Musically Inclined

Musically Inclined

“Now the Past is just a conduit, and the light there at the end is where I’ll be…” (Relient K). Music has always been a passion of mine, ever since I was forced to take piano lessons in 2^nd grade. Since then I’ve learned to play guitar and am currently working on singing. So when I was asked to pick a building to do a history project on it was an easy pick, Glidden Hall, Ohio University’s music building. I created a short video presentation containing information about the history of the building, a music program, The Singing Men of Ohio, and of course music. Music is a form of entertainment and this was the main focus while creating this video. There were many choices I had to make while creating the presentation, such as coloring, graphics, information, and songs. Each choice was made to hopefully enrapture the audience into watching and enjoying the entire presentation, music has always been interesting to me so why shouldn’t my presentation involving music be interesting?

The very first decision I had to make was to decide who my audience was. I chose my peers, because everyone has some interest or stand on music, and I knew I could make the presentation enjoyable for them, because I am one of them I know what we like. Most people my age would throw away a flier, containing lots of information, or anything that looks boring. So I tried to cut down on information while still giving a basic background of the history. This is also why I chose to use a video because I could add audio as well as visual items, giving me a better chance to attract their attention. Attack more of their senses.

I remember the first time I walked into Glidden Hall during my orientation, I was so excited because I knew I was seeing somewhere I was going to be spending a ton of time. So, while designing my presentation I knew I had to show the information about this building first. But I also knew that this information could potentially be the most boring part of the actual presentation so I decided to make it visually appealing, choosing blue and orange, which are complementary colors. I looked up how to make these colors the most visually appealing and I found that a 3:1 blue to orange ratio was the best way to present these colors. This is because our eyes like contrast its one of a graphic designers first lessons, blue and orange are a contrast of each other.

The beginning of the video shows just a slide saying “the history of…” with a picture of Glidden Hall, I was trying to create suspense and interest in finding out what the picture was of. After that I told my peers a couple facts about Glidden. But I made a break in the information with a little joke to re-attract their information and letting them know there is more entertaining stuff coming up. I then proceed to give them more information, but I try and create more suspense and curiosity by adding “…” after “practice rooms”. Then I show a video of me playing the chorus from “Wonderwall” by Oasis to not only give them an idea of what a practice room looks like but also to add a little bit of entertainment.

This is where I switch to talking about the Acapella group The Singing Men of Ohio. The Singing Men of Ohio are a really cool group and what really made me interested to them is that their name use to be Ohio University Men’s Glee Club, I’m a big fan of the show “Glee”. To introduce the topic of the Singing Men of Ohio, I use suspense like I do previously in the video, by saying “Plus Glidden Hall is home to many musical ensembles”. Here I also switch up the text colors to green and white, Ohio University schools colors. This is because the Singing Men of Ohio travel around the country and globe representing Ohio University, so it only made sense to have their slides in the schools colors. The next few slides are about the Singing Men of Ohio as a whole. First giving you background information about the start of the club and following that up with more recent information and happenings. From here I switch to talking about Section 8, the elite group from SMO, and giving a little information about them.

All the information in this video was important, but the music was even more important. I believe it would catch my peer’s attention and hold it. So I got some audio of Section 8 and the Singing Men of Ohio playing various songs. The first song was “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz. This song was a hit so I know they have all heard it and could most likely sing along. Then there is my playing “Wonderwall” by Oasis, another hit they have undoubtedly heard. And lastly there is “In My Head” by Jason Derulo, of the three songs “In My Head” is the newest. I chose these songs not only from their popularity but to show all of my peers what the Singing Men of Ohio and Section 8 sounded like.

Every choice made while creating this project was create enjoyment, and to keep my peers attentive and paying attention. Not always the easiest task. But hopefully with the chance in color and graphics as well as the music I was able to accomplish this. This project was to create a promo of the history of a building. And I believe I accomplished that I may not have given them all the information about Glidden but hopefully enough to create a spark of interest in the music building or maybe and hopefully music itself.