Chords

The medium that I chose to explore is music, and on a more specific level are 'chords'. I was playing around on my guitar and thinking about this project (not very happy with my previous attempts at the project with various other mediums) and realized how nearly identical chord progressions can sound so different based on the way they are played and obviously the accompanying lyrics and vocals. Now I am not much of a singer, nor a guitar player so don't mock me too much, I totally flop the ending of the recording. I was inspired by a song mashup I heard of 'The Police' and 'Snow Patrol' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__3McxusO7Y).

I picked four different songs, with four distinct styles that make use of nearly identical chord patterns to exemplify the unity in all music. "Good Riddance", "Wonderwall", "Tu Eterna Cancion" and "Hero". I then rehearsed the four songs, taking out a section from each song and combining them into one musical piece showing the interconnectedness. I felt that by doing this I could comment on how all music comes from the same place. The same notes. The same origin.

"Good Riddance" and "Wonderwall" are both sweeping acoustic ballads about life, love and consequence. "Tu Eterna Cancion" a spanish love song, and "Hero" probably one of the mushiest love songs there ever was. Listening to either of these songs individually you would not be easily reminding of the other, but when they are played together they transition quite smoothly, except for maybe my own errors as a musician. My major objective was to show how music has it's own life and rules that we can play by, just because we play the rules well doesn't mean we have a completely original license to it's content. Yes we may take the instruments and give them life, but notes and music give our sounds meaning.

The hardest part about this project for me was my own musical inability to play the songs as well as a talented guitarist or vocalist could have done. If I had more time I would have sought out a more talented musician and practice the piece with them and record them performing the piece. It was exciting because I toyed around with a few different song options before settling on this four. It was surprising to me because there were quite a few other options that I could have included, the piece could have easily been twice as long including a variety of other songs. I feel like the piece goes to show us that the artist can manipulate any piece of music in many ways. But art has a soul of it's own, and that rings through.