Music practical..crrrap

daggy

hey , hum. First post , first thread. ah well sure.
I'm in good ole 6th year right and kinda of freaking out about my practical for Music in April.
1. I didnt take music at Junior cert
2. I have never EVER had a music practical exam, never done grades or any formal training of the like
3. My teacher is rubbish
4. my instrument will probably be frowned upon by the examiner.
5. Electric bass...it is very very difficult to find challenging songs, but also the most fitting accompaniment from willing musicians.
6. I have tons and tons of experience playing music in front of people, that isnt the issue.
7. I'm just worried that the examiner will be like...ah , excuse me?
8. I play a few instruments , been playing bass for about 3 or 4 years, and no i do not play the mind numbing "3 note" kind of songs.


in fact the songs i have chosen to play are :
We are yoiur friends by Justice vs. Simian
Smoooooth operator by Sade
Hysteria by Muse
and this weird variation of this syncopated christmas carol( dont laugh) its act really cool...

any advice? any at all... anybody out there actually done the practical,is about to or knows stuff?words of wisdom please, please !

Fad

YYZ by Rush would be quite impressive to an examiner (it also highly unlikely theyve heard it before, or very likely depending on how you look at it)

justice? nice i got their newest album on monday and just realised how prominent the bass is (tis cool) [waaaaaaay off topic]

Fad

and no i definitly do not think that bass would be frowned upon, guitarists dismiss bass and a cop out, but remember that the examiners will have musical experience and obviously wont dismiss it like that

daggy

coolness , will check out the song.
Justice are fantastic! But have you ever done a practical ?

Alanstrainor

I was in pretty much the same position as yourself this time last year, having never done music before, and i'll just say it's a really relaxed atmosphere when you're doing it, and seeing that you've had experience playing live you'll be grand. As for what songs you're going to play, it's not about how crazily difficult the song is, it's all about the performance, just have fun with the songs and try to mix them up a bit, like have a mixture of fast/slow songs and different styles too. It was probably the easiest part of the whole LC and with your experience you should get a massive chunk of the 50% going for it.
Alan.
I'm a guitarist by the way

daggy

Alanstrainor wrote: »

I was in pretty much the same position as yourself this time last year, having never done music before, and i'll just say it's a really relaxed atmosphere when you're doing it, and seeing that you've had experience playing live you'll be grand. As for what songs you're going to play, it's not about how crazily difficult the song is, it's all about the performance, just have fun with the songs and try to mix them up a bit, like have a mixture of fast/slow songs and different styles too. It was probably the easiest part of the whole LC and with your experience you should get a massive chunk of the 50% going for it.
Alan.
I'm a guitarist by the way

ok cool...yeah i know that, i mean its how you play it and blah blah but its so discouraging when your best friend grade 8 in your face piano player walks in and plays frigging chopin etc. I just cant imagine the examiner being able to keep a straight face when they hear me? It sounds ridiculous but seriously! 50% is a big deal like! the written part of the exam is absolutely fine bar melody writing which i find disgusting. I do have a healthy mix of songs , i think and the accompaniment is the real bitch to organise. I am making this backing track for justice and my god its taking ages. 4 hours of work = 1 or 2 minutes of song.
cheers anyway man. OH well seeing as you're a GUITARIST well then... lol.

Jay P

But you need 6 songs. Hows about some Necrophagist? Some crazay stuffs there, were talkin tapping and the like. 2 lads in my class are playin bass and 2 more are playin drums so it's not that odd.

You could also have backing music on a cd player or something, my friend in 6th year who switched from art to music at the start of this year is playin guitar and he put his backing tracks on a cd after he tabbed them out on guitar pro, which will give you "credability." But the examiners just want to see you can play the instrument with good profficiency.

Good luck anyway

Aard

As for your question #7, I played Webern's Variations in my music practical. You can't get much more "eh, what?" than that, and the examiner seemed fine.


Your 'unusual' choice of instrument will probably be a welcome breath of fresh air after all the mediocre violinists and pianists I'm sure the examiner sees day in day out.


I played bass for one of my in-class practicals and it was fine, the teacher looked pleased. I played the first half of Metallica's Anaesthesia. A semi-improvised stand-alone bass line from Call of Kthulu could be appropriate too.

FunkZ

My friend played bass last year and I'm pretty sure he got the A1. He just bought a book that showed differnet styles of different bassists. There was everything, funk, jazz etc. They were all fairly advanced though. Try and get down something by Jaco Pastorius.

ninty9er

Stairway to Heaven.....does your teacher have everyone do a practice run in class when everyone's looking. I remember the individual practical was the most nerve wracking part of the Leaving Cert for me, the group practical was fine though....If you play with everyone staring at you it alleviates the nerves slightly in the real thing.

Fad

no some how i dont think Necrophagist would be a good idea :P

i havent done a LC practical before anyway..............

Jay P

What possibly could be wrong with necrophagist? Its not like you have to "sing" it

Fad

even naming the song could go badly, then of course you'd probably play with some sort of accompanyment thats were it all goes downhill:D

Jay P

Ha ha, that is very true, point taken

The Volt

I'm in a similar position

Bass and Singing though. My theory is brutal so i'm banking on a good practical

Bass pieces:

Incubus - Are You In?
InMe - Mosaic
AFI - Death Of Season
Patrice Rushden - Send Me Forget Me Knots

Singing Pieces:

Apologize - Onerepublic
Something's coming - West Side Story
If Everyone Cared - Nickelback
Sonnet - The Verve

kisaragi

Mmm, as long as you have a mix of styles and are of a reasonable standard it's fine For example for my LC practical I played.

Scarlatti - Baroque, fast
Mozart - Classical, fast
Brahms - Romantic, Slow
Nobuo Uematsu (final fantasy) - Modern, very difficult, very cool

The classical pieces were grade 5-7 standard and the FF piece was really difficult... but seeing as in I enjoyed it the most it was my best haha. I would have played more of that kind of music but you really shouldn't repeat styles.

Anyway yeah, it's trivial what instrument you play. Our examiner told us he wanted to see us enjoying ourselves. He was lovely and it gave encouraging comments etc... it was quite "relaxed" (considering...). I don't know much about bass, but try to showcase different techniques, moods etc. Just variation really. As for the standard, well they expect you've been playing 5 years, so it's vaguely equivalent to a grade 5 exam I guess...

Jay P

How comes people are only doing 4 tunes? Surely doing 2 extra tunes is better than doing extra composition/listening? Thoughts?

Aard

@Jay P:
Most people choose to do the practical as 50% of their exam. This means that if you play one instrument you need to prepare six songs, whereas if you play two then you prepare four each. As part of the latter, many people opt for "Music Technology" (I did this - dead easy) which counts as an instrument. This means that in practice, you can do the Music LC playing only four pieces.

Fad

yes music tech is supposed to be stupidly easy DO THAT!

digiking

Music Tech is stupidly easy - Well if your good at computers, otherwise its still easy just practice it.

As regards the practicals - i didn't do music myself but i have done sound for the practicals many times and from chatting to the examiners their main concern about electric instruments is your gonna play to loud - so keep the volume down, other than that just make sure you know your pieces well (4 of them) and have good accompaniment that wont let you down.

Do 25% Music Teach & 25% Practical it's much easier and seems to be the general consensus amongst music teachers unless you can play an instrument such as the piano to a high standard.

hope this helps

Alan

youzer-name

i played master of puppets for my practical last year, i was only gonna play 3 mins of the song but after a min n a half the examiner said "ok dats enough", i was worried but my teacher said not to worry cos she had seen me play n dat she could tell that i was good. i got a b1!