New Music Monday 1/31 "Craig"/Justin and Raj

primeval- original; belonging to the first or earliest ages
pallor- lack of color; unnatural paleness
licentious- characterized by lust; lewd
-phobia/phobic + fear/ one who fears  
-philia/phile + love of/ one who loves


My pick of the week:
The Black Keys _ I've got mine

Assignment #3- Song Review 1

You have read plenty reviews and we dissected the structure of quality reviews in class. Let's write a positive review for a new song of your choice. Here are the ingredients:

• Minimum Word Count: 140
• No less than two different forms of sentence variety (See Sentence Spice Handout)
• Simile-Metaphor/Imagery
• Active verbs
• Some biographical context of artist
• Choice adjectives to describe music/instruments

Look to our class notes for best word choice.  Read more reviews to get additional
Here is the analysis of Martin Douglas's review of Weekend from Pitchfork

Due Dates:
Team Bieber-Last Names B-O       1/31/2011  MONDAY! 
Team Cyrus- Last Names P-W       2/2/2011   WEDNESDAY!

If you want to really impress...This is what you can already do now that you have a Google account.
Google Sites Tutorial

Assignment #2- Choose Your Own Adventure

You are assembling the necessary materials for our study of effective writing.  This is the task over the next few days in the computer lab.

Save your reviews on the server.  Make note of the source.  Print all material.  Edit the copies so that you will be comfortable annotating.

1. Locate four album reviews of an album released within the past year.  Look no farther than the links to your immediate right on the blog.  Professional writers only.
2. Read the reviews.  Pick the writer/critic/reviewer that  has the most talent.  Find four different album reviews by the same author.  Attempt to find a range of positive and negative reviews.
3. Find lyrics to your top five songs.  Minimum of two different genres.  Hip Hop + Country + Screamo for example.
4. Find lyrics to the worst lyrics.  Cliche, missed metaphor, or whatever...

Feckless- A)Lacking purpose or vitality; feeble or ineffective. B) Careless and irresponsible.
Gauche- Lacking grace or social polish; awkward or tactless

New Music Monday- Megan and Neil

Alchemy- a method of miraculous change of one thing into another.  Traditionally changing lead into gold is a common example.  Yet think how a musician can be an alchemist in terms of what emotions they can pull from their audience. 

What a difference a word makes?

and compare this to the studio version.

Contrite- crushed in spirit by a feeling of guilt.
Lyrics- It was not your fault but mine.
           It was your heart on the line.
           I really messed it up this time

This is my favorite Joe Satriani- Not necessarily Neil's favorite!

Google Doc Tutorial- Assignment #1

New Music Mondays

New Music Mondays- As part of your class participation grade, you will share with us some new music. Here are the guiding ideas:
A) The music must be new to you, as within the past month. I hop the song came to you as act of serendipity The best discoveries will require you to push some boundaries. Pick up a parent's or older sibling's album. Get lost on Pitchfork or stumble across it in non traditional spaces (Pandora or WONC). If you found it on Kiss FM or MTV, it was already pre-chewed for you and we will sniff that out.. Keep searching.
B) Explain to the class how you stumbled across this song/band.
C)  Describe your attraction to this song.  Why is it fresh to you?  What instruments should we listen to specifically?  Any lyrics that were especially jarring?
D)  Either bring the song in or send me a link (youtube, etc) on the Friday prior to your Monday presentation.

LCD Soundsystem- One Touch


The XX- Intro



The XX- Islands

Yoko Ono- We're All Water and MoMA Scream Performance 2010