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Criterion A
Document:
https://docs.google.com/a/ishcmc.edu.vn/document/d/1ZNb1HEHS-xsRQoiGRyMs4GJ4ZvvCVmfMpBHCrvCqUi8/edit?usp=sharing

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

Criterion D
Script: https://docs.google.com/a/ishcmc.edu.vn/document/d/1hTZinO9vS2WN9beRokCvU3TAzAsYntsdoyLYVm6D7ZE/edit?usp=sharing
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j9uTRXzANs

(Video contains written work on the script and includes interviews that supports point.)

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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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As planned we would stay afterschool yesterday to finalize our product and our performance would be taken place today. But as none of the EE's teachers replied to our sent email and it was planned last minute so Marshall could  not organize time to stay afterschoool. Therefore, this morning we 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. During music class time, we went to the DT room to finalize our product. As Belle was wrapping the other 5 extra foam steps with foil as a backup in case if any of the others are ripped we can easily replaced them while I was soldering the wire to the railing and extend the cable and tested the product again to see if there are any problems. We also realize that more then one people would still work we the exception if one of our hands contacts with the metal railing and the other to be skin contact with the steps. At the end we also talked to Mr Graham about our audience as 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 we have selected our audience, we sent an email towards the EE's teachers and compare then towards the secondaries students but are worried that the older students won't be confident enough that our the audience of the older age group would participate as compare to the enthusiastic as the younger age group.

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Today we discussed  in class with the teacher on who our audience is for product. Our initial plan was to perform in the red brick area during after school so we would target a larger audience with a wide verity of different grade students to test out our product. But we decided that it would not be efficient as there would be a large number of older students, teachers and parents and it would be harder for us to separate and determine if the different age group would change and effect determinate who they play. We discussed the popular behavior of older audience how 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 younger kids are more likely for them to find interest in what we have done, take initiative and try it out. We would organize and set up a time for our performance during one of the music class time, organize a time with the EE's teacher to bring out the students to the brick area and explore the piano.

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Our idea was initially to set a poster that we would be placed next to our piano and would hopefuly pas the message to tell what is the idea of the piano and for then to take there shoes of with one hand touching the rail for electricity to flow. So we 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 the audience to have a chance to guess and 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 then plan to create a design of what we wanted our graphic notation to look like on paper and finalize the final design as a digital version created through a program called Adobe Illustrator.

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Today, we met up in DT room after school 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 seeing if it works and if there are any errors that we would need to fix. When we hook the cable to the steps connect to the makey-makey board, 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 as we think it was too thin and would easily ripped cause by the steps of students. After connect all the cables to the steps we then plug in the makey-makey to my laptop and tested all 5 notes. It didn't produce sound when we touch the step and we soon realized this was due to as the electricity needs to travel through our body therefore we need to create a circuit to be able to produce sound. We then discussed with Ms. Ngo for an alternative solution and she suggested us for us to either create a metallic railing or a bracelet that is connect to the makey-makey board. We decided that we would hook the makey Makey to the steps and the metallic railing as people would need to have skin contact with both things for electricity to flow. We first 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 successful when we one hand is touching the rail and the other hand or leg touching the note.

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After we have learnt and realize to our project limitations, 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 either an raising scale or condescending scale as the performer can change between scales without the issue of blocking the way if it was places/positioned on the stairs and 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, I have bought 2 rolls of foil which would be uses to wrape the platform and 1.2mx2m foam which would be our platform that we would wrap the foil with. During after school, we first took the measurements of the stair step to record the dimension and later on let us know how big or small our platform of each note of the piano to be. We then meet up after school in the DT room to begin our built to the stair steps starting with measuring 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 actual stair steps measurements just enough where we would step on and we have cut out 12 pieces for the five notes/scales. Afterwards, we then took the double sided tape and taped the top of the foam piece to secure the foil down that would be wrapped over , wrap the foil to the foam piece and tape it to the back of the foam piece with electric tape. The main reason why we have decided to have chosen foil to wrap the foam piece as our platform for our piano is because it will help conduct electric and trigger the sensor to the makey-makey. When we have finished wrapping 12 steps, Mr. Phu told us that we need skin contact in order for it to accurately to conduct electricity. At this point we thought we wont be able to force people to take off their shoes when walking the stairs just to try the piano as this would not be convenient for them and so we decided to change our position of our piano and placing it 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 on how to build the piano sitars, we then discussed to each other on exactly what we wanted to do and how that connects to the concept of minimalism. From there we createour 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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Today, Belle and I started to work on the project together. We research on similar projects that have been pre-exist which would help us develop our ideas and goals of our project. With previous TV shows called Crowd Control on National Geographic creating this similar idea of creating a piano stair however they had a different concept which was to encourage to use the stair instead of the installed escalator next to it and for people to use the stair to exercise through decorating the steps and making the stairs more attracting and fun which they hope would bring more peopel to use the stair instead of the escalator. They did this throght installing some sensors on the steps so when a step from a foot of a person steps on, this would create a beat or sound of a note on the piano scale.
Link to the project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbDRP4ovhao
After this, we both devided to use this concpe to the idea made. We then also planed to position placement for our piano to be made on the flight of stairs next to the swimming pool and also counted the amount of steps in total to know how many notes of the piano we can fit. We then also counted other set of stairs around school such as the elementary stairs and the arts and DT stairs but we notice that those stairs aren't used and important as the set of stairs next to the swimming pool where most people would use and walk on. At the end, we came on a conclusion and chose the set of stairs next to the swimming pool as it has 12 steps matching the 12 tone scale also as mentioned above, where we would predict that most people would use the stairs which is a good thing as we wanted as much people to walk on the stairs to expand our limitations. Afterwards, we first research o nthe basic on the steps on building a piano stairs or tiles and possible how to build the sensor if we were to use them. After school, we also went and talked to Mr. Phu an DT teacher which he insisted us to use makey-makey as our programming as it will be cheaper, less time consuming and more reliable to make.

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As I was interested in choosing chance music is my project, I had done a bit of online research which would help me identify the definition of chance music and also what makes a composition 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.