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Music Does Matter

 This is an Action Project for my civic term class, Music That Matters. This term we took a deep dive into music and how it can teach, inspire, and ignite people. For this project we had guest speakers from many different places come and teach us about different ways music can be effective. We took these ideas and came up with ways music can benefit our communities. We are proposing these ideas to My Block My Hood My City, which is an organization that helps communities by giving grants and donations to help make peoples ideas reality. We also learned about Ratliff's vocabulary. I went out to the end of my block and took a video of the sounds that come from my neighborhood. 

Hello, I am a student from GCE Lab School, and I am applying for the grant to help make my idea of making this installation possible. For this project, I came up with an idea to teach, inspire, and ignite my community through music. I went out to my block/neighborhood and I sat there for about 4 minutes, just listening to the sounds that are in the area. I noticed that there is hardly any music whatsoever in my neighborhood. So I decided to spend a couple days brainstorming as to how I can make my neighborhood more in touch with music. I picked a spot that I feel is a good spot to teach and inspire. I chose 61st and Langley corner. The reason I chose this spot was because I think it has the most potential for my project. It is right next to a post office and a school so I feel like it has the most outreach. People from areas other than just my area come to mail anything in the post office. This spot also influenced my idea greatly. My idea is to put a color coded xylophone on the corner to teach kids/adults you can enjoy music wherever. I also think that this installation can have the potential to inspire kids to get more involved with music. This installation will have music printed onto sheets of metal attached to it so kids can learn songs with the color coded notes. Below is a video showing the type of music that would be played on the xylophone and showing the neighborhood too. The song I chose to use for this video is called Moonlight Serenade by Glenn Miller. This is a song that will most likely won't be played on this project but to summarize it using the Ben Ratliff terms, it shows signs of Slowness, Repetition, Stubbornness, Sadness, a bit of Discrepancy. I chose discrepancy as the last term mostly because it is a slower/sad song on a instrument that is usually thought of as happy. The songs that would most likely be played on this project would be songs like, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Mary had a Little Lamb, and Row Row Row your Boat. Each of these songs have similar tempos. They all have a slower but happy tune/tempo. I think these songs would be perfect because of the relation to the school near my project location. The location of this project is meant to reach students and people wanting to learn music. To me, it doesn't matter who plays it as long as it means people are being inspired or taught.




This project was something that I enjoyed mostly because I was able to get a different perspective on music. It showed me how music is able to affect me and my community. I was confused for a while about the video making process but I was able to figure it out in the end. I have always been a big admirer of music in general so when I was able to take my interests to the next level I was very excited. 

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