The art of music can be described as a medium that can both physically and emotionally move people. All artists strive to be creative and stand out from the crowd; but when the majority of pop music is composed of four chords, where is the originality? G-E(minor)-C-D and A(minor)-C-D-F are the most common chord progressions and the only factors that change between the thousands of songs that use these progressions are the strumming pattern and the lyrics. However, the skills of the lyricist and composer who successfully produced these songs take a backseat to the singer. The audience robs them of their much due credit with their applause and idolizing. Although plenty of singers strive to be original, all artists “plagiarize” and reinvent the wheel; so, how are they able to achieve originality?
Jonathan Lethem analyzes the way that various artists across all mediums rip off other artists in his essay “The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism”. In his essay, Lethem defines “plagiarism” to mean artists using other artist’s work through “mimicry, quotation, [or] allusion” (61). Rather than word for word copy and pasting of someone’s work, the word plagiarism will be used to describe the use of someone’s work as inspiration for other art in this essay. Lethem does not view this form of plagiarism as a heinous crime, rather, a “sine quo non of the creative act” and in fact, a badge of honor for the one getting “plagiarized” (61). In other words, it’s impossible to be creative without quoting and alluding to people and their works. Using an example of an Iranian filmmaker, Dariush Mehrjui, who used J.D. Salinger's work as a springboard for his work, Lethem asserts the filmmaker “had paid [Salinger] homage” by using it and in doing so, a...
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... been changing in movies and television to adjust for everything feeling “familiar”. Horror-spoof flicks and action, romance, comedy movies have been made because sticking to one genre would now bore people and would result in them walking out or changing the channel. The only question left is what will happen once people are bored with genre mixing. In other words, when the “strange” becomes “familiar” what will satisfy people’s appetite for entertainment? Maybe the emergence of the perfect genre will take over the market by stealing the best parts of all music and combining it to please everyone. The Internet Age is both a blessing and a curse when it comes to music. A person is able to create masterpieces by using other people’s music and blending various genres but one must not forget the Internet is what has caused people to crave creativity in the first place.
The word “original” is often used to describe paintings that have been manufactured by hand, but it is not clear whether hand-made copies of work are still considered so. When an artist copies another’s art, is his own art original now that it has been tainted by the thoughts’ of others? The poem “To A Mouse” by Robert Burns served as inspiration for John Steinbeck when writing the famed tragedy “Of Mice and Men.” Steinbeck, a Nobel prize-winning author, set many of his books during the Great Depression or the California Dustbowl, times when the future seemed bleak. In Of Mice and Men, man-child Lennie and his “father figure” George form an unsuspecting friendship, and set off into the world with their dreams of one day buying land and settling down. The characteristics of these protagonists are directly taken from the Burns’ poem, which describes similar characters. Is such a close emulation detrimental to the value of originality in the work? Steinbeck believed that “only through imitation do we develop toward originality,” a motif seen in Of Mice and Men. Inspiration is necessary for all art, but by exploiting Burns’ poem, Steinbeck bastardizes the innocence of originality.
Over the last few decades, the practice of radically appropriating works of other artists has become common. The central tenet in appropriation art is to incorporate ideas and images from mass media, popular culture, advertising, and from other artists into a new work. Indeed, appropriating art is not new since borrowing from other artists is an age-old practice. For instance, painters have regularly repainted the paintings of other artists with an aim of exploring the application of their artistic style in a familiar art. However, photographing another artist’s work and claiming the authorship of the work without acknowledging the original artists poses a serious challenge to the idea of authorship. Incorporating other artists’ work into a new work is the central element of modern appropriation art.
Music has a great influent on people in our daily life, just like technology’s effect on the music. In the last 100 years, pop music has been a major part of American culture. There’s always discussion on how great can a pop music affect one’s daily life. Both technology and music can affect one’s life in either good or bad way such that they are also related to each other. Technology had always had a dominant role in human history like music since the 1900s. Since then, the advancement of technology had create ‘miracle’ with music such that people won’t be able to imagine the effect back in 19th century. The effect of the technology on pop music can be observed through the instruments, composition and mainly the recording and transmission technique.
Remixing original material from different artists has become an important controversy in today’s modern world. The matter of stealing copyright material is taken very seriously and offends a lot of artists. Lawrence Lessig, author of “Remixed: Media” and a professor at Harvard Law School, writes about how he doesn’t agree. He uses several examples and personal stories to back his position and try to get his readers to understand that what new contemporary artists have started doing. Is nothing illegal and attempts to make it socially acceptable. Writing something like this, the author should include three rhetoric appeals such as ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos is, by definition, “an appeal to authority or character” (31). Pathos is a way to connect through emotion. Logos is incorporating formal examples such as definitions, facts, and proven statistics. Another part of the article would be the kairos or otherwise known as the appropriate placement of each argument during the course of an article. While reading, it’s easy to see how ethos, pathos, and kairos is used in Lessig’s article as he places an emotional state that could be perceptive to his audience and modern day statistics to connect with his audience in order to convey his opinions on remixed material throughout his article, while leaving out personal credentials.
The drastic socio-cultural changes that occurred following World War II in all participating and surrounding countries led to the rise in ‘pop culture’. An important aspect of pop culture is popular music of the age. Although the concept of music as a consumer product was already emerging by the 15th century, with musical eras like Renaissance, Baroque and Romantic coming and going over the centuries, it was not until after World War II that musical styles began to expand and change much more quickly than ever before. Each decade from the 1950s is widely known to the general population as having its own distinct style of popular music.
A number of other genres, throughout the decade, maintained a significant following. One genre that was slow to start was Hip-Hop, while it emerged in the 1970’s it didn’t become significant until the late 1980’s. Although Classical music began to lose impetus, it gave way to a new generation of composers through invention and theoretical development. The decade was also distinguished for its assistance to electronic music, which rose in reco...
Popular music places a premium on accessibility, represents various meanings to boost both instant appeal and memorability - distinctive tunes, novel instrumental flourishes, danceable rhythms, repeated riffs - but its signal feature is melodic emphasis and great vocal gatherings.
Music offers a soundtrack for life. It has the power to, "to elevate the mind, body and character of individuals and the spirit of the nation as a whole" (Suisman 19). Along with its profound effect on people, music is also derived from endless sources and contains an infinite number of messages and purposes within its given context. Musical genres are often created to standalone as their own entity, but songs are also sometimes intended to represent multiple influences and alternate styles. As exemplified through the examination of various musical genres, their origins and their historical implications, a persisting influence relates to either the stylistic inspiration from other cultures, ethnicities and musical styles or the blatant conflict
‘Copying, reinterpreting, quoting, and translating are all terms that have been utilised as alternative descriptions for the phenomenon known as “appropriation”, the action of taking or making use of something without authority or legal right. This practice often involves borrowing, mimicking, or even stealing, and it is highly contested and criticized in the contemporary art world’ (Gorman, C 2013, p. 215).
With music, comes a story. Adele is constantly cultivating new emotions and experiences with her often sombre ballads. Taylor Swift is strikingly honest and offers the world a new storybook about real love and real life with each album release. NWA opened up the eyes of the world to the reality of police brutality and oppression towards people of colour. These artists with such different styles and methods are all similar in what they offer. They offer a story. Often the singer may lack in vocal abilities and while this is unfortunate, it does not matter. What is important is the lyrics, the music. Those are the significant aspects that conform music in the world as
Music has been a part of human culture since the beginning of time, and it continues to transcend language barriers, belief systems, and remains completely open to interpretation. Music has changed drastically in the last 20 years. The main barrier breaker is credited to the Internet, which has opened an entire new world for music. Music will continue to evolve over time as the industry finds new ways to use the Internet. Major labels have found that adapting to the new ways of the industry has provided continual change for them. Musicians and labels have to continue to be open to accept the changes as time goes on to benefit the consumers as well as themselves.
Though, what does happen to be a rarity in today’s music is creativity and originality. Imagine going to a concert and the backing tracks failed to work. The artist can neither play their instruments nor actually sing. What is the purpose of being there? To listen to a pre-recorded soundtrack and watch a narrowly talented, average person dance on stage.
In today’s evolving and changing society, many people do not appreciate how extraordinary music truly is. Since the birth of the vinyl record, there are less people who own and are interested in them. Even though vinyl records have recently been making a comeback, they are still not as popular as they once were. People take for granted how easily accessible music is today though in the past it was not as simple. Even though vinyl records may be costly and may not have a large quantity of songs, as time progresses and technology continues to develop, the way that people listen to music degrades their appreciation for music due to easier accessibility, weaker sound in terms of quality, and decaying genres.
middle of paper ... ... Today, appropriation is a necessary part of artmaking in our high-speed visual and information-based society. Some people feel that appropriation is not necessary in art. I feel that this idea is ridiculous.