Outcome

Proposal

For the module 2 project I am going to create an audio supercut of some Red Hot Chili Peppers songs in which they make sounds which are not words. For example they often have sections in their songs in which they just say "oh" or "ay" for extended periods of time. I am going to make it go viral by uploading it to soundcloud then sharing the link with people and encouraging them to share it as well. I chose to do this because they are a very popular and recognizable band and they also have a lot of content to work with because they have released so many studio albums.

Intention

The big ideas behind my project were to create a supercut of the noises that the Red Hot Chili Peppers make when the lead guy isn’t singing. I made it because it was assigned to me. I chose to do this topic in particular because part of the assignment is to make the content of the project go viral. This band is very iconic, the voice of the frontman is very recognizable and overall they are a very recognized and appreciated band. This would hopefully help with spreadability.

Context

The general artistic trend which inspired my outcome was the supercut. There are many supercuts out there, a lot them deal with film sequences. Some audio ones, like mine, include compilations of popular songs from a certain year, mashed up into one song. One particular work (which is a remix instead of a supercut) which inspired mine was the one where they took the debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin and cut out all the words so it was just the moments of silence. Mine would be a supercut instead of a remix, though, because it draws material from more than on piece of content, i.e. multiple songs. However, the concept is similar because it takes something in which the content is relevant and interesting and cuts all the meaning out, leaving just fragments which buffer the content.

Process

I listened to 7 different songs which were among the band’s greatest hits because the point of using music from this band in the first place was to make it recognizable, so it would be pointless to use their less popular songs. I cut out times in which they were not speaking and just vocalizing and cut together pieces from the different songs. Some challenges were cutting the clips close enough that the noises were long enough, but cutting out all consonant sounds. Another challenge was that sometimes the noises didn’t flow together well so it sounded choppy instead of like a piece which flows within itself. I rearranged the clips to minimize this. Some ideas and approaches I rejected included using Audacity in favor of using GarageBand to generate the final product. I also considered at one point using more than one band’s music, but decided that just one was more concise and would help with spreadability.

Product

In the end, the supercut contained content from five songs because two which I had tried to incorporate did not have relevant vocalizations in them. I composed it by cutting pieces out of songs in garageband, and concatenating the remaining audio clips (which contained no words but vocalizations) in an order such that no two clips from the same song were next to each other so it sounded more choppy and more like a compilation. In terms of spreadability, I think that failed because it was clear that this was a school project, which made people not super interested in it.

Critique

I think the work was pretty successful. It definitely sounds the way I had imagined it to. The one thing I don’t like about it is that some of it doesn’t really flow together. I wanted to achieve a balance between being smooth and choppy by making it obvious that the clips had come from a variety of sources and that there are a lot of different instances in which they make random noises, but I also wanted it to flow in general as an audio track. Especially between the intro and the first noise, I don’t think it flows too well. Also, I didn’t quite cut out the next sound (which was the beginning of a coherent word) out of the end of these clips well enough so you still hear some random consonants here and there, but I actually think that make the clip flow better in the end.

Reflection

I learned how to use GarageBand and about the concepts of remix, mashup, and supercut. I would possibly try to incorporate even more songs into the clip, but the limitation to that would that I would only be able to choose from their more popular songs to adhere to the theme of spreadability. If I had wanted more content, I could probably have made it from many different artists instead of just one, but again in terms of spreadability I just wanted to choose to one which is mostly ubiquitously known. Also I realized afterwords that some of the noises were actually supposed to be words like “oh yeah.” 

References

I used this video as reference for my own:

“Debate Breath, 2004” Tinapple, 2004

Sources

I used the following songs:

“Snow ((Hey Oh))” Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stadium Arcadium, 2006

“Around the World” Red Hot Chili Peppers, Californication, 1999

“Give It Away” Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blood Sugar Sex Magik, 1991

“Otherside” Red Hot Chili Peppers, Californication, 2000

“Dark Necessities” Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Getaway, 2016

(I attached an mp3 file in addition to the soundcloud link in case I get taken down for copyright issues)