Sonic Revelations, Sonic Revolutions

I had never heard Girl Talk until I came to Oberlin. I had heard of them, yes, but I sort of figured that anything heavily referenced on the Oberlin 2012 facebook group was well worth avoiding.

I was wrong.

The first time I heard Girl Talk, it was early September and one of the worst days of my life. I had spent the morning going back and forth from the old media check-out room, to the art department, to the new media check-out room, to the cage, to ginko gallery, to the photo co-op,  back to the art building, and so on ad nausem and side cramps. All this walking culminated on the bench outside my photography professor’s office, holding the knowledge that manual cameras are so completely obsolete that noone on campus owned any, much less was willing to rent one to a lowly, novice of a freshman, and the shiny new iPod I had just received for class in my other hand. I put my headphones on, and after being a bit frightened at what came up when I put it on shuffle, searched through it for anything that sounded vaguely familiar.

I sat outside my photography professor’s office for a half an hour, bouncing up and down, dancing and singing a bit, and basically, having a ball. I didn’t even mind that he didn’t show up. Anyone passing by must have thought I was insane. I was grinning wildly and bopping along, and occasionally cracking up laughing and exclaiming things like “Really? Really?!” to no one in particular.

The first time I made someone else listen to Girl Talk was a couple of weeks after that. We were on a study break, and I was jamming out in the corner, actually still doing homework. “So show me this weird music you’ve been listening to,” my friend demanded, raised eyebrows, hand out, not about to take no for an answer.

“Um, okay,” I said, and quickly changed the track to something a little more listener-friendly.

My friend nearly snorted water through his nose. “Did they just sample Paul McCartney? Really?” He couldn’t stop grinning. I didn’t get my ipod back for a while.

Since then Girl Talk has been all over. I joined a couple friends on an impromptu to Lake Eerie late one Saturday night, and we rolled all the windows down, blared Girl Talk, and sung into the wind. I’ve heard it in co-op kitchens on particularly bad crews and on the radio. The thing is, Girl Talk has almost spoiled me. I can’t listen to Paranoid Android without thinking about how much better Girl Talk made it. Who in the world would have thought that ABC by the Jackson Five would be so much improved by giving it a back beat and blending it with Bohemian Rhapsody? The originals are sometimes (especially in the case of Avril Lavigne) not as good as what they’ve been made into. Rapping over Come On Eileen and God Only Knows, if not one of the best ideas ever, is at least one of the most amusing ideas ever. Every part of every Girl Talk song is a “cool spot.”

I think one of the reasons I am constantly so amazed by everything they produce is that I spent a good deal of my summer writing found poetry; taking the words of my classmates and famous writers and strangers and twisting and rearranging them to create something completely new. I discovered this accidentally, just listening to a classmate in my writing workshop read his work aloud and trying to type fast enough to catch all the phrases and words and images I found really intriguing. I ended up with a block of text that read a lot like poetry. I started experimenting with rearranging the words and ideas of the “feedback poems,” as my class started to call them, and I believe that some of the best things I wrote during those three weeks I did not actually write. My friends wrote all of the words and phrases, and all I did was rearrange, adding a couple of words here and there where necessary. I spent a long time torturing myself over who “wrote” the poetry I ended up with, and now I know exactly what was going on. I sampled.

The idea of musically legitimizing stealing with the word “sampling” is fantastic. I am a fan. Everything comes from somewhere; some a little more directly than others. That’s not a problem in and of itself. Artists learn by copying and drawing what the masters have created, and then branch off that knowledge to create something new. A sketch of a statue is still a beautiful new piece of art, and someone may be more enthralled with that than the original marble. Directly using others’ material without credit and plagiarizing is a different story. Giving credit where it is due (which I am sure Girl Talk has done in what have to be the longest liner notes ever) and then making something new is not only acceptable; I would encourage it. Nothing exists in a vacuum. Most things have been done before, and we can just branch off them to create something “new.” Reuse, and recycle.

Beyond that, it is incredibly hard sometimes to rip things apart and put them back together in a way equally as aesthetically pleasing as the original. Girl Talk always hits it perfectly, and I am always impressed.

Hey guys, long time no post, I know. I’ve been sick and then lost my password, and eh, I hate excuses. Let’s get on with this. I’ll do the assigned blog now, and then stayed tuned later on today for Natalia’s Make Up Posts!

This piece is so amazingly disjointed and yet works together so fluidly. I have tons of different impressions scratched down on my paper: “forests, birds, haunted house, glowing,” etc. One of the main impressions I got from the piece was the idea of birdcalls, because of the way the piece is structured. It is rare for an instrument to continue playing for very long, so the snippets reminded me of bursts of birdsong. I heard an owl-like sound at 7:48 and 7:58, and when the tapping began (at 10:15) it reminded of a woodpecker. The thing that I think makes this whole piece work is the fact that the two instruments are not really playing with each other. They’re layering over each other. They never play for exactly the same interval; one always comes in earlier, leaves later, or bounces in and out of the music. The flute and the vibraphone are on different planes. At the beginning this was played up even more, with the instruments almost taking turns, in order to highlight the scarcity of sound, and all the silence sprinkled through the piece. At about 8:46 I realized that the sound was becoming more compacted, and there were a lot fewer intervals of silence. Occasionally I even forgot that there were only two instruments because of the diverse sounds they created. However, these sounds could only play two at a time because of the limited numner of instruments, which also added to the layering sound. To my ears, there were five nine building blocks of this song: silence, flute trilling, vibraphone trilling, flute shrieking, vibraphone clanking, the two different kinds of tapping, the ominious hum, and the glowing hum.  These sounds affected the tone of the piece a lot. At the beginning, when it was mostly silence, humming vibraphone, and softly trilling flute, the piece felt a lot calmer than later on, when the vibraphone began tapping out beats and the flute began to shriek. The end worked very well, because it calmed down a lot and thus reminded me of the beginning, but at the same time had a different sound clearly derived from the music’s progression.

Basically, I really liked this.

I just dashed home from the TIMARA concert so I could blog about it.

IT WAS AMAZING. I had no idea what to expect, and I was so pleasantly surprised this time. Fantastic!

Instead of continuing to babble things like “OMG SO GOOD!!1!” (and I am heading down that slippery slope) I would like to talk about two pieces in particular that caught my attention. Postcards from New Amsterdam was so interesting to listen to because I’m going to write my paper about the sense of place in John Luther Adam’s work. It was great to be able to hear such a different place composed in such a different way. I have been to New York exactly twice, and I spent the first couple of minutes thinking, “The music needs to be harsher!” Then I realized that I had never really listened to New York, and that I was basing my judgement off of movie stereotypes. I once took a taxi alone very early in the morning to an airport in New York City.  New York isn’t all hustle and bustle; it’s also glowing streetlamps in the halflight, and cement stoops leaning from brick buildings, and park benches, and forests, and walking down the street knowing no one. There was a distinct feeling of loneliness in the song, which I notated on my program as “the lone ranger sound,” some quality that reminded me of country western movies with tumbleweeds and drawn guns.  The music obviously draws from the sound of traffic and sirens, which I find very appropriate for a piece based off New York. Postcards from New Amsterdam was very different from John Luther Adam’s interpretation of Alaska, and yet strangely reminiscent not only conceptually. Both are primarily gentle works (not only in the sense that they didn’t make me physically ill). I think the use of a wind instrument in Postcards from New Amsterdam is what makes it seem gentle to me even thought it is filled with siren-like noises. If another instrument had been used, I feel it would seem a lot less like JLA’s work to me. There was also something undifferentiated about it because of the constant siren noises (though not as monocromatic as JLA’s music). I think Postcards from New Amsterdam was likely influenced by JLA’s concept of composing a place, as well as his execution of that idea.

“I really wish there wasn’t an intermission,” Jackson said, watching everyone file about and chat. I thought about it and nodded. “Yeah! It would work so much better if it just went straight on through and got everyone into this sort of zone.”

I’d like to officially retract that statement. The way Terri Hron chose to start the second half of the performance was brilliant. By softly playing the beginning of the work without any introduction, the sounds of the audience slowly quieting down to hear became part of the piece, and I started to think of the entire intermission as part of the work as well. It’s a fascinating idea.

I think one of the main reasons why I liked this recital so much, beyond the fact that it was simply beautiful music and the closest thing to musical poetry I have heard in a while, is that there were strong concepts behind each piece. I like to be able to grapple with ideas as I hear the music, and I think it lets me enjoy it more than as just an aesthetic experience.   

There are some benefits to procrastination. In all honesty, I completed the readings this morning, and I am in no way apologetic, because of the snow.

I’m from Florida. Snow is new and fantastic and cold, and everyone I know is making fun of me for being so thrilled, because apparently it’s not “really snowing.” Listening to John Luther Adams again this morning, I realized: this is really snowy music. I was blown away by how perfectly wintery it was, and then I read the papers about how JLA’s purpose was to compose Alaska. This blew me away even more, because he had so exactly raised that image in my mind even when I had very little background knowledge of the music. You know when you completely adore something so much you can’t put it into words? I’m listening to The Light That Fills My World right now, and I feel exactly like that.  I think I’m going to walk around listening only to John Luther Adams for the rest of the winter. I am amazed, and enthralled, and hearing JLA’s work and staring out the window at the snow made my day. It was spectacular. It sounds so much like watching snow fall. The background stays the same and there is very little variation in the scene (some people walking by) but then the shimmer of the falling ice everywhere, and the patterns of the snowfall changing every second makes it stunning. I was never bored watching the snow fall or listening to John Luther Adams’ music.

The idea of composing places is also such an incredible idea to me. I wish I was more musical so I could try to compose Miami Beach, or Oberlin, or my aunt’s backyard. In the meantime, I’ll have to settle for listening to Alaska over and over again.

I listened to this basically all morning Monday while cooking lunch for my co-op. I had no idea what I was going to hear, and was at once skeptical and amused by the idea of a piece for a toy piano. I picked it just because Professor Alegant said that it sometimes “swings,” and I figured I needed something upbeat to keep me from chopping my fingers rather than the cauliflower.

My fingers were very pleased with this decision, as were my ears. I was surprised to find myself totally rocking out to a toy piano. I got so into it! It was never repetitious to the point of boredom, even though I played it on repeat, and I could always find something new in the sound. Around maybe the second or third repeat I realized that the backbeat wasn’t just a part of the random kitchen noises on the other side of my headphones, but a part of the piece. I don’t know if it was intentional for you to be able to hear the bang on his fingers on the keys, but I think it added so much to the sound. It gave me more to focus on, and aided in the piece’s strange danceability.

Over fall break (on the planes?) I really want to hear the rest of Inner Cities, because when I accidentally started listening to 4, it was a complete break in sound and tone. 3 was very upbeat and fun, while at least the beginning of 4 was slow and depressing. I can’t find the link yet.

Our discussion in class about Tramp with Orchestra (Jesus’s Blood Never Failed Me Yet) really intrigued me. Was it ethical to create this piece with the recording of the tramp’s voice when the tramp may have never even heard it, much less have received monetary compensation for it? Somebody else in class described this song as stealing a part of the tramp’s soul, and I completely agree with that person. I also completely agree with Finn’s blog, in that the reason this piece feels like it captured a soul is because of its unremitting honesty. Like I said in class, this argument highly reminds me of photography. Suppose you take a picture of a girl crying on the street. Is it ethical to portray such sadness without compensating the subject of the photo? You’ve taken a picture of her when she is emotionally fully exposed, and if you’re a really good photographer, you’ve managed to compress some of her soul onto a sheet of paper. You could never learn her name and her portrait could hang in national museums. Is that different, somehow, because it is inherent in the medium of photography? Art is meant to portray life, and when the line between life and art is blurred substantially it can make people uncomfortable because they are forced to face the realities of life head-on. The serious negative reactions of a couple of people in our class to this piece because it felt like it nearly encapsulated a life made me have an even greater appreciation for the work. That is the mark of a seriously successful work of art. Another, I think, is the ability of the music to take on whatever emotions you bring to it, which I think was also shown in our class’ conversation by the way some people found it very uplifting and others found it very depressing.

In my opinion, souls are not meant to be kept anyway. We give away our soul willingly on a daily basis, by saying what we’re thinking and caring about people and creating art. Souls don’t have a limit. They replenish. I think it’s a sad thing that people are uncomfortable looking directly at who someone is. I do not believe Gavin Bryars had anything but the most honorable of intentions in creating this work. I still can’t find the right words to describe the tone of this piece. It isn’t depressing or uplifting, it’s just comforting. It’s another one of those works that reminds me of all sorts of cliched things like how there is always good around the corner and silver linings and such.

The first time I heard this, I was stunned at the beauty of the piece (even though I know we have moved on from drones, I tend to go into everything we listen to in this class expecting the worse. This time, I was very pleasantly surprised). The background melody was calming, and the lyrics repeated so assertively that I felt like all was right in the world. “Yes,” I thought. “I can tell you truthfully that few periods in my life have passed so quickly.” The line “there are doubtless subtle surprises ahead, but I feel secure and ready” had such an amazingly calming effect on me. (I was also very amused by the times he went overboard on the enunciation of certain phrases: it highly reminded me of some poetry readings at writing camp.) 

Listening to this again the next day, in a much different mood, was an entirely separate experience. I caught onto every ironic nuance of the words. I still felt like it was some sort of mantra; something to be repeated day in day out like it or not, like “today will be a good day.” It was, however, really bitter. 

Reading Erin’s post gave the whole work a much more dire spin. Somehow in my listening I missed the line “talk to guards and inmates” which changes the entire meaning of the piece. I’m not sure I like knowing the backstory as much. I liked the piece better when it was a general litany on life, instead of being a very specific elegy. I think while it may make the piece stronger in some regards, it causes Coming Together to lose its relatability.

I think half the fun of Triadic Iteration Lattices is the simple fact that this piece is being performed on air sirens. The idea that air sirens could make music had never occurred to me before, and it was fun to hear the ways in which an ordinary object that we traditionally consider to make an obnoxious noise could create arresting music. Someone in class said that you felt like you were on a roller coaster while listening to it, which I did not realize the first time I heard it, but after playing it again yesterday I completely agree with that person’s assessment. The piece teases the listener with the notion of a climax, but every time until the last, final crescendo, the work backs away from the one sound the listener wants to hear: all the air sirens blaring at their full potential at once. This worked really effectively to keep the listener constantly involved in this piece. I think that of all the pieces we’ve listened to so far, this piece was the easiest for me to stay consistently concentrated in the music because of that (the fact that it was only 8:22 also may have helped, however).

I don’t have any associations with air sirens, really, other than the obvious Nazi references. I didn’t know that air sirens were sounded in the event of a tornado until someone brought it up in class. I don’t think they’ve ever sounded air sirens in the event of a hurricane. Because of my lack of personal involvement in the basic sound of the air siren, I do think I was able to enjoy this piece much more. I think that if I had other negatives associations with the noise this piece would be completely different for me.

I hate to write about something so many other people have already chosen to blog about, but when I came back to listen to Kontradictionaries again, it sounded very different to me. Already I can feel my ears adjusting to the harsh sounds we’ve been listening to in class, and every so often when there is a soft, high overtone, I almost feel like I’m listening to classical music while all I am really hearing is a bunch of roaring drones. While I completely agree that this isn’t dance music, I could actually imagine myself walking to class in the winter, bundled up in every winter garment I could find, with this piece warming my ears. Only at about ten minutes in did my head start to buzz unpleasantly. I’m also finding myself beginning to disagree with my former assessment that this piece was no more than a technical exercise with no emotional content. When the overtones appear, it is almost like light spilling from behind a cloud. I could see this piece as some sort of meditation on the monotony of life, with a couple of bright, shining moments sprinkled throughout, though I would really not like to be the one to defend that thesis. I do find myself enjoying it more as I force myself to continue to listen to it. Perhaps one day I will consider it dance music?

I feel extremely pretentious writing a poem to Atmospheres, but I did it anyway. I picked out the sequences (”cool spots”) where I heard atmosphere noises, and then tried to convey the sound and the creepiness of the piece. Please keep in mind guys that I did write it this morning and haven’t finished editing yet. The poetry is entirely fictional; it is not about my mother, nor anyone’s mother I know. It was meant to be creepy and incestuous, because my discomfort in writing the poem (and hopefully the reader’s response to the poem) mirrored what I felt while listening to this piece. 

I.  (4.33)
My mother kept bees.
They liked her; lapped
at her ankles and knees in a way
life never did. She wore a paisley dress
(and little else) and they bit her all over
as she danced.

II. (5.12)
She loved the city, loved to watch
the car crashes and fire trucks and wonder
where all the ambulances were going.
We pulled over for every road kill
knelt beside the carrion, and prayed.
My mother would put it in a cardboard box
and we would have possum for dinner.

III. (6:40)
Every night, we skinny-dipped
my long brown hair trailing behind
as we swam. After, we lied on the beach
and pulled sand through our toes
and we touched and touched and touched.  

about the intro:  Atmospheres needs no introduction, and thus, it doesn’t have one. The song begins sharply with a droning sound, while other instruments play lilting, fearful melodies around the hum. These quiet melodies slowly become the focus, go into a soft crescendo, only to be overtaken by the lower, harsher notes. They combine, increase in volume, then fall to almost silence. The crescendo returns, the din rising and rising until… it falls. It falls without any warning, and doesn’t cut off to silence this time, but continues wafting along with the trumpet and the piece continues.