IB Music HL HELP.

[kremlingrease]

i'm on the second year of IB, and I take music as a higher level subject. it was going pretty well until my experienced music teacher had to resign from our school last december. so now, more or less 3 months away from the exams, AND i have not started (and quite clueless) about my musical investigation AND how to prepare for the paper. my current music teacher is clueless about IB (he read the IB syllabus guide and claims i have to make 10 compositions?!) i know the syllabus well and i am aware that more or less i have to struggle myself.

there is no way of cheating as well, but i want to ease things up a little bit.

so here's my question.

are there any relatively easy music pieces i can use for my investigation? i was told to analyse a indonesian gamelan with a classical piece. i find it quite hard, as i am not that aware of the gamelan....

how do you prepare for the paper? this includes the prescribed works as well as the listening paper.

any kind of advice are very much needed.

thanks!

[Mitali]

You cannot prepare for it. Its all about luck.

[supitselwin]

Wow. Ok. I'm taking music SL, but I'll try to help as best I can.

For musical links investigation, it's a 2000 word paper intended to be presented in some kind of media form, such as a blog post, website etc. and is basically a research paper on the links of 2 distinct musical cultures you've chosen. These two musical styles should be independent in that one should not have influenced the other, for e.g African music and Blues because African music was highly influential to Blues music and hence would not make for a good investigation.

I can try to give you some help on gamelan music as I am doing it for my musical links investigation. Personally, I am doing gamelan and African music. The main features of gamelan music are:

Cyclic rhythms / patterns (Gongan)

Heterophonic texture

Pentatonic / heptatonic scales (Slendro and Pelog respectively)

Ostinatos

3 types of gamelan: Balinese, Javanese & Sudanese

Personally, I don't think it would be easy to do an essay of similarities between western classical and gamelan music as many of the main characteristics of the two are different. Perhaps you could consider other music cultures / styles that has some of the above characteristics (perhaps Indian or African?)

My teacher advised us to focus on two main links to analyse for the essay, so make sure you have 2 solid links between the different genres before you choose it. Make sure you get one piece from each style, from music libraries or online sources like Youtube. For in depth analysis, you may want to transpose parts of the piece to illustrate what you're trying to show in the links. Also make sure to refer to specific times in each piece, for e.g, at 4'33", ......

Definitely use your local library for more detailed / accurate research and background info on each musical culture and to give your essay more credibility.

Composition: I don't think you need to compose 10 pieces. The ibo music course brief I found online states you need "three pieces of 3 to 6

minutes in length choosing from a wide range of styles and media, including traditional instruments, voices and/or music technology, and reflect on their understanding".

Preparing for the actual exam:

Prescribed work: Listen to it as often as you can! Put it on your iPod or something and just listen to it when your out and about. This will get you more familiar with the tune and when you're at home, listen to it in detail, following the score. Annotate important parts of the score, such as key changes, structure and features that are characteristic of the genre the music is in. What are your prescribed pieces? If they are the same as mine, I could help you in more detail. In the exam, it is likely you will be given questions asking what features makes the piece part of a certain genre, and possibly comparing the 2 prescribed pieces.

Listening paper: You'll need to learn the features and important terms for each genre that the course includes. I'm not sure about the full list of possible genres, but as far as I know they are:

Western music: Baroque, classical, romantic, 20th century, minimalism, neo-classicism & other 21st century genres, blues and jazz

World music: Indian, gamelan, Chinese, Japanese, African

In the exam, you should choose 2 musical elements to analyse, from SHMRG (Structure, Harmony, Melody, Rhythm & Growth). Refer to the piece when answering (time or bar no.). For pieces that they do not give the title, composer or origin, you will need to use your analysis to answer in your conclusion which musical culture this music comes from by identifying the features of that music genre found in the piece.

I can't believe you've been stuck with that much work this close to the exam! You should be outraged at your school...

If you need more help, I'll try my best.

Good luck.

[kremlingrease]

thank you so much for the pointers on gamelan. it helped a lot.

but guess what.

i am about to fail. apparently now my teacher gave up on me, and decided to leave the school.

i am all alone for the second time, and i have no supervisor for my musical investigation.

so far i have got a piece for the gamelan music called 'ladrang wilujeng', and the oh-so-responsible teacher was so persistent on comparing it with a classical music (Debussy, but we all know he studied the gamelan, and somewhat influenced a plethora of other musicians with a similar sound. so i guess i can't use one of his piece...?)

i tried indian music, like ravi shankar but i'm quite loss with the structure of indian music.

my IB coordinator is only giving me 2 more weeks to complete this.

otherwise...well.

good bye my future.