A bus ride & Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio
During follow up questions about my Symposium 1 presentations (introduction about ourselves, previous work, and what we want to do), Simon asked me what I’ll be writing my Critical Research Paper on. I had no idea what I’ll be focusing my research on. Honestly, I came into this course with an open mindset in order to learn as much as I can and to make cool objects. I did not consider what it actually means to study on an MA course, to focus on a research topic and make objects from a process/research based perspective. I (only mentally) freaked out a bit when I realised I had no idea what I wanted to do. I know myself and I know I get bored of things very easily. I also realise that coming from Carpentry (an object based process) that this is a completely new and foreign way of making than what I am used to. So I knew that I needed to pick an area of research that severely interests me.
I started by comforting myself about feeling lost or as Simon would put it, “becoming confident in the ambiguity”. I then began constantly sifting through ideas for areas of research. Almost doing field studies on myself with anything that peaked my interest. One afternoon, I got on the bus to go pick up a second hand lamp for another project. It was 45 minutes each way so I got comfortable, put my headphones in, and played some new music.
One of the songs that came on was ‘Call your mom’ by Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio. A four minute funk jam that is essentially a guitar solo for the entire song. It’s not your traditional guitar solo though, it’s more melodic and follows the accents of the bass/drums. The emotion that comes through this studio recorded song was immediately captivating to me. As a musician myself, my tuned ears always take studio recorded songs with a grain of salt. For this reason, I’ve always preferred judging bands/musicians off of their live performances. I especially take note when you can feel the music through a studio recorded song and ‘Call your mom’ may be the best example I’ve ever heard. The rhythm of the drums and bass is something you walk down the street to and feel like you’re in a music video. You can’t help but move. The pure playfulness and emotion the guitarist is putting into his melodies and accents drives the rest of the song along. I must’ve listened to the song 40 times in a row, trying to take notes of what was happening. This isn’t the first time I’ve felt like this about a song. Some of my earliest memories are watching my grandfather and uncle play blues on the piano. I picked up my first guitar at 11 and have played all sorts of instruments ever since.
On this bus ride, jamming to ‘Call your mom’, thinking about what I was going to focus my research on, it hit me. If I’m so obsessed with music and how it interacts with different cultures, why not meld two of my favourite things (making and music) together? The amount of excitement and relief I felt after that realisation was intense. The amount of ideas or areas of research I came up with on that bus ride was enormous. They all focused on three main themes: How do humans make and use music to express themselves, how does the human body react to music/sound waves entering their body, and how do spaces harbour sounds?
Now to start researching and mapping out my research topics…
