Artist & Song Study

Introduction

In this blog post I am going to study "My manic and I" by Laura Marling and "I want to break free" by Queen. I feel that an in depth study of these songs and artists with enable me to gain a better understanding as to how they become popular and rose to fame. 

To present my findings I will be using Prezi (www.prezi.com).  Prezi is an interactive online presentation tool, which is a modern approach to the traditional power-point slideshow style.
To the right is a screen print of the home page of the site. 

Laura Marling

Queen

Embedding 
One technical challenge that I faced while creating this blog post was the issue of embedding the Prezis. This was hard as blogger is a google product and prezi is not, meaning that embedding is slightly more of a challenge.  

To do this to go on the finished prezi online page and select the "embed" button, underneath the prezi. This opens up a selection menu where I can chose how my prezi will function and look when it is embedded. I choose the size of 550x400 pixels and the option to let viewers pan and zoom freely through the prezi. 

Next you copy the code to the clipboard, and open your blogger post. On blogger you change the editing the mode from "Compose mode" to "HTML coding mode". This allows you use coding to insert the prezi straight into the post, much like how a programmer would create a website. To finish to change back to "compose mode", and the prezi is on your post and ready to be viewed!

Genre Studys

Introduction
For this blog post, I am going to research into a few different genres of music. This will help me to gain a deeper understand of what defines the genres and what the different characteristics are of each. 

To aid my research in this blog post I will using Mind Meister (http://www.mindmeister.com/) which is a free online mind mapping website. I feel that this will be a great way to create mind maps about my research for each genre, which will allow me to exploit modern technology. 
Here are some screenshots from my Mind Meister work:

I will also use an app called "Bloom.fm" in order to research popular songs by specific genres. This an a app from the "app store" on my iPhone 4 which allows users to pick a specific genre or sub-genre, the app then creates a radio stream of songs centred around the chosen genre. This will help me to gain an idea of what is recommended listening for the genres. 
Here are some screenshots of bloom fm in action:

By clicking the genre wheel, shown to the left, the app then opens a list of genres. These can be rotated through, as shown in the screenshot to the right. A genre is then selected which opens another scroll through page with a selection of sub genres available. A sub genre is then selected which begins the radio stream. Songs can be scrolled forwards and backwards, and a "playlist" can be viewed as well. 


Study of Indie 
The first genre that I looked at was "Indie". I created an online map mind about this genre which can be viewed by this link: http://www.mindmeister.com/349849292/indie
There is also a screen print of the mind map below:

On bloom fm to the genre of Indie does not have is own category. To find it you must select "Alternative", which then provides you with the options of "Indie Rock" and "Indie Pop".
I selected both of these, here are the radio streams that I was presented with:

I was unfamiliar with with most of the artists presented to me for both sub-genres, however it was very interesting to discovered what bloom fm would recommend. 

Study of Punk
The second genre that I looked at was "punk". I created an online map mind about this genre which can be viewed by this link: http://www.mindmeister.com/349866021/punk
There is also a screen print of the mind map below:

On bloom fm punk does have a genre of its own. This genre is filled with 4 sub genres, and one selection to play all together. These are "Electropunk", "Hardcore Punk", "Pop punk" and "Ska punk". As shown in the screen print below:

Here are the radio streams that I was presented with for each sub-genre of punk:

Some of the results for the punk bloom fm searches interested me as they were not artists which I had released could be classed under this genre. For example M.I.A. 

Introduction + What Is A Music Video

Introduction
Over the course of this blog I am going to research into music videos. I will aim to learn what makes a good music video, typical codes and conventions, filming styles, editing techniques and more. This will be vital information that I will need to put into practise for when I begin to create my own music video. I will end my blog by evaluating my progress over the course of this project. 


What is a Music Video?
A music video is quite simply a promotional video created by an artist or band as a promotional material to aid the sales of their singles and albums. It is often used to enhance the lyrics by creating a storyline, showing the artist in the best possible light.Occasionally they do not follow any kind of convention, causing them to make no logical sense.

One thing that all music videos are designed to do is to entertain the audience. They must include the music track that they are promoting. They commonly include the artist or band, however this is not always the case. They can be very experimental in style, which more commonly occurs when the genre is more niche. 

Music videos have become very popular with music television channels, as it gives them something to play with the track. They are also uploaded on to the video sharing site YouTube (www.youtube.co.uk). This makes them available to be shared easily between people, most commonly on social networking sites such as FaceBook (www.facebook.co.uk). This popularity has seen an increasing rise is the budget for the creation and editing. Meaning that very high-tech results can be achieved.