STUCK (now with SOUND!)

I am currently working on Paulus' rhythm brief. I chose this brief because I have been desperate to do more work revolving around music. I decided to utilize this project as an opportunity to sneak some more of my poetry into my work. My first task was writing 3 different poems to 3 different genres/eras of music. I selected some 80s power tunes (Journey), mid 90s indie-rock (Jets to Brazil), and lastly some current pop (She & Him). Then I examined the differences.

























I used an educational module for analyzing poetry that I found somewhere on the interweb.
They were divided into 5 categories:



























I recorded my findings and highlighted the similarities in green and variants in red
















































Next I began to examine further patterns in the poems and investigated the parts of speech that appear. Just to remind myself what they are exactly...


























I then calculated how many of each speech component appeared per poem and then averaged them. Once I had become familliarized with the drum kit, I scanned for drum tabs from the bands I had listened to or alternately watched live videos to discern which pieces of the kit they used most - least often. I allocated the most frequent unit of speech to the most used drum piece and the last to the last, and so on. Then I transcribed the poem to drum music.


























This is the result of the first poem















and the second:











lastly













I didn't really understand what these would sound like (not having access to a drum kit and all..) but my brother has a studio in his basement, so I sent him the first tab (Jets to Brazil) to see what he could make of it. He mentioned that it was missing the time notation. Due to lack of time (and having 2 little ones) he recorded the first 6 notes and repeated them just to give me an idea.



I later explained to him what my project aim was, so he graciously agreed to play one of the odd composures. I love you Sammy!
Here's what the Journey tab sounds like.




I used to play the drums and have always been interested in matching sound to lyrics but unable to. I think I have been trying to fit that into this brief.

So I thought maybe I could simulate the coordination of playing the drums by making my own extremely simple drum kit.... out of paper.





















I colour coordinated the poem with the corresponding drum/cymbal to hit. It was quite a fun activity and I started to get the hang of it. The markers made pretty efficient drum sticks. I wish I could submit this.




















I started wondering what the poem would look like if it were only notations.


























Then I used tracing paper and removed the bars..


























I changed the format from vertical poetry lines to horizontal tablature




















Then tried it using the words in the tablature format







































Where is this all going? This is a question I can't answer. Despite the crit being tomorrow, my head is going around in circles with no hope for a revelation.

UPDATE: Paulus gave me positive feedback for this project. He said it was an interesting project and to keep going using the transcribing system I created, applying it to well known pieces of writing - like something from Shakespeare. I'm in the process of doing that now, as well as looking at other mundane written matter (VISA statements, etc).