Assignment :  

- Same idea as last week - Below you will see a template that you can choose to use, or not ! If you want to do your own thing, make sure to model it after the template so you finished product looks pretty much the same

There are 2 activities you will complete as you go along !

Activity #1 :  Research

This activity will deal with finding songs that have a specific number of instruments.  For example, you will have to find 2 examples of songs that have only 1 instrument. For each song you find, tell me what the instrumentation is. 

Example

• 1 Instrument:
  •  Song: Fur Elise  
  • Artist : Beethoven (seen last class)
  • Instrument : 1 Piano

Find examples for each of the criteria seen to the right -------------->>>>>>>>>>

Find examples that adhere to the following:  

1. 2 Songs with just 1 instrument (1a, 1b)
2. 2 Songs with 2 Instruments (2a, 2b) 
3.  2 songs with 3 instruments
4. 2 songs with 4 instruments
5. 2 songs with 5 instruments. 
6.  2 songs with more than 15 instruments . 

INSTRUMENTATION QUESTION #1:

HOW MANY INSTRUMENTS ARE THERE ?

• Lock this question in !!!
  
• This is something you should be asking yourself constantly while listening to music for class and just on your own ! It is a great exercise to try to separate the sounds / tones in your head .
  

Remember :There are NOT VERY MANY songs (Especially popular songs) that only have 1 instrument !  What we really like to hear is a combination of different instruments and sounds that come together and compliment each other ( hint: that is the definition of instrumentation!)

Are there JUST A FEW  instruments ,  or MANY ?

Listen to this example ------>>>>>>>>>

• can you picture it with the scene below ?
• can you hear the two different  sounds of the voice and guitar ? can you hear hem separately in your head ? 

Here's another Example of the same Instrumentation ----->>>>>

These are relatively easy instrumentations to wrap your hear around because: 

1. there are only 2 instruments 
2.  The instrument's (guitar/vocals)  tone/sounds are particularly different 

IF YOU REFER BACK TO OUR 2 IMPORTANT QUESTIONS CONCERNING INSTRUMENTATION FROM LAST CLASS , THESE ARE VERY SIMILAR 

1.  HOW MANY INSTRUMENTS ARE PRESENT
2. WHAT TYPES OF INSTRUMENTS ARE THEY 


^^^^ THIS IS WHAT WE ARE ALWAYS THINKING ABOUT IN REGARDS TO INSTRUMENTATION.  HOW MANY & WHAT ARE THEY ! ^^^^


SO....

Variables that make this exercise more difficult :

1.  Increase the Number of Instruments
2.  Vary the types of instruments we hear

Dian Krall - Fly me to the Moon
1. Piano
2. Voice ( female )
3. Upright Bass
4.  Drums
5. Guitar

The Roots - Jimmy Fallon Theme-------->>>>>
From Left to Right:  1. Electric Bass 2. Electric Keyboard 3. Tube 4. Saxophone (can't see instrument) 5.  Vocals / Singer 6. Trumpet (can't see instrument).  7. More Electric Keyboards  8.  Electric Guitar  9.  Auxiliary Percussion  10.  Drum Set

We can use a room full of people as an analogy here :

Take this kids lunch room for example .  Full of chattering and screaming and eating kids.... Lots of echo in the gym.... Utter Chaos

Imagine if you walked into this lunch room and I said:  " Ok, Now Close your eyes and tell me how many  people are talking in the room "
....
Wouldn't this be a difficult task ?  Why ? Because there are dozens of little voices happening at one time ... it's impossible to sift through them all !
Now imagine I say : "Now tell me what one of the conversations is talking about "
......
Difficult again right ? because there are so many different noises happening , they all have an effect of baffling and masking each other

Now imagine the same situation here :
****You are dropped in the room*****
"How many people are talking int he room " ?
"What are the people saying " ?

Much more manageable to answer in this situation , as there are only 5 people in the room ! Even if they are all talking, you can probably sift through them and count , or at least say ' more than 3 ' etc.  

Now finally here - the easiest of all - we could instantly answer there is 1 person talking and tell you exactly what they are saying - because there is no other noise pollution or to distract us from the 1 speaker

Now Let's bring our analogy full circle.  Compare the situations we just talked about with a room full of conversation to the pictures of performances below. Imagine again you are magiacally dropped in the room where each of these are taking place 

The picture on the LEFT is more comparable to the last room situation - where there is just 1 conversation happening, and everyone is listening in to just that (granted there are 2 instruments in this picture....)

• we can imagine listening to this and pinpointing right in on Adele's voice
• This would be an example of Thin or Sparse instrumentation

Now contrast that with the picture on the RIGHT.
This is much more akin to the first room situation , where there are multiple conversations happening in the room .
Here we have 16 instruments !!! all playing over top of eachother at the same time - imagine having to pinpoint just one of those !

• this would be an example of Thick or Dense Instrumentation
  

So  -  Let's start thinking of instrumentation of sort of sliding scale or spectrum of Thin ----->> Thick


Thin/Sparse/ ---------------VS--------------Thick/Dense/    
Simple                                                Complex      

Look at some of the instrumentations below , Thin/Sparse falling on the left, and Thick/Dense on the Right

Listening ...

• Take a Listen to the following examples which will go from Thick to Thin in instrumentation 
• As you are listening, think of the analogy about walking into a room and trying to pick out the different conversations  - but in this case the conversations are what each individual instrument is playing.  

1

2

3

4

?

Many !!

Activity #2 : Listening Exercise

Pick 10 songs you enjoy listening to  ( by different artists !) and analyze the instrumentation .

Analyze the instrumentation = answer our 2 big instrumentation questions

1. How Many instruments are there
2. What are the instruments

After doing this , can you make any observations? Are there any combinations of instruments, or instruments that pop up more commonly than others (if so, which ones and why) ?  Do more of your songs stick to one side of the dense --- sparse scale ? OR maybe its all over the place ? Do you think that instrumentation has any kind of effect on your tastes in music ?