Kevin Wang
Professor Jablonka
MHC 100
12/4/10
A Search for Meaning
I have never been an artsy person. When I first heard of the final project at the beginning of this class, I was bewildered. I had no clue of what to do and couldn’t imagine myself creating any work of art. However, as the class progressed, I have learned about the various arts and felt more comfortable with dealing and understanding art. When it finally came time to do the final project, I was not afraid to experiment with many new ideas. Eventually, I decided to do something that interested me very greatly because it allowed me to fully express myself artistically in my own way. I decided to make use of the Garage band application to create my own version of the song “You Belong with Me” by Taylor Swift and present a live performance of “Somebody to Love” with Ting, my classmate. I enjoyed the process of doing both. From the many works of abstract art that we have seen, I have adapted what I have learned to a musical context and learned how to create my very own song and improved my abilities as a pianist. While working on this project, I was at times not sure of how to take full advantage of the application and made mistakes. However, the songs eventually turned out to be very creative. The MHC class really opened me up and allowed me to experiment with many ideas that I normally wouldn’t have done, such as adding my own guitar solo in the middle of the “You Belong with Me” song. I am immensely satisfied by the whole classroom experience and especially from my final project. I truly felt that both of our songs are a great portrayal of the universal theme of love.
For the first part of the project, I decided to do the song “You Belong with Me” and create a version of the song with Garageband because it reminded me a lot of the theme of love and how love can often be very hurtful and depressing. The lyrics of the song were the most moving part of the song because of the way it weaved this theme of love into a story about longing for someone that does not love you back. In fact, after listening to the original song “You Belong with Me” by Taylor Swift, I decided that the song was way too happy-sounding. Loving someone that does not like you back can be a very confusing and can be very distressful and depressing. In my remake of the song, I decided to make it a lot slower and more melodic and minor sounding, to make it more reflective about the pain of love.
Pop music is often criticized by music critics as being shallow and not meaningful. However, I feel that it all depends a lot on the song and on the portrayal of the song and that pop music can be very meaningful and deep. In my version of the song, I included many instruments that do not really fit into a pop music context in trying to bring about a different meaning to the song than what was originally intended. For this reason, I included the piano, organ, and violin into the song. The organ set the tone of the song by soaring above the song with high notes that reflect the idea of the purity that constitutes love. The piano set a more of a classical tone of the song by laying out the foundations of the song. I used the violin to complement the melody of the song that Ting was singing and to add contrast into the second verse of the song.
For the rest of the instruments, I tried changing the overall tone of the song as well. For the bass, I added many minor elements into the baseline that gave the song a sad sounding touch. The hip hop kit that I used acted like the beating heart; its continuous pulse gives life throughout the whole song. For the drums, I made the beat a lot slower than the original so the time of the song seemed a lot heavier and more drawn out for the full effect of the song.
In the song, I also included a solo part with electric guitar. I tried to give the song a whole different tonality with the guitar solo. I gave what I felt was a response to the words of the singer and this is reflected in the guitar solo which takes on a whole different tone than what the song was until that point. As a result, the song gains a different perspective that adds an interesting contrast.
For the last parts of the song, in Ting’s solo, we decided to slow down the song even more and in effect, slow down time. I felt that this part is the song is when the singer can get more personal and express the song in the moment in a pure way that expresses their innermost feelings. The song is frozen at this point when the singer makes one final plea that “you belong with me” as the climax of the song. Then, the song goes back to its original theme and ends.
A constant problem that we have had with this project is the built-in microphone that was used to record the singing. This was a constant problem because the built-in microphone in the Macbook recorded even the instrumental part, which muddled the singing. As a result, we could not create harmonies of the melody, and the vocal of the song is also not as clear as it could be as well.
For the second part of the project, Ting and I decided to do a recording of the song “Somebody to Love” by Queen. In this song, we did more of a classical arrangement of the actual song and also included the guitar player, Billy Pearson, in our arrangement of the song. In this song, we remained true with the Glee arrangement of the song, but we could not include the harmonies because there was only one singer, Ting. As a result, we made the song slightly simpler than the full arrangement. However, I felt this live performance was good practice and gave us a glimpse of the actual world of performance and being in the moment.
In this life performance, I wasn’t nearly as worried as I’d normally be for a performance. This was because I realized that sometimes in art, there really is no such thing as a mistake. While it might seem to me that I played a note wrong, even wrong notes can add an unintentional element to the song that no one has tried before. And in the many abstract art pieces that I’ve seen, I’ve learned that sometimes, even a “perfect” portrayal of something might not always be the best portrayal anyway because life itself is not perfect. As it turned out, I did make many mistakes in our life performance. However, I realized that as long as I don’t give this away, it will be hard for anyone to even notice. The life performance turned out to be a great success as a result.
In the end, both of these works of art that Ting and I have created were highly satisfying and inspiring. I felt that the possibilities with creating whole songs and arrangements with just a keyboard and a laptop are very numerous. In recording a live performance, I have gained perspective of my own techniques. I learned that as long as one doesn’t stop in the middle of the performance, the audience will not notice and there will actually be no mistake visible at all. The broadening of my mind through MHC class was immensely helpful for my project because it instilled within me the idea that art doesn’t have to be perfect; that there are many dimensions of art and everyone has their own definition of art. There is no one correct art form.
