Overview
The average audio backdrop in today’s society would undoubtedly contain a cacophony of text alerts, ringtones, vibrations, and other digital notifications. Instant messaging has developed into constant messaging. Whether it’s texts, emails, messages from social media platforms, or good old-fashioned phone calls, most people have a steady stream of incoming and outgoing data pulsing from their phone throughout the day. There is a bit of dark irony in the idea that cell phones were intended to liberate us from the corded phone on the wall, to allow us to freely communicate with whomever, whenever, wherever. However, now that the ease and access of communication have become universal, this practice has taken on a sense of obligation for many people. It is now a responsibility among smartphone users to maintain a positive mediated communication status with friends, family, classmates, coworkers, bosses, etc., and our ability to respond to these people has a significant impact on our social, academic, and professional standing. I’ve chosen to highlight this cultural custom in my final remix project by creating a song called Response Ability, using cell phone sounds and heavy sampling from hip-hop and other popular genres.
Experiment Justification
I. Concept/Analysis
For the past several years, I’ve noticed that when I hear phone noises within a song, I will instinctively check my own phone to see if I missed an incoming notification. I really wanted to draw attention to that phenomenon with the beat for Response Ability. I typed a rattling rhythm using my iPhone keyboard, and looped the sound of a vibrating phone to create makeshift drums and bass for the beat. I layered the sounds of text alerts and email notifications, and spliced a common iPhone ringtone to fill out the baseline instrumental. My goal was to make the beat rhythmic enough to be impressive and enjoyable, but distracting enough to prompt a twinge of anxiety in the listeners as they struggle not to check their own phone, emphasizing their (and all of our) addiction to these technologies.
II. Research & Archive
I was originally inspired by Grandmaster Flash, Chuck D, Cut Chemist, and other sample-heavy producers that we discussed and examined in class. Songs like The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel utilize multiple source tracks and blend them together into a coherent sequence, which is what I aimed to do with Response Ability. Defining this project was a bit difficult for me. According to Eduardo Navas (2009), there are several different types of remix, and they overlap and interplay with different types of mashups. He defines selective remix as “adding or subtracting material from the original composition” (Navas, 2009, p.4). Since I added the digital notification tones to the track, and subtracted Nas’ verses from Made You Look, as well as some of the instrumentation, I think the song could fall under the category of selective remix.
However, going further, a reflexive remix “allegorizes and extends the aesthetic of sampling, where the remixed version challenges the ‘spectacular aura’ of the original and claims autonomy” (Navas, 2009, p. 5). I utilized the most iconic aspects, or the ‘spectacular aura,’ of Nas’ original song—the beat and certain elements of the hook—but Response Ability does claim autonomy simply by implementing so many other sounds and samples from additional sources. Upon the first listen, many people wouldn’t describe the track as a “Made You Look Remix” but as more of a remix or mashup built around Made You Look. Therefore, I think the song could potentially be classified as a reflexive remix.
Lastly, when Navas (2009) discusses mashups, he identifies a regenerative mashup, which he explains to be “a recombination of content and form that opens the space for Remix to become a specific discourse intimately linked with new media culture” (p. 3). This seems to be the most fitting description of Response Ability. I would label my remix as a regenerative mashup because I used a myriad of audio samples (one form of new media culture) that were only connected through a common theme (phones and communication) in order to comment on a powerful cultural trend.
Below is a chart of my audio archive used for Response Ability, as well as a photo of the full project in GarageBand.
III. Results
The primary song that I remixed for this track was Made You Look by Nas. I was able to find an instrumental version and an A cappella version of the song online, which made the mixing much easier for me within GarageBand, where I produced and edited Response Ability. I blended the Made You Look instrumental with the phone beat I made to create the backbone of the song.
After the intro and first “Made You Look” hook, the song breaks into an interlude, utilizing the song YAH. by Kendrick Lamar. The section of the song I used contains these lyrics from Lamar: “My world been ecstatic, I checked the signal that read— buzzin…radars is buzzin…yah yah, yah yah [repeat].” While Lamar isn’t specifically talking about phones in this song, that was a way that I interpreted it, with “buzzin” referring to vibrating phones or the ‘buzz’ of communication, and “yah yah” referring to the nonchalant approach that many people use in their digital communications, especially when the sheer volume of messages gets overwhelming. After Lamar says “buzzin,” I added a particularly loud text alert and immediately slowed the beat and lyrics down into a “chopped & screwed” fashion that nods to a popular style of southern hip hop from the early-mid 2000s. This beat change is intended to evoke an overwhelmed, drowsy, and confused feel with the listener, and to set the stage for the cacophonous bombardment of samples that come next in the interlude. Between erratic phone notification sounds and quick samples of almost 10 different songs in 30 seconds, the interlude culminates into a barrage of distracting sounds meant to capture and recreate the feelings of stress, confusion, and anxiety that can accompany the far-reaching obligations of digital communication.
The interlude ends with the iconic “Aw, made you look!” line from Nas, and then jumps back into the remixed Made You Look instrumental. For this hook, I added my own remixed lyrics from the original Nas song. Rather than “Aw, made you look! You a slave to a page in my rhymebook,” I used “Aw, made you look! New slaves get trapped in a MacBook.” The hook is repeated 3 times, each time followed by a quick refrain (“Always on the phone but what is going on?”; “Gotta get back to ‘em even when you’re gone”; and “School, friends, love life, work and beyond”) ending with the oft-used “How do you respond?” sample, to bring attention to how important our ability to respond can be within different contexts.
After the hooks, the Made You Look instrumental disappears and the outro revisits some of the samples used earlier in the interlude. The song ends with Nas saying “Aw, made you look!” and then a triple text alert, followed by “How do you resp—” which gets cut off by a click and a dial-tone, signaling the end of a call and, metaphorically, the song.
Conclusion
Lawrence Lessig, a remix savant, claims that culture itself is a perpetuating remix (Lessig, 2008). He argues that when people discuss, engage with, or participate in any form of media, they are inherently adding their own personal, contextual implications to that media (Lessig, 2008). We are taught from a young age to take what we know from any number of different media sources and to apply it to what we want to learn, discuss, or create. So, in essence, remix creates culture. Digital communications have become embedded in our culture, and that is reflected in a lot of the sounds we hear each day, whether they are smartphone notifications or lyrics from popular music. Through this project, I hope to allow listeners to view our culture through the remix I’ve created, and to reflect on how digital communications (and remix) have affected their lives.
The beautiful thing about remixes is that they can always be improved, or changed, or reimagined. In their article titled Remix: The Art and Craft of Endless Hybridization, Knobel & Lankshear (2008) write, “In the sense that each new mix becomes a meaning making resource for subsequent remixes, there is no end to remixing. Each remix in principle expands the possibilities for future remixes.” In addition to making a cultural statement with my Response Ability remix, I hope that future media producers, remixers, and creatives may gather inspiration from my work, and continue adding to limitless media archive that the Digital Age has developed.
Resources
245 contributors. (2016). YAH. by Kendrick Lamar. Genius. Lyrics & Annotations. Retrieved from https://genius.com/Kendrick-lamar-yah-lyrics
Grandmaster Flash. (1982). The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel. The Message.
Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C. (2008). Remix: The Art and Craft of Endless Hybridization. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52(1), 22–33. https://doi.org/10.1598/JAAL.52.1.3
Lessig, L. (2008). Remix: making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy. New York: Penguin Press.
Navas, E. (2009, November). Regressive and Reflexive Mashups in Sampling Culture.