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I have reflected at some point of the process before. I will put them together in the post, because they are more qualitative than if I start a new reflection now.
I am glad that we were able to finish the product one day before the due date, and actually worked together harmonically after days of argues.

I am not very satisfied with the texture and harmony of the piano and the lead. The lead is too distorted, not the sound, but the pace between each change of chord is quite long that makes the song sounds dry. The left hand of the piano was also repetitive. I should have applied diverse rhythms than just two.

The most constructive feedback for us right now would be the construction of the song: there is always no climax or impressions in it. Rika plays the chord once only before every change, so if she can strum more continuously, the performance is definitely better.

I think we did a good job in fusing the instrumental of the song. The instruments, from a traditional Japanese shamisen, have changed to a modern classical instrument piano and a metallic sounded lead. The fusion will not be as clear as if we fused Nada Sou Sou into a complete different genre, but to an extent, we have achieved some parts of the requirements.

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My first impression was, oh, this is a good EDM song. The diverse electronic instrumental builds up an overall grained but clean texture that entertains EDM lovers. However, the first part is distorted: the transitions between loops are not fluent. One can easily tell the dry swift between an upbeat funky drum beat and an accelerated rock beat. As the song continues, more than two loops are mixed together, and the music slowly grooves. Towards the end of the piece, they have made a beautiful mashup of instruments.

Harmony is developed in parallel with the structure. From crooked and short in the first 40 seconds to harmonic and grooving, the song is constructed as slices rather than the common texture of layers. The opening was mild with a regular rhythm, not powerful and strong like a normal EDM. This is perhaps interpreted as a sign of fusion of a calm and traditional genre with a dynamic and explosive genre as EDM, hinted to the audience at the beginning. There is no crescendo throughout the song as expected; the music is consistent in dynamic.

However, the song is off beat. The piano melody is too slow to the rapid tempo of the EDM base. The parts would have made a good solo by themselves, but when they are put together, everything sounded oddly disconnected. Some notes of the piano part are wrong, and its volume is too small to hear among the loud EDM strumming. Therefore, the original song is not fused much. The altogether song is just basically an EDM base with a piano melody in it.

The song can be improved be changing the instrument that plays the melody, from piano to an electric instrument such as lead or bass. The piano sounds very distorted and low, which drags the explosive nature of the music down. Being in time with the music is also very important to consider.

I adore the effort they have put into the project, because it is very hard to fuse a traditional Chinese into something as modern as EDM. The differences they have to deal with are not just the unsteady beat and tempo, but as well the original music of the song that might be misunderstood if fused. Mom taught me to be optimistic :)
I would give them a 6 for this project, because of the effort they put into, and the really EDM base.

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shared with Mr. Graham via Drive
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7tIxum7-R3ZeVpEZ3RvWTFycDQ

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The element of music that we chose to fuse is the instrumental of the song. Because the main instrument of Enka is the shamisen, which is not learnt widely nowadays, we decide to make a cover of the song on the piano and add some features of the lead guitar in to create the mixture between two different modern genres. Piano is played by many people, therefore we think that if the song is played on a classic Western instrument, the beautiful melody of the song will attract more interest from the audience, and they will start to know about Enka more.

The melody is still kept, because it is what makes the song recognizable to Japanese.

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We recorded the performance today. Although we had to spend half and hour to record a single video (technical problem and Rika wanted everything to be beautiful without the interfere of editing), we finally made it.
I am glad that we were able to finish the product one day before the due date, and actually worked together harmonically after days of argues.
However, I am not very satisfied with the texture and harmony of the piano and the lead. The lead is too distorted, not the sound, but the pace between each change of chord is quite long that makes the song sounds dry. The left hand of the piano was also repetitive. I should have apply diverse rhythms than just two.
But the best thing was that, Rika finally didn't just give up easily when something went wrong. You can see parts where she suddenly stopped because she forgot the chord progression, but she had the courage to catch up and continue the rest flawlessly. I'm happy for that. :)

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The greatest achievement of today is definitely the discover of the similarities between guitar and piano by us!
We thought that because the chords on the piano and the guitar are different, thus the notes have to different as well. However, it turned out that the chords and the notes are not really related. The chords can be three tones different, but the notes are still the same. The F on the piano is the same as the F on the guitar. So Rika basically can use my piano notes on her lead. The attached image is the arranged for guitar I wrote down before. But now, since the notes sound the same, we don't have to use it anymore.
The practice is going quite well, Rika and I were able to put together more than half of the song - until the beginning of the instrumental break - already. The transition from verse 1 to the break, although was fast, Rika managed to handle it. But from the break to verse 2, she needs an extra 4 beats to catch up.
The most constructive feedback for us right now would be the construction of the song: there is always no climax or impressions in it. Rika plays the chord once only before every change, so if she can strum more continuously, the performance is definitely better.
But I'm glad we have tried to "teamwork" as much as we could.
I think we did a good job in fusing the instrumental of the song. The instruments, from a traditional Japanese shamisen, have changed to a modern classical instrument piano and a metallic sounded lead. The fusion will not be as clear as if we fused Nada Sou Sou into a complete different genre, but to an extent, we have achieved some parts of the requirements.

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Since the goal to the product was decided over the break, we started to practice very quick today.

The structure of the song will be
- An intro by me (piano)
- Verse 1 with piano playing the melody, lead playing the power chords
- An instrumental break with lead repeating the last four bars of the song. It is basically the same as the intro, but on another instrument. I believe the distorted and metallic sound of the lead will create a sense of metal rock to the song, and alters the genre of the performance. If we chose to play the piano with a vocal singing alongside, the product would be very much the same as the original version on the shamisen (Japanese guitar). But when there is more than one instrumental of different genres in it, the song is fused more modernly.
- Verse 2, which is the same as verse 1. One of the requirement for the performance is to be approximately 2 minutes, so we want to repeat the verse twice to build up the layers and construct a tension to the song.

Rika has found the chords for her lead, there was something interesting with the chords. Although the chords on the piano and on the lead are not the the same (piano starts with F, lead starts with D), when they are played together, the pitch completely matches. This means that the chords for the lead will always be three tones lower than they are on the piano.

With that knowledge, we applied the same rule on the notes - decreasing the notes three tones lower. I spent five minutes rearranged the notes for Rika because she will need it for her solo in the instrumental break.

Rika improved a lot after break, so we could put the first two sentences of the verse together this lesson. We will meet up during the weekend for more practice, and the video is planned to be shot on either Monday or Tuesday next week.

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- Power chords and genre "controversies"
- Seriously talked about the fusing genre
- I came up with the idea of changing the genre into blues because Rika didn't want to continue the power chords. But the idea, after some considerations, didn't seem to a wise choice. If we just decide to change everything just because there is a check on Wednesday, our product would be nowhere to finish. Instead, we should stick with what we have for now, any further changes will be discussed after.
- However, honestly, the only reason why Rika said she wanted to change into blues because she didn't try hard enough. And I do not really agree with her on this.
- Finally decided to perform the piano/vocal version on Wednesday.
- Asked Rika to practice the power chords with her guitar teacher.

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- Figure out the chords on the guitar.
- Because the chords on guitar that Rika found uses capo 3, and there is no capo on the piano, I thought that perhaps I have to go 3 semitones lower from her starting chord (D) to match with her. However, after a few trials and the sound still didn't seem right, I had to try every chord around that key.
- The problem was finally solved when I resumed with my original chords, which starts with F. It turned out that when the capo in on 3 for guitar, piano should as well go up 3 semitones from the guitar first chord.
- Asked Rika about her practice with the power chords because we need to hurry up before the field trip and break weeks.

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- Rika wasn't here today, and I had to leave at 2:15 for the musical preview, so there was not much progression today.
- Trying to learn the lyrics while playing the piano, which was so hard.

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- Mr. Graham suggested us to do the power chords, a rock element. He said that playing the song on the piano would sound very similar to the original version, so we should make sure that there are enough changes in the product to achieve the expectations.
- If Rika plays the power chords when singing, or perform part of the melody on the lead guitar (electric), it would create some sort of rock element to the song.
- Rika agreed on that, and said that she would ask her guitar teacher for help.
- The structure of the song would be: Intro + verses (piano, electric guitar playing the power chords), Instrumental break (piano playing the chords, electric guitar plays the distorted melody).

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- Introduced and discussed with Rika about the new direction of the product
- Practice singing with the piano. Piano chords are used.
- The first, basic plan for this product is to make a vocal/piano cover of the song. This is already fusion because we are transferring the song which is played by a traditional instrument to a modern instrument that everyone would love to play. Bringing the traditional genre into modern context.
- Sounded very nice, but I need to work out the piano arrangement, because I'm currently playing a repetitive rhythm. The intro should be derived from a part of the melody, and the rhythm for the verses should some change through the song.
- Attempt to add guitar into the instrumental. This will make the song more acoustic-like.

The traditional version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VkBIpWNgzs

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I'm not very satisfied with our progressing speed. Rika seemed tired and didn't have the mood to work seriously today, so it was basically me working by myself. However, I respected her decision, so whenever I tried to add something new in, I asked her to listen to it first. Her reactions were predictable; she went along with everything I showed her.
Honestly, I do not want to turn the process journal into my diary, but I feel the need of writing this down, because it will be an important to look back and evaluate at the end of this unit. Rika and I don't usually agree on the same thing. Nada Sou Sou is a great song, and we both agreed that it sounds beautiful traditionally. I proposed Pop, because putting in some modern instruments like drums and guitar will not change the original concept much. Many traditional Vietnamese songs were fused with Pop, and they all sounded nice. Rika went for EDM, because she loves the genre. Although fusing it with EDM will bring a great fresh look to the song, Rika said she would like to keep the instrumental soundtrack we found. I personally think that it is impossible because there isn't a steady beat to it, so there is no way we can transform it into EDM without some cutting of the melody.
Therefore I came up with a solution, something to do for today, tried to add a steady drum beat to the second part of the intro, verse 1, and the beginning of the chorus. This is the only thing I can do that might benefit us in the future, considering our different motivations.
We spent the last few minutes of the lesson practicing the song on the piano. A piano section will be included to verse 1, either in a Pop-style, or in electronically as in an EDM, I'm not sure.

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Decide on whether the fusing genre should be pop or EDM.
Try out some electronic instruments
Come up with a draft for the intro and verses

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Decide on Nada Sou Sou
Find audio and instrumental versions for the song
Import it to Garageband
Argue over should we keep it instrumental or vocal, since it is hard to find pure vocal audio

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Today's tasks focus on considering between Indian traditional music and Pakistan traditional music.
We tried to start off with something refreshing today, to see if we can find the inspiration for our assessment. That was how we learnt about Indian and Pakistan traditional music.
Do some researches about the genres and compare
Listen to a few Japanese traditional songs. Introduction to Enka

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Today is the first day of our new assessment - Fusion. The task is to transfer a traditional piece of music into a catchy, modern song that teenagers would find interesting to listen to. We are encouraged to work with some one not from the old STOMP group, I partnered up with Rika.
Since we spent more than half a lesson as a class together to go through the criteria and expectation, as well as listening to last year's examples, there was not much progress in our process. We had a better chance to explore Garageband and some amazing things that it can do like adjusting the tempo of a recorded track. After a while, we made the first move on doing the assessment: choosing music.
Rika and I had a little debate over which genre of music might be appropriate to fuse, and how will we present our product. Personally, I think that a live performance would be great, because I am more on the side of fusing the instrument, instead of the song. This idea all came from Mr. Graham. Most of the class is going to do their task on Garageband since they are aiming for the genres that are being fused, and I want to make a difference by playing a modern song with a traditional instrument. I believe it would be really cool, so I talked to Rika about my idea. However, Rika didn't support it, because she preferred doing the task electronically, and we will not have enough time to construct a complete live performance. Also, if we do it on Garageband, we can have different instruments playing at the same time, while performing requires a group of people for a certain number of instruments.
Honestly, I wasn't very convinced by Rika, but I thought that taking a new challenge is always amazing, so I accepted her.
I then asked her to show me some Japanese traditional songs, and vice versa, I let her listened some of the Vietnamese folk songs. Japanese music is more widely broadcast than Vietnamese, that was why I think her music sounded fine to me, but my traditional music was a little queer to her liking.