Classes I'm taking this semester

I think I wrote my class schedule last year.
And now, I'm gonna introduce my new class schedule.

Since this April, I made new schedule because I became sophomore~!



Oh, if you are freshman of this blog(lol), I'm gonna introduce myself a little bit.
I'm Kei, studying in music college in Japan.
My major is playing classical saxophone. My school also has Jazz course but I'm in classical.



In my first year, I couldn't take some classes I wanted to attend, but in this year, it's gonna be exciting.
Because I can take many classes I'm interested in!

■民族音楽概論　Introduction of Ethnic music

This is, maybe the most interesting class in this year!

In this class, I'm gonna study about many ethnic music.

Each race has own music. Own melody, rhythm, instrument and also dance.

And each musics are related to culture religion they are believe.

(In Japan, almost people are not believe any religion... Not all. but almost people are.)

Then, I'm gonna learn how music connect to religion, culture and their life(also our life).

Teacher have studied in Africa for her field work.

So she has some ethnic instruments and her stories are so interesting!

■音楽美学　Aesthetics of Music

How music is beautiful? Why music makes people happier?...etc.

Please see it.(Wiki)

In this class, I'm gonna study like this.

I think, I need to know/think about philosophy to understand what aesthetics of music is.

Actually teacher told me brief history of philosophy.

And also I need to understand history of music.

Yeah, that's why I couldn't take this class last year.

I studied music history last year...

■音響学　Acoustics

Difficult stuff! But interesting.(That's why I'm taking this class.)

It relate to physics stuff and I don't understand it enough :(

How a sound appear? What is a mechanism of sound?

In this class, I will study these kinds of stuff.

■和声学　Harmonics

I was studying harmonics and this class is to continue a system of harmonics.

In classical music, there are many rules.

For example, it have to move below/high notes in the case... and so on..(I can't explain well...sorry :(

But sometimes composer, such as Debussy, broke away from these rules and then he succeeded to make new style of music.

I don't study any history in this class, just learn a method of harmonics.

■合奏(吹奏楽)　Ensemble(Wind orchestra)

Brass!!!!

All students wind instruments major join this class.

Each student join one band from four or five bands.

Now a band I'm joining is playing two pieces -both of them are requirement piece of wind orchestra competition.

(Almost junior high/high/university/company band in Japan compete every year's summer!)

All pieces are composed by Japanese composer.

So it is good time to play Japanese works.

■器楽史　History of instrumental

This class is focus on a history of instruments.

How develop instruments, how music changed with these instruments... and so on.

■コンピューター音楽概論　Introduction of computer music

I didn't imagine I use Mac PC in school....!!

Yeah, in this class, there are 16 Mac PCs to make scores by using keyboard and PC soft "finale".

I never used finale before, so this is gonna be first time to make beautiful score :) wow!

Because I like to use PC, this class gonna be so exciting la~~!

■英語　English

...I guess I don't need to explain.




"Aesthetics of music" and "Ethnic music" class are very interesting to me.
And through these classes, I'm also interested in philosophy, history(include the then culture) and science of religion.

...haha, I think I'm definitely curious about so many stuff :)