Kai Hazard's portfolio 2016-17

NBA2KAI

You Know What I Mean, It's Halloween  MP3 

     You know what I mean, It’s Halloween was created for our Halloween project. The idea was to make a scary song that you might see in a horror movie. To get inspired, we watched some scenes from classic horror movies like the shining. The underscoring from horror movies or any suspenseful scenes is not irrelevant. However, the music is not supposed to over go the scene. The music is there to enhance the experience by adding to the suspense. I took that to mean that the music should be subtle at first but build to something very scary. Generally, when I think of horror or Halloween, I think of dark and twisted  things.

     For this project, Jackson and I used Minor chords to give the song a sense of darkness. I associate minor chords as sounding melancholy usually but not scary. However when using the minor C chord, I played each of the notes in a row and then played the chord which sounded very creepy. We used the Pitch Bend to make the chords sound Erie and build up suspense. Then, at the end we tried to make a loud sound with the intent that it would startle or scare someone who is listening. We used the pads on the mini keyboard to make the loud sound. I feel that this song could have been in a movie scene where something bad is about to happen and it would enhance that scene.

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Ode to Festus Ezeli

     For the first concert of the year, I really wanted to write a song that represented me. Basketball is basically my life. I am playing year round on several different teams. I also love to watch basketball and play basketball video games with friends. One game, 2k15, was the game where I discovered my idol, Festus Ezeli. He has been my favorite player for years now. I decided to write a song about him. I wrote lyrics but I was never able to actually put them into the reaper file. Instead I created a video of his best plays.  I feel that this piece represents my abilities halfway through this year. 

     I used the Pop Progression of I V vi IV in the key of C to compose the harmony. From there I created a melody with stable intervals like major fifths and fourths. I used a drum beat from the directory then matched it to the chords. The chorus is my favorite part because it stops everything besides the piano. It is alone as it plays a few chords. The words would have made it better but I still like the sense of closeness it brings. The bridge is all about how Festus was injured and will be out for the season. Minor chords have a sad undertone. I played a C minor chord, G minor chord, and A minor chord and a F minor chord. It is the pop progression but with minor chords instead of major chords.

MP3

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_kReV-L0MmbaXE0NndPR3dEdGc

Lion King Scoring Project

     This was probably the first project that Jackson and I made that I thought was cool. We were tasked to take a movie scene and take out all of the sound. Then we had to put in new sound of our own. We were inquired to import sounds that would reconstruct the scene. A lot of the time when movies are being shot, The sound in the film is not the sound that was recorded. This sound has been added by people after the scene was shot. We had to use 5 key elements that make the sound in a scene. One of the elements was Title Scoring, which is the music played during opening and closing credits. The main chords were C minor and F minor throughout the piece so I spelled them out in the title scoring. We also had to add underscoring which is the subtle yet very important music that plays under the scene. The underscoring was a series of chords. I used C minor and then I moved the third down a half step. I then repeated that process with an F minor chord. Another element that we added were sound effects. A sound effect is a sound other than speech or music made artificially for use in a play, movie, or other broadcast production. My favorite sound effect that we used was a Lion’s Roar when Scar clawed at Mufasa’s hands. Another element is related to sound effects. Foley is the sound that is very subtle and people don’t think about it but without it the scene would be very different. We found a sound from the audio directory of footsteps on gravel. The scene is a stampede so we had them play over each other to create that effect. The last piece that was added was the Dialogue. Jackson and I listened to the scene a couple times and picked out all of the dialogue. We re recorded all of it in the studio. We knew that Simba and Zazu had voices that are much higher than our voices. So we changed the pitch of our voices in reaper in the Item properties settings. Without these elements a scene is not easy to follow and adding them in ourselves gave me a new understanding and appreciation for movie scenes.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_kReV-L0MmbNXlsZUlCSHBHekk

Bagel Blues

     I learned throughout the year that writing lyrics could and should be done after writing and composing the bulk of the background music. So before I even thought about what the song would mean to me, I had composed the music. I used the blues scale in the key of G and played the first five notes up and down.. I also used a drum beat that was on the MT Power Drum Kit vst and a bass guitar accompaniment from the Cakewalk SI instruments. When I had composed my music I was stuck for some time on what I should write the song about. I was really hungry during that time and I was really craving bagels. I decided that a blues song about bagels would be a fun little song that I could write. To make it a blues song I made the song sad about how I wanted bagels.

          In this project, We also learned how to score our songs. We learned how to use a very helpful program called MuSescore. Jackson and I imported the MIDI tracks from the Piano and the Bass Guitar. We had to edit the tempo to make the two tracks match each other. If we wanted to have people play this live this program would allow us to do so.

MP3

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_kReV-L0MmbMzFiTjF2V19tcTQ – Change | Remove

Baller!

     This was the final project for the last concert of the year. Like my other concert piece (see Festus Song), I wanted this piece to represent me. More specifically I wanted to show my nonchalant and upbeat taste in music. One of my favorite artists is SuperDuperKyle. He is a rapper that makes happy songs that always make me smile and laugh even if I am feeling low. I wanted to make a fun song with fun lyrics. I created a drum beat to start and then used a major progression of I III II I IV V I V VI V IV I in the key of C.  

     In the last concert piece, my lyrics were based on syllables. This time I focused on both syllables and rhymes. I decided early on that I wanted this to be about basketball. So I wrote a line shouting out one of my favorite players, Russell Westbrook. Throughout the song, I also shouted out some of my other favorite players like Festus Ezeli, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Paul Pierce. This Is my favorite piece because the lyrics were really cool.

     For the Chorus, I used the chords to write lyrics that fit them. It was a silly chorus but it had a chill tone that makes it sound really nice.