Rock and Roll

For the theme of rock and roll music, I wanted to avoid referencing any specific artist, so I depicted the drum notation for a "back beat," one of the key rhythms that distinguishes rock music. (Inspired by the Wikipedia definition of hard rock).



The background texture is based on the kuba cloth ish design I did for the jazz contest, and the colors are from the Sgt Pepper album (i.e. the shiny psychedelic band outfits of the four Beatles - ok, so I did end up referencing a specific artist).

My favorites were the 45 rpm inserts (there were several designs of those, but those gold ones were the best) and the palm frond guitar picks.

Voice Range

I'm partial to Mozart's operas, though I have very little music theory or history foundation to speak of. A few days ago I was idly pondering how far apart the standard voice ranges are - for instance, tenor and mezzo-soprano. Wikipedia to the rescue! There is a lovely chart comparing not only human voice ranges, but also a number of instruments. The answer to my query - they overlap by about one and a half octaves.

In the same article, I was amused to see the note about highest and lowest notes in standard singing repertoire - both are in Mozart operas! The highest is in both arias sung by the Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflöte, and the lowest is sung by Osmin in Die Entführung aus dem Serail. So, not only Mozart operas, but specifically German Mozart operas.