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Arun Bose

UWRT-1102-041

Professor Ingram

April 5th, 2017

Reflection

For my multi genre project, I decided that I wanted to incorporate my

interest in music, specifically focusing on pop music. While I personally listen

to a variety of different styles of music, ranging from smaller underground

artists to large-scale pop artists, I decided to research pop music because I

was interested in the relationship between culture and popular music. The

term, pop music, was coined sometime in the 1950s and has since come

to mean everything from rock n roll to funk music to rap. Glenn McDonald, a

principal engineer at The Echo Nest, analyzed the 5,000 more popular songs

since 1950 and found that in the past 70 years, music has grown to be

louder, faster, less organic, and overall; music written today sounds very

distinctly different from music written in years prior (McDonald). I wanted to

research what is causing popular music to change. I have since come to the

conclusion that pop music changes and develops over time in response to

changes in technology and culture, with culture primarily affecting lyrical

content and technology affecting the overall sound of music.

My target audience was difficult to narrow to a specific demographic

and I found my target audience to simply be anyone with an interest in

music. Since I was specifically researching pop music, this significantly

broadened my target audience as virtually everyone that enjoys music

enjoys music that at one point in time was considered pop. While not

everyone necessarily enjoys current Top 40 songs heard on the radio, due to

the substantial evolution of pop music over time, the term pop music, has

come to encompass a wide variety of musical genres.

During my research I found that I was referencing a variety of different

sources, from professors at accredited universities to independent reporters

and authors. The difficulty that I found in my research was that while there is

certainly research in circulation pertaining to the evolution of pop music,

there is very little research answering the ever present why. For example,

Nickolay Lamm, a researcher with The Thought Catalog that specializes in

creating unique graphical representations of data, conducted a study where

he analyzed Billboard Top 100 hits of the past 50 years and created graphs to

illustrate how lyrics have changed overtime however he failed to address

what has caused lyrics to change (Lamm). I found many different sources

that focused on how lyrics and the overall sound of pop music have changed

over time, however I found very few sources that explained what caused

these changes.

For my selected genres, I created a PowerPoint presentation and an

interactive timeline. I chose these genres because I realized quite early that
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a genre that simply involved text would simply not suffice for a project

pertaining to music. My PowerPoint features visuals, music videos, and songs

within the presentation itself, allowing the audience to see and hear the

dramatic evolution of pop music over time. My timeline features a variety of

different popular artists as well as cultural and technological events

overtime. I also added active presidents into the timeline to help better

outline the political events that were occurring at the time. A large amount of

music has been written in direct response to political events such as war,

presidential elections, discrimination, as well as countless other issues. For

example, Pierro Scaruffi, author of A History of Popular Music, found that

World War II had a very direct impact on the musical climate of the time

(Scaruffi). The PowerPoint should be viewed first, as the presentation

describes the point that I was trying to make in my research, where the

timeline simply adds a sense of perspective and allows the audience to

visualize how music has changed in relation to cultural and technological

events.

Being that both of my genres are interactive and require a computer,

they would lose a significant amount of their efficiency should they be read

in a printed format. Both of my genres would be far more effective viewed

through a computer or even a smartphone and would likely be found online.

Both my timeline and my presentation were very text heavy which utilized

the linguistic mode, but they were also very visual and contained a variety of

graphics to help express my findings which utilized the visual and spatial
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modes. My presentation made use of the aural mode when it featured

contrasting examples of pop music videos to introduce my presentation.

Being that both my presentation and timeline were featured on a computer, I

did not employ the gestural mode at all.

My genres mainly presented my research through logical argument. I

thought that a logical appeal through statistics and specific examples would

be more effective than trying to unnecessarily try to make my point through

some sort of emotional appeal. Through my timeline showing specific artists

over time and through my presentation allowing the audience to hear the

evolution of music, I feel that I made my point effectively. I established ethos

by clearly demonstrating that I had done a large amount of research

pertaining to my topic. However, my project did lack any sort of Kairos being

that my projects entire point was that pop music is constantly changing and

evolving. There is very little reason why it would be important for the

audience to understand my message now as pop music will continue to

change indefinitely.

Overall I feel that I was effective in communicating my message to my

target audience. However, if I were to complete this assignment again, I

would make sure to choose a topic that catered to a more specific target

demographic and I would also try to choose a message that could be better

conveyed through a printed setting.

Works Cited

Glenn McDonald. Audio Trends Over Time.

The Echonest, http://blog.echonest.com/tagged/audio-trends-over-time

Lamm, Nickolay. An Analysis of Money, Love, and Sex in Music.

Thought Catalog, http://thoughtcatalog.com/nickolay-

lamm/2014/02/an-analysis-of-money-love-and-sex-in-music.

Scaruffi, Pierro. A History of Pop Music.

http://www.scaruffi.com/history/pop50.html.
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