New sound project to be posted every Friday until the magazine release day
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Post by Haenah Kwon
Week 3: Battlefield
Video by Omar Fraire
Week 2: Nocturne No.5
A piece performed by Ailish McMahon
My name is Ailish (Its practically spelt phonetically – think “ail” as in “sail.”) I’m from Cork, Ireland and I’m a visiting international student at Wesleyan this semester. My home university is University College Cork (we call it UCC), where I am double majoring in music and math.
The piece of music I am playing in this recording is called Nocturne No. 5 in Bb Flat Major. It was written by an Irish composer called John Field. According to the Oxford Music Online Dictionary, a nocturne is “a 19th- century, Romantic piano piece of a slow and dreamy nature.” If any of you are into classical music, you might have heard of nocturnes by Chopin – he took the idea from Field, who invented them.
When I decided to learn to play this piece of music, during the first semester of my freshman year, I hadn’t really played many pieces “of a slow and dreamy nature” before. My favorite type of music is Baroque music (which is music from 1600 – 1750, roughly speaking), which is beautiful, but not at all “dreamy.” I wanted to step outside my comfort zone a bit, which is how I ended up following the scores of Field nocturnes while listening to them on Youtube.
This one caught my eye (or my ears?) for a few reasons. Before I’d even listened to the recording, I noticed the “cantabile” marking on the score, which means “to play with a singing tone.” I’d been singing with the UCC Choral Society since the beginning of the semester, having had no singing experience prior to that, and we’d just returned from a trip to Galway where we took part in a singing workshop. The “cantabile” marking made me smile, as it made me think of the friends I’d made and the enjoyment I’d found through singing with them.
As I listened, I could hear where the piano was breathing, the effort that it took to make each note sound beautiful, the waves of sound underneath the melody and the rise and fall of the melody itself.
I won’t make any more attempts to describe the music – if composers and musicians could accurately and completely describe what they wanted to say in words, we would have no need for music.
Week 2: Fireworks
A video By Caren Ye
In this video I took in Hachioji summer firework festival, I found the subtleness of the sound of firework in the distance and the voices from people talking near by very interesting. As the firework disappeared, the crowd also started to scatter around and the place became quite gradually. The beautiful thing in the firework festival is not only various kinds of firework, but also laughter and little talk from people who enjoyed their time viewing the beautiful firework and feeling happiness through their friends' accompanies.
Week 2: The World is on Fire
Sing-Along film by Yohei Okada
Week 1: coast to coast
An experimental short film by Wilson Lai
coast to coast//experimental from Wilson Lai on Vimeo.