Today, Tuesday, September 14, 2021, in class we talked about the creation story in the Bible and how it contributes to musical creation and looked at different creations of music about the creation story in Genesis. Also in the reading, we read about the creation of music and how originality plays into creating music, and the fact that in today’s world it is hard to create a completely original piece of music that has no influence from some other music in some way. When looking at Genesis Chapter 1 in the Bible you will find many different ways in which it was written and the wording based on certain versions and how although they are each different in some way they are all ways of telling the same story. The same thing happens with music in that you might have the same song but there might be a cover version and while it is the same song, it has its own differences in conveying the same lyrics. When we started to talk about cover songs, one that was mentioned, “Knocking on Heavens Door”, by Guns N’ Roses was one I never realized is just a cover song of the original song by Bob Dylan. When listening to both, I prefer the Guns N’ Roses version over Bob Dylan’s because it has a little more life to it and emotion. This is similar to listening to different versions of the creation story by certain musicians because while reading the text is interesting and informative, the musical versions also seem to bring out another level to the text and can help the reader to understand the text in a deeper way and different perspective than before.
As we go back to this thought on originality and creation, there are different levels of originality such as making a cover version of a song, or a parody of a song, to for instance making a new song but using the melody from another already existing song. For instance, one definition of originality found in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines originality as, “freshness of aspect, design, or style.” This I found interesting in that it matched up with what we were talking about with musical creation, in that while it may not be completely original and that would be nearly impossible in today’s world, but all the different musical creations we talked about all had a freshness of aspect, design or style. For example, the cover song “Knocking on Heavens Door” has a new style to the same lyrics and has a form of originality although when looking at the lyrics they look very similar. So, although you may find it hard to create something original, just think about maybe making it be fresh in aspect, style, or design instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, while also giving credit to the original author to avoid plagiarism.