How to choose a topic for the Musical Investigation?

[Yasmin16]

Hi,

I'm in my first year of IB and my teacher wants me to start thinking about my cultures for the Musical Investigation now. My problem is that I have no idea where to start. He said it would be a good idea to pick a popular culture and possibly a world music culture. I was thinking of maybe doing something like dubstep or drum and bass for the first culture but then I'm stuck for the second...

EDIT: just thought of this... would comparing jazz music to reggae work or are they too similar?

How did you all choose your cultures?

Any help is greatly appreciated

Yasmin

Edited May 24, 2011 by Yasmin16

[lastminuteman]

I did my MI under the old syllabus. From my understanding, you have to compare pieces of music from two different cultures by commenting on the similarities of certain musical aspects, so that's harmonies, scales, rhythms... you want to be using musical examples (i.e. scores or transcriptions) to demonstrate your points.

So I did Flamenco music (culture from world music) and rock. I compared the use of ostinato (repeated rhythmical patterns) between the two. I also looked at chord progressions, features in vocal melodies (i.e. melismas).

Now, I might think that reggae and jazz could be too close because they're both modern very Western forms of music. You'd be wanting to compare world music and western, and even better if they're from different time periods.

The main thing is though the strength of the musical analysis. Just find stuff that you can really analyse the music of and you'll be fine.

[Lilbailey]

I'm thinking of comparing acid jazz to barbershop quartet.