notesdontmatter

Forum – Week 10 – " Construction and Deconstruction"

Frederick May:

Freddy gave an interesting and entertaining presentation citing the ‘ingredients of song construction’, namely the ingredients of successful pop music, as his relevant subtopic. Those of us who dream of mainstream success would love to imagine an arcane formula one that would provide clear access to that top 0.000000000001 percent of artists who enjoy a long and successful career in the commercial music industry. How Freddy can argue that such a formula exists without knowing what the seven magic ingredients are (as he quoted from the great sound engineer Michael Stavrou) is a difficult question without, I believe, a convincing answer. I’m certainly not trying to discredit the concept, but apart from the un-referenced formula of pitch, positive lyrics, tonality, and body resonance (which apparently only holds true for happy-go-lucky pop songs) there was nothing presented to back up the idea apart from a few varying musical examples that made no.1, all of which apparently contain ‘the seven mysterious ingredients’.

I think there was a valuable point missed in Freddy’s also unconvincing argument that one could fall asleep listening to the metal band ‘Slipknot’ unless the visual impact of their live video was presented at the same time. I have been listening to heavy metal music for at least twenty years, starting in the eighties when the genre received very little airplay in Australia – especially on television, and I could not think of one situation where video footage has had a profound influence on my decision to purchase an album. When I first ‘heard’ Metallica’s Master of Puppets back in 1987, I embraced it as the music I had wanted to ‘hear’ for my entire life. I had been into Punk music for a long time preceding this and was overwhelmed at Metallica’s ability to express themselves so aggressively with such astounding musicianship, which goes against the easily accessible three chord grunge ideal of Punk rock. Then and now it gives me all those stimulating feelings that Freddy pointed out in relation to the Slipknot video: Excitement, Aggression, Happiness, Raised heart rate etc. The point I’m trying to make is that I loved their music for years without ever seeing them, and despite initial short-lived excitement at the novelty of my first viewing of the film clip to the song ‘One’ in 1989, it has never been about the visual aspect.

As for the ‘valuable’ point I promised to mention at the start of the above paragraph, the reason I think one may make a connection with the importance of visual impact in conjunction with the consummation of Slipknot’s music, is the fact that their craft lacks a certain level of sophistication. Personally I think it’s no accident or pure musical influence on the senses that they dress up in their scary suits and jump around like maniacs during a performance. Like many of the so called ‘Nu-metal’ bands of the mid to late nineties and early this century they realised they were not going to pull ‘Metal’ crowds on the strength of their musicianship alone, so other factors of their performance were exaggerated to compensate.

Dragos Nastasie gave us the breakdown of some layering concepts of techno, new age, and industrial rock. I found the point regarding contextual change in a given sound or melody to be the most useful.

Matt Mazzone proceeded with a disastrously bugged presentation (why do so many people in a music tech course appear overwhelmed when faced with one computer, a CD player, and a less than daunting ten channel mixer?) of some advertising music he had written for the Media Resource Centre. It was pleasant enough sounding music in the main example, non intrusive and unchallenging, an approach I wish more advertising companies would adopt.


Reference:

Steven Whittington. “Forum – Week 10 – Construction and Deconstruction." Workshop presented at EMU space, Level 5 Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 17th May, 2007.

Frederick May. “Forum – Week 10 – Construction and Deconstruction." Student talk presented at EMU space, Level 5 Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 17th May, 2007.

Dragos Nastasie. “Forum – Week 10 – Construction and Deconstruction." Student talk presented at EMU space, Level 5 Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 17th May, 2007.

Matt Mazzone. “Forum – Week 10 – Construction and Deconstruction." Student talk presented at EMU space, Level 5 Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 17th May, 2007.

posted by David J Dowling @ 5:04 PM