I began by reviewing my process book and list of research to see if there was anything worth revisiting.I found an old reading that gave me the idea to approach music from a different angle. Instead of categorizing music into genres, which often produced similar tones (even with different instruments), I'd explore different representations of emotion through music. Keeping it simple, I continued my research into the subject.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3764399/
Here, I found information regarding the most common emotions represented in music. Here is a screenshot of the table I'm referencing in the link above.
With this, I put together a set of emotions I wanted to represent through music I'm familiar with. These emotions were joy, sadness, anxiety, love, and anger.
I began looking through my playlists of music, conversing with my girlfriend about her own musical tastes, researching the top 100 billboards of today and the past to see what were some common songs associated with these emotions. I put together a list, one song to each emotion:
Here, I found information regarding the most common emotions represented in music. Here is a screenshot of the table I'm referencing in the link above.
With this, I put together a set of emotions I wanted to represent through music I'm familiar with. These emotions were joy, sadness, anxiety, love, and anger.
I began looking through my playlists of music, conversing with my girlfriend about her own musical tastes, researching the top 100 billboards of today and the past to see what were some common songs associated with these emotions. I put together a list, one song to each emotion:
JOY = "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" - Wang Chung
SADNESS = "Peanut" - Earl Sweatshirt
ANXIETY = "Open Up" - Korn
LOVE = "Brown-Eyed Girl" - Van Morrison
ANGER = "Bullet With a Name" - Nonpoint
SADNESS = "Peanut" - Earl Sweatshirt
ANXIETY = "Open Up" - Korn
LOVE = "Brown-Eyed Girl" - Van Morrison
ANGER = "Bullet With a Name" - Nonpoint
I felt these songs appropriately represented their paired emotion due to the overall tone through lyrics and instruments. The idea however, is to physically hand letter a portion of each song. With that in mind, I pulled a couple lines of each song that were examples of the emotion. Here they are below.
JOY
I'll drive a million miles
To be with you tonight
So if you're feeling low
Turn up your radio
The words we use are strong
They make reality
But now the music's on
Oh baby dance with me yeah
SADNESS
Flushin' through the pain, depression, this is not a phase, ayy
Picking out his grave, couldn't help but feel out of place
Try and catch some rays
Death, it has the sour taste (Sour taste)
ANXIETY
Open up now
Head in the sky
Pierce the tongue that keeps telling lies,
Still, it's in my mouth,
You breathe in but can't breathe out
LOVE
Laughing and a running hey, hey
Skipping and a jumping
In the misty morning fog with
Our hearts a thumpin' and you
My brown-eyed girl
You, my brown-eyed girl
ANGER
Oh!
JOY
I'll drive a million miles
To be with you tonight
So if you're feeling low
Turn up your radio
The words we use are strong
They make reality
But now the music's on
Oh baby dance with me yeah
SADNESS
Flushin' through the pain, depression, this is not a phase, ayy
Picking out his grave, couldn't help but feel out of place
Try and catch some rays
Death, it has the sour taste (Sour taste)
ANXIETY
Open up now
Head in the sky
Pierce the tongue that keeps telling lies,
Still, it's in my mouth,
You breathe in but can't breathe out
LOVE
Laughing and a running hey, hey
Skipping and a jumping
In the misty morning fog with
Our hearts a thumpin' and you
My brown-eyed girl
You, my brown-eyed girl
ANGER
Oh!
My disposition is in a position for all to see
Regretless of how it feels
I got a bullet with a name on it
Bullet with a name
At this point, I attempted to turn the mp3 files I had for each song into soundwaves using Adobe Audition. There was an issue here though: the information I would be gaining by completing this process in measurement would be tainted by the instruments. I needed an acapella version of each song. This became the process for the next couple hours, learning how channels in audio worked, and figuring out how to isolate the vocals from the sound wave. This came with a lot of issues, the main being the terrible distortion and loss of information. If I were to edit the song down to an acapella, I'd be simultaneously distorting the sound wave, therefore giving me misinformation.
I decided to just simply listen to those isolated portions of each song on loop, making marks above the lyrics to represent where different things happen. These are the simple drawings made.
SADNESS
JOY
ANGER
LOVE
ANXIETY
These marks represent the pitch and tone shifts taken at different points in the lyrics. As you can see, in sadness, the pitch doesn't shift much. This is also true for the rap genre however, often focusing more on the lyrics and beat in spoken word, measured on a single bar:
https://www.rapanalysis.com/2015/04/rap-music-analysis-14-kendrick-lamar/
This is turn helped inform me of how to apply my formula that I created from last semester to the hand lettered visual. While this portion is yet to come, I've begun collecting reference typefaces to aid in representing pitch and volume shifts, noise and distortion through art. This is the next step.
Regretless of how it feels
I got a bullet with a name on it
Bullet with a name
At this point, I attempted to turn the mp3 files I had for each song into soundwaves using Adobe Audition. There was an issue here though: the information I would be gaining by completing this process in measurement would be tainted by the instruments. I needed an acapella version of each song. This became the process for the next couple hours, learning how channels in audio worked, and figuring out how to isolate the vocals from the sound wave. This came with a lot of issues, the main being the terrible distortion and loss of information. If I were to edit the song down to an acapella, I'd be simultaneously distorting the sound wave, therefore giving me misinformation.
I decided to just simply listen to those isolated portions of each song on loop, making marks above the lyrics to represent where different things happen. These are the simple drawings made.
SADNESS
These marks represent the pitch and tone shifts taken at different points in the lyrics. As you can see, in sadness, the pitch doesn't shift much. This is also true for the rap genre however, often focusing more on the lyrics and beat in spoken word, measured on a single bar:
https://www.rapanalysis.com/2015/04/rap-music-analysis-14-kendrick-lamar/
This is turn helped inform me of how to apply my formula that I created from last semester to the hand lettered visual. While this portion is yet to come, I've begun collecting reference typefaces to aid in representing pitch and volume shifts, noise and distortion through art. This is the next step.
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