TJK RHTRC FNL: 2015

Creation of a performance involves the way in which humans come up with ideas and the way in which humans interact, which is rhetorical, if the definition of rhetoric remains as human interaction. Kenneth Burke writes, “the base function of rhetoric, the use of words by human agents to form attitudes or induce actions in other human agents” (Burke 1031). The way that a performance plays-out makes use of both intention/design and spontaneity/impromptu reveals opposites working together. When writing about Kenneth Burke’s terms “Act” and “Motion” John D. Ramage comes to the conclusion in his book Rhetoric A User’s Guide that “there is no such thing as pure Act. Every Act retains elements of motion” (Ramage 14). The idea lies on a continuum inseparable, just in the way that design and spontaneity work as one to carry out a performance. Even if a show is carried out in complete design there is some human error, some difference in each performance and that is the spontaneity hiding beneath the waves. If the spontaneity works then it can be added to design. Even an impromptu show like Who’s Line Is It Anyway still uses structure and design in a simple way—getting characters and places from the audience. It is just like a battery’s polar opposites working together, allowing energy and flow.

Design means to structure in a way. The tires of a running car need to be on the wheels rather than on the baby in the backseat to be effective in their designed use or effect. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines design as “to plan and make decisions about (something that is being built or created)” and “to create the plans, drawings, etc., that show how (something) will be made” (Merriam-Webster). Interesting how creation and design are connected outside of a religious context, not to confuse humans with a possible all knowing power, because in rhetoric where communication, value systems, and language vary, so will believability, but it means all humans posses the ability to create and design.

Where do spontaneous ideas come from? In attempting design and carrying it out, the places it leads will not always be expected and certain knowledge just seems to fit after a traveled path. Spontaneity is defined as “: done or said in a natural and often sudden way and without a lot of thought or planning” and “doing things that have not been planned but that seem enjoyable and worth doing at a particular time” (Merriam-Webster). Interesting that there is more than one definition. If language needs more than one definition what does that say about they way in which humans think and interact? It means humans have a certain need to be shaped and shape themselves, and that humans are susceptible to choice.

Ramage applies the term pluralistic to rhetoric over the term relativistic because “Relativism also holds that it is impossible to ‘converse’ across belief systems, that the denizens of different belief systems cannot modify each other’s views, and that it’s futile to try” (Ramage 71). If rhetoric wasn’t pluralistic and the ability to change the self and or others left, nothing about communicating or performance or creation would matter. Ramage writes, “pluralism holds out the possibility that different ‘sorts’ of people may achieve identification with one another and thereby tolerate each others’ differences in the name of cooperation” (Ramage 72). The idea allows crowds. Without pluralism there could never be the possibility of mob mentality, a good mosh-pit. This pluralism is what allows a band to unite and form ideas and break ideas. It allows and audience of different values and backgrounds to engage in a shared experience. Rhetoric needs the other. Design and spontaneity need each other.

To attempt to accurately describe experiences with performance and the aspects of design, spontaneity, and rhetoric, I will move into the first person and explain the way in which I use design and spontaneity to create a performance for CRNLRD (Corn Lord), how the band works together to use the two, and how rhetoric encompasses the social aspect of a performance and the way in which it is created.

Song writing makes a good first move to move towards performance. Generally, if I sit around with a guitar in my hands long enough, something happens. Undoubtedly, the traditional cultural norms in song writing exist. It is impossible to be completely out of tune with them, even if the idea behind the music is to break from the tradition it is still using the tradition as a background or backtrack for its voice. Charley Parker is a good example of how jazz made a move to deconstruct the music of the time. Everything I write is reflected against and in many ways arises from the past body of musical knowledge. Someone alive who writes music has surely in this day and age heard a song before, unless I would count the scats of babies for song, and sometimes music is played during labor and during births. Song owns more structure, than complete babble, like a songbird has its tune. No doubt that inside the structure lays possibility for emotive communication. Scat. Scream.

Song writing owns no way of getting around the existing tradition of songwriting. The intertexuality of the process reflects in the way that people consider music or anything to be “good”. Humans use what they already know to perceive the now. Genera comes into play because genera implies that there are different tastes and different tastes that mesh to portray particular ideas, and different ways to enjoy a piece of art, while there are different identities to identify with that live alongside genera. Songs are written to reflect genre, whether the nature is sincere or cruel. World music and remixes show that what comes before matters in what happens next by the way in which the genres pull from many past experiences.

I should note that sound acquires its beginning defining qualities in communication through rhythm and tempo, melody, and timbre. It speaks; it imitates thought (while thought can imitate it) and the natural world. The echoic nature of auditory communication reveals how musical tradition flows through songs.

However difficult to disregard tradition, it helps set the stage for spontaneous thought or creation, and therefore a possibility to add to the tradition, in traveling the paths previously paved. Somewhat like: “You have to know the rules to know how to break the rules”. I cannot credit the professor who said this to me—I do not remember. Like a miner with a lamp in caves, there is a search for value and expansion where previously the travel. When I just have my guitar in my hands, sometimes something I’ve never played blurts out, and it sparks a whole song. Or an old riff revisited leads somewhere new. There is a way to take formulas for song writing and adhere personal stamps to them. Listen to the Blues. The defining qualities of sound help owe to that. This is why covers of songs get a personal flavor, even if the artist is doing an impression to sound “just like” the previous artist.

In jamming or improvisation usually a central idea or tune/melody and rhythm ends up structuring the meaning and definition of the sound. If improvising works to taste then it can be worked into design in attempt to make the desired end more potent. This is a way design and spontaneity work together in the making of a future performance.

Once there is enough music to fill a set there is the ability to work these measures of design into performance. Planning out a set list will even contain design and spontaneity. Some sets come together by simply writing the songs down in no particular order, but in an order. Others come together through rigid design melding dongs into one another creating a “seamless” production. In designing a set list, it can be really exciting to see the reactions of crowds physically to a change in genre, and the particular stereotypes or identities that pertain to a genera. In the Zebra video pay attention to the change in styles of dancing from 13:40-20:40. Genera attempts to capture a body of emotional value; a performance of genera attempts to move and communicate the emotion to the audience members. When attempting to design music in the punk genera it affects/effects people in a different way than a country song does. The crowd moves from thrashing and moshing to slowly kicking out a few legs like a frog while holding their belt buckle. The design of a song causes different types of dancing. The defining qualities of sound make this jump possible. In peer reviews, I have heard the abrupt changes described as “annoying” and “hard to deal with” to “really funny” and “It’s cool how you play a couple of different styles”. The performance is interesting rhetorically because it can create an area for different people to communicate a similar feeling together. It is more like a body. It is a group experience. Watching any of the videos the crowd will communicate in laughs, “Yeahs”, and arm swings/fist pumps directed towards one another. It is a great experience to attempt to create this body. Again in the Zebra video, from 10:00-10:30, until my band mate says, “Sorry” he could get them to say anything (I was smiling big), but his values got in the way because he felt guilty about his comment. After the show he noted to me, “Man, at that show I really got outta my shell” and he felt good about it seemingly, so I did too.

In the attempt to explain design and spontaneity, mistakes are not left out of the case. The beginning of the Zebra video starts in the middle of our set list. It was my fault because I forgot to hit record. What an idiot. We had just finished a song called “Bacon” and I ran over and had to fiddle with the camera, and in the failure of the ability to carry out design my band mates went into a small jam in “A” that filled the uncomfortable stagnant void of silence, the no communication realm—or the communication that the band sucks. It was an unplanned spontaneous move that I am very grateful for because it took some of the audience’s attention off of me. The small jam in “A” lead perfectly into the cover of “The Wizard” by Black Sabbath. The communication unspoken by myself was noticed and to keep the right frame of mind for the audience, to keep them engaged, the band played and helped save me…I fumbled with it out of nerves. Also in the Zebra video from 20:40-26:00, the entire Kid Rock experience is ruined by the dumb way I introduce the song; I mess up the rap a bunch too, but that was my first attempt on stage. At least Kid Rock is pretty awful and so is CRNLRD. This is something that I did not really want to do but I did because we are a group working together.

The space in between songs, personally, becomes a time when spontaneity is more potently engaged, and my nerves are a huge part of the way in which I will interact with larger groups. I would say nerves are described as discomfort when analyzing them through a lens of performance. The Mine Do In The Summer video represents some really good rambling and a view into a way how spontaneity feeds off of other events or people and leading to a different place. The time in-between songs are the part of the set list remaining more undefined, of course only if it is chosen this way. At a performance talking to the crowd is a choice. The choice exists to structure the space between songs with out words. From my own experience crowds are intimate especially with a microphone, and I choose to speak freely toward the audience. Speaking freely here means to say what comes to the mind. And my words usually come from discomfort. Discomfort becomes a tool for performance because it drives me to act to get to the next song.

I have no idea what I am going to say or do until the beginning of the next song—the next instance of design. In the Zebra video from 13:40 to the beginning of the next song I have no idea what is going to happen. Everything that is said comes from discomfort, on my part. I cannot speak for the band member closest to the camera, but I do not think that when he called the crowd to step forward that he had preconceived a thought about telling people to, “Punch a girl in the boobs”. He then goes on to retract his statement and blame the violent thought on me. To my own taste I find it funny. Something I didn’t expect to do was that crazy tape-rewinding tongue twister that leads into the “1-2-3-4” and the song, but multiple audience members after the show said that they thought it was “hilarious” and “awesome”. This instance of spontaneity worked out in a way that gained audience approval and therefore designer approval. A random act that can fit itself into a design. I use the time specifically for crowd interaction. Spontaneity is aligned with “Thinking on your feet”. During any performance, there is a chance of hecklers and the best way to react is a way to get the crowd on your side in any way as soon as possible. There isn’t any point to being on stage if someone can take it away too easily. The Go Somewhere Else video is a successful example of witty retort. Spontaneity seems to almost be a knowledge that arises without trial, attempt, or struggle to create, but must use parts of prior experience to make a path to a new place. Most people start a trek in the mountains on a previously trodden step, and move into unknown places. I also think that a way to explain the “eureka moment”, when the right answer just appears from seemingly nowhere, is the brain making connections, solving, with out senses noticing that it has done so. Like waking from sleep.

Many of the audience members are drinking beer and liquor. It is a reliance of many musicians. Alcohol and music are synonymous with a party. Music is usually played at an establishment that serves alcohol. CRNLRD knows it needs that psychographic of drinkers to survive. Ramage writes, “How I go about defining and defending my sense of self is not significantly different from how I go about defining and defending my sense of ‘justice’ or ‘the good’” (Ramage 70). People justify and defend their own actions in comparisons all the time. The “tu quoque” fallacy, or the “you too” represents this idea well. Imaginary Mom says, “Don’t smoke and drink, you brats. I love you”. Imaginary kids say drunkenly, “Imaginary Mom if you loved us you wouldn’t smoke and drink”. It snowballs into the “everybody’s doing it” attitude. I imagine at bars that people do this all the time at bars with smoking and drinking. But I bet that it happens much more quietly than most might want to acknowledge. It is about taking the spotlight off of ones self, moving blame to another being without validity. I work at a bar. I see people only take shots if someone else is all the time. Not to say that a toast is a wrong action, but if justified under false premises, it becomes an emotional decision, not necessarily negative or positive—it depends on point-of-view. I need people to justify getting wasted so the effect/affect of music is greater on the audience, so people have more of an incentive to show. So people do not care about temporarily handicapped dancing. I also rely on different people with different value systems to be able to get along. CRNLRD doesn’t play just one type of music so people need tolerance. These ideas took part in design of the bar scene long before I ever entered. An interesting dynamic of music and bars is the jukebox. People will put thirty dollars in a jukebox but will not pay three dollars to see a live band. It sucks.

The creation of performance really comes from a desire to engage and interact multiple people at once. Design and spontaneity help the desire become reality, and become an experience. In the shared experience of music, communication changes because people have a sense working together—the band takes over the sense of sound for them. In using design eventually spontaneity will burst from nowhere, and if it works then formula has the opportunity to become strengthened. The performance must change.

Work Cited

Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric Of Motives

Ramage, D. John. Rhetoric A User’s Guide. USA. 2006.

TJK RHTRC FNL

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Thanks

Note to the reader

Go Somewhere Else video

Mine Do In The Summer video

Zebra video

Performance of Music: Design and Spontaneity and Rhetoric