One thing that’s always interested me is music. I’m a very musical person, with my constant tapping on desks, chairs, etc. always being mistaken for sheer restlessness, but it’s usually just me tapping out a rhythm. So, I decided to take some of that random noise that I tend to make and turn it on its head, making it the objective.
The final score after a couple iterations that I decided on was as follows:
Collaboration Between an Artist and Whoever Wants to Be One
Find music.
Play it loud.
Start a recording.
While it plays, play your own notes.
Stop and listen to what you’ve made.
My thought process behind this is fairly simple. It seems to speak on two things:
- Musical collaboration and its absurdity at the top level
- Arguments
As for musical collaboration, the title calls this out. It’s a collaboration between an artist and whoever feels like they want to be one. These top artists of today only collaborate with people of similar stature. I’m sure most will agree that the artists at the top of the charts right now aren’t the best in some cases; there are people no one’s heard of that are far better and more talented. Collaboration at the professional level is based solely on stature, not on the quality of product. This score allows those with no stature to essentially collaborate with top artists, or whoever they feel like collaborating with. It’s open ended, meaning you could take it as seriously or jokingly as you want. Someone could record a beautiful vocal duet using the background music’s vocals as well and really try and make something great, or, as you’ll see, someone could just bang on a bunch of tables and make a ton of noise.
As for the argument side of things, this could also be seen as a fight between two voices, each talking over each other with neither prevailing. If two songs (or collection of sounds) go against each other at the same time, do either of them really get fully appreciated? It’s the same for arguments: if both people keep talking over the other, neither will ever get their point across. That being said, sometimes we should step back and let each voice speak independently.
Test Results –
I ran my playable iteration of this in class with everyone involved. I expected most people to be shy about the idea and most to not be involved. Boy was I wrong. I don’t know why I expected art school students to hold back but they sure didn’t. We never got through the full score, as the last step was cut short due to time, so for those who were in class at the time, here’s the last step.
https://youtu.be/ts2Mfn0XWqw – It’s sideways, sorry. The audio is what matters most anyway
At the beginning, only a couple people went at it, with one drumstick and the trashcan. Eventually, everyone was involved in one way or another either hitting things, using surroundings, or using their own belongings to just create noise. Most people managed to stay with the correct tempo, which surprised me. People seemed to enjoy just letting lose and hitting things though, which was good to see.
Overall the score was a success, as the result of letting everyone bang on everything while a track played in the background resulted in a mess that was neither the song playing or just the noises, demonstrating the argument analysis of the score. In addition, I recorded a drum cover over the weekend, and looking at the score, does that not fall into an iteration of this? That cover would describe the opposite side, the actual musical collaboration part. So, with all objectives covered, I’d call this a successful score and something to look into performing sometime, musician or not.
-Darin O’Meara