Week 3: Wrap Up

Thus ends week 3.

I ended up being pretty busy this week being both an ac-tor and an award nominated location sound guy, so I didn't end up having as much time for things as I initially anticipated.

But the week started out with a song analysis of Kanye West's "Blood on the Leaves". I think I did a decent job at this "analysis". If you're interested in that kind of genre or anything, check it out.

Next up was an album analysis of Neil Cicierega's Mouth Silence. Unfortunately this post got rushed as that was a day that I was on location sound duty. So I talk a bit about the first few songs and then I looked at the clock and rushed the rest of it. I'm rather disappointed and I'll have to work on not worrying about the clock in the future.

Lastly, yesterday's post. I wrote about what this was gonna be all about in last weeks re roll, but basically I'm editing down a role playing game some friends and I recorded a year ago and I'm gonna add sound to it. And if I want to do this right, I need more time. So I'm extending this activity to be on of this weeks activities. I edited it all down for yesterday's post (three hours into an hour-fifteen) and so now I'm gonna give myself ample days to do the sound right.

So onto the rolls for this week. Automatically I am adding the thing I just explained, and only rolling twice. Those rolls are:

17, and 9.

Those are "Music Video Without Music" (again), and "Write about an artist" (again). Ugh. I keep rolling the same things over and over. How is this possible.

Either way, I'm looking forward to this week. That's two Practice Activities and only one Theory, so we'll see if I can handle it, cause every other week has been two Theory and one Practice.

Au revoir.

Week 3: Everyone is John - Editing

Hey everyone, quick update on my last activity of the week, which I last described as a mix of "record a podcast" and "radio play". I'm currently in the midst of editing this thing down, but there is a lot more than I thought, so if I want to do this thing as well as it deserves, I need more time. Luckily I run this ship, baby, I make the rules. So here's what I'm gonna do: I'm gonna make this activity one of my rolls for next week so that I can continue. I'll do it as my first activity of Week 4 and have it up on Tuesday. I feel like this is totally fair, and may end up happening in the future - because often my ambition outweighs my ability. And rather than just rushing things and turning them in "on time" I want to be a good boy. So I'll mention all of this in tomorrows Wrap Up post.

In the meantime, and as a way to "prove" that I'm actually working on this, enjoy this screenshot.

Yeah. I'm doing all of my editing - the actual chopping up of the clips - in Premiere just because that kind of thing is easier for me than in Pro Tools. Also, I'm pretty sure my Pro Tools is still borked and I don't wanna deal with that.

THIS IS NOT A COP OUT.

Edit:

Quick update four hours after initial posting, I finished the actual editing, or at least 98% of it.

There will be fine tuning/massaging but I got our three hours of recording down to an hour and fifteen minutes.

Week 3: Album Analysis - Mouth Silence

Since I'm so bad at talking about music I thought I would at least do an album that brings me immense joy. Today I'll be looking at the mashup album Mouth Silence by certified musical genius Neil Cicierega. That's right, I said mashup album. So let that dictate whether or not you listen to it.

This album is a sequel to the mashup album Mouth Sounds and in my opinion is the better of the two. But Mouth Sounds is legendary in its own right. On the surface, this is a "jokey" or "comedy" album, but in reality this is actually the most artful album since Dark Side of the Moon (an album I've never heard, nor have any opinion on). Also fair warning, this album is an hour long.

We shall start - as most good things do - at the beginning. The album opens with the odd and jumbled sound of "Goodbye". Using samples of Third Eye Blind's "Semi Charmed Life", and ethereal synths Neil sets the stage for an odd and unique sounding album. This is a weird opener in that there's no joke, it's just music, but I think it's actually perfect. I think it shows that while this is a mashup album, it's also an album that has heaps of musical talent behind it. And before you know it we're onto track two.

"Rollercloser" is not one of my favorites but it is a damn earworm. This track chiefly uses "Love Rollercoaster" and NINs "Closer". The fun in this song is using the super serious Nine Inch Nails track over the fun and bouncy "Love Rollercoaster". Along with the interjections from "Jungle Boogie", this is a fun track.

What follows is the first of two tracks that samples news clips. "Furries" is a lil ditty parodying(?) furry culture. This one is also not one of my favorites but uses Hanson's "MMMBop" as the backing for Jimmy Hendrix's "Foxy" and my god if it is not perfect. With little bits of "What does the Fox say?" this song really tells a tail. (See what I did there? Tail. Because the song is about furries.) Next track.

The next track, "Friends", is only ten seconds but it's a perfect musical joke. The restraint Neil has to not go any further with the joke is admirable. This is also a good point to mention that this track has perfect transitions. Almost every song leads into the next and the transitions go fast, I love it.

"Best" is up next, and this is absolutely one of my favorites. The idea is to use as many songs that feature the word "best" and it is joyful cacophony. If you listen to one song, listen to "Best". This song is so dense. With all the samples and instrumentation with cartoony sound effects thrown in, there is always something fun happening in this track. Also the ending is a perfect set up for track six.

"Pokemon" consists exclusively of news clips backed by the Jackson Five's "I Want You Back". This song has the least amount of music going on, but is still impressive with how the news clips work as lyrics. This track is, dare I say, deeper than just a funny mashup. This collection of news clips that demonize a children's trading card game is just ridiculous. News anchors call Pokemon "A world order", "Demonic", "Violent" it's so crazy and having all of it playing togethor in one place back by the cheery Jackson Five shows how stupid the Pokemon worry was/is. Also, at the end of this track Neil uses anchors saying "Pokemon" over and over as lyrics and it fits perfectly.

Okay I gotta start speeding through these cause I'm at 7/19. "Sexual Lion King" is officially my favorite version of "Can you feel the love tonight, it is far superior to the Grammy Award Winning version.

"Crocodile Chop" is one of the more famous tracks of this album, and is in the vein of "Rollercloser" with it's super serious lyrics and fun, bouncy backing.

Transmission is weird, skip it. There's probably something interesting going on, but it mucks up the pace of the album, in this man's opinion.

"Love Psych" is one of the greatest tracks on this thing. It's "Love Shack" and the theme from Psycho. It's phenomenal.

"Orgonon Girls" gets off to a slow start but gets pretty groovy a third of the way in.

"Born to Cat" is short and entertaining enough, but is near the bottom in my track ranking (if that existed).

"What is It" takes the "serious vocals, fun music" to a wackier level by speeding up the vocals to have the "chipmunk effect". It's fun. "Quotation marks".

"It's" is similar to "Born to Cat" short and pretty entertaining, but not outstanding.

"Close to the Sun" is the good version of "It's" and "Born to Cat".

"Numbers" is a great track. This song uses as a bunch of tracks that reference phones, and has a spectacular bridge type thing towards the end.

"Space Monkey Mafia" is very fun.

"Wndrwll" is amazing, hilarious and incredibly well done. After the first chorus, he reverses every word of the song. Listen to this track. Oh my god, listen to it.

"Piss" is a juvenile wrap up featuring some great usage of samples to make the singers say really dumb things.

Sorry this got so brief, but this is a looooong album. It's a silly album, but it is actually rather interesting and nuanced and probably took a lot of work. And that work really really shows. Some may argue that this is dumb. But so is the Mona Lisa.

That's right, I'm comparing this mashup album to the Mona Lisa. What are you gonna do about it?

Week 3: Song Analysis - Blood on the Leaves

In this week's edition of song analyzing, let's take a look at "Blood on the Leaves" by Kanye West. I'm gonna try to do this a little better than last time. I'll try to organize this and maybe have some actual outline I'm following. Also let the record show that I made it 3 weeks without bringing up Ye.

In an attempt to be more better at song talking about, I'm gonna start by talking about the music part. Obviously the song samples Nina Simone's recording of "Strange Fruit". It's a pretty odd song to use as a sample, but I think it works with the mood of the song. It also sounds real good. The song opens with just the sample and a few piano chords that sound similar to the piano in Nina Simone's recording. Kanye's vocals come in, autotuned in the way he likes - obvious but not overpowering. Parts of the Nina sample are repeated like an instrument would. The piano at this point sounds like it too is being chopped up as a sample which is kind of a jarring unnatural sound - which fits in easily with Kanye's autotuned vocals (and the whole themes of the album Yeezus). About a minute into the song the piano turns into a low synth, and the drop happens, which brings in this high energy synthesized brass and heavy drums. Parts are added and dropped throughout the song, weaving low energy parts of the song into high energy parts. The two biggest pieces that contribute to the song, besides the sample, are the synth brass that sometimes carry the song on their own, and Kanye's vocals. The brass really amps up the energy of the song and makes me wanna jump around. The sound of Ye's vocals really bring an edge to the track, and his mumble singing sounds really good in this track.

I've talked about the sound of the vocals, but I also like the content of the vocals, the lyrics. Kanye initially brings a lot of emotion to this track, the first verse is melancholic and pleading. But at the end of the first verse, with the line "So, let's get on with it" Kanye brings in an attitude that I find infectious. The beginning of the second verse is pretty high energy but, once again, by the end of the second verse his attitude has kind of calmed down, not as mellow as verse one though. Kanye does some mumble singing and the song really quiets down. But he's not done, and he quickly goes into the third verse which consist mostly of some patented Kanye mumble/yell/regular singing. This all leads into one of my favorite Kanye verses, where Kanye drops the autotune and raps over that aggressive brass and drums. And just as quickly as the high energy fourth verse started, it ends. The song ends with more Kanye mumble singing, using his voice as another instrument. All the parts of the song come together one more time and slowly are taken out until it's just Kanye and the sample and the piano, and then just the sample and piano. The song ends like it began.

I really like this song. It's a moody song. But it's the type of mood where you're like, "I'm sad but also who cares I'ma wild out" and I just love that. The different energies jive really well together and all the parts of the song feel like they fit together well both with each other and with the album as a whole.

I don't know. I feel like this was a better analysis, but what do I know and why am I even talking about music.