The purpose of this project was to use two songs, utopic and dystopic, and  mash them to create songs that speak to your character. I learned a lot in order to be able to make this mashup, but most importantly, beat matching. Beat matching is the art of matching two beats down to a science. We were visited by Carlos Torres, a professional DJ. While visiting, CT made a mashup with us and showed us how to beat match. This song helped me grasp how to understand how music is made, and how to make music. I picked the songs Problems  and Change is Gonna Come. I chose these songs because I wanted to pick a pop related song, and a classic song. Problems is by ASAP Rocky and was only released last year. I feel the contrast in music styles is what makes mashups so great. Essentially, it has never been heard before. The contrast between two clashing styles, when pulled off, can sound like one song.

In my opinion, my final product is utopic. I am a fan of hip hop, and I believe my mashup reflects that. I enjoy beats and mixes that are relaxed and make you dance a little. I feel I did a good job of completing this personal goal. The beat has everything to do with it’s utopic feel. The beat is the floor to every song. In my song, I feel that all of the samples follow the lead of the beat. The beat is very high pitched and moves at average pace, making it sound utopic. I enjoy the process of making a mashup, although it may be difficult. It begins with finding the songs, which for me was relatively easy. I am a fan of both ASAP Rocky and Sam Cooke, and I found they mash up quite well. The next part, and mostly the final part, is cutting and clipping songs to make them sound as if they are one song. This was the longest and hardest part of the project. After you’re finished with these two steps, your mashup is complete.

QUESTIONS
What makes me want to do it? I really like the saying, “If you see you see something wrong, you own it” I saw the neglected park way that needed ownership and felt that we (GCE) being responsible stewards have an obligation to care for it.
What do I want to come out of it? To assist the teachers with successfully incorporating the garden into the school’s curriculum: such as composting and how to build fertile soil, chemistry (soil testing), growing herbs, small fruits, and creating components of a wild life habitat etc.
Who will utilize this space? Everyone who walks, bikes or drives pass the park way will be able to visually appreciate the garden aesthetically or enjoy the scents that may emanate from the raised herbal garden. Therefore, in answer to who will utilize this space, the community will use the space. The immediate positive impact that the park way will be beautification and nutrients to the existing trees is who will immediately benefit . As well as, on the June 5, 2013, the seniors whose graduation’s the photos will incorporate the park way transformation.

REFLECTION

For my Action Project, I shoveled and tilled the rock patch in order to grow a garden. Some skills I used and will continue to use is my ability and knowledge of plant and farm life. I also used strength and knowledge of tree life and how to avoid roots. The human right I am addressing is the right to eat, and be able to make your own food easily and naturally. The ability to farm gives you the option to eat, work, and sell. Farming is the oldest profession in the history of mankind. My experience tilling and shoveling the space outside of the Global Citizenship High school was a plentiful one. Doing 3.5 hours of manual labor was enlightening as to how food has been produced for millions of years before my existence. Farming is the oldest profession in the history of mankind, and it’s simplicity is what makes it such a durable profession. I found it interesting how connected to the Earth you feel when farming, tilling, or planting. We, however, were only tilling, but felt a strong connection to the land. The amount of physical effort the project took, made us all more invested in our work, and the land that is soon to be. Tilling land is a process that takes extreme amounts of work, so much so that you need as many volunteers as you can get. In our experience, we received a wealth of volunteers who had similar care and interest into the school garden. They were a huge help morally and physically. I am extremely invested in the garden and farm due to the work I had to do make it possible. I think with the amount of people working, helped the amount of investment into the farm/garden.While the work itself was quite difficult, we never actually faced serious tribulations.

         What I find to be most interesting, is how people react to witnessing others doing community service. Many people were outgoing, asking questions, and relating to us, as if they understand the struggles of manual labor. It is easy to tell that many people have used manual labor as a way to increase income or get community service hours. Although, many people were, interestingly enough, sorry for us. People had automatically assumed that we were doing this as a punishment. I find that to be extremely interesting that when people see kids doing manual labor, they assume that they are serving a punishment. I think this is a representation of how youth is looked at and treated in America. Kids have a certain power that they did not have before, where as they are in control of their future careers, schools, and work options. Whereas previously, all future options were unavailable. I also believe that most working adults in 2013 grew up in an era in which they were not given the selection of their future.
Overall, tilling the land was an outstanding experience. I learned a lot about how to farm and what it means to farm in an urban area. Working while studying the mannerisms of those walk by was fascinating. Working for GCE is always an enlightening experience, the way it’s students attract and gravitate to otherwise tough, or petty, work is unmatchable.

The purpose of my song pitch project is to display the pitch of a song with homemade instruments. Pitch can defined as the difference in tone and volume drawn out in a field. The song I chose was “blah blah blah” by Brother Ali, featuring Slug. In order to start the project I had to learn the meaning of pitch, and how to demonstrate different pitches with homemade instruments. First, we built a diddleybow, which is a homemade instrument that acts as a single string of a guitar. In building the diddleybow, we strung out different pitches according to different notes. After selecting a song, we were asked to write out the pitch on paper. Along with writing came a video and lesson on how pitches are visualized. Pitches can be visualized in only one waw. They are drawn in sharp up and down motions. The higher the note, the taller the drawing of that note’s pitch. I picked a song with a lot of changing pitch which made it easier to understand how pitches change and how to draw them.

The song “blah blah blah” has a very urban timbre that makes remember summers as a child. Being a kid we played a lot of basketball in the backyard, often with the radio tunes blasting from the porch. Since 5th grade, Slug has been one of my favorite rappers, and often listened to him while playing basketball. The song’s main instrument is the trumpet. It has a certain urban and speedy tone that reminds me of Chicago. When the trumpet is at it’s loudest, it has a very utopic pitch, making the song very enjoyable. The song never reaches a dystopic point, as it is very utopic and upbeat. I feel that it’s utopic consistency is what makes it such an enjoyable song to me.

As assigned, I only used the instruments we created to actually record the track. Along with the diddleybow previously mentioned, we created a sort percussion like instrument called the kalimba. For my track, I used the diddleybow as a metronome or beat. to add on, I used the kalimba to act as the trumpet in the song I previously mentioned. This was an enlightening experience I loved because of its gain in my music knowledge.

Monsanto is a farming company that started in 1901 in St. Louis, Missouri. Monsanto is now the second biggest Genetic Seeding company in the world. Meaning their business is creating seeds that are genetically modified to survive longer than organic seeds. While it seems like a plausible idea, the chemicals put in the seeds are often unsafe for consumption and are still being sold. As of 1980, Monsanto broadened their horizons and produced a weed killer called RoundUp. The RoundUp conspiracy is the one I am currently focusing on. Shortly after, RoundUp became the number weed killing substance in America. Soon after that, RoundUp began creating superweeds. The substance that makes up RoundUp, glyphosate, created a superweed, or weeds that became resistent to RoundUp. As recent as 1993, NPR, reported a story in which Monsanto was asking the USDA for approval on RoundUp resistant soybeans. Technically, these soybeans are unsafe for people to consume.
My problem is that I believe that Monsanto is creating RoundUp only to sabotage certain farms. After 87% of all soybean farms had RoundUp, it had been discovered that superweeds were growing. Shortly after that, Monsanto produced a RoundUp resistent product. After it was released, Monsanto’s yearly income increased from 1.7 billion, to 1.9 billion. A $200,000,000 increase. Monsanto has been consistently releasing products against their previous product. Heightening their income above any other farming company. As seen in my graph, Monsanto sees a consistent raise in income after a=every new product is released.
In my conclusion, I believe Monsanto is working against themselves to increase revenue. The statistics in revenue and product are evidence enough that Monsanto sabotaged farms on purpose in order to sell their newest product. America’s small farms are becoming one of the most up and coming businesses in the world. Not only is Monsanto sabotaging the farmers and their business, they are sabotaging food for the entire country.

ARTIST STATEMENT

     The purpose of this project was to create a memory through sounds, using timbre as the difference between utopic and dystopic sound. For my story, I used 13 tracks, all various while in a basketball game. The story I am portraying is that of two basketball games I played in this past winter. Various tracks I used were the sound of swishing, dribbling, and calling plays. The hardest part in creating this track was displaying the ups and downs of my story. Often times the emotion can only be told by words, displaying it by only sound can often be misjudged as a different story than you wished to tell. Although, with my story, it was easier to display with sound because a basketball game is filled with sound, but lacks talking. This made it easier for me and others to understand my story.

     For my recording, I used GarageBand. With the help of a few peers I used the sounds of the school hallway to portray a basketball game. I would tap the floor with my fist to portray shooting, peers to create a swish, etc.

     For my recording, I chose to edit it in the form of a song. While my sounds are aimed to tell a story, they also move in the rhythm of a song. I found this process most interesting when the timbre of the story changed. I found this difficult because you had to change the mood of each track, which often took a lot of time!

Ward 43 Proposal Rough Draft 4/15/13

         This change will occur in an empty lot between Fremont and Kingsbury, which used to be a bedding store. The most important question to be answered is as to who it may affect. The change in scenery would most likely affect business owners in the area. Ward 43 is an area that lacks beautification, as for those who commute to and from the area everyday, may know. While ward 43 is renowned for it’s booming businesses, it has no parks, grassy areas, and even lacks trees. Although, in the past two years, the city of Chicago has done wonders for the beautification of ward 43. This includes allowing an Apple store to open on the corner of North and Clybourn St. in the fall of 2010.  Living in the 21st century, many of us know the beautification  that comes with an Apple store, which is the centerpiece of the area. This involves repaving the roads, and making bike lanes twice as big, both renovations the city has done in the past two years. I believe that the main focus of ward 43 is to surround businesses with renovations that increase revenue, which, in my opinion, is exactly what the park would do. This is a problem because of the contrast in ward 43. In saying “contrast”, I mean the distance between the local businesses, and the lay out of the area. There are 5 family oriented businesses within  North and Clybourn st. and Fremont and Blackhawk st. With all of the family oriented businesses, there is no place ofr families to reside in. Which is why this a problem, and, a park, could possibly resolve this problem.

          This could affect the local area, making it more green, and in turn, turning into a more friendly area. Last year, a proposal was made to turn the lot into a group of retail shops. Businesses such as “Anthropologie” and “Williams and Sonoma.” While these would bring in more revenue, the park would enlighten the area, bringing a peaceful reputation. While we are yet to know the response, I believe that the group of stores will only bring more of the same, and not widen the demographic. Most of the shops in ward 43 are family orientated, but lack the family demographic in the area. The park could change and affect this problem. My proposal is different from other proposals because it can switch the feel of the entire neighborhood.

          Overall, it can increase the demographic of who visits the neighborhood, help bring revenue to the up and coming businesses in the area, and overall, bring a more peaceful vibe to the area.

Below is a slideshow of pictures taken during my presentation. Enjoy!