Throughout the early months of school, students in Mr. Lee's Newtown High School music classes have been creating and talking about music in myriad ways. In Harmony and Composition I, students have sharpened their active listening skills, building a rich lexicon with which to explain the musical world around them. In AP Music Theory, our young composers have laid the groundwork for 4-part chorale writing, a pedagogical practice that dates back to Mozart and earlier. Meanwhile, as Jazz Improvisation students have developed their blues and scale vocabularies, Music Technology classes have employed a technique called "vertical layering" to create interactive video game scores. The musical universe is a diverse one indeed!
Here's a Venn diagram (from Harmony and Composition I) through which students explored key distinctions and similarities between classical and popular genres of music. (Of course, we were speaking in broad generalizations and found that any discussion of musical style and genre will invariably reveal many exceptions and ample "gray area.") |
And here are snippets of video game scores from Music Technology 1 and 2. Each student used the pentatonic pitch collection and their sense of rhythm to create a multilayered fabric of musical texture, much like the looping soundtracks of blockbuster video games.
New music for Super Mario Brothers - Underworld (excerpt)
Thomas Jensen
Thomas Jensen
New music for Rayman Legends (excerpt)
Jetson Ku
Jetson Ku
New music for Super Mario Brothers - Overworld (excerpt)
Kyle Vitolo
Kyle Vitolo