Developments of Pop Music

musical development:

-relying on live performance and not sales
-censorship
-more electronic
-better percussion
-manufactured bands
-lyrics and song meaning
-production and quality
-accessibility of music
-voice auto tune
-multimedia recordings

In this task we analysed popular music from 1950 to 2010. We organised over 70 bands and artists into genera and decade. To do this we had to look a lot of them up because we didn't know who they are.  This task was helpful because it gave me a wider understanding of the different genres.  

Muse is an example of a band who has spanned over a decade and a half. there early albums were more rock and guitar based,  for example "showbiz" which was in 1999. However there more recreant albums like "the 2nd law", which was produced in 2012, have more electronic and dub step influences. It has become more aimed at popular music fans and not rock fans. Also the lead singer (matt Bellamy) has become worse at singing and cant hit the high notes any more. An example of a song from showbiz is the song "sunburn" which has piano and guitar and not much technology. Comparing this to the song "unsustainable" from the album the 2nd law which is a very electronic and



Showbiz - sunburn - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRYBvmehfWQ
The 2nd law - unsustainable - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uHiYQ0yYCk

Evaluation of Autumn Recital

James - Guitar
Sax - Vocals
Ed - Drums
Dan - Bass

I played Bass Guitar in a performance with three other people. James was on guitar, Sax was our singer and Ed was on Drums. Also in the final performance Kim supported us of the piano.  In the rehearsals We spent 2 weeks deciding what song we should play. this was a problem because it gave us less time to practice. In the rehearsals we decided to play "wrecking ball". originally we were going to play it in a reggae style and i make up a good reggae style bass line. However we decided not to play in this style at the end but i still played my bass line.         

Practice Diary Task 1

Section A - I play electric guitar and some acoustic fingerpicking. I have played guitar for 11 years but only really started taking it more seriously in the last 3 or 4 years. I can play guitar at around a grade 5 or 6 although i have not taken any grades. I have played in 4 bands so i have some experience playing in groups. I know pentatonic, major and minor scale shapes in most keys. I know all my major, minor, power and 7th bar chords.

Section B -  I practice for around half an hour every day. The structure of my practice is normally that i warm up with some scales and spider exercises. Then practice/learn songs for my bands or I learn stuff that i am listening to at the time. The things i want to improve on this year are my technical playing style and also songwriting with a group. I also want to do some guitar grades and try to get to grade 6 or 7.

Practice Diary Wednesday 4th November

In our music lesson today we carried on practising our cover of supersonic to improve I need to improve my dexterity on the bass in order to play a more complex rhythm and get a higher mark. Also I have to think of a slightly better bass melody for the chorus because the one i am playing at the moment is very simple. In my own practices i started to learn many of honour by Biffy Cliro. I is a finger picking style and is fairly easy however the picking pattern is fairly unusual and was the most difficult part to get the hang of. Then I started practising some improvised guitar solos to backing tracks. i stayed inside the pentatonic scale however added some Dorian notes to make my solo more interesting and make it a slightly different style. this helps me to improve my improvisation and it makes me more aware of the different techniques available to me when I'm improvising. I still need to continue with with in order to make my playing more fluent and natural. 

Practice Diary Monday 2nd November

In todays lesson i have done more practice with my group of our cover of wrecking ball. I had to think of a new bass melody because i had forgotten the old one that i was playing. This was hard because i don't normally play bass and i am not used to it. To stop this i should probably write down what i am playing so that i can remember. I had to work in my faster scale runs on bass because i find them a bit of a challenge. Next time we will continue practising the song in order to improve on fluidity and making it sound good. At home I started to practice stress on the sky by biffy cliro on guitar. The chords are very simple however its in 3/4 time signature and the rhythm is hard to learn because it almost feels like the last chord comes in randomly but it doesn't.