The Bible and Music

Today, I had to leave early from class. For the time I was there, I found it interesting the different tools people found. It was helpful to hear from others. We started Samson and Delilah when I left.

I’ve been looking more into entertainment that involves creation and how it’s demonstrated. I’ve noticed a heavy pattern in mostly the musical aspects of its representation. It typically starts out with a piano level then gradually crescendo into a fortissimo whole note. There were only one or two songs that didn’t use this apparent cookie cutter method. However, it did work, I felt a rush during the expiration of the crescendo which was usually accompanied with visuals of life. Most of these were seen and heard on documentaries from the BBC, Nat Geo, and the Nature Channel.

I think that there are many ways to musically portray a creation story. On one hand huge swelling phrases could be very thrilling to listen to but one could also use very soft simple music to highlight the subtle beauty of creation. Personally I would prefer the latter. Films such as “Planet Earth” show creation scenes in all variations, i.e. icebergs collapsing, mudslides, stop motion plants growing. Those are often accompanied by a mixture of soft music and sometimes nature sounds. One of my personal favorite creation scenes in pop culture at the current moment is from “Moana.” The music is rather inspiring and uplifting.

On Monday’s class we talked about creativity and originality of music. We discussed how no one can copyright chords and how a lot of music is based off other music. We started discussing different ways to make music online for our final project. We watched a video at the beginning of class with modern music and the creation story reading over it. I thought about how I could take a modern song and add a story over it. I want to try and experiment with Garage Band over Spring break and hopefully get some practice in before the final project.

How do things come into creation? If you think of something based off something else is it still entirely yours? There are many versions of the creation story but it is just worded differently. The story still has the same message. I admire people who can write songs and lyrics. They are very creative and original.

http://www.apronus.com/music/onlineguitar.htm

We briefly looked at this website, in class. I played around with it and found it to be useful. I liked that it showed both the guitar and the piano so you could use them interchangeably. I also liked that there was a recording feature so you could have your chords playing the background, while you do something else. I think I will make use of this in the future.

Today’s class, was focused a lot around creation and originality. We looked at how creation can be something simple and that being original can come in your ways. There are lots of online resources that can help make music easy and assist in the learning process. It makes the task a bit less daunting when you have the assistance of other sources.

When the topic of originality was brought up, I thought of the rap group NWA. Even though they do not represent the Bible in any way, shape, or form they were very original. I was watching the film, “Straight Outta Compton”, and it showed how they were very bold and unique for their time. They presented lots of new lyrics and ways to approach rap. Being original sometimes, has to revolutionize a genre of music. They were very interesting to learn about, even though they don’t relate to the Bible.

One of the main topics we discussed in class today was the idea of originality in music. Two words that we mentioned while discussing originality was plagiarism and improvisation. With any song or music ever created, you have to consider these three words. Creating music can often derive from another piece of work and people confuse this by labeling it as plagiarism. One of the main ideas that Professor McGrath stated was how several artists take certain sounds or chords from other music, and that is perfectly okay. If we were suppose to compose music based entirely on new chords, melodies, instruments, and tones then it would be nearly impossible. Another aspect that I never really thought of was how easy it is to create some form of music. From humming into the car to having a full band in the studio creating an album, anyone can create music.

Improvisation was a word that I was sorta unfamiliar with in the subject of music. However, I realized that improvisation is not plagiarism at all and it can be mistaken for that. Improvisation does not always have to be an entirely new form of music, so you can take it from some other song or hymn that grabs your attention. The idea of creating my own music is scary to me, yet I realized today in class that it is okay to start from another text or even another song. I can take certain chords or sounds from my favorite songs and utilize them in creating my own work.

Can you plagiarize music? Chord progressions can not be copyrighted, thus you can take backing music that is already in existence, and make a parody, without it being plagiarism. However, if you do take a song as is and don’t change any of it, then it is plagiarism. Even if you write original music, it follows patterns and influences of other artists, and that is why music from older generations all starts to sound the same. Being a composer or a creator of music, creating from things that exist, sculpting from things already in existence, that’s okay to do and is an good place for the final project. It is not plagiarism if you do it right. Basically, all you have to do is change some of it up and it will not be plagiarism.

This weekend, I learned how to play Hot Cross Buns on the guitar. I worked with Jessie from our class to learn this song. The experience went really well. It wasn’t that challenging to learn that song. It actually made me want to explore more with the guitar. I liked the way the notes flowed together and how the instruction connects. I think it would be fun to play around on a guitar to try and learn more. I was a bit nervous to try this, because I don’t know much about the guitar. After this experience, I see that it isn’t that bad as I thought it would be. Even though it was a simple, child-like song it was still fun!

The Prince of Egypt is a children’s movie about the book of Exodus from the Bible, and tells the story of Moses’ life on his journey to become the Prince of Egypt and lead God’s children out of Israel. Although it is a kid’s movie, there are some rather dark aspects to it, such as the song The Plagues, which is about how God sends down plagues into Egypt because Pharaoh refused to let the people free. This really captures the vengeful God of the Old Testament, much different from the forgiving ever loving picture that is painted of God now. The