I really enjoyed this exercise! I thought it developed me into a better musician as it developed both my aural and compositional skills. When improvising my beat patterns, for the most part, I just sang whatever sounded good while remaining in a given mode. The hardest part of the exercise for me was figuring out the Solfège and corresponding hand signs to the chord – especially when it was inverted! To do this, I visualized what chord was constructed by the ending note of the pattern, and worked it out accordingly. For instance, I was certain that my fourth pattern ended on ti because it was harmonically adjacent to the home tone. I figured the V chord in first inversion would be the most correct, so, I reasoned that Ti, Re, and Sol were the correct Solfège syllables.
Overall, I thought my improvised baseline was good. Throughout the song, I was continually planning different ways to reiterate the la, do, and mi notes to create interest — that is — while singing, I was planning what to do next. Later, I decided to add other notes to make the bassline more interesting. For me, the hardest aspect of this exercise was making my bassline rhythmically and melodically interesting. I know that basslines are supposed to outline the harmonic structure of the piece; hence, they do not have to sound too complex. However, I thought that I could have introduced more rhythmic and melodic variation in my bassline (e.g., I used the same rhythms too often). Achieving this balance between complexity and not outshining the singer takes a lot of practice. Therefore, I will practice this concept in my improvisatory exercises; in other words, I will brainstorm as many rhythmic and melodic variations to give myself more variety.
For my Simple Song this week, I chose Hot Cross Buns. After singing the song out loud, I noted that the song only consisted of three notes: Mi, Re, and Do — the first three notes of a major scale. This made figuring out the Solfège very easy. For me, I think the most integral part of the exercise was singing the song out loud. My understanding of the Solfège hand signs is that they are used to teach others a song. However, I found as I was reflecting on me singing the song out loud, I actually imagined the scalar direction of the first phrase of the song — downwards. Overall, me associating the downward motion of the scale with the hand signs going down gave me an additional level of confidence figuring out the Solfège; I knew that the song used a simple, downward scale.