Basic music theory

A staff is a most important part of every music sheet. It is made up by 5 horizontal lines as the following picture:

Notes will be put onto the staff and depends on the position of them on the staff, we can decide their names. For example, if we put a note on a second line counted from the bottom of the staff, this note will be G.

The next thing about notes is note values which are durations of specific notes. The following picture shows quite clearly about them.

A staff in music sheets is splitted by vertical lines. Each part of it is call a measure.

For example, in the above picture, all of the 3 staffs have 2 measures. The fraction number in the beginning of each staff is called the Time Signature. In the first staff, 2/4 means that the duration of each measure equals to the duration of 2 quarter notes. 3/4 time signature in the second one indicates that the duration of each measure equals to the duration of 3 quarter notes and so on.

There are also time signature with denominator which is not 4 such as 6/8. However, the meaning of them is the same except that we use eighth notes as a unit to measure instead of quarter notes. So, 6/8 means the duration of each measure in a staff equals to the duration of 6 eighth notes.

Reference:

• http://www.musictheory.net

Some common music genres

Pop music: “is a genre of popular music distinguished from classical or Art music and from folk music. The term indicates specific stylistic traits such as an emotional singing style, lyrics about love or sex, danceable beat, clear melodies, simple harmonies and repetitive structure so that people can catch on and join in.” (Wikipedia, 2006).

Some notable Pop music artists through periods:
1950s: Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra.
1960s: the Beatles, the Rolling Stones.
1970s: Elton John, Cher and the Carpenters.
1980s: Michael Jackson, Madona
1990s: Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Jessica Simpson, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.
200s: Pussycat Dolls, Hilary Duff.

Funk is an African American music style which was started by artists such as James Brown, the Meters and the Family Stone. This genre became a distinct genre since 1970s. According to Wikipedia, “Funk music is characterized by intensely syncopated, danceable rhythms with the emphasis falling heavily on the first beat of every measure; prominent bass lines; a distinctive, razor-sharp type of rhythm guitar; chanted or hollered vocals in the style of soul music; powerful, rhythm oriented horn sections; a strong emphasis on percussion, often including hand drums and other instruments as well as a drum kit; and African and jazz influences”. It was also believed that funk has influences on disco and hip hop genres which were developed later.

An artist which can represent to this genre is James Brown.

Disco is a music genre which is affected by Funk. At the first time, most of disco songs were created for nightclubs only (in the 1970s); but after that, they began to approach more common audiences such as radio listeners. The following list is some disco hits in the 1970s (Wikipedia):

Nelson James – “I Have An Afro” (1972)
Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes – “The Love I Lost” (1973) and “Bad Luck” (1975)
Love Unlimited Orchestra - "Love's Theme" (1973)
The Jackson 5- "Dancing Machine" (1973)
Barry White - "I'm Gonna Love You Just a Little More, Baby" (1973), "Can't Get Enough of Your Love,
Babe" (1974), "You're the First, the Last, My Everything" (1974)
Shirley & Company - "Shame, Shame, Shame" (1974)
The Hues Corporation - "Rock the Boat" (1974)
The Commodores - "Machine Gun" (1974)
Frankie Valli - "Swearin' To God (1975)
Dalida- "J'Attendrai" (the first French disco song and first hit in Europe) (1975)
LaBelle - "Lady Marmalade" (1974)
The Four Seasons - "Who Loves You" and "December '63 (Oh What A Night)" (1975)
Silver Convention - "Fly Robin Fly" (1975)
The Bee Gees - "Jive Talkin' " (1975)

Heavy Metal which began popular in the 1970s-1980s is a sub-genre of Rock. “It is characterized by guitar-and-drum dominated sound, strong rhythms and classical, bluesy or symphonic styles” (Wikipedia). Although the main theme of heavy metal songs is often about darkness and evil, they also has been divided in to sub-genres including thrash metal, death metal, black metal, power metal and doom metal (most of them was started in the 1980s).
Thrash Metal: characterized by faster, louder and more aggressive than the original one with notable artists including Anthrax, Megadeth, Metallica and Slayer (the 4 bands are also called the “Big Four Of Thrash” (Wikipedia).

Death Metal: is developed from thrash metal with fast drummers, high-pitch screaming and harsh metal vocal. Notable bands of this sub-genre are Nile and Suffocation.

Black Metal: was originated from Europe which has the theme mostly about Satan. Most black metal bands such as Mercyful Fate, Bathony and Celtic Frost often used shrieked vocals, dark atmosphere and highly distorted guitar.

References:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funk
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_metal
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_music
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

A free webpage to download music

In the previous 2 semesters, the only webpage I used to download music for my flash is http://freeplaymusic.com. However, when I was doing a flash about font, I looked for an opera song for my flash as my font was a Venetian Oldstyle font. But I couldn't find any coz the http://freeplaymusic.com only has general categories such as classical, jazz,...

So, I had to find another music download page and I found http://music.download.com. This page categorize its music much better with sub-categories for each general categories (e.g in the classical category, there are sub-categories about Classical guitar, Concerto, Medieval, Renaissance and more).

References:
http://freeplaymusic.com
http://music.download.com

Using mask in Flash

In this post, I will present a quite interesting example about masking in Flash. This technique changes a grayscale picture into a color one. I have used this technique is my font advertising assignment as well.

To begin, you need 2 pictures of the same thing, one in colors and one in grayscale. Then, each picture is put on a layer with the layer of the colored picture on top (in the .fla file, these 2 layeres are named "color picture" and "grayscale picture").

After that, you create a new layer which is on top of both "color picture" and "grayscale picture" layers and name it "mask". The next to do is drawing a small black circle in this layer and making a motion tween to make the circle's size be bigger than the scene's size. Finally, right-click on the "mask" layer and choose Mask.

Download .fla source file here

FreeFoto.com

I've just found a free image stock website on the internet. It's address is http://www.freefoto.com. This website has more than 100,000 images which are organized into 3043 categories. It is known as the largest collection of photographs for non-commercial purposes.

This is some pictures about Roma in this website.




References:
http://www.freefoto.com/preview.jsp?id=14-26-3&k=Trevi+Fountain%2C+Rome%2C+Italy
http://www.freefoto.com/preview.jsp?id=14-26-51&k=Trevi+Fountain%2C+Rome%2C+Italy

Centaur font research

Centaur was designed by Bruce Rogers in 1928. It was arranged in the Venetian category in the MyFonts website with Palatino, Vendetta, Stempel Garamond and more fonts.

About Bruce Rogers
Bruce Rogers (1870 - 1957) is a typographer, type designer, illustrator and artist. He used to train as an artist at Purdue College near Lynnwood. From 1894, he produced graphics for "Modern Art" magazine. 1915, he design the book "The Centaur" for Montague Press.. After that, he worked at different places such as Cambride University Press and Harvard University Press from 1920-1928, W.E.Rudge publishers from 1929-1931, Oxford University Press and Emery Walker in 1935.

Some of his publication: "Paragraphs of printing", "Bruce Rogers, a life in letters"

About Centaur font
In 1458, Charles VII sent the Frenchman Nicolas Jenson to learn the craft of movable type in Mainz, the city where Gutenberg was working. Jenson was supposed to return to France with his newly learned skills, but instead he traveled to Italy, as did other itinerant printers of the time. From 1468 on, he was in Venice, where he flourished as a punchcutter, printer and publisher. He was probably the first non-German printer of movable type, and he produced about 150 editions. Though his punches have vanished, his books have not, and those produced from about 1470 until his death in 1480 have served as a source of inspiration for type designers over centuries. His Roman type is often called the "first true Roman." Notable in almost all Jensonian Romans is the angled crossbar on the lowercase e, which is known as the "Venetian Oldstyle e."

Centaur which is designed by Bruce Rogers is a re-creation of the roman type cut by that Nicolas Jenson in the fifteenth century. The name Centaur was used because Bruce Rogers was used this font the first time for the book "the Centaur" by Maurice de Guérin, published in 1915. Lanston Monotype of London cut the commercial version of Centaur and released it in 1929. The Centaur Family Font is often used for book composition, headlines and elegant advertising pieces.

References:
www.myfonts.com

My social welfare poster

I chose the topic about ecouraging people to use public transportation. The bitmap image which was used in this poster is an image of empty seats in a bus at Ben Thanh market. Combined with the text about 11000 people die every year, this image shows one reason for the high traffic accidental rate is because people don't want to use buses. I used Photoshop to make the picture look like a hand-drawing picture with grayscale in other to create a sad mood for this piece.

Photomontage

This is my self portrait as a machine. I called this is a "MP3 maniac" picture because I combined components which are related to playing and storing MP3 music. For example: the eyes of the character were actually speakers, the head was cut from the IPod, the neck was the headphone plug and etc.

Social Welfare Posters

These are social welfare posters which I saw in Ho Chi Minh City's streets.

I really can't remember exactly where I saw this poster. It is somewhere near the Coop Mart Cong Quynh. This poster is telling people that selling women and children must be stopped.
The second poster which is about birth control is placed right in front of Tu Du hospital. The text in this poster basically means "Stop at 1 or 2 children for good raising"
This poster is on Nguyen Thi Minh Khai Street. It is a poster about environment. It tells people not to pollute the air.

And the last one is on Cach Mang Thang Tam Street. Its message is about avoiding antibiotic abuse.

Winston Smith's Montage Art

In this post, I'm going to show some of montage artworks of Winston Simith. These pieces were downloaded from his website www.winstonsmith.com. In this website, there are a lot of montages which are arranged into various categories based on their topics. These following ones are my favourite pieces.

The first one was entitled "Strange Bedfellows". In this montage, an elephant and a donkey are sleeping on the same bed which is full of money, and their back are faced against each other. As the elephant and the donkey are the symbol of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party - the two most powerful political parties in the United States, this picture made me think that Winston Smith was trying to draw the political background of the United States, politicians just try to compete to each other to protect and increase their own benefits.

The second piece is also interesting. The author has modified the Mona Lisa picture into a woman dressing like a rocker in the 1970s. This picture reflects the movement of youths in that period.
And the last montage is a quite familiar picture. It is the picture of the Jesus Christ dying on the crosswooden structure. However, the name of this piece is "In God We Trust" which is the motto of the United States. Moreover, the Cross was also combined from the US dollars. I don't quite understand what does piece mean but in his website, Winston Smith said that this montage is the art for dead Kennedys.

References:
http://www.winstonsmith.com/gallery/book3/big/strange.html
http://www.winstonsmith.com/gallery/book1/big/mona.html
http://www.winstonsmith.com/gallery/book1/big/idol.html

Business cards

These 2 following images are business cards which are done for my exercise in class. Both of them have the theme of red and white which quite fits with the SoundHoof logo. The logo and blocks of text were arrange in grids. At the first card, the contents are symmetric through the center while in the second one, most of text were put at the right area. The only thing that I'm not really satisfy with is the color of text expecially with the telephone number and email. I made words "Tel" and "E-mail" be bold to distinguish them with the phone number and the e-mail address, but they looks wrong. I still don't have a solution to fix this problem (I tried to change the color of these words but they still looks distracted).