Bailey Holtham
Mar. 11, 2018
Project One
Prof. Gewirtz
Music is inevitable in everyday life. Throughout all genres and composers of music each has a different effect on one's mood whether he/she knows it or not. A new survey by Edison research says the average american listens to four hours and five minutes of audio each day. Exactly how that listening breaks down might surprise you sense no previous study has tracked all audio consumption. Live radio has accounted for 52% of all listening time or just over two hours per day. From the car radio on one's way to work, the music that goes off when one turns on their computer, and even in the grocery store, all of this affects one's mood unconsciously.
I waited until spring break started to begin my music journal because I adventured into new places that I’ve never been before and wanted to look into the different kinds of music that I would encounter in the south. I am a part of the Lansing Community College softball team and every year we take a trip down south to Tennessee, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi to play games as well as practice in the warmer weather. I have never been anywhere south of Cedar Point in Ohio, so this was an entirely new experience for me. I am first going to discuss the different music I listened to everytime we rode the bus for over an hour. Then, I will talk about the different pre-game “pump-up” music that was played in each state we played games in.
The entire time I was on the bus at all I always had my headphones in and was listening to something. The first stop was in Columbia Tennessee. It was an eight and a half hour drive from LCC West campus to Columbia Tennessee and I needed something to keep me occupied for that long. I could not have survived this trip without music. We departed at 7am on March 3rd, and with it being that early in the morning the whole team got on the bus and went right to sleep. I get car sick very easily so I still needed something to distract my mind while I slept. I put my headphones in and played songs with slow tempo and dynamics to soothe me to sleep. I used the Pandora “Sleep Station” radio. The song that continues to stick in my head when I think about music to sleep to is “Skinny love” by Birdy, which consists of slow and soft largo tempo and starts with a simple duple meter. The song has a pretty constant polyrhythm as well. The duration of the song is three minutes and twenty-one seconds, making it an average length for a slow pop song.
The texture and melody of this song enhances the entire listening experience because of the
mood or tone that the composer(s) is trying to exert. As for the Timbre of the piece, the opening chordophone is a beautiful segment of a piano by itself. To me, the piano is not a very universal instrument, meaning that it typically is used in slower-tempo genuine pieces of music opposed to hip hip music that uses synthesizers to produce its sound. Each dynamic of this song tied in very well with...
