audiovisually vindicated
Sep. 11th, 2003 04:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tugrikThere were very few 'fluff' classes for me during college. I took a whole mess of college-level entry placement (CLEP) tests and got out of almost two entire years worth of requirements. Aside from a few various humanities courses I was able to spend most of my years there on core classes. It made for an insanely busy time but at least it was never boring.
I still had to take one or two non-core things, though. In my last year there I needed another humanities credit but was already doing an insane 22 credit-hour term. I picked "Music Appreciation", figuring I could use the destress-and-listen time. This turned out to be a very interesting and informative class -- moreso than I would have expected. While most of the class went very well I did have one disagreement with the prof that stuck with me for a good long while.
One assignment was something my friends and I (and tons of folks I knew online) did every day: we had to bring in a favorite piece of music and then describe (or illustrate, if you had the talent for it) a music video that would go well with the piece. The key to the assignment was to make the visuals describe the sound and pacing of the piece, not the lyrics or literal story; it was supposed to teach us to look for the drives behind music instead of anything literally presented. I picked a favorite Art of Noise song called "Back to Back". I'll put a clip of it up online later, for the curious. The track is off their album Below the Waste. It has a solid, steady beat that's like a quarterstrike during a four-paced run, making it great music to jog or cross-country run to (yes, I jogged a bit when younger).
In the flow of this music I could see a travelling-song... someone/something running to that beat, staying a steady course, while they charged through landscapes that changed around them. The hard impacts coming every four measures were excellent places for effect-edits where the main character would run through some form of barrier into the next landscape or situation. I could see it in my head very clearly, but as usual lacked a good way to visually describe it. The best way to describe the mood would be "calmness of purpose amidst a driving force". This is a theme present in much music I like. It's expressed in anything from the zen-like state an athlete can get to ('the Zone') while in the throes of compeition to the person who's simply smilling and nodding to the deep bass amidst a rave of oscilatting, thrashing dancers.
Upon expressing this concept and showing a storyline (with crude scene drawings) to the teacher, I got berated loudly for doing a terrible job. That type of music, sayeth the mighty professor, is best represented with something of hard driving action and quick/hard cuts. The idea of gaining calm and pressing through it simply was not applicable and I shouldn't think that way. Yes, this seriously grumped me out. We had an animated discussion about it before I simply took the "D" on the assignment and left class.
I'd all but forgotten about this until last week. I obtained a copy of Darude's music video for "I can feel the beat" -- a popular BPM-style hit that was all over the dance/trance channels earlier this summer. The song is repetitive and to a strong beat; classic dance-style 'theme and variation' where a simple sample and core riff is repeated and tweaked between bridges and climaxes in the song. It's fast paced and thumpy (though definately not 'high bpm' style). It relates very well to the early AoN stuff I like. The video was of the artist driving his car down a beautiful stretch of highway. He was calm, laid back, gently nodding to the beat of his own music; staying mellow while driving solidly. Each major shift in the song brought a mild but noticeable shift in terrain. The one main crescendo/peak/play-out in the middle was used as a transition for him leaving his car and going into a helicopter. It ends with him arriving at a secluded beach party where they're already enjoying his music. His set starts anew as the video ends.
I've since downloaded or otherwise found video works for a bunch of other songs in the same category and have found this type of behavior to be a theme. It makes me want to look up that old Music Appreciation prof and neener-neener! at him. Sure, I might have been wrong back in his world/time... but now folks like me are the mainstream. It's so nice to see I wasn't the only one finding the focus amongst the chaos and grooving on it. :)
I still had to take one or two non-core things, though. In my last year there I needed another humanities credit but was already doing an insane 22 credit-hour term. I picked "Music Appreciation", figuring I could use the destress-and-listen time. This turned out to be a very interesting and informative class -- moreso than I would have expected. While most of the class went very well I did have one disagreement with the prof that stuck with me for a good long while.
One assignment was something my friends and I (and tons of folks I knew online) did every day: we had to bring in a favorite piece of music and then describe (or illustrate, if you had the talent for it) a music video that would go well with the piece. The key to the assignment was to make the visuals describe the sound and pacing of the piece, not the lyrics or literal story; it was supposed to teach us to look for the drives behind music instead of anything literally presented. I picked a favorite Art of Noise song called "Back to Back". I'll put a clip of it up online later, for the curious. The track is off their album Below the Waste. It has a solid, steady beat that's like a quarterstrike during a four-paced run, making it great music to jog or cross-country run to (yes, I jogged a bit when younger).
In the flow of this music I could see a travelling-song... someone/something running to that beat, staying a steady course, while they charged through landscapes that changed around them. The hard impacts coming every four measures were excellent places for effect-edits where the main character would run through some form of barrier into the next landscape or situation. I could see it in my head very clearly, but as usual lacked a good way to visually describe it. The best way to describe the mood would be "calmness of purpose amidst a driving force". This is a theme present in much music I like. It's expressed in anything from the zen-like state an athlete can get to ('the Zone') while in the throes of compeition to the person who's simply smilling and nodding to the deep bass amidst a rave of oscilatting, thrashing dancers.
Upon expressing this concept and showing a storyline (with crude scene drawings) to the teacher, I got berated loudly for doing a terrible job. That type of music, sayeth the mighty professor, is best represented with something of hard driving action and quick/hard cuts. The idea of gaining calm and pressing through it simply was not applicable and I shouldn't think that way. Yes, this seriously grumped me out. We had an animated discussion about it before I simply took the "D" on the assignment and left class.
I'd all but forgotten about this until last week. I obtained a copy of Darude's music video for "I can feel the beat" -- a popular BPM-style hit that was all over the dance/trance channels earlier this summer. The song is repetitive and to a strong beat; classic dance-style 'theme and variation' where a simple sample and core riff is repeated and tweaked between bridges and climaxes in the song. It's fast paced and thumpy (though definately not 'high bpm' style). It relates very well to the early AoN stuff I like. The video was of the artist driving his car down a beautiful stretch of highway. He was calm, laid back, gently nodding to the beat of his own music; staying mellow while driving solidly. Each major shift in the song brought a mild but noticeable shift in terrain. The one main crescendo/peak/play-out in the middle was used as a transition for him leaving his car and going into a helicopter. It ends with him arriving at a secluded beach party where they're already enjoying his music. His set starts anew as the video ends.
I've since downloaded or otherwise found video works for a bunch of other songs in the same category and have found this type of behavior to be a theme. It makes me want to look up that old Music Appreciation prof and neener-neener! at him. Sure, I might have been wrong back in his world/time... but now folks like me are the mainstream. It's so nice to see I wasn't the only one finding the focus amongst the chaos and grooving on it. :)
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no subject
Date: 2003-09-11 04:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-12 10:07 am (UTC)It's one thing to represent the music that may be fleeting or fast. It's another to resognize the pattern behind it.
Considering it was an Music appreciation class the professor was probably teaching a bit down to non-music folks (which always bothered me) and at the same time you probably lacked the vocabulary to convince the professor of what you meant in musical terms.
I went through the whole music thing in college and am now performing with a local symphony orchestra. Some of the most devilishly complex and quick music can belay and overall feeling of comfort and form that is much slower.
Because the vocabulary of music (pitch, tambre, and tempo) is such a simple system to express in, it is quite comment to juxtapose messages (fast pacing for a calmer message) to produce a more complex body and message overall.
"Music for Prague 1968" is almost frenetically fast. At the same time it expresses incredible sorrow and sadness. Mendelssohn's "Italian" Symphony is probably one of his livliest works, but it expresses a serene spring morning in Italy.
I guess when you get down to it. That moment in college when you realize that the professor is wrong and you know what you're thinking is the time they should hand you your diploma. You've graduated to your own thought.