Third Week: Research on musical instruments

Now i go on researching the musical instruments that i am going to use in my animation. So first thing come to my mind is wikipedia and i found an article on musical instrument. Here is it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_instrument

According to the article:

A musical instrument is a device constructed or modified with the purpose of making music. In principle, anything that produces sound, and can somehow be controlled by a musician, can serve as a musical instrument. The expression, however, is reserved generally to items that have a specific musical purpose. The academic study of musical instruments is called organology.

There are 7 types of musical instruments, which each is categorised in the way they generate sound. They are:
Wind instruments, Lamellaphones, Percussion instruments, String instruments, Voice, Electronic instruments and Keyboard instruments.

Now i have an issue. Since there are 7 types of musical instruments means i have to put 7 musical instruments from each type into the animation which is impossible because i am limited to only 15 seconds. I can only probably work with 3 or 4 instrument because if you look at it, it would take at least 2-3 seconds for the notes to move from this end of the camera frame, then revolve around the musical instruments and then move to the another end of the camera frame and then to the next shot, if one instrument takes around 2-3 seconds, 15 seconds is definitely not enough. Furthermore, there is an ending for me to take care, ending might take longer.

I have another issue even if i force myself into putting the 7 types of instruments. That is, lamellaphones are not popular. From the article. Lamellaphones create a sound by the plucking of lamellas made from different materials (metal, raphia etc.). These Instruments are tunable, so they do not belong to the idiophones. An example is the Mbira. I dont even know what that is.

Musical instruments can be the same type, as long as they are easily recognized if not people would be wondering what kind of alien stuff is that since they never see that kind of instrument.

I pretty like having electrical instruments as i can think of this idea:
The notes kind of act like a source of energy or electricity, this source of energy or electricity which eventually get in contact with the electrical instrument will then charge up or power up the instrument therefore showing life in it. Then i also can use the more commonly used electrical instrument like the electrical guitar, the electronic drum set and the musical keyboard. Three should be enough for the animation.

Now i can carry on researching the electrical instrument i am going to use, I will be researching on how do they look like – so i can add details to my model if not it won’t look real and also where will the sound be produced – to give out additional notes from the part where sound is produced in the instruments. To show liveliness better in the musical instruments, they should give out sound when being powered or charged up. These sound will be represented by the additional notes coming out from the part where sound is produced.

Third Week: 2nd Draft

As you can see the changes are:

1. There are more notes as the main subject
2. Direction of movement of notes are shown
3. Additional notes will be given out when main notes are charging up the musical instrument
4. Notes and musical instrument will glow when in contact
5. and, an explosion for the ending.

Third Week: Further research on musical notes

I had absolutely no idea on what notes should i use and how will they look like so i went on to search DeviantArt for pictures related to music. Here are the pictures i have found:

Animating the music note(by changing its shape) would show groove and life.

Also animation the size of the music note could also show groove and life.

And making the notes flowing in one direction to show togetherness(notes work together very well)

As you can see from all the pictures, the more commonly used notes are the quavers, crotchets, semiquavers and beamed notes which i will be using. Other notes will not be used because they will look awful in the animation.

Third Week: Research on Musical Notation

I looked at Melvin’s blog for the 3DF assignment (lol just wanted to see what you have there ) and found a link to the Musical notation article found in Wikipedia which helped me a lot in this research. Before i read on the article i need to find out what the staff is so i search on google.

This is the staff.

Just something i need to know but i will not be using it because the lines would be distracting (Your eyes might follow the lines instead of looking at the musical instruments in the animation). I also thought that i would make the notes glow when it revolves around the instrument instead of glowing throughout the whole animation to show that something is charged up. I would also probably make the instrument glow together with the notes to show that both are in contact.

So i went on researching on the notes since the notes are the main subject in the animation. I found a link within this article that talks about Modern Musical Symbols in Wikipedia. I have found pictures of musical notes in this article:
The Longa.
The Breve.
The Semibreve.
The Minim.
The Crotchet.
The Quaver.
The SemiQuaver.
The DemiSemiQuaver.
The HemiDemiSemiQuaver.
The QuasiHemiDemiSemiQuaver.
The Beamed Notes. These are used to connect quavers.
And Lastly, the Dotted Note, which lengthes the note depending on how many dots.

Third Week: Confirmation on the Genre of Music to be used.

I want to have style in my animation, so the music should be some kind of “style”. I mean, the music shouldn’t be simple, my concept is Music gives life so it should be like stylistic, cool, energetic so that it can bring instruments to life. Since there is a need for style. I will the genres: Classical Music, Gospel, Jazz, Latin American, Blues, Rhythm and blues, Country music, Melodic music, Ska and Reggae(whatever that is) and Contemporary African music.

So i am left with: Hip hop, Electronic Music, Electro/Electro Funk, Electronic Dance Music, Electronica, Rock, Funk and Funktronica.

I went on researching on these genres of music by listening to short sounds loops found in Flashkit. These short sound loops have been categorised into different genres. I also found out they are very useful because they are royalty free and is not the full music (which means they are small in filesize) so i can test which sound loop is suitable for my animation.

Here are the sound loops i have listened:
Rock: Hard Cope
Funk: Funkytown
Electronica: Steady
Hip Hop 120talkabout

When i listened all these, i realised that i do not have to just use one genre of music. After you listened to all the loops shown above, i thought of a idea that could make my animation better. I can always mix the sound loops. I can do it by using a sound loop, maybe from the Rock or Hip Hop as the background while having an additional loop at the starting of the animation using the Electronica loop to signify the beginning of the animation. And then i will probably end the animation by using an explosion sound effect.