireflies, but it makes you picture it in your head. You're imagining someone with sparkling beautiful eyes like fireflies)

He wanted to set sail on the ocean of love but just wasted away in the desert.

(The ocean and the desert are complete opposites)

In your own words, what is a simile?

Same as with metaphor, simile is also a part of the descriptive figures of speech but we use simile to describe something by comparing it. Most of the time we tend to use two words with similes like and as to make the comparison.

Example: 

The athlete was brave as a lion

The truth was like a bad taste on his tongue

Similes and Metaphors in Songs

Dangerous woman - Ariana Grande

 "Something 'bout you, makes me feel like a dangerous woman

something 'bout, something 'bout you"

Best Part - Daniel Caesar

"You're the coffee that I need in the morning

You're the sunshine in the rain when it's falling

Won't you give yourself to me, give it all, oh"

Paramore - Misery Business

"She's got a body like an hourglass that's ticking like a clock
It's a matter of time before we all run out
When I thought he was mine, she caught him by the mouth"

Taylor  Swift - Blank Space

"You look like my next mistake
Love’s a game, want to play?
New money, suit and tie
I can read you like a magazine
Ain't it funny, rumors, lie
And I know you heard about me"

Soundtrack Of My Life

Design Ideas: Year 11 Art

The first day of school, and first day in senior school, we were asked to view some of the artists that we could use as our inspiration for our work. I particularly chose Propaganda / Anti-establishment and I also chose 2 artists on the topic; Barbara Kruger and Shepard Fairey.

Barbara Kruger has an iconic font that she uses with her designs/photos. She significantly uses Futura Bold colour white and with a colour red backdrop with her texts to draw attention. Most of her works are all about feminism and body shaming. However, Shepard Fairey's topics are more all about politics and war.

Nevertheless, what inspires me to do this topic? What is/are my whys? I think the things that is currently happening in our generation such as, war, politics, and climate change inspires me to do this topic. Adults may not see it but us youths, there's something that always urges us to make a change in some area that we know we can make things a little bit better for everyone. And in order to reach out to other people is to make designs and art that could speak to them visually.

Shepard Fairey's controversial work of art in LA. Some Korean residents were offended with this work because of the symbolism behind the rays which is similar to the Japanese Imperial flag.

This is an example of Barbara Kruger's work of art. She uses black and white photos to make the text pop, draw attention and make the writing more dramatic. She also makes her texts in bold.

Shepard Fairey

Barbara Kruger