Sound and Vision: A Classic Song With A Modern Twist

So, yesterday in STAC, the stacies watched David Bowie videos, in celebration of his new album, The Day After, which could be considered a sequel to Heroes. To see the evolution of Bowie was incredible. From a spaceman, to an alien to a manequin, Bowie time and time again shows he can amaze his audience and try something new. What really took me was a video, not of Bowie, but of an artist named Beck (remember the song Loser). He was sponsored by Lincoln Motor Company, and performed a concert filled with 160 musicians in a dome, to blast sound 360 degrees. The song Beck performed was the 9 minute epic, called Sound and Vision (as you can see by my title). He took every mainstream instrument ( I am sure I saw a musical saw), and performed the song. This is one of the most interesting things I found out about the song. All of the players played the same song which produced sound from all directions. Beck made the song seem more active and alive to create a more modern approach to a song thought dead or non existent by most teenagers nowadays. Prior the video, the concept of having every conceivable instrument playing at the same time was inconceivable to me. I thought that, to have every instrument playing the same song would make the song one uniform sound. To my surprise this was not the case. For starters, all of the instruments played at different times. Secondly, some groups of instruments were played and heard more than others such as the the brass, and the string instruments, which caused the song to have a better harmony. Also, Beck's voice was less synthesized and more realistic than Bowie's original recording of the song. I thought the song enhanced by this because Beck's voice complemented the crisp sounds of the instruments more than Bowie's synthesized computer generated 1970's harmony.