Sunday, April 10, 2011

Blog #10: Remix and RO

The remix I've chosen is not one that has any penetration into pop culture whatsoever. In a pretty popular and influential video game from 1998 that has probably garnered more top spots on "best video game ever" lists than any other, there's a little musical ditty based off of a little three-note musical theme called "Song of Storms." In the game, the player has the option of using it to cause the weather to change. It's identifiable as one of the playable songs, but its penetration into any culture, be it video gaming, music, remix, or otherwise is pretty minimal. The song is one of the uncountable themes originally composed and arranged by the prolific game-musician Koji Kondo. Though I've been away from the gaming culture for a very long time, the legacy of that man's music still resonates strongly with me today.
This remix is more of a sentimental, mindless jam session by a dude with a screen name than it is an actual remix, but hey the definition of remix is loosely defined anyway and doesn't really matter for the scope of this assignment. It's got a simple chord progression played on acoustic guitar to open, and continuously backing it throughout. The main theme recognized as the "Song of Storms" is then introduced, played on an additional guitar. He repeats the theme until no longer necessary, then throws on an electric guitar overlay for variety. Then he continues to break down with a long, multi-part solo that goes in a completely different direction.

What I like about this remix is that it still feels very loyal to the Song of Storms. An unfortunate reality of the original material is that it's roughly eight bars of music, and it's really hard to make a fully realized song out of only eight bars of music. He repeats as necessary, because the body of work it comes from is by its very nature repetitive. But you can only repeat an eight-bar theme a couple of times in a musical work. He lengthens it by adding a long instrumental session in the same key, pretty artificial and obviously unrelated to the original work but it sounds good and adds character. I love that. Anyway, before I get too deep into discussing musical merits of song remixing, I'll just go straight into lessig.

This ties into the notions of RW culture Lessig discusses. In his section RW, Revived he mentions how the internet and other technologies are changing our culture's access to tools that allow us to remix media. He uses the example of throwing Beatles' works over Cronkite broadcasts and distributing the result to tens of thousands. That would be difficult before the internet and other technologies allowed us to do such things on an amateur level with almost no budget. I feel like SAiNT 420's remix of Song of Storms is a great example of this as well. Using digital recording technology that's pretty available, he can record himself play some acoustic guitar, and using an established online community (OCRemix), he can distribute it to anyone in the world that wants to hear it.

Lessig discusses many things in RW, Revived and a lot of them are relevant to the presence of this remix. The idea that remix promotes community and education is true of SoS. OCRemix, the website, project, and internet community dedicated to the remixing of video game music, is the vessel that SAiNT420 used to project this remix. It is the very epitome of a strong, benevolent community. Further, the OCRemix project has made me, and I'm sure thousands before and after me, a lot more informed as to the ways of musical theory, transcription, editing, producing, creating. That's not to mention the whole body of knowledge that is digital information sharing, copyright, file management, computer programs, compatibility, etc. As well as the "goods" of remix that Lessig describes, SoS and OCRemix represent the idea of alternative media taking precedence in popular thought. Video games and the internet represent huge amounts of RO consumption, and people playing video games then actively deciding to research gaming communities on the internet is representative of the beautiful romanticized notions of RW that Lessig lauds.

Conclusion: OCRemix is a project that could only be born of a culture that embraces the RW creativity Lessig describes, and SAiNT420's remix "SoS" is an example of a remix that shows people's active interest in RW culture.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Blog #9: Collateral Damage

Lessig's key argument in the introduction as I see it is that we are far too hostile with our approach to copyright infringement, with the rhetoric of "war" we invoke against piracy. He claims that copyright law is outdated and that our approach to certain behaviors is unreasonable, unfair, and useless.

Lessig describes the RW culture as one of divergence, one where all parties have agency and active creation of content is done by all. RO culture is one of complacency with professional creation. Individuals rarely create and a select few are chosen by popular culture to make content. It's important to Lessig because he feels that the current copyright laws suppress and even criminalize most acts of creation by amateurs, and vastly promote RO culture. He shares the romanticized view that RW is superior and ideal.

He brings Sousa into his argument because he feels that Sousa's promotion of "amateur" creativity and limiting the reach of copyright were very useful and can have profound implications in today's landscape of creation. Lessig feels that the copyright laws no longer apply to today, because a new generation of "infernal machines" promotes a RW culture, and copyright restricts it.

Blog #8: something or other about Freud and rhythm and disc jockeys

I'm going to abandon all pretense here and just address this prompt in a straightforward way:

In the Rhythmic Cinema section, quotes I enjoy:
"[Surrealists] found that freedom in the abandonment of the roles that they, like everyone else around them, were forced to play" (80).
I've grown to love almost anything that's counterculture, and what better way to be counterculture than to live life devoted to going against the grain of your standard packaged capitalist societal notions like these surrealists do? Live life without boundaries.

Rhythmic Space
"We live in a world so utterly infused with digitality that it makes even the slightest action ripple across the collection of data bases we call the web" (89).
I wholeheartedly agree with this quote because the web is incredibly connected. There's so many connections online, the hyperlink structure is so complex that anyone can see something online. It's kind of haunting to know how international our presence is.

Errata Erratum
"all in all, the creative act is not performed, by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act" (97).
This quote speaks volumes to me because I love music and find such to be incredibly true. A song's meaning is most certainly contingent on the user's interpretation. I've had so many discussions with other musicophiles (?) that have interpreted songs I like in so many bizarre ways that I can't see them as self-contained works any more. They are incomplete until their audience has been reached.

The Future Is Here
[referring to live music versus recordings]
"The two are mutually conditioning, and this cycle will only intensify throughout the twenty-first century" (101).
This section is an afterthought where he breaks down the idea of live music and non-live music, an interesting discussion that's always been present in the music industry. Live music is offered as a more authentic and wholesome music experience, but that does present problems to DJs.

The Prostitute
"I don't know of any artist who really thinks everything is locked down" (109).
This has multiple meaning to me. First, there can be some contention as to whether or not a DJ is an artist in the typical musicianship sense of the term. Secondly, he refers to the idea of content and music being locked down and static. He's both assuming the validity of DJing as artistry and offering a novel idea to the concept of music ownership and fair use.

The song I've chosen is Chiddy Bang's All Things Go, which samples Sufjan Stevens' Chicago.
I wouldn't even necessarily call this a sample. It seems to me a sample is a direct rip of a piece of a track for use in a separate song. This uses the same melodic structure and progression, as well as a rip of the chorus' lyrics, but not the song directly. I guess what is and what isn't a sample is a little loose in definition anyway. The interesting thing about this sample is that it takes a beautiful ballad from the prolific alt/indie-folk god Sufjan Stevens and completely re-tools it as a sentimental hip-hop tune, accessing different sensibilities and appeals throughout. It breathed new life into a song I love, and gave me a new window of vision into the hip-hop culture that I know so little about.

This has implications with what Miller's talking about a lot. A huge amount of his literature refers to convergence culture, and the digitality of songs making access greater. The digitality of music enabled this huge genre crossover and the re-appropriation of an indie classic into the world of hip-hop.