Feelings and Sound

Today, I wasn’t able to get much done at all. I had Art, which delayed my writing a bit. This did come in handy in a way because I began thinking of new themes to write about, and interesting instrumental parts. I want write about people, and their feelings towards family, not just lovers. Family is a strong topic to write about, and it’s very difficult, if not impossible to capture the true feeling of love one has towards a family member. Such a family member could range from sister or brother, to parents or grandparents. This seems quite intimidating. I am also trying to squeeze in one pop song into the album, if time allows. I want to create variation in my songs. I read an article the other day, and I stated, "The reason why the Beatles became so famous was because of their writing, and their chord changes." That clicked for me. I am now obsessed over putting different chords, and interesting/different chord progressions in my songs. Such chord progressions could be like from the song, "Honey Don't" by Carl Perkins. The intro went from an F, to a C... that was so revolutionary in its day, and it has a lasting impact on today's music world. I think interesting chord progressions play major roles in my songs.

Workday

Lately, I’ve been overly concentrated over writing “pop” songs with catchy intros, and all that jazz. I just couldn’t produce anything that would satisfy me. I began talking to Ellen Cooper, and she suggested listening to more music. With this, I went home and I decided to lay out all my records in my record collection and listen for things that would “Grab” me. I listened to artists ranging from Nat King Cole to the Beatles, but the Album that struck me the most was “The Stranger”. This album was so powerful, lyrically and instrumentally, that it blew me away. Now I’ve had this album for a while, though I never paid close attention to it. My eyes were literally glued to the lyrics printed on the paper sleeve of the record. Billy Joel’s lyrics were so descriptive; I must have listened to the whole album 3-4 times to re-picture the stories in my head.

With upon listening to the albums, I decided to take a new route to the songwriting- Story telling. I wanted to tell a different story in each song I wrote. I didn’t want to write the same old freakin’ love songs you hear on the radio that have repetitive lyrical ideas like, “Baby I love you, I’ll never leave you, and we’ll never part….” I wanted to create songs in which when you hear them, you’re automatically envisioning the storyline in your head, like Joel’s styles of writing, Paul Simon, and many others. At the moment, I am intending on making a shortened album of 5 or 6 songs, 3 of which I am in the process of finishing, and the other 2 I still have to work on a bit. The 6^th may be optional, but I may have lost the idea of which I have based the song off of, thus creating a problem. Tomorrow, I am intending on finishing the 3 songs, and continuing the process of working on the others.

Music on fear

My Individual project (Final project of the year) is based upon music. I intend to write and record my own original music that is based on my biggest enemy, fear. My reasoning for not writing much music is because of the fear of writing bad music. I have always tried making a song by coming up with something "catchy" but who is my audience? I have no audience while writing a song, so I have no audience to tell me that it’s bad music. With this, I’m going to face my fear, and write music about it. I intend to create an EP of my music, and design my own Cover.

My Intensive

The third quarter of STAC seemed to be the most productive for me. The intensives were good challenges for me, and I look forward to doing more. In this quarter, with the intensives, my intension was to mainly focus on creating my own music, and expanding my knowledge of music- its origins and future.

With the intensives, I broadened my “library” of music. I did this by trying to listen to as much music as possible, ranging from The Monkeys to Rockplile. Some artists were not included in the assignment, but I listened to them anyway because I realized that they were very influential in the pop music world- such artists included Buddy Holly.  I did this because I needed to have an inspiration in order to start writing my own music. Before the intensives, I was so accustomed to the 12 bar blues, i only wrote the 12 bar blues. I didn’t feel as If I was being a true musician by just playing the same genre over and over again, so I needed a change. With my expanded library, I wrote several songs with the intentions of trying to stay away from the 12 bar blues. I enjoyed my songs so much that I have begun playing them with my band.

The intensives played a big role in changing my band’s sound for the better. Before the intensives, my band only played Rockabilly and 12 bar blues. That’s all we could play because we had not written any good songs that had alternate arrangements, only Boogie Style Rhythms. In order to make the intensives worthwhile, I took the music we received from emails and tried to make new music that was based off the morphing of genres. I would listen to several songs that were sent to us and then record any part that would interest me on my iPhone. I would hum the sounds that I liked and record my humming sounds on to my recorder. With this, I would select my favorite sound, out of all the sounds, and write a song from it. If the sounds sounded like an intro, I would use it as an intro and write a song around it. This was my most productive technique, and I could say this, because I have written a total of 6 songs by using this method which I believe are good.

I feel as if I have grown as an artist and a musician because of the intensives. I have gotten so much out of them, and I hope we could continue doing more of them, or doing something in that realm of assignment.

By,

Scott La Marca

Expressionism

Van Gogh, portrait-with bandaged ear

Soutine’s, Woman in Red

In my opinion, I feel as if expressionism is a medium/art form of describing feeling or a way of thinking. It could describe depression, happiness, anger, jealously, or pain. Examples of this are Soutine’s, Woman in Red. I feel this piece reflec­ts of his inner disturb­ance or of his inspir­at­ion/drive caused by something he would gain out of creating the piece. The colors in his pictures tell the emotions present in the piece. Darker colors represent solemnness, while more vibrant colors represent happiness, and excitement. Another great example of an expressionist with emotional disturbance influenced on his work would be Vincent Van Gogh. As a struggling artist with anxiety and mental issues, he was a compulsive thinker. I know as a person who most probably has OCD, I also think compulsively. I always think about my work over, and over again. A thought in a deep analysis, will never leave my mind until it works out in such a way that I am satisfied with myself. During this process, my emotions seep into the piece I am working on at the moment. At times, the emotions are anger or frustration.  Having to do things over and over again to make them “perfect” is very time consuming and obnoxious. It makes one very anxious, and angry at the piece, causing the artist to want to start over again. I think I understand, to some extent, how Van Gough must have felt while doing his work. When he was admitted into the treatment centers, he would often paint himself. Those self-portraits, to me, reflect his pain and remorse for doing such things to his own body. He seems depressed in these paintings, and it seems as if he also feels depressed due to the fact he was a struggling artist.

Performing in blackface makeup was a theatrical convention used by many entertainers at the beginning of the 20th century, having its origin in the minstrel and vaudeville show. Al Jolson was the most famous performer to wear blackface makeup when singing- he felt Working behind a blackface mask gave him a sense of freedom. I guess in a way you could call the mask, in his case, a placebo. There are just so many forms of art out there to explore, some is very interesting. Sometimes, what makes art interesting is the back story. Look up the blackface, the history behind it is actually pretty interesting!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF6383U8xD0&feature=related

everything is not what it seems...

I know it’s a little late, but I’m going to post anyway. The trip was interesting. I enjoyed the art in the MOMA, based on the world trade center. It was very abstract. Personally, I am not an abstract fan, though I felt as if I related to some of the art; somehow. Some of the pieces, though they were DADA, did have a point. A pretty complicated point when it comes to describe in art form. It is sadness, and confusion. An artist may say his or her art is about certain topics such as these, though in reality, it is actually hard to make art in such a way, that it doesn’t seem as if you the artist is trying too hard. A good example of this would be the piece in the museum where there was ash covering the white floor. It may have seemed as a meaningless DADA piece, but I perceived it a bit differently. I thought since this was a world trade center gallery, it may have had something to do with the sculpture of the innocent looking pedestrian sitting on a bench in front of the ash. With this, the two objects combined represented a statement to me. The statement was everything is not what it seems. The WTC attacks occurred on a beautiful, average Tuesday. Everything seemed to be going fine, but things suddenly turned for the worst when the attacks happened. 3500 people were killed in a period of 2 hours, and the entire U.S has changed since that day. Everything is not what it seems... that’s my philosophy on art, and everything related to it.