Tag Archives: music

REMIX CULTURE

Over the space of three years, my taste in music has changed significantly. This has affected the way I write music and shaped my opinions on how music is consumed and should be consumed. In the bands I used to play in, we wrote songs together in a setup of drums, guitars, keyboards and vocals. We had original copies of the songs to play in a live format before recording commenced. Now, everything is different.

When it comes to music production for me now, there is only a minimal amount of preconceived musicality that goes into a song. The writing occurs within the production suite, leaving questionable evidence of an original song. The song doesn’t exist until the final product has been produced and recorded. It’s strange to think that the recorded version would now more likely be considered the original and the performance is a copy. The complete opposite of my previous works created as a band.

This shift isn’t just something I have experienced. There is an obvious trend of solo electronic artists using tools such as Ableton to make their music. This relies heavily on the cut/copy/paste/sample techniques employed by Girl Talk as presented in class. Whilst I’m not a huge fan of Girl Talk, he is a pioneer of mashup culture and it’s hard for him to go unnoticed. I have since found myself slowly being immersed deeper and deeper in to a combination of mashup/megamix culture. Just like a lot of other artists.

Gregg Gillis’ techniques of production seem to be quite consistent with Dan’s views of originality. The opinion that there is no such thing as an original idea is somewhat confronting, but the message of twisting ideas to create something new allows the concept of ‘originality’ to breathe. I personally think we are too deep in to sampling culture to combat the issues of copyright, and thankfully enough, most of the people I know who sample music don’t intend to make a cent off their products anyway. They make music because they like to make music, and want to see people dance. Don’t stop the party, keep the tunes comin’.

– Gabriel

PROJECT BRIEF 3 REFLECTION

The collective production quality of each project was significantly better than last project. People obviously benefited from using the high quality cameras at our disposal. Each project was different from the last, and I give credit to those who tackled quite serious subjects with people other than close friends. It can not be easy.

Chloe Abbot’s project on Fraser, an aspiring fashion designer and tattoo artist was very clean and specific. It conveyed information in a visually pleasing format. The background music complemented the black and white footage well, and was cut in and out when required.

I think it could have been improved by providing more information, particularly on what Fraser is doing at the moment to get further into the fashion industry. After viewing, I felt compelled to learn more about this. Chloe says she is in the process of constructing another edit for Fraser’s label SIRAP.

Chloe’s blog can be viewed here, and her portrait of Fraser can be viewed below.

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– Gabe

PROJECT BRIEF 3 – SEDGWICK

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I felt a lot more comfortable with Project Brief 3 compared with PB2. I’m going to put this down to the fact that PB3 allowed me to depict someone else’s character. Instead of me being judged, my friend Sam will be judged, right? Or was this task just setting us up to be more critical of other people’s filmmaking ability? Either way, the shifting of focus allowed me to create something that I liked, rather than something others were supposed to.

I’m happy with the found footage I used within the short. The retro vinyl advertisement slides in nicely with what I have filmed. It not only relates to the sound from the short, the colours make it visually pleasing. And because almost all of the found footage comes from the one source, there isn’t a huge variety of picture quality. I think if there were more than a few sources of footage, it would lose the sense of rhythm and flow I believe it has.

I’m not so happy with some of the sound in the interview; I had to do a lot of cutting with audio files and fades in and out to make it sound decent. As it was filmed on my balcony with a variety of mics, unwanted sounds such as traffic were picked up. When the sound matched the footage of Sam on the balcony it was good, but it was when the audio was placed over the top of other visuals that it sounded out of place.

In terms of producing portraits, I think a key discovery would be that b-roll footage is always good to have. There are a lot of places you can just slip in a bit of footage to show characteristics rather than tell them. Although not all of mine was used in this project, it’s handy to know for next time.

As a media practitioner I found using public access footage to be really useful and is something I want to explore further. There are heaps of cool and weird bits out there that will certainly serve a purpose in my media making over time. I suppose more generally, using Adobe Premiere Pro has got me thinking more about pre production and the actual filming side of filmmaking. i.e what I need to film to ensure it looks alright during editing.

Sam’s music can be found on his soundcloud:

– Gabriel

PROJECT BRIEF 2: MISCOMMUNICATION

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The footage included in my self-portrait was shot in Ballarat, my hometown, and Melbourne (I still spend some time in Ballarat). When it came to capturing the footage, I had pre-meditated shots in mind, but it wasn’t until I started editing that I began to focus on themes. I have broken it up into two parts. The first half focuses on influence, education and growing up in Ballarat, and the second half focuses on confusion, creation, and reflection in Melbourne.

The first sequence of my father singing, hanging towels, and the photograph of 2 generations of brothers, symbolises his influence growing up, by spending time with family. The red, white and blue towels are a subtle hint at my being a Western Bulldogs supporter. Terrible decision… Dad always played music, which developed into a passion of mine, which becomes obvious in the second part (my music being the background track).

Flicking through school photos of myself is an explicit depiction of growing up, education and moving on to a life of independence. Dissolving into an unsolved Rubik’s Cube signifies how scrambled I felt after school. I then felt settled going to university completing a degree in Music Industry, hence the solved Cube followed by a piano being played. It wasn’t until after this course that I felt like Music was more of a hobby than a profession. The photograph of my computer with ableton loaded on the screen, and my RMIT certificate in the background represents this.

The lyrical content of my dad’s song playing in the background: “Don’t change me, I can’t be changing, chasing other people’s ways”, is about focusing on achieving what you want to do. The audio at the start links with the audio of the closing shot where I am listing my likes and aspirations as a 4 year old. Reflecting on this, travelling to outer space is a metaphor for dreaming big, and that is something I am happy to do.

‘Miscommunication’ is the name of the song in the background of the second half of the clip. I feel that it goes well with the footage because without this explanation, everyone would have a different interpretation.

– Gabriel

NOTICING NOTICING

It’s impossible to remember every little detail or experience down to its minute details. Memories get cloudy, and it might just be me, but it’s getting harder and harder to distinguish between dreams and drunken states… As cliché as it sounds though, it is easy to remember details when you know what you’re looking for. Learning how to mark and record memories is an interesting process. I was walking down the street recently (as ya do) with a friend and I was consciously paying more attention to people around me, to try and boost my awareness. When I told him I noticed a guy with very broad shoulders and leathery legs, he realised he needed to pay more attention to the ‘freaks’ as he called them. But this isn’t about the ‘freaks’ of Melbourne; it’s about the mediated content packed into Melbourne Central. Here’s a bit of stuff that we found on our travels:

  • Emergency exit sign
  • Security camera
  • Melbourne Central clock
  • Train timetables
  • Tony Abbot flyers
  • Posters:

posters

  • Rubbish/newspaper clippings
  • Piano surrounded by red velvet (red cord)
  • People using facebook everywhere
  • Radio/music in restaurants and shops
  • Train announcements
  • Background conversations
  • Mount Franklin bottle of water (advertising)
  • Coca Cola advertisement
  • Map of Melbourne Central (?)
  • RMIT drink bottle
  • Conversations with shop attendants
  • Film Art textbook
  • Aaaand Joe Hockey:

JOehockey

Yep, Joe Hockey

TAME IMPALA – LET IT HAPPEN

Tame Impala’s new jam ‘Let It Happen’ is their longest track yet, at 7 minutes and 49 seconds. For an artist so prominent in the music industry, it is interesting to see that their first release in three years is probably closer to a dance track than a radio friendly pop song. This song disregards structure and instead relies heavily on melodic synthesizers to create a catchy atmosphere. This is something that Kevin Parker has gotten extremely good at. Tracks such as ‘Elephant’ explored synthesis as a vehicle for catchiness, but ‘Let It Happen’ solidly maintains your attention throughout its eight minutes. As one of the driving forces in the Australian music scene, Tame Impala have total freedom to experiment with their music. Kevin Parker has a knack of pushing the boundaries with each new release and ‘Let It Happen’ continues this trend. Although their popularity has skyrocketed since the release of ‘Lonerism’, Parker continues to write honest music that isn’t compromised by the need to service it to radio. If ‘Let It Happen’ and his contribution to ‘AAA Aardvark Getdown Services’ is anything to go by, then the new record will be pretty tight.

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– Gabriel