In the first week we got into groups of 4-5. In our group, we have Mario, Maria, Tereza, Kalyani and I. We came up with 2 base ideas of creating a jungle, with animal noises, and a monkey with music made by 3 hybrids of monkeys. We decided to use the monkey idea for our whole project. We starting thinking of rough ideas on the art and music aspect of our project, for the music aspect, we decided to make the music online, all from monkey noises, and then edited on Mixcraft. We came to an agreement to get a 1 minute audio clip for our monkey, so 20 seconds for each person in the music role. For the art aspect, we sketched out our monkey, and annotated it, labeling how we would make each part of the monkey and what materials would be required. After this, we made a presentation to present to the class, we also peer evaluated the other presentations conducted by other groups. After our presentation, our peers gave us feedback on our presentation and a bit on our concept of our project, the teachers also gave our group feedback and we were marked on our presentation. The feedback helped improve our project and make it better.
We started experimenting with our project for the music aspect, between the music members, we all came to a conclusion and allotted ourselves with a different type of monkey from the choices of a gorilla, chimpanzee or a orangutan. I started going to the music room with my group, to use the computers, so we could use Mixcraft to create our own monkey music. I went on YouTube to find gorilla music, as I chose to work on the gorilla. I downloaded these different types of clips and made them all into Mp3 files, so I could use them in Mixcraft, I edited. cropped, chose different parts of the music and combined them to make music I think is good for my level and music that can fit into our sculpture. I changed the beat and the tempo of the clips to make it seem like electronic music, as I like the DJ and trap style of music. I tried to replicate a similar tone, while using monkey sounds. I gave suggestions to my group members, as they wanted some feedback on their music. We also looked at the progress of the art students and liked their creation.
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| My gorilla music clip, which is 20 seconds long. |
Week 5-6
I started showing my music to all my group members and they gave me their suggestions on the music I created, which I used to improve my music creation. I continued to enhance my music creation, I encountered a problem while working on the project. I wasn't able to remove spaces between clips, I wanted to crop the music clips to exactly where I wanted it, but the tool that changed the length of the audio was very inefficient, so I found the feature of removing space between clips, and my problem was resolved. We are going to now edit all of our 3 clips, which are around 20 seconds each and make them into a combined 1 minute clip, we will edit them in and mix different segments of the clips and make one good clip. After we completed our own music, we all came together and combined all of our music and put it into a minute music clip. We emailed and saved our personal music, and started a new mixcraft project, we downloaded jungle background music to support our music, and make it more interesting. We edited in small details, to make it sound interesting towards the audience that are listening to the music. We took my ending segment of my music and put it at the end of the clip, as it suited our 1 minute clip very well.
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| We combined our music to create a one minute clip. |
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| Tereza working on her mixcraft project. |
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| Maria working on her mixcraft project. |
After 7-8 weeks, our group completed the project based around different types of monkeys. The music aspect went well, we created our 1 minute clip, using different monkey noises. A jungle background music was combined as well to blend in with our monkey sound, as it sounded natural. The art part of the project was great, the monkey was created, with his eyes, made out of table tennis balls. The giant plastic water container was successfully used to put the organs of the monkey in, as well as the cables connected to the motor. Overall, everyone concentrated and remained on task, and worked efficiently, which resulted in the music being finished early.
We could have improved the music by making the background a bit unique, for the art side we could have got the motor to work properly, by checking before the project went o display. We could have found a different motor, as the one we currently had didn't work after it was hit. The LED aspect was amazing. but, if we found a way to get LEDs without using a power cable, so it would work without inconvenience.
