Date: 13-1-16 Music Lesson with Dr Manhart

Today, we summarised what we have learnt for folk songs. We also notated folk songs and explained why we thought they were folk songs. This will help us complete our assignment about folk songs that I have heard many rumours about.

Folk songs are simple in tune because their melodies generally have small intervals or scales. This is so that the song is easier to memorise and easy for everyone to sing. Most folk songs also have unknown composers as the songs are so old or popular that the composer is ignored. I personally think that this is very sad for the composer. After all, it was his work and he was forgotten.

Folk songs have simple lyrics and repetition in the lyrics. For example, in "London Bridge", the phrase "falling down" is used multiple times. The lyrics are mostly rhyming, as seen in "Row Row Row", when the words "stream" and "dream" are used as a rhyming couplet.  These folk tunes also have insignificant content. Would the events of Mary bringing a lamb to school have a profound impact on us anyway?

Folk songs are meant to identify specific groups, such as your cultural, racial, national groups etc.

After we went over these points, Mr Manhart split us up into the groups we were in yesterday and let us choose a song to notate and elaborate on why it was considered a folk song. Our group, oddly enough, chose the same song as another group. I expected Mr Manhart to skip our group's presentation, however he let us present. This gave the whole class a small but valuable insight as to why some songs are more effective when written in one time signature as opposed to another.

Additionally, we cleared up a few misconceptions, such as rhythm vs speed. How are they different? Well, rhythm is either simple or difficult, while speed is the tempo of the music.

In conclusion, during this music lesson, I have learnt a lot and I hope that it is useful!

Date: 12-1-16 Music Lesson with Dr Manhart

Today we learnt some basic information about folk music.

Firstly, Dr Manhart let us try to name a few tunes or songs that we think everyone should know. Our answers included "Star Wars' Main Theme", "Twinkle Twinkle", "Row Row Row the Boat" and many others. Afterwards, he moved on to the subject of oral history.

Oral history is when we pass down something oral in nature to the next generation, for example a folk tale, a folk song or a poem. However, nowadays people prefer to use written history instead as it is more reliable than oral history. Dr Manhart told us a story of when he went to Indonesia to study a particular tribe. He wrote down the tribe's songs which were passed down trough oral history. A year (I think?) after he had left, the tribe was wiped out because of a hurricane. Therefore, both oral and written history have their pros and cons.

After that came the fun part! Dr Manhart split us into groups and instructed us to choose two of what we deemed "folk songs" to perform. My group consisted of Yau Wai, Callista, Irena and me. We chose "Row Row Row the Boat" and London Bridge is Falling Down", which oddly enough were the same songs that one of the other groups chose.

After the performances, we concluded that tradition selects the necessary. It whittles down a magnitude of songs until the best remain. The definition that Dr Manhart has given us for "traditional" is that it has been forwarded for more than two generations and it does not have a composer's name attached to it, because the song is so well-known that the composer is forgotten.

We also tried to identify the various aspects of folk music.

First of all, a folk song is meant to identify a particular political nationality, religion, race, culture, dialect, etc. For example, a Chinese folk song is taught orally to Chinese children, not Caribbean children or something.

Folk music is characterised by its simple, catchy tunes of which everyone can sing (inclusive of me. I have a terrible singing voice.) and memorise, easy lyrics, repetition, and its short length.

This is what we've learnt today.