[CHANNEL MUSIC]
Hey, guys.
Today we're going to talk about your responses
to the Bang on a Can assignment, and that was to find your band.
Mark Stewart and Julia Wolff explained it this way.
Your assignment is to go through your day
and you notice all the sounds around you,
as you go through your day.
Choose one of those sounds, or a group of those sounds,
a room of those sounds, and that's going to be your band.
And once you've found your band, choose your instrument
and join in.
As you probably remember, Mark and Julia
were insanely great at doing this assignment.
And unlike most people, they have
a ton of experience getting up in front of a lot of people
and doing wacky things with no firm idea of what exactly
is going to happen.
That's a really hard thing to do.
This assignment asks you to put yourself away far out there,
and we are immensely grateful to those of you who did.
[THEME MUSIC]
The first response we're going to talk about
is one from Sophie.
She's a drummer, but she's currently not enrolled
in anything that gives her an outlet for that,
so her band was items in her desk.
[DRUMMING]
One thing I noticed right off the bat
when watching the responses to this assignment
is that making noise is a pretty common part of our days.
Sure, we're not all talented drummers,
and we don't all have an audience
or are strategic about it, but in going about our routines
and tending to the practicalities
of everyday life, we're making music.
Like Jenn N.'s band is her breakfast routine,
and she is the conductor.
She helpfully narrates what she's doing for us.
JENN N.: First, the toaster start off by counting the beat.
Then a coffee pot kicks in a big gurgle and a steady stream,
providing the melody.
Then the bacon starts to sizzle, adding a crescendo
to the entire piece.
Jenn doesn't add in with her voice or anything,
but that's not a stipulation of the assignment.
Jenn has found music in what's around her,
and joining in, in this case, means
layering or composing and not necessarily adding, per se.
You're With Fear made an audio recording,
and they titled it "Waiting for My Band: 39 Plays."
The band members in this case are a metronome,
a wooden window sill, a metal coffee pot, and the street
noise outside their apartment.
Each was recorded separately, and then the tracks
were combined.
[MUSIC - YOU'RE WITH FEAR, "WAITING FOR MY BAND:
39 PLAYS"]THE
I really appreciate the way this one is described
for us by its maker, and I'll just recite
a few bits of what they say.
"The street noise and coffee pot are
barely noticeable beneath the window sill's
rapid and recognizably musical gestures.
The window sill and metronome build
to an Afro-Cuban-inspired climax, and then abruptly stop.
Suddenly the street noise is more apparent in the texture.
The insistent window sill motive returns, and this time quieter
and manipulated into jerky fits."
OK, so I'm not a musician and I don't really
have the language to talk about music and all
of its complexity, but I love, love, love reading about music.
I wouldn't have been able to describe the piece this way,
but it described what I heard beautifully and perfectly.
And I appreciated the music more for it.
This next one was done by The Collective,
an arts program created for Tulsa, Oklahoma, teens.
And they met up at the Philbrook Museum of Art and did the Find
Your Band assignment together.
[MUSIC - THE COLLECTIVE]
I liked this group approach to the challenge,
and it made me notice how even traditionally rarefied places
like museums are still full of banal materials like Plexiglass
holders for signage, cardboard boxes, and paper cutters.
And I love how comfortable these guys are in the gallery
and with each other.
Truly successful band finding.
So there were other people who used perhaps
the most common sounds of all as points of departure,
and those are the sounds of our own bodies.
Geek Stance made this great video
where they improvised to the sounds of the dance studio,
with their own bodies, and each other.
[MUSIC - GEEK STANCE]
There's a lot of awareness of breathing
and the rhythms of our own bodies,
and there's this great point when one person's
snaps and the others respond.
And this piece is full of wonderful moments
that, for me, emphasize the beauty of collaboration.
Another response that focused on the body and its sounds
is by Y2K Snowglobe.
[MUSIC - Y2K SNOWGLOBE]
They said about this the following,
"as someone was several congenital heart defects,
I often feel at odds with my own body.
Like, I may want to sprint around the house in the rain,
but that's not really within my capacity.
So for my band, I endeavored to try and bring together
my body and my mind.
So my band consists of my heart beat tapped out
on an inflatable ball, my breathing, my pill
bottles, my medical bracelet, and my voice."
This is a case where I felt like someone had created
an entire band and not just a simple two- or three-piece
accompaniment.
It's personal and sincere, and I really enjoyed it.
This next one is titled "Walking Alone in the Dark,"
and is by Empty Disco who has made quite a bit of music
before.
But this was their first experiment with found sound.
[MUSIC - EMPTY DISCO, "WALKING ALONE IN THE DARK"]
Riley shares that the sound was recorded
outside of their home in North Carolina,
and I like that we're given a chance
to experience the sound on its own first,
then Riley joins in with lyrics while we can still
hear the noises of the crickets and the street around them.
I feel as if I'm really there, and it
made me wish more music was recorded outside the studio.
It's these kinds of more personal reactions
that I think I enjoyed most of the responses
to this assignment.
Like this one by Dakota Hommes titled "Empty Pages."
[MUSIC - DAKOTA HOMMES, "EMPTY PAGES"]
All we know is that this was inspired by this Art Assignment
and the movie "Frank."
We hear a coin start to spin, and then a voice
joins in reaching to hit some higher notes in the most
genuine and heartwarming way.
And then the piece ends promptly and suddenly
when the coin drops.
That one was really raw and pure in a way that
aligned with the expectations I had after seeing Mark and Julia
do this assignment.
When I first started seeing the responses to Find
Your Band come in, I did wonder whether the ones who
used software and editing were cheating in some way
by not creating an impromptu band right then and there,
in a highly unedited way.
But then I quickly dismissed that
thought, because editing and mixing is completely valid
and an interesting and important way to make music.
You guys took this assignment in such unexpected and enriching
directions, and I'm always glad to see people
taking these prompts and making things
that are completely their own.
Thank you for participating and for watching,
and remember that you can keep finding your band
and we'll keep posting your responses.
And we're going to take you out with one more
piece by Dan Jones, who worked with the sounds
he founded in his own studio and a little tune that
might sound familiar if you've watched this show before.
[MUSIC - DAN JONES, "STUDIO SOUNDS"]