Project 1 : Musical Instrument

Project 1 :Musical Performance

Daily Objects as Musical Instruments

Project Brief:

In this project, students were required to make a instrument out of the daily objects individually. After completing the instrument, students were divided into a group of 11 to perform a muscial performance with the different themes given.

This project requires much creativity in the whole process as it was not easy to transform daily objects into instruments that works well and serves the given theme at the same time.

Therefore, this project is a good platform for students to unleash their creativity and go wild with their imaginations. The performance was opened to public thus students were able to gain experiences on stage while performing to the audience.

The themes given were punk rock, disney movie soundtrack, disco retro, radio top hits, hip-hop, king of pop and so on. Our group got PUNK ROCK !!!! YEAH !!!!!

My group was made up of 11 people:

1. Lee Yet Yee ( Me )

2. Tam Zhao Wei

3. Madeline Liew Zhi Qi

4. Chang Huey Yi

5. Heng Shy Hua

6. Chin Shee Wei

7. Koo Jian Xiang

8. Ng Kwang Zhou

9. Tan Min Chuen

10. Ashley Yeap Phay Shian

11. Darren Tan

Progress Journal

-Process of Making The Instrument

Our group was named the minions because everyone likes minions and of course, there was one particular minion carries potention to be like a punk rock singer.

Cover Page

The major instruments involved in punk rock.

Page 1

Punk Rock instrument analysis where the function and suitability of each instruments are stated and put into consideration on which instrument should I choose.

Page 9

The FINAL PRODUCT!!!

Cover Page

The major instruments involved in punk rock.

1/10

The process of making the drum set was quite callenging as I need to think of how to connect each part of the instrument to make it look like a full drum set.

These are the daily objects I used to make my instrument. The objects are ordinary things that we can see everyday like pails, broom stick, chopping board, metal plates, suction hook and a plastic flower pot.

The Creative Part:

-making the clash cymbals of the drum set

I was in a procastination stage for quite a long time thinking how should I make the clash cymbals for my drum set. I chose to use metal plates as the cymbals but what connects a metal plate perfectly without affecting the sound quality produced?

At last, I got my answer while taking shower at home while looking at the suction hook that were used to hang my clothes. " LIGHT BULB ON"!!!

Therefore, i tried connecting the metal plates to the plastic broom using the suction hook, and the best thing was, the sound produced was not affected!

The Musical Performance:

-Procastinating, Planning, Practicing, Performing

I was in charge to plan the performance. It was very time consuming to plan how does 11 different instruments built with different objects will " come together in peace and harmony ". In addition, our song list was changing over and over again therefore it was quite hard to actually plan for the whole performance.

Fortunately, our team finalized the songs which are:

- 21 Guns

- It's My Life

- So What

- Smile

- Aint It Fun

First Tutorial:

We drew a mindmap describing all the characteristics of punk rock and made our very own CD cover.

Then we presented a sneek peek of our performance during that tutorial and we had our very first minion group photo.

We gone through many practices and I was quite proud of the results as everything was coming together so perfectly. All of my team mates were good in beats and rhythm, some of them have music bases so it was not a problem for us to immitate the songs using our own instruments. We even made our own banner for our music band.

Gladly, our group got many good feedbacks form each tutorial sessions where Ms. Reene, who was our tutor for this performance also gave us some useful advices to improve our performance.

Big Day For The Minions !!!!!

-Musical Performance ( 3rd of April 2015 )

The day had finally arrived!!! I woke up at 3.00am to get my makeup done. Me and my team mates have done many research on punk rock style, how does they dress, makeups and hairstyles. It is quite unusual for people to put on makeups like a punk rock star so it was quite fun to do so.

We gathered at 5.00am in the morning and helped each other on the makeups, hairstyles, coloring our nails, tattoos and many more. Then we had the last rehearsal to get ourself fired up for the performance. There were so many people who came to watch our batch perform. Our group was last in line to perform.

Punk Rock Performance:

Photos of The Day:

Myself

Me and my friends

Spot the difference : Ms DE!!!

Me and Mike~

Myself

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Reflection:

Through this project, I have learnt to think out of the box and be creative in everything I do. I also learnt not to constrain myself both in my thoughts and ideas. In addition, I gained more knowledge about punk rock, their styles and character. I really enjoyed the time acting as a punk rock music band performer and feel how a punk rocker feels like. I did not like punk rock singers or songs previously but after this project, I love them.

Besides of learning more about punk rock, I was able to make a bunch of life time friends. I enjoyed every moment with them practicing all night long. I was able to know more about my friends and we worked together to solve every problem that arrised. There were many ups and downs throughout the whole process but there is nothing to worry about as I know that my friends have got my back and I got theirs.

Appreciating the daily objects around me was what I learnt through this project. The daily objects are simple but when input with creativity, amazing things can be produced. This project have really unleash my creative thinking skills and I sincerely hope that there will be more projects like this in the future.