Musical Investigation Guideline request

[Arenais]

Hi, I need to give in my musical investigation, the one of comparing two cultures and was wondering if there is such a thing as a guideline or a set of instructions or even the requirements for it, since my teacher seems to not know of these papers. It would be of great help, thanks!

[KaieraAi]

Hi there! I had to do mine last year, and it's totally a pain because my teacher didn't give me papers either! I got a really good grade on mine despite that, so perhaps I can help.

I broke my essay into a compare sections based on the types of similarities. Mentioning things like influence from other areas and instrumentation, and then getting more narrow, down to things like the types of chords and harmonies, or rhythms that may be the same.

[Utah IB Student]

All I was told is that the cultures should be contrasting for the most part. Right now, I'm a bit stuck on mine. Do you think that I could do well if I focused on the roots of each music genre and less on the specific scores I chose?

[lespetits]

Pick two songs of differing cultures, you can do traditional folk piece (e.g Irish folk or Japanese kabuki opera) vs a western art piece (e.g Tchaikovsky or Debussy.)

Once chosen, listen to the pieces and pick out what similarities you can find AURALLY. Note them down. So these might be that the melodic contour may be similar, they have similar uses of pivot chords, structure, texture or even perhaps chromaticism? Analyse aurally and then compare.

After noting down similarities, find two things that you find similar that are easily expandable. I would go for choosing 3 musical concepts that you need to focus on - in depth!

For example you may look at Structure of the piece, is it ABA , or AB? Make sure once you analyse, go into depth and really back up your points with solid examples!

I'm still in the process of doing my MLI, but I hope I helped!