Name: Yucheng(Frank) Bao
Title of Music: Welcome to Wonderland
Artist Name: Anson Seabra
Concept and Design
The song I chose is Welcome to Wonderland by Anson Seabra, which is the song that shouldered the most of memory of my high school experience. Because of the clean and soft voice for the vocal, this song can always open my inner world. The overall tone of this song is calm and peaceful, which pictures the sense of loss to me when I listening to it for the first time. Then I felt a kind of a sense of belonging and comfort after listening to it over and over again. That is like all my inner thoughts converge together, alongside the melody of this song because I sense that the song seems to give me a direction and to lead me into a place for peace without and distraction and disturbs, also point out a smooth pathway to the future.
Furthermore, as for the style of this song, the whole structure is following a fixed pattern (A-B-A), and inside each part, one main melody repeats in the song several times which is also an important feature I would show in my composition.
I will more explain my design and intentions, also the Gestalt Theory I applied into this composition to present the concepts and features of feeling in this song in the Process part.
Process
- The sense of loss and The sense of belonging
I think it is the most difficult part because these two concepts are actually contradictions. In this case, I am trying to use some separate figures to show the sense of loss, and use the aggregative figures to present the opposite. You can see some scattered starts (forming by ‘v’ and ‘i’) on the peripherical side of the whole composition. Their separated locations present the disconnection and also some of them are distorted to show the irregularity which also symbolized the helpless people and individuals who may suffer a lot from their life. These stars can also reflect on the beat of the piano beat behind the main melody, which provides a comprehensive atmosphere to the whole song.
The big circle in the top left seems like harmonious entirety forming a huge contradiction to the scattered stars. I intentionally created two lays of circles- the inside circle is formed by the letter ‘O’ with the really smooth font, and the outside circle is formed by ‘M’ and ‘W’ which have symmetry figures. I also put some distorted effects on the outside circle to show the transition from the sense of loss(the separate stars) to the sense of belonging(the inside circle). For these circle elements, I applied the similarity (using the same letter-figure to form the whole part) and the closure (not complete the whole figure and left room for imagination).
- Leading direction
To make the leading direction, I used the letter “A” to compose the min-element to make the pathway. I adjust the two-sided line to become curves and also using the size difference to make the direction more three-dimensional. To make the composition more abundant and endow it with the sense of space, I added some rings (composed by the letter ‘D’) and let the lines go through the center of the rings. These rings can symbolize the halo, which also means hope for the future.
- The fixed pattern and the repetition of the melody
The prominent feature of this song is the repetition of the melody without too much variation. So in my composition, you can find I am actually also not making too many changes. All the parts I also repeating the same figure to forming the bigger picture, which reflects on that feature.
Conclusion
According to the professor’s advice, I will make the improvement from the perspective of structure and the variance of design. First, I will put the main two big circles into the top right corner, which may be forming a more stable structure in the whole composition. So that the big circle and two rings will compose an “X” in the whole picture which will become more stable than now. The other is I may try more various repetitions in my composition.