Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Make Cycle 2

When I heard that we would be starting make cycle 2 I was initially intimidated. I used drawing and visuals as the medium for my last make and, not wanting to repeat this, I was not sure what my next medium would be. After a couple hours of deep thought I realized that I could use music. My Inspiration when i began playing in 2011 is an ukulele player named Jake Shimabukuro. This virtuoso in recent years has pushed the instrument to it's limit and made it very popular with many types of audiences and in many different genres. I wanted to somewhat imitate his format for performing in concerts, which is this; He is as much of a story teller as a musician. Most of the time before he plays a song he explains its origins and reasons for being composed, so that even though it has no words, it can still connect with people. Every time Jake writes a song he tries to base it off of an underlying idea like a girl he used to know from high school or only using three of the four strings and still have a beautiful piece. I wanted to essentially do the same thing with my scientific writing journey so far in English 1103.
It was tough at first trying to represent certain parts of my journey through musical devices and techniques, and in the end may not have worked out so well, but i feel it was a good learning experience at least for expressing my ideas through music. The song went through a lot of phases and changes. I wrote it by basically thinking about something in my one pagers like the danger of science. I would then ask myself, what chord or intervals make me feel like i am in danger? After finding certain licks and progressions that conveyed the right feeling I pieced them together to make each section. The hardest part of composing was transitioning between section because usually a song embodies one idea but this one embodied four very different ideas so I had to find the right transitions that made the song flow and somewhat pleasing to the ear.

Here is a link to the video: https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/106906463885989989488/albums/5929228898164358001/5929228897181941330?sqi=102837263751899366528&sqsi=245dcc4b-1452-4a6d-ac70-82db3db8f742&pid=5929228897181941330&oid=106906463885989989488

My one pagers are listed below(at least the last three that were digital) Soon to be added.

2 comments:

  1. I liked your inspiration, and I did notice the sudden invasion of ukuleles even in high school. At least I know why now. It's cool how you used the emotion through different notes to link it to your one pagers. The song was also really good.

    ReplyDelete
  2. First off I really liked the song! I also thought that the whole concept of the make was really unique. I think its really cool that you found a way to show your journey through music.

    ReplyDelete