Response to "Brainwashed"

"Brainwashed" by Seth Godin

In Seth Godin’s article “Brainwashed,” he talks about 7 ways to get over the idea that you’re just average and reinvent yourself. Two of those methods are to “acknowledge the lizard” and make art.

Acknowledging the lizard means to get over what other people may tell you or think of you, and do your thing. The lizard brain is the part of the brain that worries about safety, and shuts down our art so it isn’t laughed at. This shutdown is the resistance that gets in the way of your work. You know how when someone is annoying you, you just ignore them? In order to ignore them and get on with your life, you have to acknowledge them. The same goes for this resistance. You have to acknowledge it in order to be able to get around it and create some art.

Of the other six methods, the one that stood out to me the most was “make art.” Godin defines art as something that changes everything, something new. Making art is creating something that hasn’t been created yet. That’s what we’re doing with these assignments we’re posting. We are creating soundscapes and songs that people haven’t yet seen the likes of. We create these things, and by posting them, we connect to other people on a human level.

These blog assignments are a great way to connect with each other and become greater artists. They show that we have learned what has been taught to us, and that we can rise above the norm to make new things. However, through these posts and lab assignments, it should be quite clear that we know our stuff. There’s no reason for us to have to be required to post a certain amount of certain words to hammer the point home that we know it. Yes, there is benefit in critiquing other people’s work – we help them get better at their craft and possibly learn something ourselves. But there can and will be nothing positively constructive coming out of a partially scripted critique as opposed to our own words.

Music/Song Assignment

Blog 3: Exploration of Cover Songs

As a guy who has gone through adolescence, I can definitely say I have a certain appreciation of double entendres. One of my favorite songs that exhibit one is “Big Ten Inch Record” by Aerosmith on their album Toys in the Attic.

Aerosmith did not do the original song, though. “Big Ten Inch Record” was originally done by Bull Moose Jackson in 1952. This was when rock and roll music was just coming out, and when it was starting to become a euphemism for sex. All the lyrics were technically about a record, since at that time, the medium for playing music was on a ten-inch record, but the way Jackson spaced the words, it led one to think of something else.

Between Bull Moose’s original and Aerosmith’s cover, the lyrics did not change much. Aerosmith did a really good job at keeping the integrity of the song. There were only a couple places where the lyrics changed. Bull Moose Jackson said, “take out my big ten inch” and “get out your big ten inch,” whereas Aerosmith said “whip out your big ten inch.” This led to a more sexual interpretation, as whipping something out can seem more sexual than taking or getting it out. Another lyric changed was instead of saying “gal” like Jackson, Aerosmith said “girl” - as in 1975, people didn’t really say “gal” anymore. 

The melody was also pretty close between the original and the cover. The main difference was the instrumentation. In 1952, “Big Ten Inch Record” was in the genre of R&B, and they used saxophones for the instrumentation. Bull Moose Jackson was a black man, so he wasn’t well enough off to be able to afford an electric guitar, which had just started becoming popular. In the 1952 version, the solo and main melody was presented through saxophone, with the rhythm being presented with an upright bass. In the 1975 version, it was electric guitar and bass, with one of the solos being harmonica.

The musical quality was very close as well between the two versions. Jackson’s version was maybe five beats per minute slower than Aerosmith’s, but in both of them, it was a driving beat with the same drum part. The song started off with greater intensity in the Aerosmith version, but that can be attributed to having a wider mix of tones in the initial attack than Jackson’s version. Aerosmith’s cover of the song was actually lower throughout the entire song, in a key that was a couple steps lower. The overall organization of each song was the exact same, though. It started with a saxophone riff, went through 2 verses and into a solo, 4 more verses into another solo, 2 verses, then the end of the song.

I first heard Aerosmith’s cover of the song, and I liked it a lot, not even knowing that it was a cover. When I found out about the original version of the song by Bull Moose Jackson, I listened to it, and I still stand by my original thoughts of the 1975 version’s superiority. While they are in essence the same song, the later version of it is better. It has more of a full tone, which could be attributed to their having better recording technology in 1975 than in 1952, but I think it is attributed to Aerosmith. They sped up the song a little, put it into a key that sounds warmer and more inviting, and put in a better variety of instruments. They didn’t stick with just one instrument for all the solos, like Jackson did with the saxophone. They did one solo with guitar and the other with harmonica, giving the song a more diverse feel. That’s why I feel that Aerosmith’s 1975 cover of “Big Ten Inch Record” was better than Bull Moose Jackson’s 1952 original.

This is a soundscape that Angela Salerno and I did. A soundscape is where you take different sound clips, and put them all together in a way that it tells a story. This soundscape is to convey an emotion of optimism. You've got cheerful birds on top of eerie music, a baby laughing when a couple is kissing, and an overall theme that goes from dark to bright. Enjoy!

Blog Assignment 1B: Ways to Get Ideas

"14 Ways to Get Breakthrough Ideas" by Mitch Ditkoff

All CEO’s nowadays want innovation, which comes from inspired ideas. But how can one get inspired ideas? Mitch Ditkoff gives 14 ways to do so in the article above.

1.     Follow your fascination – if you find yourself fascinated by a certain idea, expand on that.

2.     Immerse yourself with one task – you won’t find breakthrough ideas while multitasking. Sit down and focus on one thing.

3.     Tolerate ambiguity – you will most likely not get a breakthrough right away, so you need to be comfortable with “not knowing.”

4.     Make new connections – take a few different things, and put them together in a new way.

5.     Fantasize – use your imagination.

6.     Define the right challenge – in order to find an answer, you need a question.

7.     Listen to your subconscious – when you get stuck after consciously trying to come up with an idea, pay attention to dreams and random thoughts that come into your head.

8.     Take a break – when you hit a wall, walk away from it and do something else for a little bit. Come back to the problem with a fresh mind.

9.     Notice and challenge existing patterns and trends – find patterns in whatever you’re thinking about, and come up with a new configuration.

10. Hang out with diverse groups of people – get the input of different types of people, it’s the idea of collective intelligence.

11. Brainstorm – most great breakthroughs are about collaborations than just one guy’s ideas.

12. Look for happy accidents – watch for those moments when the answer is shown to you for no reason.

13. Use creative thinking techniques – these act as jumper cables to get your brain’s motor running.

14. Suspend logic – don’t think about what is conventional. Let your imagination run wild.

These are all really great ideas to give you a boost in your creative life. I’ll bring your attention more closely to three of these in particular, two have helped me in my creative life, and one I have a bone to pick with. I’ll start with that one.

Look back at #13. In the article, Ditkoff gives links to websites that generate ideas to get people started on their thinking processes. The only problem I see with this is that, since it is on a website, someone has already had that idea. Since you get it off that website, you are getting the idea from someone else, so it is therefore not exclusively your idea. I suppose if you’re really stuck in a rut, and you’re hard-pressed for inspiration, this could be a good tool to use, but if you’re trying to have a breakthrough idea of your own, this isn’t the way to go about doing that.

The two tools for getting inspired that have really helped me, though, are numbers 2 and 8. Sometimes we get so much piled on to our plate that we don’t know how we’re going to get through our to-do list. That’s where immersing yourself in one single task comes in. Whenever I’m feeling swamped with work, I hide my to-do list so I don’t see all the stuff I have to do, and I focus all my attention on one task until it is completed. Then I take a break, and immerse myself in the next task. Whenever I get jammed up on something, I put it away for a couple minutes, listen to a couple songs, get on Facebook, take a break. Then I come back to it all refreshed, and I work through to the next jam.

The next thing I’m going to do is give you an example of how I would put into practice that first idea of following your fascination with a couple questions provided by Ditkoff.

·      What new idea is fascinating you? I am a Young Life leader at Athens Middle School. What we do is teach middle schoolers about God. One way we do this is by getting involved in their lives and building up relationships with them. An idea that is fascinating me right now is to use my various talents to help with their school’s yearbook, band, or drama club.

·      What new possibility has captured your attention? Like I said before, I recently had the idea to go help out wherever I can.

·      In what ways can you honor this inspiration today? I can go up to the school, find the appropriate teachers to talk to, and get started.

Blog 1A: Who Influences You As a Creative Person?

I am a person of many talents, and probably the most prominent is my musical talent. There are many people who have influenced me musically throughout the years, one of whom is Jiggs Whigham. Jiggs is an exceptional trombonist. He can do things with a trombone that one would think impossible, playing almost subconsciously. Seeing him play in person has definitely changed the way I play trombone. Seeing the way he manipulates the instrument to make it do what he wants to do had a profound effect on my playing style. The sweet sound he produced could only make me want to emulate it. After a week of working with Jiggs I would go home, and work, and work, and work, to try to get that same sound. I got close, but the only way to get that pristine of a sound, it takes years and years of playing one’s trombone. I could only wish for that kind of sound, and keep on playing with the goal to sound this beautiful:

Jiggs Whigham is also a master jazz musician. Jazz is his musical genre of choice, and for good reason. As great as he is at manipulating the sound coming out of his trombone, he is equally as great manipulating the notes and music he plays. The way he plays tells stories, loud and fast telling of action, and slow and melancholy telling of love or sadness, or both. He expresses the notes as an author would their words, and puts so much feeling into it to create a sort of active subtext that one can pick up on if attentive. He sometimes does this without even looking at paper. Jiggs is so skilled a musician that he can pick a key, and construct something out of nothing based off of that one note he says. He improvises, and just goes with it. He starts with the basic scale in whatever key he’s playing in, and branches off of it, creating this sort of thing:

Perhaps the greatest reason Jiggs is such an influence on me, though, is that I have worked with him three times at Jazz Seminars. That last video you saw was at one of those Jazz Seminars in SHAPE, Belgium, and I was actually in that room while that filming was going on. That was one of many pieces of instruction Jiggs gave us, and the entire week was devoted to us students becoming better jazz musicians, and putting on a concert at the end of that week. Jiggs was there to direct the concert, and give us professional advice as to how to get better. The best way he could help most of us was to show us, and being a trombone player myself, the influence he had on me was probably greater than that on, say, the saxophones, or the trumpets. I say this because Jiggs was predominantly a trombone player, so the lessons he gave were more didactic for us trombone players:

With lessons like that, combined with his beautiful tone and amazing manipulation of his notes, Jiggs Whigham was very influential in my trombone playing, causing me to be more creative and musical.

There's a lens for that.

In media 203 we had to edit a photo in iPhoto to make it depict our sense of creativity. You can see the forest in the background, but in the foreground is a lens. You're looking through that lens, as if you're using it to see into my life. It's all abstract, because no one knows exactly what their life is all about, myself included. There are certain things that are in focus, like the tree trunks, but everything else is still a mystery that will become clearer over time. So if you ask me what my creativity is like, I'll just say, "who knows? I certainly don't."