Remixing

For the past couple of weeks, I have been working on a remix of traditional versus modern. I chose to use traditional string quartet (Mozart) and a modern string quartet (Apocalyptica). I chose to use the entire Apocalyptica song, Harmageddon, as well as the video from it. I used the audio from this song as more of a backing track. The Mozart piece is the main audio piece, cut down to fit into the timeframe of the Harmageddon audio and visual. Actually mixing these two pieces provided to be a challenge of sorts, and I originally started out using another Apocalyptica song, Grace. I went to using Harmageddon because it was a little less agressive and the Mozart piece worked better with the visual. I like the end result, it could be better, but I don't think there are any quick fixes for it.

Montagnard Music and Culture

I am most interested in the Montagnard-Dega music and how it relates to their daily life. I am interested in this because while I am not a music student, I do enjoy learning about music and how it shapes and is shaped by the culture around it. I am also interested in how their instruments are created.

By reviewing the Skype call made during class, the Montagnard women said that traditional music and dance is typically done during celebratory times (New Year's, birhtday's, etc.). This website was also very helpful, describing the various instruments, how they are crafted, as well as what they are used for.

I think that in order to examine how culture plays an influence on the Montagnard-Dega culture, it would be best if I were able to talk with some of the traditional musicians within the Montagnard-Dega community.

Framing the Brain

While listening to a recording of the speech Marshall McLuhan made at John Hopkins University, I could not help but notice how he was always talking about either people as a whole or communications; or both. The talks of the differences between how the right and left hemispheres of the brain process information most interesting because he is able to tie in communications and people as a whole on a simple, personal level. He is also able to talk about differences between cultures and the differences in communication. For example, because the Greeks and Romans had a more lineal language, it created more of a left-hemisphere way of thinking. However, with the introduction of electronic communications, starting with the telegram, the right-hemisphere started taking dominance. The right-hemisphere is also the hemisphere that deals with interpretation of facial expressions. Marshall McLuhan then talks about a Chinese man who had suffered a stroke on the left side of his brain. Despite this, he was still able to read, write, and speak Chinese due to the non-lineal manner of the language.

This was interesting to me because it made me think about how dependent we are on both the written language and facial expressions to convey ourselves in daily life and how saying something and writing the same thing can have drastically different effects on the audience. Further pursuing this, I thought of how different the same poem can be when it's read as opposed to when it's spoken. The perfect example of this would be Taylor Mali's "The the impotence of proofreading." (Warning: Fairly frequent and strong language) This poem, while it can be done as a spoken word poem, doesn't have the same effect as when it is read (Video). Granted, Taylor Mali is able to pull it off to a certain extent, that poem is still better read as opposed to spoken. The same is true with many poems, as many are written to be either only be read or only be spoken. It is rare that there is one that works well in both mediums.

This alone is in contrast with Walter Ong stating that our oral and written languages are merging. However, poetry is one of the few areas where that is not true, and even there it is starting to take place. I agree with him when he states our writing is much more akin to our speaking than it used to be, even to the point where a "formal" paper isn't at all that formal anymore. When I have to write a formal paper, I find it very hard to write without using contractions simply because I talk using contractions.

---Dan Woods