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Z’ev X Jenerik 02/19/09Block Haiti

Swashbuckling Students

Aaaaaaarrrrrrgggg!!! *chough* … excuse me … Hi! I am what you would call thedirector

and

producer of

Swashbuckling Students

, a pirate song written by myself and performed by a few students (and a teacher) from CAT (City Arts and Thieves) High School. The purposeof the song will be explained later, and the purpose of this text is to elaborate, to enlighten, andto elongate an explanation that could be summarized in one sentence. Without further digression, I give you my “What is Art” paper, Take Two. Action!

Technique

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In what way does this work represent a skilled use of the software?

Most amateurs (myself included), when working with GarageBand use only a fraction of it’s true potential. I used to create songs by dragging pre-made loops into tracks and overlappingthem until they became aesthetically pleasing to my ears. Then I found that aside form mearlyrecording my voice into garage band, I could also apply distortions and amplifiers to change myvoice. I could, within reason, alter the words I spoke so that no one would be able to tell whowas speaking. I used particular amps to enhance the volume of quiet singers and ‘gruff up’ thevoices of certain, ‘not-piraty-enough’ people. The manipulation of individual track (volume)levels also made the singers voices easier to equalize, or sound similar in volume level. The endresult of this project could not have been achieved by just any amateur … it takes a special kindof armature to make something so, well, odd.

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In what way does your choice of materials for this project represent a skillful and informed artistic choice?

There are only a few music-mixing programs that I know of and the easiest to use (aswell as the one I am most familiar with) is GarageBand. As soon as I knew I wanted to dosomething involving the performing arts, I decided to use not only a relatively easy program butalso one I had worked with before. I figured that I had a better chance of creating somethingcool if I made a song apposed to if a video in which I could act because I’m unfamiliar with performing in front of a camera and I don’t like using video editing programs like iMovie(especially iMovie). In the beginning, I was tempted to do some visual arts project, but to behonest, I am a performer and I excel at doing physical things with my body as apposed to painting, which I never really got the hang of.

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How does this work you've created compare with other works of this kind by other artists?

It was brought to my attention, AFTER I had thought up the idea for the project, wrotethe lyrics, and pitched the idea on my blog, that there is a group of comedic musicians who writeand sing quirky pirate songs. They are called “Captain Dan and the Scurvy Crew” and they didnot inspire me in any way. But, the fact that they are a band selling their music goes to provethat what they do (and consequentially what I have done) is considered art. If you want to check them out, go to their MySpace page (as they don’t official have their own website). Their songwas created as music whereas my song was created as a joke, but both of our projects are art. Now, this is not to say that the idea of a pirate song was not already planted in my mind, as Iwatched a play in which they had a funny little pirate song where each person explainedthemselves and their roles. But, my lyrics were 100% original, as was the execution of the song.

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Explain in depth the different materials, techniques, and art genres you experimented withas you were making your final piece.

No project is perfect the first time around and my pirate song is a great example of thatwhich I speak. I had to make some major adjustments to my work to get it up to par. First andright off, I had to do something about the sound, as everything was super quiet. I toyed with theidea of adding amps to each track, but decided to just raise the individual track volume levels 10notches up each. This unfortunately threw all of the tracks out of volume harmony, makingsome loud while others could not be heard. It also made the backup music hardly noticeable. Ithen went in and adjusted the sound levels on the individual tracks to balance them out as well asraising the volume on the instrumental tracks. My last attempt to make the song acceptable wasto look at each track individually, and make sure they were all on beat and on tempo. Wherethey were not, I went in minimizing the ‘beat to visual’ ratio and adjusted the singer’s voicesslightly to the side. The song stll sounds funny, just a cleaner funny than before.

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Explain how the techniques you used add to and enhance the meaning or message you weretrying to communicate.

One aspect of my song that truly puts across a message is/are the seemingly pointlesslyrics. When a song has no clear message (and the lyrics are all out of whack), it sends acrossthe belief that the project is ridiculous and mine is purposefully so. The ridiculous must evokesome sort of emotion, and therefore one criteria of the project fulfils another aspect of said task.To cause further hilarity, or at least nostalgia for the cliché, I overlapped the words with a fiddle(or violin) as everyone knows that if you walked into a pirate bar, you would find someone playing a fiddle accompanied by someone playing an accordion and possibly an off-key piano.

Point of View

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In what ways is your point of view evident in the work itself?

Art is the creation of something, anything really, which evokes an emotion within thegeneral audience, excluding those who disagree as a personal. My pirate song, which I havecalled "Swashbuckling Students," is the perfect example of my rule's application as the merelistening to said song evokes within anyone and everyone a feeling, emotion, or response of some sort, regardless of magnitude. I believe that even the response of indifference to my artqualifies as justification for the authenticity of its artistic nature. "Swashbuckling Students" ismeant to make people laugh, chuckle, and/or guffaw, through the use of funny accents andunorthodox (but entirely cliché) verses. This project is supposed to be fun, goofy, and prove no point other than the fact that there are still people out there willing to embarrass themselves for the pleasure and entertainment of others.

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What is your definition of Art and non-Art? How is this definition shown in your artwork?

Art evokes a feeling/emotion, a reaction of some sort so what better to evoke humor,laughing, and/or disgust than a pirate son sung by pubescent teenagers? My project is to create a pirate song on GarageBand and get some of my friends to sing with me on it. The purpose of said venture is primarily to have fun, but also to educationally prove that regardless of theemotion you get from the song, (whether it is confusion, disgust, giddy chuckles, etc.) myartwork will have fulfilled its purpose. Whatever message you glean from a pirate song abouta fictitious band of scurvy dogs is entirely up to you, because everyone draws their own meaningfrom a piece of art, but know that I make this song, not to make you think, but in the hopes toentertain (and if I’m lucky, enjoy myself).

Context and Connections

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Specifically describe the artworks you looked at when developing your definition of Art inblogs 1-3.

Um … funny thing … I looked at visual art to construct my definition of art, eventhrough my project is musical in nature. But enough stalling, I looked first at a man scrawlinggraffiti on a wall. I personally despise tagging as I feel it is a brash disrespect to all others whothen have to stare at the surface. BUT, I figure that if someone takes the time to go down under a bridge and tag a well tagged location, he or she must have a good reason for doing so. Andthen there was the paperclip. Ah, how subtle a simple picture can be and yet fraught with