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Musical Investigation Ideas?


Dimitri

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So, I'm an SL Music student and I'm starting my musical investigation. I'M STUMPED!!! Anyone got any topic ideas to share? Or something to get me going? My only possible topic idea is Irish folk music, and if I needed to be more specific, I could say from the 1800's. I have NO reason for using that, it just came up one day. Help???

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I really don't know about anything about music nor the musical investigation therefore I'm not sure if this post will be useful, but why don't you try like a compare and contrast of American hip hop in the '60s and nowadays or how or to what extent it represents the culture each artist comes from. Hope it helps :)

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Hello,

for the MI you need to find two specific pieces that are from two very different cultures and find two big links between them but the links need to be based on the musical elements eg. structure, melody, harmony... and not on the context of the piece eg. they are used to represent feelings of love or they are both for violin.

I wonder if somebody could help me too. Then present it in some media script

So, I am planning to use Japanese koto music and Western Classical music, specifically rokudan for the japanese and the piano variations by Copland.

Are these pieces too different?

is use of a gradually increasing metre until the climax and then slowing at the end of the piece an "inherent" enough link?

my other link is that they are both variations on a theme (both continuous and consisting of 2 halves)

have other links too such as both not diatonic and monophonic-ish?

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Hey,

I just finished the November 2011 exams and got my results and all, and I did HL Music.

I think the easiest/most common topic people choose is Debussy & Gamelan, but I really didn't want to do something that everyone was doing, cos I thought that for such an easy topic, a 7 won't come very easily. I got really frustrated because like most people, I couldn't think of a topic at all! and it was getting pretty late for me, too. In the end I got a 7 with a perfect score (20/20) for my MLI and my topic was a comparison between musical cultures within hungarian and scottish music.

My advice to you is to listen to music every day, as in, turn on your classical FM, go through youtube. Another topic I was contemplating about was Spanish music and Riverdance, but couldn't find two songs that showed enough musical links. I suggest you listen to songs, and if you find two songs that seem similar, write down their similarities, for example 'rhythm: both in simple time'. Then pick your two with the most similarities/most you can write about. Don't forget to include a bit about differences too!

Good luck!

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  • 3 years later...

Hey, 

 

I'm also a Music SL student and I'm thinking of topics to do my investigation on. I'm pretty clueless about what I'm doing, and by now I've come up with questioning the validity of every topic that I come up with. By now I've thought of Jonny Goodman and a classical composer (yet to pick which one), Pink Floyd and Reggae and Ryukyuan music with Nirvana. What do you think about these? 

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  • 2 months later...
  • 1 month later...

We were told in my class that the goal is to find music from two places that are extremely far apart from each other, and compare them. Try to avoid focusing on cultural similarities/differences and more on form differences, or things more analytical in the style of the music. So far, I know half of what I am going to study. I am going to use Norwegian Folk Music and something else, possibly something more eastern.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hello everyone! I am a Music HL student and I am also doing the Music Link Investigation. I understand the requirements very well, but I don't know what genre I should choose. I have already chosen one of them (Chinese Music (with a little bit of western influence) and I want to compare to something else. Any ideas on what genre I can try for? Thank you!

Edited by Snowieball
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  • 1 year later...

Since you are comparing two musical cultures so it is best if you finish a detailed analysis of (or simply just list out) the musical features or writing devices (sequence, imitation etc.) used in Presto Agitato if thats what you're going for and find a piece or a musical culture that share these musical features (bear in mind that they can have differences and this would be a contrast you can discuss in your MLI). But do try to avoid pieces that differ too much, or they will give you limited scope for comparison (which is your focus).

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hello,

I'm having a bit of trouble with the structure of a Japanese folk song that I'm analyzing for my musical link investigation, I thought it would be the common structure of jo-ha-kyû which is what most traditional Japanese music would have. However I am having trouble finding the end or the beginning of each section or if it even is the structure I think it is. 

The piece I'm analyzing is "Sakura (Cherry Blossoms)" Performed by Toshiko Yonekawa.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK51LblcEOw&safe=true

I know it's not easy to analyze world music in depth but this piece of music really interests me and I have a lot of similarities with the other piece I'm analyzing.

Thanks for your help

 

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