Sonic Revelations, Sonic Revolutions

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.