Extra Credit

I have always enjoyed listening to many genres of music and growing a passion for each type in some sort of way.  While listening to music, many times I would guess wrong about which song was coming onto the radio and I didn’t understand why I would screw up so many times.  During this class I started to realize why I would screw up the songs so much.  The article by Scott H. Church A Rhetoric of Remix helped me gain a better understanding of the mistakes I was making.  I had thought that many of the songs seemed to sound alike, but didn’t know why that was.  In Church’s article, he talks about how people remix original pieces of work to create their own.  The thought of artists who would use similar beats or chords from previous songs seemed a little far stretched.

            I then came across a video on YouTube done by a group called Axis of Awesome.  In this video, the three guys sing multiple different songs while only using four chords.  I found that this video makes more sense when comparing it to the article.  In Church’s article, he talks about classical imitation, also known as imitation, in which people use different interpretations of songs or pieces of work to improve their own.  This idea of imitating other pieces of work to enhance your own is not ideal in my eyes.  I feel that if you want your work to be unique then it needs to be completely different from someone else’s.  I understand that you can make your song or speech be effective by using portions of other effective speeches or productive songs.  However, this would not make your work completely unique and special to you.

            This video of multiple songs being sung while only playing four chords shows that many artist use other’s work to improve their own and give themselves a chance to have success.  Remixing songs is very common, as there are many people who combine songs to make a living.  Remixing a speech can be different as many times the person giving the speech will reference the person who they got the information from, while people who mix songs or use the same chords/beats will not reference a certain artist.  This video helped me gain a better understanding of what Church was saying in his article and use the video as a real-life example.