The Evolution of Visual Albums - Research Project

Proposal 

The Inspiration I got for the research project came from Beyonce's 2016 Lemonade album, because it caused so much intense feedback and conversation that it intrigued me. At first I thought I would in depth research the entire album, and then I came to the idea of researching the long evolution of visual albums, going piece by piece. Both of which were too detailed, and so instead I decided upon a middle ground. I wanted to create a brief timeline of visual albums that have caused most effect, that is easy to follow, and not too detailed to get lost in.

Within this project I will be covering a baseline of albums and some songs that have caused evolution and effect in this area. I will not be diving too deep into detail, as there is so much on this topic that it is easy to walk off track, and also I don't want this to be ten pages long, or too confusing.

As a result, I want to have a clearer understanding of visual albums, the power they have and could have over the course of coming years in the industry.

The Evolution of Visual Albums

So, to start, what is a visual album? 

                                  A visual album is a stream of videos running through each

and every song, interlacing to create a story. The musician in this case

uses visuals to dive deeper into the meaning of the individual songs,

giving the listener a better understanding of the song's point of view.

Visual albums can give us perspectives of a piece that we may 

 never have previously caught onto, whilst allowing the artist to have the 

power to express their story using visuals exactly how they want it to be seen.

On the 23rd of April 2016, Beyonce released her highly anticipated album 

"Lemonade". This, as a result, created an uproar of conversation on visual albums, and their development within the music industry of what is now 'expected' and what causes conversation. This pop culture phenomenon set an entirely new bar for legacy in the music world, but intriguingly enough, there is nothing new about it.

The spark that started a growing flame, was released in 1964 by the Beatles; 'A Hard Day's Night'.

A Hard Day's Night is a musical comedy film starring the Beatles, following the band 

for several days as they look for their lost drummer. Now, this isn't today what we would label as a visual album, more so strictly a musical but, it definitely sparked interest and momentum in the area. The Beatles's film was extremely popular at the time and has become a classic. It contradicts what a visual album would be now, as it focuses more on the fictional story of the movie, rather than the songs as a separate entity.

Moving forward to 1984, when Prince released his first motion picture; Purple Rain, an American rock-musical drama. The movie surrounds Prince as an autobiographical character, with dramatic twists and turns. The film consists of several concert sequences, and although it is still not quite the solid visual album we've more recently encountered, this musical definitely shows that it is nearing in that direction, with plot and dialogue to fit into a book.

Interestingly enough, Prince had continued to take a very visual approach for longer than just this blockbuster film, and it translated through every one of his released songs, all of which, have music videos. Although not all were necessarily intertwined with one another, Prince was definitely walking in the right direction, the music videos and songs didn't have to link, because he was already creating visual story after story with every song. Possibly, if he had still been alive today, he would have taken this technique further, and sewn many together to make a full blown visual album.

Another evolution is Daft Punk's Interstella 5555.

The Sci-Fi film was released in 2003 and followed the futuristic storyline of alien pop stars

who had been abducted by a music executive and forced to perform on Earth. This piece as a whole discards any dialogue whilst following a story line. It contains some sound effects, but closely sticks to a song-only-basis, this does create an intense focus on the songs but this possible experiment makes it less accessible for people who don't really understand the concept or lack in prior experience with this band.

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kanye West, has been called the "prototype for modern visual albums". Released in 2010, it
stands side by side to what we consider a visual album would be today, except this one set
a subtle mould for future works. The album itself indulges into a story of fame and what has been sacrificed to live in this life - expressed almost as a self reflection ritual, and by the end having to find a balance between who you are and who you have to be to make it in the music industry.
Visual albums allow space for the artist to express their hardships,
complications, and moments through connected imagery until it becomes
one big linked video, the songs come after the other to further the story.
Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy definitely does this, and eight years later, is still being put under magnification.

Beyonce's Lemonade does a similar thing, before this album was released
the duo Jay-Z and Beyonce were put under public scrutiny after allegations of Jay-Z cheating rose a the surface. Neither revealed much about it for a long time, that is until Beyonce dropped this visual album. The album itself throws us into her warfare of emotional process with Jay-Z, the helplessness, anger, and confusion that later through growth express a story of redemption, sacrifice and forgiveness. Lemonade is a work of art celebrating black culture, symbolically, visually, lyrically, and musically. This film highlighted raw police brutality, with shots of a young black boy holding has hands up in front of police, with imagery of Beyonce sitting on a police car amidst a flood, and mothers holding up pictures of the sons they lost to police brutality.
This, is self and social commentary at it's finest.
Beyonce took her message and used our addiction to television for her benefit, by broadcasting her visual album on the same level that Game Of Thrones would be showcased, on AMC.

To close, visual albums have been a long time coming, as most things do, it started as
pieces of an idea that although now have come together to make sense, when reviewing to back then, look hardly alike. Visual albums have the ability to shed light on topics on a widespread
scale, they have the ability to create conversation for years to come, it shows a naked
perspective of the artist when expressing their own hardships. Imagery and music come hand in hand, even just as a simple example of movies, a piece of music can change the entirety of just one scene, it effects the emotional outcome of the audience, and can be a help in translating more of the story, these albums take great advantage of this.
Beyonce's Lemonade album, because of it's recency and relevance to right now, has set the bar above and beyond, and in turn, reveals most other things to be shallow and lacking. Visual albums are most likely to become the norm, just like simple music videos for each song are now.
This type of in depth commentary is essential in order to give space for growth and let free expression and speech run wild in an increasingly fragmented music industry.




Links!


What Beyonce's 'Lemonade' album meant to me as a black woman

Cuepoint - The Evolution of Visual Albums

Beat Media - The Evolution of Visual Albums

Revisiting Kanye's 'Runaway' and what it means now

Is 'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy still Kanye's best work?

Evaluation of my 3 Composition Clips

Evaluation of my 3 Composition Clips 

So, we all had to choose 3 clips. 

They were all labelled as either 'Action' or 'Emotion'

I chose two from Emotion, and one from Actions. 

Sadness, Panic, & Chase

Action/Chase Clip

For this I looked at multiple Car Chase scenes, such as:

Baby Driver

007 Spectre 

Drive 

The music for a lot of these car chase clips had suspense and full on chase music.

Because my clip was pretty much just the full on chase, I skipped any suspense stage. 

I found the Action clip to be the hardest, I found it difficult to have a constant continuation of a beat, possibly another reason why I found it harder than the others was because it is fast paced, and I usually write/sing/compose slow songs. 

Overall it was a good challenge that as brought to my attention I'm lacking in the skill to compose fast paced songs, which now means I can focus on this weakness and improve.

Panic Clip

For this clip I took most of my inspiration off of the (amazing) movie Interstellar, most songs where I can I take inspiration from this soundtrack as it has an incredible effect on me and is so intoxicatingly beautiful. 

For instance, there is a ticking in the song Mountains

It causes suspense, and it meshes so well with the organ that, as the song goes on, 

It translates suspense, and it meshes incredibly with the organ so that, as the song goes on, the both combined intensely heighten tension.

I decided to try this technique, using a ticking plugin and experimenting with various organs and cello.

I tried out a melody that reminded me of this soundtrack, but no matter how I tried to fix it in it just didn't go, Steve listened to it and said it was missing the panic aspect, which he was right about, so I decided to cut it out and possibly use it somewhere else. 

This was hard at first but eventually really helped with my creative flow.

Note to self: Scrapping ideas you're attached to can actually fix everything.

My main problem  is that I got excited with the amount of interesting plugins I found for the Space Clip to try out...so I ended up with over 15 channel strips in order to not forget where I found anything that I liked the sound of. 

Note to self, calm the heck down with the amount of plugins, I know it's exciting, but chill the heck out and choose a sound one at a time, or think of another way. Plonker.

Sad Clip 

This is clip was a little different from the others, in the beginning it has a man (Johnney Depp) and a child sitting together on a bench, after a few seconds the child asks "but why did she have to die?".

I wanted to use this because if I kept this small part it could give even more emotion to the composition. 

This one was the easiest to compose, I really enjoyed creating it, I know that with sad songs it's more common to use piano and maybe even violins etc, so instead I decided to experiment around with a harp and cello, this gave a really great airy, reminiscent feeling, which I wanted.

Sad songs are usually quite slow and progressive, this for me is easier since I have had more practice with slower songs, so it was quite fun. 

Again, I wanted to take inspiration from interstellar, I had a feeling it might fit. 

There was a melody I mentioned before that sounded quite interstellar-y, I liked it but it just didn't fit in with Panic clip. I saved the idea for later on the off chance I would need it again, and surprise surprise it fits perfectly. The melody itself is subtle, so unless you're looking for it it's easy to miss, I didn't want it to be at the forefront as otherwise it would be too much and repetitive, so I'm really happy with the end result on this one.

After this assignment, I learnt more of where my weaknesses and strengths stood, which are:

Weaknesses:

Fast paced songs 

Editing (EQ, Compression etc)

Letting go of ideas I'm set on

Strengths:

Slower, intense songs

Letting go, can be the answer to a recurring block/problem

New ideas

This has caused an improvement in these areas.

Sweet.