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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j9uTRXzANs

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKVkILpWB2M

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https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ne2zc1Pb0OIMxSOSxqN8SZG0LuEhYCvkdhn2hLNRW0U

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As planned we would stay afterschool yesterday to finalize our product and our performance would be taken place today. But none of the EE's teachers reply and it was planned last minute so Marshall could  not organize time to stay afterschoool. Therefore, this morning to went to talk to the EE's teacher directly and she said the time of our performance would overlap with their class time but she is willing to make an exception for this project and if we are still interested we can confirm with her on Monday morning which is the rescheduled performance day. In class, we went to the DT room to finalize our product. As I was wrapping 5 extra foam steps with foil as a backup incase any of them others are ripped. While Marshall was soldering the wire to the railing to extend the cable. At the end we also talked to Mr Graham about our audience. He wanted to have a range of age group to show different responses to our project. Therefore, we plan to set up at the beginning of secondary lunch and through primary lunch and the EE's wouldn't be necessary as we don't want to interrupt their class time and we think we have a wide enough range of age group. So referring back to the artistic intention, we want to investigate the responses from audiences including teachers, students from grade 1 to grade 12.

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Today was our performance day, at beginning of secondary lunch we set everything up in the red brick area. We made a few last minute change to our initial plan. Firstly we didn't put the steps in order to piano scale and as I was hooking up the wire to the Makey Makey, I put the notes in random order. I decided to do so because as our audience is expand for older age group, the randomness appeal to their curiosity and allow them to explore the order of the notes. Secondly we didn't put up our poster, the graphic notation of our performance because the poster would constrict our people's imagination and if we would give them no instruction, they would have a better opportunity exploring various ways to create music.

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Today we have selected our audience, the EE's as we are not confident enough that our the audience of the older age group would participate as enthusiastic as the younger age group. We sent an email to all the EE's teachers.

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Today we discussed  in class with the teacher on the audience of our product, our initial plan was to perform in the red brick area during after school so we would target a larger audience. But we decided that it would not be efficient as there would be a large number of older students, teachers and parents. We discussed the popular behavior of older audience, they are less curious to try our product out also they are less comfortable to perform in public. So we thought it would be best if we target a younger group of audience, one idea was the EE's. As it is more likely for them to find interest in what we have done, take initiative and try it out. We would set up our performance during class time, organize a time with the EE's teacher to get the students to the performance area and use the piano steps.

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Our idea was initially to set a poster that we would be placed next to our product, the poster would tell the audience they should take their shoes off. But now that we realized there are more steps that the audience need to do then to simply take their shoes off and step on the platforms. So I came up with the idea to develop a graphic notation, as it is one of the aleatoric element. It is a poster illustrates a visual demonstration of how to use the musical steps. On the poster, we didn't want to use any words because we want to allow people to have the chance to explore with the musical steps instead of giving them direct instructions. Also it is would incorporate more aleatoric elements as it is up to the audience how they interpret the graphic notation. We have create a design of what we wanted our graphic notation to look like and we are going to finalize it as a digital version.

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Today, we met up in DT room afterschool to continue on working on our piano steps that we started to do last time. We test out the functionality of the product before we continue building them. When we hook the cable to the steps, the foil ripped so we used foil tape to secure the cable instead. Also we decided to cover the steps with another layer of foil because it is too thin and would easily ripped. But before we do that we continue to test the functionality of the product o we hook the steps with cables to the Makey Makey and the computer. It didn't produce sound when we touch the step and we soon realized that electricity needs to travel through our body therefore we need to create a circuit to be able to produce sound. We discussed with Ms. Ngo for an alternative solution, she suggested that we can either connect it to a metallic railing or a bracelet. We decided that we would hook the Makey Makey to the steps and the metallic railing so people need to have skin contact with both things to make a sound. We tested out with the stairs railing but it is conduct small amount of electricity so it didn't work so we tested on a separate metal stick and it works.

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After we have learnt the limitations of the product, we have to change our design and our artistic intention. We no longer set out steps on the stairs so we can't create music from people's daily routine and habit. Instead our audience are encouraged to get involved and they make music voluntarily. When people try out the steps, in the process of them figuring out what sound each step makes can be considered as music. As music is considered as a planned composition, we are challenging that idea by presenting that the experimental process can also be considered as a musical composition. Also as we are no longer using all the stair steps, we only created 5 steps and each step would correspond to the notes of a pentatonic scale: C D E G A so the pitch is limited to these notes of this scale. There would be an expected wider range of tempo because it is no longer the tempo of a walking pace but it is completely up to the audience. The same effect is made to the rhythm, there is an expected wider range of rhythm as it is no longer constricted to people's walking pace.

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Over the weekend, Marshall bought 2 rolls of foil and 1.2x2m foam. During after school, we first measured the stair step dimension. We meet up after school in the DT room to start our built to the stair steps. We measured out the foam piece with the dimension on the foam piece that would be placed on the stair. As we thought that the foam does not need to necessarily cover up the whole stair step, we cut out with the dimension of the foam to be a bit smaller than the stair steps enough just where we would step on and we have cut out 12 pieces. Afterwards, we then took the double sided tape and taped the top of the foam piece, wrap the foil and tape it to the back of the foam piece with electric tape. We have chosen foil to wrap the foam piece because it will help conduct electric and trigger the sensor. When we have finished wrapping 5 steps, Mr. Phu told us that we need skin contact to conduct electricity. We thought we can't have people take off their shoes when walking the stairs so we decided to place the steps all on the ground. We would set it up with a poster asking people to take their shoes off if they want to try our project out.

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After we have done research, we discussed on exactly what we wanted to do and how that connects to the concept of minimalism. From there we produced our artistic intention.

Artistic Intention:

Music is traditionally defined as a structured composition where there are specific instructions on how to replicate the exact sound the composer intended to compose. For our minimalism unit, we want to challenge the idea that music need to have these elements therefore we have decided to compose an aleatoric composition.

We have decided to build a musical stair and in the type of mobile form, an aleatoric style, which means the chance elements are involved in the performance and the outcome is left to the determination of the performers. We will install the steps of a flight of stairs with sensors, as people walk up and down the stairs, the specific note would be played. The whole soundtrack would be recorded and register as our composition. Through this composition, we also aim to challenge people to reconsider that their daily routine, walking up and down the stairs, can be considered as a musical composition.

Pitch: A flight of stairs has 12 steps and each steps would be a note on the piano, it would form the 12 tones scale. Therefore the pitch has the range of a 12 tectonic scale and we would set this scale to the middle C range.

Melody: This element is up to chance. It depends which note the performer play, which step the people walk on corresponding to a note on the 12 tones scale. As people usually walk up or down the stairs, it can be predicted that the melody would consist a lot of runs either ascending or descending. But this is only a prediction as there is no certainty to determine people’s stair walking pattern.

Tempo: This element is up to chance. It depends on how fast or how slow people are walking on the stairs. When there is two or more people walking up/down the stairs, there would be no strict timing and tempo as they walk at a different pace.

Dynamic and expressive techniques: This element is up to chance. How low or high the dynamic is depended on the number of performers, the number of layers and melodies played. Other than that, the sound is preset with the specific expressive technique so this element is consistently throughout the composition.

Rhythm: This element is up to chance. It depends on the rhythm at which people walk. The length of the note is determined as the sensor can play the note with a preset time value but the rest, how long or short it is, is depended on how people walk.

Harmony: This element is also up to chance. The harmony it creates from the different melodies that is created at once by multiple people walking up and down the stairs.

Structure: Our composition would be 40 minutes long, during lunchtime from 11:40 to 12:20.

Instrumentation/Texture: The sound of a piano.

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Marshall and I start to work on the project together. We research on similar projects to develop on our ideas further. We have a video from the TV show Crowd Control on National Geographic, where people wanted to encourage people to exercise by taking the stairs instead of the escalator. Therefore they have decorated the steps, set up motion sensor and made a beat box stairs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbDRP4ovhao
So after we decided to use this idea, we wanted to the flight of stairs next the swimming pool to count how many steps there are. We have chosen this flight of stairs because it has 12 steps matching the 12 tone scale also is where we would predict that it is the flight of stairs that most people would use. Afterwards, we researched on how to build the sensor. We contact Mr. Phu and he told us to use Makey Makey.

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I was interested in chance music so I did some research to identify what is the definition of chance music and what makes a composition is a chance music.

Research

Aleatoric music also known as chance music, the name is from a Latin word alea meaning dice in which some element of the composition is left to chance and/or some primary element of a composed work’s realization is left to the determination of its performers. The term is most often associated with procedures in which the chance element involves a relatively limited number of possibilities.

3 types:

The use of random procedures to produce a determinate, fixed score: chance element is involved only in the process of composition so that every parameter is fixed before their performance.

For example: the musical dice game which was popular during the late 18th century and early 19th century, these games consisted of a sequence of musical measures, for which each measure had several possible versions and a procedure for selecting the precise sequence based on the throwing of a number of dice.

https://www.mozart-game.cz/

Mobile form: chance elements involve the performance. Notated events are provided by the composer but their arrangement is left to the determination of the performer.

For example: Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Klavierstucke XI (1956) presents nineteen events which are composed and notated in a traditional way but the arrangement of these events is determined by the performer spontaneously during the performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxnPghkhleo

Indeterminate notation, including graphic notation and texts: traditional musical notation is replaced by visual or verbal signs suggesting how a work can be performance.

For example: Earle Brown’s December 1952 shows lines and rectangles of various lengths and thicknesses that can read as loudness, duration or pitch. The performer chooses how to read them.

Another example: Morton Feldman’s intersection No. 2 (1951) for piano solo, written on coordinate paper. Time unit are represented by the squares viewed horizontally, while relative pitch levels high, middle and low are indicated by three vertical squares in each row. The performer determines what particular pitches and rhythms to play.

After the research and I have more understanding of what chance music is, I started to brainstorm ideas I can do for my composition. The first idea I came up with was where I would pour candies through a funnel down on top of a xylophone and how the candles fall is random and unpredictable creating a chance piece of music. I got the idea from a video creating using M&M, playing a piano, dispensing the candies on an instrument and creating a specific sound. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPtE3ZQFn5s
The second idea I came up with was setting up sensors on the stairs so when people walk up and down the stairs, it would produce sound. The composition is up to the audience and the audience are the performers, it is unpredictable what the performers are going to do so it is considered a chance piece of music. I got the idea from Chinese candles, where the candle is light up, it will activate a sensor and play happy birthday song.