Digital StoryGreen Day: A 5 Minute Drum Chronology - Kye Smith
LinkOne of the most interesting and thought-provoking sections of Colin Lankshear’s and Michele Knoble’s book, New Literacies, was the one about John Phillip Sousa and his
encouragement of amateur musicians. According to Sousa, amateurism was what was going to preserve, and progress music. Amateur musicians would learn to play the classics, and then use their skills to create their own music. With this in mind, this week I wanted to critique an amateur musician's music.
I can across this mashup medley of Green Day songs. The drummer plays only seconds of the more recognizable drum riffs of each Green Day song off of each other their studio albums (so far). It takes a lot of practice to play drums, and replicate one song by a popular band, but this drummer, Kye Smith, managed to replicate nearly every song in Green Day’s catalog, and mash them together under five minutes!
Remix Practice:Music video
Looking at Lankshear's and Knoble’s definition in New Literacies of the practice of making a music video, Kye Smith’s medley fulfills some kinds of involvement and literacy dimensions required.
- Expressing fan identity & expressing enjoyment of a particular song or music track – Kye Smith expresses his fan identity through playing unique drum sections from each Green Day song. So this particular music video goes beyond the enjoyment of a particular song, but a band’s entire discography. Kye Smith also shows his enjoyment (and literacy) of playing the drums, highlighting more complicated drum fills, as well as switching time signatures. There is an obvious logical connection between each section, as he starts from the start of Green Day’s career and follows each album’s track order until their latest works. If you are familiar with Green Day’s catalog, you can also recognize that he purposefully selected the more distinguishable drum beats.
- Expressing a music video editor identity – Aside from being very proficient at playing the drums, Kye Smith shows that he has some video editing skills too, switching camera angles, presenting the albums and songs at the bottom of the screen, and even showing a smaller video of his bass drum, and foot work in the bottom right of the screen. He also layered the sections from the original tracks onto his drum playing to provide listeners some context to what sections he was performing. Kye Smith clearly shows he can fine-tune video and audio to best display his medley.
There are a couple other kinds of involvement absent from this video that Lankshear and Knoble describe. Green Day is a very popular band, and whether or not people can agree whether it is punk, or pop music, I don't think Kye Smith’s video overtly expresses support for indie music, or for music that is controversial in certain circles. His video does not express support for an issue or injustice either.
Because of the level of know-how in producing this musical mashup and video, I am assessing Green Day: A 5 Minute Drum Chronology on
Jason Ohler’s criteria of Story, Originality, Creativity and Voice, and Sense of Audience.
StoryThe video lacks any real story. Instead, it acts more as an anthology of Green Day drummer Tre Cool’s performance. Because of Kye Smith’s selections in drum riffs, and his self-imposed limit of five minutes, the audience does not see any progression in Tre Cool’s drum playing either. The video is uncomplicated in its intended goal, and executes exactly what it suggests. Otherwise, story is absent in the video.
Originality, Creativity, and VoiceBased on our new definition of “remixes” provided by Lankshear and Knoble, there really isn’t such a thing as originality. Everything, as I understand, is a remix of prior cultural artifacts. We interpret and filter these artifacts with our minds, and when it comes time to create something, we mix, or remix, all these artifacts together into our own artifact. So, with this in mind, I will exclude Originality from this assessment.
Although his video is a collection of a popular band’s work, Kye Smith was very creative in how he mashed them together. His selections had a clear purpose in being the more identifiable drum riffs in each song. But, because Kye Smith was emulating Green Day, there is a lack of voice in this video. Perhaps the only unique voice present in the video is Kye Smith's video editing choises, the decor in the room, and the fact that he played the medley in five minutes. Nonetheless, Kye Smith’s intended goal was met. This video wasn’t meant to present much voice, but rather to replicate.
Sense of AudienceKye Smith has a strong sense of who he is performing for. You can tell because he could have easily recorded this video of him playing and uploaded it without any video editing. Instead he helps his audience by layering the tracks onto his drum playing, allowing the audience to hear the other instruments and singing which helps the audience understand what parts he is playing. Furthermore, he provides an image of the album and the track name at the bottom of the screen. Without these indicators, Kye Smith’s drum performance would look and sound like an unrecognizable, seemingly off-beat, crazy drum solo.
