Music is All the Same

Proposal:

EDIT-

Instead of supercutting together songs based on their topics, I wanted to tackle the idea of familiarity in songs. In a blog post on The Patterning - (https://thepatterning.com/2016/08/20/the-millennial-whoop-a-glorious-obsession-with-the-melodic-alternation-between-the-fifth-and-the-third/), Metzger makes the observation that a huge amount of modern songs share a common sound - the whoop. I wanted to bounce off this idea and demonstrate how songs play on our sense of familiarity and stick to basic melodies to appeal to a wide audience. In this way, many music artists work towards making the most "listenable" song to make the most money, rather than making an original melody.

ORIGINAL-

Music is one of the most integral part of human life. Not only is it a great way to relax, it is also a great way to communicate, as sounds transcend language and cultural boundaries. However, much of music does not take advantage of it's medium. Rather than spread an interesting or personal message, most songs are catered to fit in the mold of "pop" songs. This can be seen by the surplus of songs that sound the same and discuss the same topics. 

I want to create a supercut of today's most popular music to show how similar each song is to each other. I plan on grouping snippets of songs by their topic, (love, sex, drugs, ...) and also by their musical patterns. 

Outcome

Video : https://youtu.be/BlRAeBlSnko

I created a short supercut of popular songs. It was made using Adobe Premiere. 

Intention

Write about the big ideas behind your project? What are the goals? Why did you make it? What are your motivations?

My big idea was to make a video highlighting the use of familiar sounds in many pop songs of today. I wanted to demonstrate that many artists aim to appeal to people's nostalgia rather than aim for their unique sounds. This results in an excess of songs that sound very similar or share a similar sound personality. The most obvious consequence of this is the spread of the "ohhhh" or "whoop" sound in many of today's popular songs. 

Even though the spread of the "ohhh" or "whoop" sound is evident, it can be hard to realize it without it being pointed out to you. Rather, we, as an audience, tend to consume music without much thought. By making this video, I hope to make more people aware of the media that they choose to consume.  

Context

Include references and discussion of artists, artworks, movements or aesthetic frameworks/techniques/approaches that inspired your outcome, process or approach. What has informed your outcome? How does your outcome relate to other artists and their work? What ideas, styles, or themes did you draw on any why?

My main inspiration was Patrick Metzger of The Patterning. He pointed out the spread of the "whoop" sounds in popular songs. He also discussed how these familiar sounds are made to play on our sense of nostalgia. Familiarity with the songs makes us more likely to like the particular piece of work. 

Process

Describe how you translated your concept into the outcome. How did you approach the exercise? What were the design choices? What challenges were encountered and how did you resolve them? What ideas did you generate and how did you refine or reject them? What approaches did you reject?

I first collected a group of songs that demonstrated the "whoop" sounds, and cut all the "whoops" together.  Then, I rearranged the clips to be grouped with other clips that sounded the most similar to each other. This involved attempting to match different songs with similar tempos and pitches. Finally, I arranged these groupings of tempos in the order that seemed the most musically pleasing. 

It was challenging finding the right order of clips. I first considered doing random arrangement of songs. However, the jumps between clips proved to be a bit too jarring. As a result, I settled on sorting the clips based on their bpm and pitch. 

Product

Describe the outcome. What did you create, how, etc.? How did you compose your remix? What styles, methods or techniques did you use? What tools and technologies were involved?

Video : https://youtu.be/BlRAeBlSnko

I created a supercut of various music videos of popular songs. I used Adobe Premiere to edit my video, and I used videograbby and youtube to collect all my samples. 

Critique

Critically evaluate the success of your own work. What does your inner critic say about this work? Did you match intent and outcome effectively? (note: use the framing questions to guide your response!)

I believe I matched my intent effectively. I believe that my supercut of similar sounds from various songs effectively demonstrates the common use of nostalgia in pop songs to attract an audience. 

I do, however, am unsatisfied with the mix. I believe that, given more time, I could have made a more musically appealing mix of the songs. As is, I believe that the supercut is a bit jarring at times when it jumps from song to song. 

Reflection

Briefly outline what you took away from this project. What did you learn? What would you do differently?

I learned a lot about the difficulties in creating a successful mix. In addition to making sure the visuals are good, creating a mix involves clear understanding of the temporal. Sounds need to exist over time, so you have to deal with managing the temporal axis as well as the visual axis. I learned that supercuts, although they seem simple because the visuals are already there for you, still require a great deal of planning and intuition. I would definitely choose my songs that I super cut together more carefully if I started this project over. Instead of selecting any songs that exhibited the "whoop", I would have selected a theme of songs to use so that my supercut would be more appealing musically. 

Sources

Cite and attribute any sources you used directly in your project. Document this carefully: be very clear about what media you worked with, where you found it and how/where it was incorporated. 

Tove Lo - Habits

Alejandro Sanz - Looking for paradise 

American Authors - Best Day of My Life

Bastille - Pompeii

Boy - Little Numbers 

Chris Brown - Turn Up the Music

CHVRCHES - The Mother We Share

Demi Levato - Really Don't Care

Imagine Dragons - Radioactive

Ingrid Michaelson - Girls Chase Boys

Katy Perry - California Gurls 

Kings of Leon - Use Somebody

Macklemore - And We Danced

Oh Wonder - Without You

One Direction - Live While We're Young

Outasight - Tonight is the Night

Owl City - Good Time

Panic! At The Disco - This is Gospel

Pitbull - Timber

The Head and the Heart - Down in the Valley 

Twenty One Pilots - Ride

Walk the Moon - Shut Up and Dance

Arcade Fire - Wake Up

References

Reference and attribute any texts, concepts, ideas or related material that informed but wasn't directly used in the creation of the outcome.