"Don't Worry, Be Happy"

 The Ted Talk I decided to watch was with Bobby Mcferrin, the man who wrote the song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”, and it gave me some interesting insight about music. During the talk, Bobby stood up from his seat, as he was among a group of scientist, and involved the audience in a performance. As he hopped to either left or right he had the audience a sing a single note. He did this and improvised a song with the audience and then revealed after that every he has been, every audience has been able to comprehend the pentatonic scale.  At the end one of the scientist offered him a job in neuroscience jokingly. I use the pentatonic scale in my music frequently and a lot of people agree it’s vital to learning music. When Bobby explained how wherever he goes every audience knows how to do that, it confirmed my affinity for music and why I’m at Full Sail. I’ve been working hard at school, on my projects, and finding a place to work and I just have to keep doing it. This video made me remember why I’m doing all this and it’s good to see that while I’m putting in the time and work it takes. My biggest resource for success is Full Sail. Through the MBBS program I learned about how my industry works, and through the EBMS program I’m continuing to learn more. Not only that, but I’ve met some friendly people that want to put in the same amount of time and work on this project as I do; it’s good to have a team. Together we’re going to accomplish this. We’ve only just started to take the necessary steps but hopefully when this is over we’ll have produced something we can be happy with.

TED talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/bobby_mcferrin_hacks_your_brain_with_music

Concept Albums

            Lately I’ve had an obsession with concept albums. I’ve been listening to The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues, and EP by the band Between the Buried and Me. The EP is part one of two, the other being a full length album title The Parallax II: Future Sequence. Although perceived as a metal band producing metal albums, there is more to these works. With influences ranging from Queen, Soundgarden, Pink Floyd, and Metallica, their music compiles many genres. Lyrically though, both albums tell stories. The Parallax tells extrapolates on the central theme of humanity. Guitarist Paul Waggoner says in an interview “…we’re introduced to two characters that live in two totally different planes of existence. Separated by billions of light-years and planets, they’re both faced with personal dilemmas to confront and reckon with. On this first one, they become aware of the other’s presence in the universe in a weird way. That’s really what the EP is about; these two guys confronting their problems, and at the same time, through some sort of weird cosmic energy, they’re able to subconsciously become aware of the other person. So one could assume that in part two, they are actually going to meet each other, and that’s where the action picks up.”

            The Parallax II does indeed pick up there after the EP, but other than Between the Buried and Me I’ve been listening to Protest the Hero, The Mars Volta, Devin Townsend, and Brendon Small and many others fascinated by the idea. I had always been a fan of heavy music but seeing how it can be creative and still aggressive. Concept albums have been around for a while, The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band is an early example one. I have been working on my own concept album for about a year now and I look forward to the day when it’s ready.

My Dream

Brendon Small is a TV writer, comedian, voice actor, animator, and musician. He graduated from Berklee College of Music in 1997 while taking comedy courses at Emerson. Brendon at some point decided to focus on comedy when music wasn’t working out in the beginning. While at a comedy club performing he met a man named Loren Bouchard who was working on a show which later became Home Movies. Home Movies lasted four seasons then in 2006 Brendon began creating a new show for the late night block on Cartoon Network, Adult Swim. The show, Metalocalypse, featured death metal band “Dethklok” and there misadventures as an international phenomenon. The show went on to release music, all written by Brendon, and then later four whole albums. Brendon even tours with a live act version of the band as front man and lead guitarist. Brendon had a brief web series on youtube where he gave lessons on technical guitar techniques because of the popularity of the guitar parts in the music for Metalocalpyse. I have been a follower of Brendon since the premiere of Metalocalypse. His skill at playing guitar has influenced my way of playing, and his script writing for the show itself has influenced my style of comedy in many ways. In music I’d like to accomplish something similar to Brendon, although my interests do not equate in terms of animation and television, I do wish to pursue comedy, stand up comedy. His dry humor is something I find funny and would like to utilize in my act. In the music aspect, the differences start to break down because I play the same style of music. Brendon has also released a concept album, Galaktikon, which is something I wish to accomplish someday as a side project and eventually perform it live.