I think that the discussion that we had on Wednesday was the best we’ve had in a while. We were just into it, and some interesting points were thrown out there. I was think about it after, and just wanted to add a thought of my own. I agree with what Jackson was saying – how many (a majority of) people only want to hear what’s familiar, only want to hear the things that they already know, sampled over and over again. The more widely circulated and more often heard the song, the bigger the cheer it gets in concert. And yeah, I agree that being closed-minded and hostile to new music isn’t a good thing… But I was thinking about that very point while I was running, listening to a favorite song from years ago, and I found that there is another spin off of this point. Although there may not that much debate about what I’m about to say, I just wanted to put it out there. As I was running, I just had a playlist going, because who wants to be searching for songs to listen to while exercising, and it was on shuffle, so I didn’t know what song was coming up next… And as it switched, I knew right away what it was. Despite the freezing cold I started to smile, and to run faster. It was Shed a Little Light, by James Taylor, an uplifting tune that I’ve been hearing probably since before I was born. It’s one of my Mom’s favorites. As the song progressed, I fell completely into step with it, and it allowed me to run faster for longer, and by the way enjoy it. So after the song ended, I was thinking about what caused my burst of energy, and here’s the conclusion that I came to: It’s about a relationship with the song. To me, music is not just a sonic experience. It can be, but generally I’m looking for some sort of emotional response, or some sort of story as well. Because of the versatility and wide scope of music, I don’t think that we can just write people off for never wanting to listen to new things – maybe they are hearing new things, in each story, and in each circumstance that they first hear a song. And if all they want to hear is familiar music and familiar themes (which seems to be the case), it is perhaps not because they don’t want to hear new things, but just because they have already built a relationship with the songs that they already know and so things outside of strictly the sonic experience give them a greater experience on the whole – emotions, memories, vivid stories, etc. I’m not saying that I don’t love hearing new things, but when an old favorite comes on, it carries a lot of baggage (usually not a bad thing), and it can get a bigger emotional response, regardless of the complexity of the music. Yeah.
After our discussion in class on wednesday about new music, orgionality, etc., I was struck with a thought. I decided to go home and cinduct an experiment. Although it was completely subjective, i found out some things about origionality in “new” music. My experiment was centered around the blues. If you are not inttimately familiar with the blues, it is a style of music where all of the songs are comprised of essentially the same chord changes. The origionality is in the style of playing, the lyrics, the rhythms, the soloing and the tambres of the instruments. In my experiment, i took this form of music and caused further similarities to be compaed in order to test for origionality. I took five diferent recordings of Stormy Monday, one of the most famous blues songs, and compared them. I listened to B.B. King, Albert King with Stevie Ray Vaughan, Muddy Waters with Johnny Winter, The Allman Brothers (a recording hich I have discussed in aprevious post), and Howlin Wolf. Aside from Howlin Wolf, these are guitarist’s recordings. All are playing the same song, in the same keey, with virtually the same chord. However, they are all different recorings.
In our discussion we asked if there could be “new music” or true origionalty with the overwhelmingly present influences of the past. I realized thorough my listening, that true origionality, in terms of playing music, comes not from the chords or the lyrics (although those are aspects of origionality that many musicians are known for), bt from the heart and soul of the players themselves. On these five recordings o the same song, there is nothing that is creatively repeative. All of the musicians are vastly different muscians who utilize their incredible talents to create a true origional out of the most common blues song of all time. It is like reinterperiting the Mona Lisa so that everyone loves it for what it is, and not what it came from. It is my belief that the origionality of music is dependant on the players themselves. A song can be origional even if it is a cover. The musical possibilities are endless and although there is no doubt that inspiration is a blueprint for many music today, the origionality of induvuduals should not be underestimated. I think we should clearly define what we mean by origionality in our contnuation of the discussion so that we can clearly delineate how we see the origionality and its potential in music today.
Powered by FireStats