Week 14 - Schubert's Finished Symphony
Honestly, the content in the above video is quality. Some of it would be perfect on a MMus welcome video presentation. It really captures what fine reflective professional musical practioners we are becoming (1:15:34-1:17:38).
17th May Face to Face Meeting 12:00pm-4:00pm
Our challenge was simple this session... start working out what on earth we were doing in the 2nd movement.
It's so fascinating this session in fact that if you were to press any point on the timeline then you would find us (in most cases) not doing anything directly related to the task of getting together the 2nd movement.
One of the biggest achievements in our four hour session (the video only captured the first half) was to constrain ourselves to the whole tone scale in the second movement due to it's unstable feel. That was pretty much it.
Why Schubert's Finished Symphony? Well at (1:33:51-1:46:47) I get to the point where I start to create a fusion between my comfortable competancies in classical symphonic music and the uncomfortable feeling of not knowing where to progress with this project. I noticed that Peer B's motif heard earlier uses the B Minor pattern so I associated that to the 1st Movement of the Unfinished Symphony. Trying to fit it together did provide some interesting results, not entirely relevant to the project but it did give me some potential starting avenues for other projects that I was working on (eg Digital Improvisation). It was better than doing nothing at all!
So yeah... that was it... nothing to see but just three MMus students singing Hallelujah and trying to finish an Unfinished Symphony.
... I'm not going to be defeated like that... surely there must be positives in this. Remember...
'Value everything, especially things that are least acceptable'
Even at this late stage of collaboration - it's important to take the smaller wins (two mentioned below) as they can still boost the morale of a group, even when it's low... it's still progress! With valuing everything, the session above did give us plenty of information. Information of what things don't work within the context of the project, which is equally valid and important as things that do work. It means that we don't have to go over another drum patch, another motif or another guitar setup as we head closer to the deadline - providing we remember what doesn't work and document it all!
One thing that Peer A did do this week was tidy up the hieroglyphics he wrote a few weeks ago into a score that was tidier and more useful. I did want to make some further suggestions (as I'm not a huge fan on using Microsoft Word boxes for scores) but I figured that I could easily follow the score and so could everyone else - so it was an unnecessary criticism to raise, especially as everyone was so tired from other deadlines this week. To be honest, after looking at it a few times, I would find it difficult to find a way to make the important details clearer than they are!
I also organised two videographers from the Video Course in DMM to assist recording some shots next Sunday. I have worked with them before on previous projects and I knew that they would deliver some stunning shots that is worthy for this project. However, I didn't want them to create the video, just film - as that could have influenced a change in the group dynamics. Instead, I realised that it would a good opportunity for me to learn about video editing and would be something I can contribute postively to at the end of the project.
So overall, the group seemed to be optimisitic about the future. Despite the messing around this session and my initial disappointment - there were little wins and discoveries of what to avoid in future sessions. All things that all lead towards our common goal in this project (or my personal goal of changing the domain of musical collaboration!).
