In modern pop music, you have a common array of instruments that work together to produce a song. You have keyboards and lead guitar to help provide both melodies and filler for empty spaces of sound. You have drums, percussion and rhythm guitar which help lay and maintain the beat.
And then there’s the bass.
It’s not a bass guitar, by the way: it’s a bass. Spelled like the fish, sounds like “base”.
What a weird instrument.
The bass is supposed to be a part of the rhythm section of a band, providing a sonic tie between guitars/keyboards and drums and percussion.
A little bit groove, a little bit thud.
So what does this have to do with social media?
Good question, but it does bring to mind the fact that I’ve rediscovered the GoGos after almost two decades and I’m silently grooving to them on my couch. How am I listening to them?
YouTube. It’s one of the biggest social media sites out there, probably the largest collection of video files that is freely available to the general public. There are original musics videos and live videos from thousands of musical acts. Then there’s the quite possibly illegal live performance videos that appear. The quality sucks for a lot of them, both audio and video, but they do offer different ways to experience this music.
Sometimes that bass riff in We’ve Got The Beat is exactly as per the original recording, sometimes it shifts and plays around depending on the gig and the tempo. That’s all about the musician.
You can get some incredibly creative user-made videos set to these songs. Sometimes they are cover versions played by other bands. Other times, someone creates a deck of completely different images and synchs them up to the beat. There’s a pretty cool mash up on YouTube where someone took a scene from The Breakfast Club and used the GoGos song instead of what was in the movie (or maybe that’s the original song from the movie – I honestly don’t remember). There’s another which uses footage from the movie Grease.
And there’s this goofy but fun version, too.
All legalities aside, it’s pretty freaking awesome that we can take sound and video files and mix them together, share ‘em with the world, get feedback, and spawn a lot of new cool stuff.
I spend a lot of time writing about Twitter, FriendFeed, blogging, and such.
I’ve done virtually nothing with audio or video on the Web. And it’s become such a huge part of social media, something that is vibrant, pulsating, and throbbing like that grooving bassline in We’ve Got The Beat. This rocking undercurrent of sound is fun, it pulls you in and makes you want to pump your fist. Or dance. Or both.
Just like a good conversation and trading of ideas in social media can pull you into its groove and tickle your intellect and make your brainwaves want to dance.
Man, it looks like fun.
See, this is where you and I differ, @MarkDykeman, the better part of my time on the Internet has been spent watching, listening to and blogging about music. I’ve also spent a lot of time creating, sharing and downloading music and playlists…at one point I had 120 hours of LEGAL music on my computer (before my hard drive crashed and I lost it all…no…I didn’t back it up! :headdesk:) Finding new and different music or finding obscure tracks from long ago are part of the main reason I come to the Internet…It’s my jam, turn it up!
Check out Five more minutes of work…don’t forget to buy milk…another meeting tomorrow so, dress up…sign mortgage papers…clean bathrooms… from Sammysunshine
@sammysunshine – Sad thing is that I used to be much more into music, both listening and playing, to a certain extent, but that petered out a number of years ago. It’s starting to come back now…
I notice your use of Lifestream.fm – must check out that service.
i personally love the bass haha . you are right about youtube !