Exercise #3

 

Nas no longer wants to play the violin, he wants to become a rapper but mom won’t let him and she forces him to go to orchestra practice for the upcoming Christmas

[A small house in Queens New York, a young boy enters the room]

Nas: Maaa, can we sit down and talk real quick?

Mom: For what, what we need to talk about?

Nas: look Maa you got me looking like a dweeb in school, all my friends think I’m weird because I play the violin.

Mom: And who cares what your friends think? They do nothing but run around the neighborhood chasing these little girls, is that what you want to do?

Nas: no mom it’s just, it doesn’t look cool playing to violin, and I’m the best player on the football and basketball team. Everyone knows me as that “Dude” in school. The ladies love me but soon as I pick this up they look at me all confused ‘cause no one can picture me playing this thing

Mom: well I don’t know what to tell you son cause I’m not letting you quit the orchestra to be out here running these streets, and plus don’t you have a concert you in coming up for the holidays pretty soon, all your distant relatives are coming up to see you play

Nas: That’s what I’m trying to tell you maa I quit

Mom: you quit what? You better get ya butt the hell out my face with all that bull-stuff you talking

Nas: you don’t believe me call Mr. Lee he will tell you, I told him it was time to put this violin down and start working on my bars

Mom: Ya Bars? What the hell is Bar’s

Nas: its music mom like my rapping skills, I think I want to be a rapper now

Mom: A rapper (laughs) boy you are God’s son, that music is for the devil and plus hip-hop is dead why do you want to start rapping now

Nas: Hip-hop ain’t dead it’s a new era, and in a few years imam be the face off hip-hop just watch

Boy if you don’t go take out the damn trash and shut up with all that nonsense you talking

[Nas take out trash upset and still has some stuff to get off his chest]

Nas: If you gone force be to play the violin in this orchestra, you making a big mistake cause I’m going to make that show on Thursday a disaster just because your forcing me and I don’t want to do this no more

Mom: Well that’s your choice just know if you do that, be better find your rappin behind a place to live cause you not gone be living in my house if you can’t follow the rules.

Nas: What rules you talking about? I didn’t know me playing the violin was a rule in this house

Mom: Well now you know so your butt will be playing in that concert Thursday night whether you like it or not

[Thursday night comes and Nas id up on stage crying “But mom I want to be a Rapper”.]

Class activity

Family

-My sister, mom, and father

Community

– Flatbush New York

Birth Place

_ St. Vincent

social

– Twitter

school/  career field

-CU Football

– Don Bosco Prep

Entertainment

-Violin 

– Hip Hop

– Nas

– Blow

 

Blog – Electro and Festival Mix

I posted a video of a DJ at an EDM festival. i sound this video to be interesting because if you listen to EDM music there’s never a lot of words, but the beat of the music is what touches the people. The DJ is on stage mixing a bunch of different beats and sounds to get the crowd going. this is his curation because he took the time to take a collected bunch of all different kinds of EDM sounds and put them together how he thought would be best to get the people into it.

Extra Credit #1

http://www.avid.com/US/

When I first started to rap, my friends and I had no idea what we were doing. We started out using Pro-tool which is a music producing system. Neither of us knew how to use this system so I started trying to see if I could figure out how to use it so we could start recoding. This was very similar to what Rice and Brown learned when they first started with music. Not knowing what I was doing, I started clicking buttons and started putting sounds together. This is an example of Ka-knowledgy because I started out having no clue what I was doing with the Pro-Tools system, but the more different sounds I heard I started to putting them together to hopefully form a beat. I’m really liked hearing samples of movie clips in my songs so I started taking samples from movies and implementing them into my beats.  After all of that it was then time to start rhyming over the beats that was made. It was then time to start rhyming over the beats that was made. I even put in a DJ adlib to start it off as the intro. This was my form on expression because even though I took a few samples from other places it was still my creation and my sound. Rhapsody is an expressive form of feeling, which is what we saw in my music because I created my own form of digital writing. This shows that the new rhetoric’s and practices that have been invented are being improved  because before there was such things as Ka-knowledge music was made a lot different than it is today. With all this improvement and all the new technology that we have at hand I believe that our music and digital writing is going to improve the more out culture grows.

Blog #5

The term that I am going to use in the mix for the video that I posted. In the post the DJ introduces a track with a mash up, with all the new technology that is at our hands music is becoming a more digital writing form. DJ’s usually give an adlib at the beginning of a song and this was a mixture our DJ talking with a Mash-up playing in the back ground. This was also an example of voice over the mix because as the DJ gave his adlib the mash-up mixture of songs played in the background.

 

Blog #4 – Scumbag Steve

A meme is a random picture that someone uses to share humorous experinces on to share with others. People tend to post meme’s to get a laugh out of others or to see how many people out in the world agree with what they put on the meme’s and hope the circulation of what they created continues. Scumbag steve picture went viral after he posted a picture of his rap group album cover and people began circulating the image and made memes because in the picture blake who is the real person in the picture looks like a typical drug user who like to party and is involved with other hedonistic behavior. the picture went viral on January of 2011 and spread around the internet quite fast. Blake Boston even began a rap career after he became a internet sensation. the picture had its ups and downs of circulating over the years but it is still seen on plenty of site on the internet. the meme plays a part in the participatory culture in terms of network rhetorics because Blake posted a innocent photo, he wasn’t trying to get anything out of posted the photo, but someone made a meme of his picture and it began to spread fast and for a long time. the photo is still a very popular meme today. This Photo is circulating all over social media, like Facebook, twitter and even Instagram.

Excercise #2- Public Pedagogy

The participatory culture teaches a lot about creative practice and social identities. Creative practices are things like YouTube were users are given a platform being too creative and make their own body of work out of their creativity. This definitely teaches people how to be more creative because for example YouTube who gives you a platform to be creative, also doesn’t allow its users to use things from its site to be creative. There are things like the copyright law that are in place to make sure users don’t violate the law of the non-copyright rule, which is basically the law that doesn’t allow users to use anything from the site to be creative.  This is where users can only use spreadable content to make sure there not breaking the copyright law. YouTube is one of the sites that have a lot of spreadable content but users can’t use it to be creative because of things like the copyright law. There are people who are called media-activist who push for allowing people to be more involved in reshaping media. Social identities are things like Facebook were users have their own social identities beside from who they are on the internet. We learned that Facebook is something of the new generation, they began to lose its identity because it was becoming more of business a lot of people were using it because it wasn’t really connecting with its influencers. Influencers are people who influence other users to join the social group; these people are usually people who have power. once Facebook started connecting with the people who are influencers and would get other to be a part of their community they started seeing a lot more users start to use their site a lot more often than before . Digital mediainstructs informally through its very composition and its collective construction, circulation, and exchange in many different ways. The first way I think it does this is it shapes the way people communicate and view things now. Before this there wasn’t a way for people to share their creativity with other. Now that things have improved vastly, we have a lot of different platforms were we can do all kinds of things in digital media. Like musician who were not mainstream before had a way more difficult time putting music out and get people to hear them, now with the way digital media has improved musicians have a better platform to share their content to find a bigger fan base. I’ve learned a lot from “public pedagogy”, I’ve learned that people share a lot of ideas and it’s all about giving users a platform to do things. Worldstarthiphop is a hip-hop based site. Users log into the site to watch what viral videos or music videos have been posted for the day. You can also find a lot of things like tutorials of this site. The site doesn’t require you to be a member, it’s just a site users and go to view and post their videos. This site is an example of appropriation. WorldStar can also be an example of Trans media navigation because it is able to follow the flow of the stories and information across multiple mediations.

Blog #3 -If It Doesn’t Spread, It’s Dead (Part Five) Communities of Users

The article talks about the communities of user, which are things like Facebook, twitter and other social networks that we have with media and digital things. The people of the younger generation want to be involved with these things are defined as media-activist. Facebook had some problems because they couldn’t connect with the influencers. Influencers are the people who are influencing other to become a part of the social communities. The author talks about the study of Nebraskans that he did involving with stoke brokers. In his result he found that people who were in higher ranks were more of an influencer.

DatPiff

.www.DatPiff.com is a website were artist are able to submit their mixtapes, which is like an album but they provide it to users for free. You can find a mixture of all types of music here, it is a hip-hop based site so most of the music on here is hip-hop music. This site take away the old method of selling hard copy albums, it also takes away the monitory exchange were consumers had to pay for their music before, this site provides free music you can stream and download.  This is an example of circulation because it shapes the way we are able to consume music, and doesn’t permit users to pay for the music.

Exercise #1- WORLDSTARHIPHOP

Worldstarhiphop is a website that users visit to watch music videos of all types of different artist, weather it is mainstream or just up and coming artist trying to their music out to people.  The website is a place where independent artist and record labels pay a small fee to submit their music videos so viewers can hear their new music, which is a very obsolesce way of doing it. Even though the site is a majority hip-hop based site you can find all different genres of music on there. The site doesn’t only have music videos; it also has all type of viral internet videos that are posted to the web every day. Artists are able to post Vlogs to the site which is like a video blog of what it’s like to be an up and coming or major label artist.  This is a new device that artists are able to use to get exposer and get their buzz going.

This site rates the videos by the amount out views they receive. Artists are able to get a lot of feedback because viewers are able to leave comments about what they think of the music or the video that are posted. Hundreds of thousands of people are everyday users of this site; I am on this site almost every day watching the new videos that are uploaded that day. The site is something I like to use when I have free time and I want to hear what hot new music is out. I like this site for two reasons, the first reason is because it doesn’t only have music, but you can also find a lot of other interesting funny videos on there. The second reason I enjoy going on this site is because it allows be to hear all kind of music, I am able to hear music that is played on the radio every day, and I can also watch videos of average people like myself who are also very talented trying to make it in the music industry. Most musician drop a music video with their music because they know the audience will enjoy the visual, that an example of “tribalism”. Worldstarhiphop.com enhances artist ability to get their music out because now their videos are able to be viewed right next to the major artist in the music industry.

My understanding that this is part of the participatory culture is clear. I see what the website is used for and how much of an outlet this can be for underground artist who we don’t get to hear because they aren’t on the radio every day. It also puts independent artist up with major artist to see were there at in term of popularity with the amount of view they receive. Music is evolving more and more with the internet. Musicians no longer have to use devices and things like CD’s to get their music out they can now upload everything to the internet for fans to hear.