Time for some audience participation! Below, I've uploaded a song, and all I want you to do is listen to it, and in the comments, tell me what it makes you think of. Anything at all. If it’s a scene or a place, describe it. If it evokes certain emotions, which ones and why? Explanations will be under the song; I don’t what influence the experience anymore than I have to. Ready?
For the record, this song is called Ethnicolor pt.1, and the artist is Jean Michel Jarre. I love most of his
music since it’s almost all instrumental. Most of his stuff is a lot more up-beat
than this one, but Ethnicolor has one of the strongest images for me, so I
figured it would be as good a start as any for these experiments. I will be
looking for more songs like this one to post in the future, and I’m always
willing to take suggestions. If you do suggest something, please keep in mind
that any words in the song are probably trying to tell a story or message, and
that could limit the varieties of experiences. However, that doesn’t necessarily
exclude them entirely. I do have one I might post later that’s sung in a foreign
language, thereby shrinking the chance of the story affecting any visions. Ve
vill see…
Finally, in case
you’re wondering what I think of when listening to this song, it makes me think
of Nazis killing elephants. Bear with me here, and kindly stop laughing. The
long sound at the beginning and throughout that gradually gets louder sounds to
me like an elephant crying out in pain. The background “ahhh” makes me think of
a choir at a funeral procession. The “Ein so” sounds like a German voice, and
when I put Germans together with sorrow, Nazis are one of the things I think
of. Why would Nazis want to kill elephants? Maybe they want the ivory, maybe they
were looking for something else to kill. I don’t know; I’m not that evil. The “tut”
about a minute-and-a-half in is a girl crying, maybe because her tribe lived in
peace with the elephants, and now all she can do is watch and cry as they’re
slaughtered. “Momentine” might be the girl’s father trying to console the
grieving youth. I have no idea what the bouncy video game noise in the middle
is, and is about the only thing I would remove from this piece. The rest of the
sounds either add to the sorrow of the moment, or are more germen-esque voices.
A sad piece to be sure, but a powerful one. :<--- end here.
Hope you guys enjoyed the song, and if you enjoy the idea, let me know. Otherwise, I'll be here waiting for our next session. Hasta la vista
Charm--Nice work. You are definitely working to engage your reader, be clever and interesting, and present thoughtful content. The layout and visual appeal works, and your writing flows well. Keep it up.
ReplyDeleteok it's quite different. Never listened to things like this before. It made me think of a foreign language I'd never heard and the sounds in the background sounded as if I could hear light moving. It made me think of my old yamaha keyboard and the different sounds that it used to have.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed having to highlight to read what you thought. After I wrote the ^ above paragraph, I listened again and heard the whale sounds and pictured the whole thing being recorded underwater. Hah, it was fun!
Thank you. I was hoping highlighting the paragraph would work, since I have no idea how to do spoiler tags yet (if we even can on blogger). Your old keyboard sounds like you could make some interesting music on it. As always, I am glad to entertain. (Bows while taking off a hat)
DeleteThis was definately interesting, it's not exactly what I listen to but if you put this together that's cool. It sounds like it could be music for a screen my ay or something. Keep it up my dude.
Delete