A Night at the Theater

Robert Rodriguez was correct with his initial statement that the songs that he composed for the concert "felt like Broadway." While I have never (and probably will never) consider myself a theater-goer, the cords and dissonance used in all of his pieces stuck me as something out an American made play. His piece "The All-purpose Rag" embodied this feeling for me, with its heavy dissonance use, and its emphasis of "chaos" over "order" (for lack of better words). Its use of violin and clarinet melody kept a constant war going on stage, with the piano constantly trying to hang on. The drums served as ornamentation through most of the piece, relegated to the back of the musical chaos. Due to the small size of the theater the reverberation within the theater was quite noticable, causing every noise to become far more noticable (used to great effect by the triangle). Unlike the other pieces, this seemed to hold a greater influence over the audience. Throughout the pieces before, I could hear students chatting throughout many of the pieces (most likely due to the performers being teachers), but this piece caused all chatter to die out. One thing that I noticed though was the lack of smaller children, most likely an influence of the late time that the concert was.

Ethnographical Analysis

For my ethnography assignment I would like to follow Radio UTD (Radio UTD can be found at radio.utdallas.edu). While not a specific genre, it would be interesting to see the various differences it has over radio stations that are played in other locations. Having come from Austin, it will be interesting to see what changes might arise from being in a different location. Coming from their website, it looks like pop is played at a far greater consistency than in Austin (though, the same songs tend to be played overall). They also have a "Top 25" list of their played songs from 2009, with Atlas Sound from the Logos CD being their number one song for the year:



The other albums listed are: Merriweather Post Pavilion, Embryonic, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, Manners, Veckatimest, The XX, Fever Ray, Try Brother, Bromst, Two Dancers, Yo La Tango - Popular Songs, Bitte Orca, Psychic Chasms, The Crying Light, Tarot Sport, Zebra, Hospice, Girls - Album, Real Estate, La Roux, Carpet Madness, New Universe, and Slow Dance. Having not ever listened to any of the albums in question (or even artists) it will be interesting to see the changes over a larger period of time.

Musical Cultures

While no music culture can truly say that they've been the biggest influence over me, I've had several big influences throughout my life. Throughout my childhood I was steeped in Classical Rock by artists such as Queen, Kansas, Boston, and a million people named "Eric" (Clapton, Johnson, etc.). They formed the basis for my musical tastes that lasted throughout my entire life. Things like Queen's "Seven Seas of Rhye", Kansas' "Carry out my Wayward Son", and Boston's "Peace of Mind" were big all throughout my childhood (and later, throughout my adolescence).





Classical Rock has a different feel to most of the other forms of Rock. Unlike the others, it tends to be slower (though, that isn't shown much with the artists listed) and have much more emphasis on the cords being played, rather than getting out as many notes as possible. The end result is that the songs tend to have a smooth feel despite the "heavy" instruments being played. This comes out very clearly in Kansas' "Carry on my Wayward Son":





Because Classical Rock covers all of the older forms of rock artists (and not just a specific group), I've become far more adept to listening to other forms of music. While I can't say that I'll listen to anything (The Beatles' "Number 9" will forever be bad to me), I have grown up with a far more diverse listening spectrum than might normally be had.