Highlights in Music

Wow! It has been one crazy week! Unfortunately, I spent most of this week in Savannah for the AP Biology field trip, so I did not have much time to practice. Instead, I spent my practice time browsing potential final product music. I really liked “Colors of the Wind” from Pocahontas:

Image by Joël Simard via musescore

Although this piece is mainly written in the key of D major, the rhythm seems challenging. There are a ton of eighth notes throughout the piece, but the eighth notes are relatively close to one another, which hopefully means that they will not be as challenging to play. I also noticed that the song is riddled with many scales. Scales better suit eighth note rhythms because the player does not have to keep track of numerous different finger positions while playing at such a fast pace. I really cannot wrap my head around why the first couple of measures are in the key of F major. I believe that major key changes are better suited for the highlights of songs. Major key changes bring focus and intensity to the melody, and the placement of the major key change at the beginning of this song detracts from the allure and anticipation of the song’s highlight. I guess the song does not really have a highlight because there is so much going on in the song. Since the same basic melody is repeated, it does not make sense for the repeated portion of the melody to be rewritten in a different key.

Since I am familiar with this song, I decided to take some time to run through it. I definitely struggled with the sudden key change because it was a very drastic change. The key starts off with 1 flat and suddenly changes to 2 sharps. I kept playing in the wrong key throughout the rest of the song, so I decided to just skip the beginning to make it easier to practice. Additionally, the rhythm in measures 66 – 68 was very difficult to play because it was the first time throughout the song that the rhythm appeared. It was crucial to play this rhythm correctly because it signaled the ending of the song.

This week, I gained more insight on the highlights of songs. I think the best way to describe the highlight of a song is through an example. For me, a highlight of a song is that moment during a rap song when the rapper suddenly sings instead of raps. During classical songs, it may be the part towards the end when the tempo suddenly increases and the melody has the same rhythm but different notes from the rest of the song. In “Colors of the Wind,” I thought that the highlight would appear in measure 42 because that was the last time that the main melody repeated itself, and the highlight usually appears in the last repetition of the main melody. However, there was no key change during the portion, so I was genuinely confused.

For myself, I learned that I am bad at slowing down the rhythm when necessary. For example, the change in rhythm in measures 66 – 68 is supposed to get slower, but I still played that portion with the same tempo as the rest of the song. I think it is more thrilling when the tempo is faster, so that could probably explain why it is hard for me to slow down. Next week, I plan to spend some more time on “Colors of the Wind,” specifically the rhythm, because I did not get much time to practice it this week. I also want to play with the original recording of the song to further improve my rhythm.