Process Piece

Going into this project, we felt a little overwhelmed by the sheer potential for material out there, processes being such an integral and ubiquitous part of life, and recording them a pretty simple thing to do. It was easy to get caught up in this plethora of material. It actually made picking a subject more, not less, difficult. After taking a few recordings of mundane morning and night routines, we narrowed down our options by wanting to try something different: these recordings were rather boring activities that anyone could hear on a given morning.  We didn’t want to pick something too ordinary, or we felt we’d have to remake the wheel in order to be interesting. We also wanted to do something that would engage the ear in this purely auditory piece. Music, and musical instruments, proceeded from here very naturally. The appeal of this process comes from its simplicity, while still retaining a kind of quirky and rare quality. It reveals how music itself, which is very process-like, is itself a product of prior preparation, whether it’s practicing or even a quick tuning up before you can grant the ear a song.  

Watching the clip of Jack White putting together a makeshift, one-stringed slide guitar really brought me towards this musical idea. I felt that all this preparation for a musical instrument led the ear to be more engaged in the process, because it expected an sound-focused product, despite the rather visual process. That visual component set that video apart from our project, but it reminded me of what we needed to do to make the process an interesting one for the ear to actually experience, not for the eye to imagine. The first stroke of the ukulele really surprises the ear with its discord and sets up an expectation for that chord to be resolved, as it almost always is in music. Playing with these expectations means it’s really satisfying when the strings are all tuned up and some really much nicer sounding chords are played.  The strum at the beginning and the strums at the end act as the exposition and resolution respectively in order to make the process feel whole and complete for the listener.

In Music 100 here at BYU, the post-modern era included the very eccentric musician John Cage.  He produced many unique recordings people had not thought of before.  In class, we listened to a few clips of John Cage simply tuning a piano.  It had no musical structure as it was just the tightening and loosening all the stings in the piano to sound the correct notes.  At first, I did not really understand the purpose of this song--if song it could be called.  However, having spent so much time discussing and studying processes, it has more meaning for me.  I respect the idea of processes much more than I did before.  The tuning of the piano is one of the things that really inspired Caitlin and me to record the tuning of a ukulele.  This recording that we took has more meaning to me as well since I know how to play the uke and I’ve tuned it many times before.  I am hoping that with this recording, people can really understand that the beauty of an instrument doesn’t come from just playing it, but from simply working with it and urging it to make a certain sound that the musician is looking for.