For my Art class (Soundtopia), we were asked to pick a song we enjoyed, and remake it with homemade instruments. While in class, we built these homemade instruments. We used a diddleybow, which is a homemade instrument that acts as a one string guitar. The next day, we built a kalimba, which is a pluckable instrument that acts as a percussion of sorts. I used these instruments to remake the song Blah blah blah by Brother Ali, which I can connect to memories with my dad in the summers. I learned a lot about how to recreate sounds with this project. Overall this has been a joyous experience, check out my work!
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.