In my opinion good music is music that is catchy. Something that I could listen to for months on end and never get tired of. A song that I’ve been listening to for over a year is B.Y.S by Keshi. B.Y.S also known as By Your Side portrays the story of a one sided love. Throughout the song Keshi shows what it’s like staying by the side of their love interest even when they don’t do the same for you. Something that I found interesting in the song was the fact that it had a very upbeat tempo even though the lyrics represented the feelings of lovesickness. With the way Keshi played the guitar and unique choices of minor chords and catchy beat it became a song that I loved for years on.

I have looked through the Units we’ve gone through this semester and I feel that this song could fit in “Listening at Home and Court.” Relating to what we discussed in that unit I feel that this is a song that I would enjoy listening to alone rather than in public with a group of people. Similar to the troubadours we discussed in the unite Keshi is also an artist who makes the theme of most of his songs revolve around love as shown in B.Y.S.

Song: https://youtu.be/U2lZIUZ_ZwU

Buddhism 

For this blog I’d like to talk about Buddhism and how music is used within their religious practice. Buddhism is a largely known and practiced religion. People who follow the religion believe that “ human life is one of suffering, and that meditation, spiritual and physical labor, and good behavior are the ways to achieve enlightenment, or nirvana. Buddhist practices often contain a chant, the use of instruments or sometimes even dances. Music is treated as an offering to Buddha and is incorporated in the means of memorizing Buddhist texts and meditation. 

A way that Buddhist people like to incorporate music into their daily life is using it to help calm themselves while meditating. I could not find a specific song, but I found a video on youtube that buddhist people use while meditating. The tempo of the song is very slow. They use a slow tempo song that is good for quieting the mind and relaxing your muscles. 

Citations

“Buddhism.” National Geographic Society, https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/buddhism. 

“Buddhism and Music.” Obo, https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195393521/obo-9780195393521-0136.xml#:~:text=Most%20Buddhist%20practices%20involve%20chant,of%20personal%20cultivation%20or%20meditation. 

Jacques Bermon Webster ll, also known as Travis Scott is an American rapper, singer, and songwriter. He holds concerts in outdoor fields. I decided to watch this concert because I heard it all over social media when it happened. He held this concert November 5th, 2021, it resulted in the death of 19 people who attended. This specific concert was held outside. He was dressed casually and created a very loud and aggressive setting with his special effects, flamethrowers being one of them. This tragedy of a concert was way too overcrowded at the time and the crowd “began to compress toward the front of the stage.” The crowding began with people being unaware of the push and when they finally realized they all collectively attempted to run to safety. By the time Travis realized it was too late and many people were already injured/dead. The concert ended up ending earlier than planned, obviously for public safety reasons. I’d like to compare this concert to Beethoven’s. Both concerts were not very appealing for the audience, Travis’s a lot more than Beethoven. Both were because the performer itself was unaware of the setting that they were putting their audience in.

In the article “100 years ago today ‘ The Rite of Spring’ incited a riot in Paris theater” the author believes that it began with a bassoon and ended in a brawl. The author believes that during the performance things got so out of hand that people had to be evicted from the audience. Some believe that it could’ve been staged as a stunt to gain attention and some believe that the actual incident was over exaggerated. This incident brought fame to Stravinsky even though it had a lot of negative feedback during its debut. People now celebrate it’s anniversary and instead of attending the performance with hostility they attend it with the means to celebrate it. 

In the second article “ Did Stravisky’s The Rite of Spring incite a riot at its premiere?” talks about how the premiere was expected to be a major cultural event given the talent involved. Instead the audience were given ugly costumes with heavy choreography and harsh music. The audience did not take well to this surprise and booed as well as jeered at the performers. Others defended the artists creating fights all around to make it so that the actual performance was barely heard. Though this is not what the author believed to have actually happened. He points out that people who described their experience mainly came from the seating at the balcony. He believes that the already harsh sounds created at the performance were enhanced even more for people seated at the balcony making it seem worse than it actually was. The dance the performers did were not some that most of the people form the audience were used to seeing. They viewed it as insulting and did not take well to some of the parts that were meant to be seen as humorous. Despite all this, according to people who actually attended the performance, there were no fights or riots. Making it so that people who claimed there were liars.

Unlike the audience I had a little background information on what to expect when first watching the ballet so I wouldn’t say that I was surprised like they were. From my perspective it seems that the performers are displaying the people in a very stereotypical way. I don’t enjoy how they are made to be seen as primitive. If I were to watch this without anyone telling me what it was about, My first thought would never be that it was a ballet. I can see why the audience was surprised. Going to a ballet expecting to see a traditional ballet performance than seeing this would be quite shocking. I think I would be disappointed and angered.

The two songs that I’ve chosen for this blog are, Want You Back by 5 Seconds of Summer and Pick Up the Phone by Travis Scott. 5 Seconds of Summer is an Australian pop rock band that consists of 4 members. Travis Scott, also known as Jacques is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, and record producer. The song Want You Back displays the artists yearning for their lost love. Throughout the song the lyrics show the artist’s regrets, “where I went wrong” and “I will never get over you.” Pick up the Phone on the other hand talks about the frustration the artists goes through when their girlfriend ignores their phone calling. The lyrics throughout the song displays the artist’s clear frustration, “blowin a bag on you, do all that for no reason.”  Want You Back starts out with a rather slow tempo that gradually becomes faster starting from 0:31-0:42. Pick up the Phone on the other hand stays at a similar tempo throughout the entire song. Want You Back also features a much softer timbre than Pick up the Phone does seeing that both songs display different emotions. Pick up the Phone displays a much sharper timbre doing a good job of showing the artist’s bitterness. The performance of Want you Back takes place in a black stage with blue soft white lights. It creates a somewhat sad but romantic setting which reflects on the song. The performance for Pick up the phone on the other hand takes place on a red stage with flickering lights on the back and props that light on fire. This setting sets a very aggressive tone which also reflects on the song.

Technology is knowledge, techniques, and tools that help humans achieve certain goals. Therefore an example of Music technology can be Spotify, an application that streams music from millions of artists all over the world. The purpose of Spotify is to give you global access to songs and podcasts. It has over 400 million monthly users and almost 200 million subscribers which shows how reliable it is. Recently I’ve seen posts on Instagram where people would be able to watch full on movies on Spotify. It’s something that people working at Spotify definitely did not intend to let happen but happens anyways. It only happened for a short amount of time though seeing that when I tried to search up the movies myself, it would come up as blank. I have a lot of experience with this app. I’ve been using Spotify for years now and it’s my go to app to use to listen to music.

#BrooklynBloodPop is a song that can be found on Spotify. It originally became extremely popular when it blew up on Tiktok and attracted many viewers to the sound. Due to its popularity people started looking to listen to the entire song, not just the short 15 seconds found on Tiktok. This is where Spotify came in. With the song now at almost 200 million listens on the app, the creator of the song has benefited greatly. Spotify is an app used globally by people all over the world to do one thing, listen to music.

https://open.spotify.com/track/7K9Z3yFNNLv5kwTjQYGjnu?si=81e2e53cefb94ae3

A song that I love and have loved for over three years now is striptease by carwash. Striptease is a lo-fi pop song that can be found on Spotify, Soundcloud, and many other platforms. I honestly just find this song adoring and often see myself listening to it when I need to cheer myself up. I often get bored of replaying songs over and over again after a month or two but I’ve stuck with this song for a few years now which is special to me. At 0:35 seconds of the song the dynamic changes for just a few seconds. It lowers itself and then introduces the chorus right after. I personally love it when a song does this, a good beat drop always makes or breaks a song for me. I may be wrong but I believe that the song is polyphony. LIstening to the song I can hear the beat of the instruments and the singer of the song. Putting them together makes the song what it is and it would be entirely different if either of them did not have the other. Overall I do not know much about this artist nor do I care for their other songs but this specific one will always hold a spot in my playlist.

Reading about the Baroque period I find it really interesting that people took violence and war as inspiration to create art. When I think of the word art I think of something elegant and beautiful, the opposite of what was going on during that period. The fact that people were still able to take from such a dark time and create something alluring and loved by the public is amazing to me. To be honest I didn’t even know that this time period existed before reading this text so not much. The textbook described the music as emotional with varieties of emotions such as anger, love, joy, and grief. It also mentioned how musicians would like to have strong contrasting effects. One of the effects being loud and soft. I love that they did this because as someone who has a short attention span,I’d rather listen to something that keeps me on my feet than listening to something that is repetitive.

Listening to Magnificat by Claudio Monteverdi, an Italian composer of Orfeo of 1607, I’m hearing exactly what I’d expect from someone who said they were an opera. The fact that he’s considered as the first great opera already shows that he’s going to have a huge impact on opera performers at that time and in the future. It’s no surprise that his music is exactly what I’d expect from an opera singer.