The artist’s name is Brandon Paak Anderson, but his stage name is Anderson .Paak. His is 30 years old and is originally from Oxnard, California. He started dabbling in music as a teenager from his bedroom and in 2011 started working on his debut album. He released his album in 2012 under the pseudonym Breezy Lovejoy. In 2013, he produced and record Cover Art, which was an all-covers EP. Then he released his other two albums Venice and Malibu in 2014 and 2016 respectively. He currently is a recording artist, music producer, and part of NxWorries. He has signed record labels with Stone Throw, Steel Wool, OBE, Young Art Records, EMPIRE, and Aftermath Entertainment. He engages with the musical genres of Hip hop, rap, R&B, soul, and funk.
I learned that music is truly created from an artist’s experiences and feelings towards certain topics. It is a way they express their emotions and reflect on things that have happened to them in the past, as well as things they are looking forward to in the future. Music made from a hip-hop-specific frame is very much like a poetry slam in that you have spoken words that have rhythm, phrasing, and rhyme, except that it is combined with a musical groove or backbeat. The lyrics of music is similar to telling a story, but adding the elements of music and different tonalities, textures, and instrumentation demonstrate a more complex way of expressing feelings through music. It is more hidden and needs to be uncovered by those listening to the music because it could relate to another piece of music that has inspired the artist in some way. I think it is extremely interesting how a person’s experiences shape the kind of music a person creates and how they express themselves. From this knowledge, I would love to see what has shaped my different loves for certain genres of music and different instrumentation. In my future teaching, I can ask a student to list out some of the songs on their playlist and learn more about them through that way. It would be more revealing than simply asking them what they liked. Or I could create an activity where they composed their own lyrics and short melody to tell something about themselves; through that, I could also connect in a more meaningful manner with my students. Through this experience, I learned how to use Acapella to compile multiple videos of myself performing different parts of a song. I decided to use the app instead of Bandhub because it was easier for me to record different angled videos of myself with a phone than a laptop. This assignment was rather frustrating for me because I was working with new technology and had difficulty aligning all the parts together. In my final video, it can be seen that there are timing issues because I had struggled so much with the technology. Also, because it was an app the quality of sound was not very good and the reverb from the flute in the practice room could be heard. I was constrained in my choices of instruments because I can only play the flute and piano and did not want to sing the melody. I wanted to recreate the piece using interesting instruments that you can find around the household to demonstrate that music can be created with anything; in my case, I used a container of pills in one video and a chopstick hitting a book in the other. I generally stuck to the basic structure of the piece regarding the chords and the melody because I am not that creative and cannot harmonize that well, so this experience forced me to think of different ways and instruments to compensate for that lack of creativity in an instrumental and vocal sense. This assignment to create a multi-tracked cover definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone and taught me the importance of trial and error and that to get better at something, in my case cover videos, you just have to keep practicing and experimenting even though it may be awful at first.
This experience informed my future life as a musician by teaching me the importance of solid rhythm, harmonies, and how to not be reactionary regarding entrances when performing a piece and listening to others at the same time. As an educator, I know how frustrating it is to not be good at a certain discipline, but I know that through this experience I can better teach my students the importance of perseverance. In addition to this, I can teach my students how to explore different elements of music and find topics that interest them in order to become more well-rounded musicians. As a musical being-in-the-world, this experience demonstrates how easy it is to collaborate with anyone, in person or online, and create interesting music and covers, even if you simply are shaking a container of vitamins. |
Davina MiawOn this page, I will present videos of my playing, concerts, and original compositions. Archives
November 2019
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