Song Critiques

Brainwashed

Seth Godin’s article, “Brainwashed,” reads a little bit like the ramblings of an aging hippy, but that does not invalidate the point that he is trying to make.  Among his seven levers for those in search of self-reinvention, his suggestion to develop the ability to fail with grace really stood out to me.  Failure is an inevitable part of life.  Everyone falls down at one point or another.  We shouldn’t forgo risk taking in an attempt to be perfect; otherwise you might end up looking like an effortlessly cool Italian person.  Which would be terrible, because it would mean that you have sacrificed your creativity to someone else’s idea of what you should be.

“Acknowledging the lizard” seems like an odd phrase thrown in amongst other suggestions like “make art” or “learn.”  But what Godin means by this is simply that we must acknowledge our own ego.  The part of ourselves that is worried more about the judgment of others than about our own self worth, is the part that will hold us back from achieving greatness.  The little voice in your head that tells you to keep playing the role of the “compliant cog” in the system, Godin refers to as “the resistance.”  Those who make great art are those who have acknowledged and learned to ignore this barrier. 

Godin’s suggestions can be applied to this blog, as well as all assignments in this class.  A blog is a more public format for submitting work than many students are used to.  Which means that for each assignment, be it a soundscape or a script, we must be confident in putting ourselves out there for the entire Internet to see.  Or at least the very specific portion of the Internet that will be looking at this blog, namely other students in the class.  The assignments we do in this class are helpful in that the provide both practice with the tools that we will be using, as well as the public nature of a career in the media.  To have a job in this industry, you must be prepared for others to see and criticize your work.  Not everyone will love everything you do, but you have to do it anyway.

Songs

Covers

            I immediately liked the song “The Killing Moon,” when I first heard it several years ago while watching the movie Donnie Darko.  The song, by Echo & the Bunnymen, was released in 1984 and sounds like it.  The melancholy vocals, catchy guitar riffs, and synth pads that characterize Echo & the Bunnymen perfectly embody the spirit of the post-punk movement from which they came.  The band is very similar to acts like The Smiths or Joy Division. 

            On their 2006 album, Bande à Part, French cover band Nouvelle Vague takes a much different approach to the song.  Nouvelle Vague typically does Bossa Nova style covers of post-punk and new wave music.  They use a variety of female singers for each album, choosing vocalists who have not heard the song that they are selected to perform, so as to give each cover its own unique, fresh sound.  While lyrically “The Killing Moon” remains unchanged, several other factors give each version of the song its own distinct tone.

            Echo & the Bunnymen’s version largely makes use of deep bass lines, a drum machine and moody, crooning, British vocals. It relies heavily on instrumentation.  While there really aren’t that many instruments being used, the way in which they are layered makes the timbre seem more complex.  It also sounds very produced – it is electric and unnatural.  The drumbeat and baseline give the song rhythm and keep it moving at a fast pace.  The overall effect is very dark and tense.  The singer seems to be pleading desperately with fate over death’s untimely visitation.  

Fate up against your will
Through the thick and thin
He will wait until
You give yourself to him

            The lyrics, the above section in particular, make it sound as though death is coming and there is nothing you can do to stop it.  The singer is clearly apprehensive and not happy with the hand that fate has dealt him, and wants to run from it.

            If Echo & the Bunnymen’s version is running, Nouvelle Vague’s cover of the song is ambling.  This cover of “The Killing Moon” is much lighter.  It consists mainly of breathy female vocals, an easy guitar strum, and some ambient sounds and chimes sprinkled throughout.  It is much simpler and more natural sounding.  It evokes the feeling of a warm summer night.  While I wouldn’t call it happy, it certainly sounds less dire than the Bunnymen.  The lighter instrumentation causes the lyrics to sound more pensive or thoughtful than frightened.   Without the drums to keep the song moving along, the vocalist seems to wander through it at her own meandering pace.  It is very mellow and relaxed, where as Echo & the Bunnymen’s version is more intense and dark.

            Because each version is so different, my preference for one over the other depends a lot on my mood.  However, as much as I enjoy listening to Nouvelle Vague, I would probably pick the original as my favorite.  The instrumentation and tone better fit the lyrics, and I find it an overall more enjoyable listen,

Soundscape

My theme was disappointment.

Soundscapes I reviewed:
Mary
Katie
Sammi

Finding Your Howl

Finding Your Howl by Jonathan Flaum

Audio Blog

Blog Assignment 1B: Ways to Get Ideas

Mitch Ditkoff believes that breakthrough ideas are not a once in a lifetime occurrence, but rather something that can be brought on with the right mental stimulation.  Whether you think that great ideas are produced within the minds or individuals or snatched out of the collective ether by creative individuals, Ditkoff claims that using any of his fourteen methods can help spark innovation.  I critiqued three of them.

#4.  Make New Connections

Ditkoff is of the opinion that innovation can result from combining two pre-existing ideas into one.  He uses such modern necessities as MTV, roller blading, and water to exemplify his claim.  Ditkoff says that the originators of these products created them by making “a new, intriguing connection” between two apparently disconnected things. The reason we do not make these connections regularly is due to the box in which we place ourselves.  Should we break out of the mold – ethnicity, social class, profession, however one chooses to define oneself – these connections would become apparent to us all the time.  Combining existing elements does occasionally provide useful and more efficient tools like the printing press.  However, much of the time, it produces the sort of unnecessary junk sold on QVC in the early hours of the morning.  This method of thinking might very well work for some, but as a general rule you are just going to end up with a Snuggie.

#5. Fantasize

When Gary Kasaprov beat the supercomputer Deep Blue in a chess match in 1989, he credited his win to his human intuition and ability to fantasize.  This is probably aside from the point, but Kasaprov played Deep Blue again 8 years later and lost.  Anyway, Ditkoff reveals that fantasy – the unseemly activity often left to societal scum like small children or perverts – can actually be a useful creative tool.  You can’t, after all, spell fantastic without, “fantas.”  Which is also in the word fantasize.  And who doesn’t want to have fantastic ideas?  While you might have thought that imagination was best left to Spongebob Squarepants or people with ponytails who drive a Volkswagen bus, it can actually lead to a creative spark in the average mind.  Doh!  I will admit that whenever I listen to music or have to ride the bus back to Columbus, my mind is going to be wandering aimlessly a few thousand miles away.  I’ve had some of my best ideas when I’m just letting my mind wander.  But isn’t this a bit obvious?  Are there actually people who have no grasp on the connection between imagination and creativity?

#9. Notice and Challenge Existing Trends

This makes sense.  Many successful people have made it simply by noticing a trend and either perfecting or subverting it.  People like Mark Zuckerberg or almost every pop star in existence have made a fortune simply by following the right trend.  Michael Bay noticed that explosions and attractive starlets draw audiences, so he made an entire film alternating shots of giant robots fighting and Megan Fox.  Some of the most interesting artistic movements have come from revolt against the ideas of the past.  Surrealism and Dadaism spring to mind.  If you find yourself successfully questioning something that everyone else takes for granted, you’ve probably got a good idea on your hands.  However, this line of thinking can backfire miserably.  Start acting contrary just for the sake of it and you’ll find yourself in a dive bar, wearing an ironic hat and whining that you liked Animal Collective before they were popular.

Maybe I am being too harsh on Ditkoff.  The intended audience of the article seemed to lean less toward film student, and further toward middle aged businessmen.  It is possible that this article could be helpful to someone that was in desperate need of ideas.  However, I found most of his suggestions to be more common sense than anything.  The Einstein quote that Ditkoff chose to put at the top of the article almost controverts everything he is trying to say.  Einstein was saying that his greatest ideas came unexpectedly – while he was shaving.  Not when he was sitting around making word lists in a frantic attempt to make intriguing new connections between them.   Sometimes you cannot force true inspiration.

I followed the prompt from suggestion #4:

“Make three parallel lists of ten words. The first list? Nouns. The second list? Verbs. The third list? Adjectives. Then look for intriguing new connections between them.”

Unfortunately, none of my intriguing new connections seem very plausible or necessary.

Assignment One: Who influences you as a Creative Person?

I would like to go into film or television production.  Someone in this field who inspires me is Stephen Moffat, current show runner for Doctor Who.  I aspire to produce work as consistently high quality, clever, and entertaining as his.

In one episode of Doctor Who, Moffat manages to turn something as innocuous as garden statues into an incredibly creepy villain.  Shown throughout the episode are parts of a clip, explained to be an Easter egg found on several unrelated DVDs, of the Doctor having half of a seemingly nonsensical conversation.  The episode's protagonist, Sally, finally watches the tape in its entirety and responds accordingly, effectively having a conversation with someone 40 years in the past.  Tension rises dramatically as the Doctor confirms what she had already started to suspect - the stone figures come to life whenever you aren’t looking at them.  In fact, the blink of an eye could make the difference between life and death.  The tension is finally released after Sally manages to trick the stone angels into looking at each other, imprisoning them in their rocky disguises for the foreseeable future. The plot of the episode is interesting and well executed, fully taking advantage of the Doctor’s ability to travel through time and the paradoxes that come with it.  The rising tension in the episode makes the climax all the more satisfying.

Text versus subtext plays a large part in much of Moffat’s writing, but particularly in the finale of Doctor Who's fifth season.  This next part is going to seem pretty stupid, but you’ll just have to trust me when I say that it was awesome in context.  Thanks to a series of ridiculously complex plot developments, the Doctor is going to disappear into oblivion unless his companion, Amy, can remember him. The night before her wedding, the Doctor tells her a story which, taken at face value, would only be the nostalgic ramblings of a 900 year old time traveling alien. (Seriously, better than it sounds.) However, the Doctor, in the desperate hope that someone would mention the old wedding adage, laces the story with hints designed to trigger Amy’s memory.  

Disregard the fact that he is talking to a child, she’ll be in her early 20’s the next morning.  (Honestly, if a writer can make all of that work, how could he not be brilliant?)  The scene was very cleverly written, and resulted in a fantastic resolution to the episode and the season.

Sherlock is a mini-series that Moffat created last year.  It is an updated version of Sherlock Holmes, set in modern London.  Great casting, writing, and editing all play a huge part in the success of this show.  However, coming from such well known and beloved source material, it is the contrast and affinity between the two that really create interest, especially for those familiar with the work or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  The most obvious differences arise from the contrast in settings, however, much of the series translates surprisingly well into 2010.  Sherlock and John meet in the same way - in a hospital, through a mutual acquaintance.  John has just returned from war in Afghanistan, also a callback to the book.  John’s shoulder wound and psychosomatic limp were a clever reference to Doyle’s complete disregard for continuity – in some stories, Watson had received a bullet to the shoulder, in others to the leg.  They don’t call each other Holmes and Watson, though, because no one does that anymore.  That would be weird.  Anyway, I find it very inspiring that Moffat, a lifelong fan of the series, was able to breathe new life into it.  There have been countless adaptations of this character, some better than others, but this one was truly refreshing.  Moffat managed to stay true to the source material while simultaneously making it his own.

Hausmann Collage