Song Blog

Harrison

Joey

Dalton

Brainwashed

Brainwashed

Acknowledging the lizard is when someone attacks our art and therefore our art side shuts down to stop the hatred and embarrassment.  Connecting is when we are allowed to meet people we would not meet in other situations and take the opportunity to learn from them.  The lizard concept is used because I usually play it safe when creating instead of showing my true art side, afraid of judgement.  The connection side helps because I get insight on my art from people I would not see otherwise and who can see my art objectively.  These exercises are good because they help me exercise my art side and give me a chance to work with people I could not otherwise.

Soundscape Comments

Zach Eisenfeld
Ian Bullington
Joseph Buccini

Song

johnny cash vs. nine inch nails

I enjoyed the song “Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails, but once the song was covered by Johnny Cash, I fell in love with the cover more than the original.  Johnny Cash recorded his version in 2003, very close to his death.  The original came out almost ten years before in 1994.  Both are great, emotional songs.

The melody in both is pretty much the same, except with a few exceptions.  In the Nine Inch Nails version, Trent Reznor seems to bend the notes of his voice a little bit in order to produce a more intense, angry vocal effect.  In the Johnny Cash version, he sings like normal, just singing with straight notes and no real vibrato or effect.  Other than this slight difference, the overall sound of the melody is the same.  

Their is a difference in pitch between the two pieces, as the Johnny Cash version is song way deeper than the Nine Inch Nails version.  Johnny Cash tends to sing lower, so this may be why the octave was chosen for this song.  The timbre is the most clear and obvious difference, as the Johnny Cash seems to be more folky, with acoustic guitars and pianos.  These traditional instruments are part of Johnny Cash’s sound, unlike Trent Reznor who regularly uses odd instruments and different effects in order to produce a new sound, referred to as industrial music.  His instruments are all out of tune and layered more than Johnny Cash’s and therefore have a completely different timbre.  The effects on his instruments also change the timbre of his version.  The speed is pretty slow in both versions and it adds to the overall sadness of the songs.  The rhythm also stays the same in both versions and is essential to the intro to the songs.  The picked A minor chord lets everyone know what the song is.  The intensity of the Nine Inch Nails song in the second chorus and even in the bridge is much greater than that of the Johnny Cash version, which picks up a little bit in volume as well, but not nearly as much as the Nine Inch Nails version does with distortion and Trent Reznor screaming out the vocals, showing his pain.

Overall, the songs are both very similar and very different.  It all comes down to whatever version the listener finds to have the best musical quality.  The difference in the timbre is so different that each are considered to be completely separate genres, but both are widely known to be great songs. I prefer the Johnny Cash myself.

Nine Inch Nails

Johnny Cash

Soundscape

Find Your Howl

In Find Your Howl, Flaum uses a story of a red wolf who was raised in captivity and released to the wild but could not howl.  In his adventures through the wild he meets a deer who tells him when he is hungry for his howl it will be there. He then eats the deer and the raven who is eating the bone tells him that he is not listening to his feelings with the right part of his body.  As he is running he changes, but eventually comes across the barrel of a gun held by a farmer. The wolf runs into the barrel and then finds a tribe circling a fire, beating a drum that turns out to be his own heart.  The people were dressed as a red wolf, and the wolf walks into the fire without being burned and howls, and the tribe responds, and the wolf leaves middle earth and sees the moon overhead. Flaum is trying to say that we have to overcome inner battles to finally show our full potential, but it is a hard and painful process.

"We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities."

This quote speaks to me because I never know where I am going to take my creative work when I am doing it.