Term 3 Listening

Maria Gadú - Bela Flor






Genre: Bossa nova






Guitar playing:


She starts by playing single strings with the soft tip of her finger making the lower frequency of the sound stand out at the start. She also uses the small fifth finger on her left hand to mute the strings and at the same time she uses her right hand to slide her fifth fourth and third finger making a muted effect.






Through out the songs she picks the strings she wants played but when she says the fraise "bela flor" she strums the strings






The vocals






She often keeps her tone very sweet due to the fact that she has a very whispery voice which adds to the sweetness of the song giving the listener a calm relaxing feeling coming from her tone.






The lyrics of the song talks about a (beautiful flower that grew in the river properly referring to a beautiful woman that grew up in Rio)


The way she interprets the song really stands out when she strengths her voice whilst repeating the song






One other thing that I noted is that she has section in the song were she calms her voice and soften her voice other part were she picks the strings harder and harden her voice too, its a hard technique to master but it is a vital bit of skill that needs practicing the reason this is so important its because strengthening and softening the sound of you vocals and the guitar helps determine wether its the verse, chorus bridge






Area of performance






The area that she sings at is quite big there's lots of space in which the sound travels and if there was to be an empty space you would hear an echo because the sound would take a few seconds to bounce back from the hard surface or the wall making a delayed play back of the sound, but since theres an massive audience which sucks in a lot of the sound because of the bodies.The initial sound let alone the reverb wouldn't be able to stand out due to the loudness. To solve this problem everything that needs to be heard has a mic on, thats a standard sure 57mic and the other is a line mic thats within the guitar.The vocals has a little bit of reverb which is noticeable due to the size of the place in which the singer is performing and also theres a small amount of reverb added by the sound engineer, the guitar has a different type of mic positioning then the vocals because the positioning of the mic for the vocal is out side the mouth right at the centre whilst the guitar has the positioning of the mic built internally this makes the sound better if the guitarist wants the focus to be on the lower part of the frequency and also the mid part but not so much for the high frequency.

Textures and acoustic environment

Are the stands having any impact on the music/sound? If so, what?

The stand is definitely having an impact on the sound because of the shape of the stand, the ground the people in it and the the stand it self and the glass windows

the reason for this:

the stands shape : the shape of the stand makes a "C" at the top which makes the sound bounce back making a small reverberation witch makes that bounces back to the the marching band the reason the reverberation is not as strong is because of all the opens space.

the ground: the ground in this video appears to be fulled with grass. this has a massive effect due to the little hole with in the ground. The percussion used has a up down sound and when the sound hits the ground it observe making the sound quiet and taking the reverberation.

The audience: the human body observe the sound due to the surface on the our skin being soft.

The glass: Glass reflect image but it also reflect sound because of the hard surface.

Why do marching bands have so many instruments, and loud ones!
marching are known to for their loud instruments. the reason its loud its because they are meant to cheer audience before in open spaces the amount of instrument's effect how loud the sound is.

Is this music suitable for the acoustic environment? Why?

this type of music is only suitable for outdoor because if the track is played in a small environment the sound becomes unbearable due to reverberation bouncing aggressively against the wall. the instruments they use is are all loud and having the song played out side makes the sound loud enough for the audeince to hear and the song becomes more enjoyable due to no hard serface stoping the sound.

B) Can you hear any reverberation. Do you think that comes from the room or might there be some digital reverb? Give reasons for your answer.
instruments: key board acoustic guitar1 main cords, acoustic guitar2 solo
keyboard: I can hear a small amount of reverberation but this might be coming from the amplifier but or an software on the computer but its digital not analog
guitar1: guitar is made out of the revered sounds. so when it came to recording lots of guitar has a mic inside the body of the guitar and this guitar happens to be one. but what happens that sound within the body goes down the line to whatever is being recorded making the sound more controllable from the mixing desk.
guitar 2: guitar 2 is doing the solo and what the band did which was really smart was to use the acoustic guitar with the bigger body to do the solo they also used a a dynamic mic to record the sound instead of the in built mic which has a small amount of reverb in it .
the vocal: the singer seems to have no reverb if you don't pay attention to the song but towards the end when the instruments stops and he carry on singing, you can here a lot of reverb.
Do you think the guitars are recorded through a mic or down a line?the guitar1:down the line
guitar 2:microphone
keyboard: down a line
vocals: microphone.

Describe the texture of the music. Does the acoustic environment suit the music?
the texture of the song on the beging start with homophonic texture the invireament in wiitch the sound is being active is very large by what I can here the reason I can tell that its a lage room possibly made out of stones and marbles is because theres a lot of reverberation witch is sound bounce off hard serface making and into the human are delayed in shord amount of time through out the soung the a harmobnic feel to it and you can here that sound also has a polyphonic feel to it due to the harmanic increasing and decreasing

the music definitely suits the environment but because the equipment is good it can the music they made can be recorded almost anywhere. the environment is perfect to the environment   beacuse its a big closed space making a fantastic depth to the sound almost increasing the sound.

Track 3

vocals only 

for this track you can only hear harmonies between a individuals singing together in a choir. the environment that they are in helps that style of singing due to the massive size and the hard marble surfaces  that reflect the off of it. at the beginning of the sing the singers starts out by sing at a monophonic style of texture which develops on to a homophonic and then deeper into the song you can hear a polyphonic. This type of technic used in this song is used quite allot in the modern  world of today and having a mix of texture in a song helps make a simple song full due to the diversity of each tone for example having the chord on the song and a melody that compliments the chords makes the texture of the song polyphonic which is in my opinion the most used type of texture with in the music industry today.

Hear and Identify

Hear and Identify 1. at 00:03 there is a loud cough, it seems that the singer coughs straight into the microphone, because this is a studio recording the sound engineer could have made cut out the section from the track to make it more professional. the singer could have tuned his head away from the microphone. 2.00:02 there seems to be a bit of background noise, it cound be that the gain of the mixing console is tuned up too high or the singer could have stepped on the pedestal making the background noise. Tuning the gain of the microphone down would have decreased the chance of any background noise. 3.00:21 the singer sounds like he went out of time for about 3 seconds. "and the degree of independence" sounded like he was reading from a sheet.The sound engineer should have made another take and the singer should have memorised his words before recording. 4.00:16 when the singer was singing the word performance, the first three leters"per" become plosives which happened because the microphone didn't have a pop shield to stop the plosive from happening 5.00:30-00:48. when the second verse started then the synth started with the vocals. The problem was that the synth was way too loud making the listener lose/ forget about the rhythm section.What the sound engineer should have done was to mabe make the synth start quieter then increase the sound slightly by using automation tools. 6.00:30-00:48 also during the second verse if you listen to the track carefully you can hear harmonies. The harmonies are in tune for most of the time but it's really hard to hear it because the backing vocal is way too quiet.what might have improved the mixing is if the engineer records the backing instruments first and then the main vocals after the harmonies on separete grinds in logic or pro tools. By doing that he would have had to change the volume for each instument and for the vocals he would have found any errors and would have been able to make the harmonies come together. 7.1:00. the vocalist went for a long note at the pre chorus but the note in which he was at sounded flat. this could be due to the lack of water, not enough traning or it could possibly be the fact that he could'nt hear himself because the instruments were so loud. a way to improve this is to do vocal exercises to get the vocals ready and to maybe turn down the instruments so the singet can hear himself sing. 8.1:48.the singer went for a big finish at the end.His voice was fine but it didnt match the note the instrument was playing, in fact it sounded like the note he was hitting was higher, indicating that the note he was singing was a sharp higher than the actial note he was meant to reach. what he could have then done to improve is to improve his listening skills so he can reach the right note.