Focus On Music, Text and Drama - Essay Example

? Focus On Music, Text and Drama Focus On Music, Text and Drama Music, at all times, has been accompanied with drama, and its function in this combination remains quite multifaceted (BaileyShea, 2007). From early epic poems and ballads with simple musical auxiliaries to the increasingly complex sound worlds of fresh drama and music can ease drama in a couple of ways. This paper will be exploring on how a certain artist narrate his story in his music and analyze one of his vocal songs to analyze. The song I chose to analyze is The Great Disappointment composed by Davey Havok from AFI. He is also responsible for every performance of the song. This paper will be discussing the meaning in this song and various factors as stated in the instructions. To enlighten you, I will be employing three main conventions Music, Structure and Lyrics. Davey Havok is an American actor, singer and fashion designer. He is best recognized as the lead singer of the bands Blaqk Audio and AFI (Kresky, 1977). He was born on 20th November 1975. Havok is a frank supporter of the straight edge lifestyle, atheism, and veganism. The great disappointment, the name of this song, was a historical event, which took place on 22nd October 1844. Some Christians argued that Jesus was allegedly going to return to earth during this day. However, that did not happen. This is where the main topic of my understanding comes from. In the song, Davey Havok uses past tense to explain that he had once done something, or to be more precise, he had once believed in a matter. All through the entire lyrics, there are concealed messages that a person would need to dig for a number of times to see the message clearly. The structure of a normal song contains three main sections - choruses, verses and ordering of ideas (Hoek, 2007). This song also has one main chorus, three main verses and the ordering of ideas. Ordering of ideas in the song is from positive to negative as is the flow in every song. In this song, the author’s point of view alters from optimism to disappointment when he notices that the “amaranth” and the “white creatures” are not real. It is as if he has been wasting his time hoping, searching and waiting for good news. These creatures are only in his dreams, which is a sick twisted story of this own subconsciousness. The main elements of the song are tone or mood, as well as rhythm. The mood, which this song gives off, is sad and gloomy (Hoek, 2007). The tone of the voice, on the other hand, is extremely frustrating as the artist sometimes whispers and at other times he screams. The verses, however, are sad and calm. The chorus is extremely angry, loud and even. A statement like “while I lingered I was wasting away” seem like an extremely strong statement. The lyrics section incorporates conventions like repetition, language, title, imagery and rhyme. The language in this song is grammatically correct and normal. In my opinion the “creatures dressed in white” and the “amaranth” in the great disappointment are descriptions for purity, angels, love, happiness and joy. The artist’s subject is wasting his life through waiting for these “creatures to emerge” for happiness and purity to emerge, but then he notices that the creatures do not exist - purity is all, but a dream. This world is never going to be pure, pristine or innocent (Hoek, 2007). Also, according to the song, the world will never be full of happiness, love and joy. Symbolism is broadly used in this song. The white chrysanthemums might simply mean that – a white flower. It can also symbolize purity and blamelessness. Amaranth might mean a never contemptuous flower or it might mean a never ending love. The great disappointment has a lot of symbolism and metaphors. These factors have more than one connotation but in spite of these differences they extremely well present the theme of disappointment. In numerous songs, it is not only the chorus which is repeated. The repetition in a song signifies that the artist wants to point these phrases out, which he or she wants the listener, in reality, to recognize what they signify. This line for instance “I did not, at any instance, want this, I always believed” in the great disappointment is sung a couple of times as the author is trying to tell the listener that he never requested for this. He never hoped to throw away his life on something, which was an illusion, a lie, a dream (Cook, 2009). This evidently portrays his disappointment and despair. The name of a song is one of the most significant elements of a song. It shows what the song is all about. The name, the great disappointment, shows the main theme or topic of the song which is disappointment. Rhyme is normally the similarity in the end-sound of phrases at the end of the lines of a song. The great disappointment does not offer rhyme unlike most songs. Imagery, on the other hand, is the symbol which the artist is trying to show his listeners. Imagery is a means of creating image to listeners of a song (Burkhart, 2010). Davey, the writer of the great disappointment, wants to show his listeners an image of beautiful white roses and soft creatures that are draped in white. The artist also wants to show his listeners a beautiful wonderland, but it all fades away whereby everything turns to grey. Davey is extremely disappointed as he sits around waiting for these creatures to emerge again. He cuts and hurts himself just to see if he is still alive. He finally realizes that these things are not real. They were just in his dreams (Burkhart, 2010). This song has its own exceptional structural techniques, form of expression, as well as artistic skills (Burkhart, 2010). It has a tough national artistic technique quite diverse from that of the Eastern drama and musical customs created by skilled musicians. Davey Havok’s song, the great disappointment, is a "cultural" creation, and, to a large extent, it has maintained numerous elements of folk music. In conclusion, Davey has an appealing voice/tone. It is extremely easy going and pleasant to hear. This vocal analysis is changeable since his voice is fairly well polished for his type of music. Even though his tone could utilize a small amount of sharpening, Davey is a talented musician who should be firmly recognized for his work. References BaileyShea, M. (2007). Mignon: a new recipe for analysis and recomposition. Music Theory, 13(4): 6-8. Burkhart, C. (2010). Anthology for musical analysis. New York: Schirmer. Cook, N. (2009). A guide to musical analysis. New York: Oxford University Press. Hoek, D.J. (2007). Analyses of nineteenth- and twentieth-century music. New York: Oxford University Press. Kresky, J. (1977). Tonal Music: Twelve Analytic Studies. New Jersey: Pearson Press. Read More