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did so what exactly is vapor wave well
the short answer isap VAP wave is a
countercultural musical and art movement
that alternatively critiques and
Embraces consumer capitalism if you want
a more indepth cultural critique of
vapor wave don't worry the internet is
full of think pieces for you to read as
well as many many videos particularly by
the internet's favorite memester Frank
Javy today I'm going to try and codify
some of it in terms of music theory yes
trying to analyze it in terms of Music
Theory seems to be kind of against the
whole Spirit of the thing it is after
all the musical equivalent of a troll
face but I'm going to do it anyway
because you earnestly learning about
things can sometimes be really cool a
musical style Vapor wave owes a lot of
its roots to something called plunder
phonics in his 1985 essay plunder
phonics or audio piracy as compositional
prerogative John oswal argued that
musical recordings themselves should be
treated as a form of musical instrument
writing a sampler is simultaneously a
documenting device and a creative one in
effect reducing a distinction manifested
by copyright oswal himself worked
entirely by using samples of other
people's songs check out his version of
Dolly Parton's Pretender for example I'm
not you see but I know where I
am I am the
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great in the pre- internet age it was a
lot harder to get away with copyright
violation so in 1989 following a
complaint by Michael Jackson all copies
of his album plunder phonic 6996 were
ordered destroyed by the Canadian
recording industry Association oh how
far we've come since then this plunder
phonic approach taking other recordings
and repurposing them for other contexts
is at the core of a lot of vapor wave
recordings so no matter how many
Canadian authorities are out there it's
going to be very difficult to kill Vapor
wave the original Spate of vapor wave
artist got their start by slowing down
80s smooth jazz soul and Funk records so
let's try it let's make some Vapor wav
shall we I have here an album by Diana
Ross Swept Away written in 1984 I'm
going to take the fourth track it's your
move I have it here in Ableton
all right all we have to do to make
Vapor wave just slow it
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down hey look at that we just recreated
The Vapor wave national
[Applause]
anthem so that's it just stealing other
people's music and slowing it down why
is this a thing why are we talking about
this well check this out eager trinsky
famously said lesser artists borrow
great artists steal less famously but
probably more applicable in this case
John Milton said plagiarism only occurs
if the work is not bettered by the
borrower it's certainly debatable about
whether or not Macintosh Plus bettered
the Diana Ross song but it certainly was
changed into something new yeah but
anybody could do that yeah but Macintosh
Plus was the one who did do it and that
is the distinction one of the most
important things that you need to learn
when you're studying music is that no
matter how much you learn about scales
Lo and Harmony the phenomenology of
music is the most important thing how we
experience the music versus what it is
the experience of listening to a slow
down it's your move is quite different
than listening to the original a great
word that I've heard used to describe
these recordings is hypnogogia which is
the transitional State between
wakefulness and sleep an entire genre of
music is out there actually which is
called hypnogogic pop which aims to
capitalize on the sensation in all of
this it's hard to divorce the music from
the visual
pathetics paper wve artists kind of
approach music the same way that a film
composer might but kind of in reverse
the mood of a scene in a movie can
change quite drastically depending on
what music is paired with
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it just the same as how the mood of a
particular piece of music can change
depending on what visuals are paired
with it
so why is this video called the music
theory of vapor wave why aren't we
talking about scales and Harmony and all
that stuff well this brings us to a core
compositional technique in Vapor wave
the powerful all intoxicating effect of
nostalgia induced sampling since 2011
Vapor wave has exploded out into many
different kinds of subg genres and
substyles and by now most artists don't
explicitly use a plunder phonic
technique despite vastly different
tempos arrangements and textures Vapor
wave is usually unified by an auditory
aesthetic which samples many different
things but Chief among them are sounds
from '90s operating systems including
startup noises text to speech dialup
sounds warped and cheesy midi samples
evoking corporate musac and other sounds
from that era consider this track by
blank
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Banshee Scott bamp of Esquire asked the
question could it really be that the AOL
You' got Ma voice is to me with the
melin was depr a weird sort of nostalgia
exists in the iconography and the sounds
of '90s consumer culture and internet
culture now repackaged in the language
of contemporary electronic music so with
all that in mind let's take a look at
the song that was from the beginning of
the
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video what would happen if I just played
the Melody and the chords on piano
without the Kmart
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sample that's definitely not the same
effect and that's kind of the point that
I'm making here music is so much more
than the sum tootal of all the chords
notes and rhythms that you play tamber
or the actual sound of the music itself
is at the core of emotional response in
music Studies have proven that there are
intense links between emotion memory and
instrumental tamber which might help
explain the Persistence of vapor wave as
an entire musical genre beyond that of
an Internet joke this is what I was
talking about when I said that the
phenomenology of music is more important
than how it's classified trained
musicians might listen to this
sound and might classify it as oh a
series of ascending perfect forths but
that completely misses the point of what
the actual music sounds like
so yes I could try and analyze a
Macintosh Plus song using traditional
harmonic and melodic analysis but then
all I'd be doing is just analyzing a
Diana Ross song the goal of Music Theory
however is a little bit deeper than that
it's trying to figure out why Music
Works the way that it does traditional
functional harmonic analysis really
doesn't work here the same way that it
doesn't really work when you're trying
to analyze something say like Jilla or
zakus for that matter instead we care
about how it was made and to what effect
and although many people have vehemently
said that Vapor wave is dead to the
point where the phrase Vapor wave is
dead is a meme into itself recent years
have elevated the Ambitions in the genre
far beyond its weird Niche Beginnings
since as an artist it's unwise to ignore
the era in which you find yourself I
thought I would try my hand at Vapor
Wave by taking samples from those Kmart
cassettes chilled out hypnogogic music
this is definitely not but it's still
fun to repurpose the old and make it new
again my buddy Luke Markham helped me
out and played drums on this track I
hope you enjoy it but in order to make
the following video a little bit more
Vapor wavy and ironic and
self-referential you're going to watch
it as I watch it drinking an Arizona
Iced Tea welcome Kmart Shoppers Kmart
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visit our pharmacist today and compare
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paying elsewhere you'll be glad you did
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you'll be glad you down
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welcome Kmart shop
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welcome Kart
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welcome Kmart Sho Kmart has low low
discount prescription prices visit our
pharmacist today and compare our prices
to what your present paying elsewhere
you'll be glad you
did anyway guys thank you so much for
watching please comment like and sub
subscribe if you've enjoyed this video I
learned a lot myself as I was doing the
research for the video I went and saw a
lot of weird things on the internet as I
was researching this video um but it's a
really strange and interesting style I'm
not sure if I like really connect with
it emotionally but at the same time
there's something to be said about
listening to you know '90s
dialup sounds and getting you know a
certain feeling from that and I found
that really uh exciting and cool to
listen to all of that anyway um if you
enjoy what I do definitely check me out
on Pat on these are my subscribers right
here and thank you so much for that and
yeah until next
time peace