An Uncommon Song
	A simple recording can be turned into the greatest symphony in the planet. I have had the opportunity to experience this feeling with this acoustic composition. Even though I was only combining different sounds from my environment, I felt like I was the composer adding crescendos, vibratos, and forte fortissimo to the piece.
	 The piece starts off with the ocean and a creepy door. The ocean has such a beautiful, yet quiet aura to it, which is why it is in the background of the whole song. As time goes on in the piece, new sounds appear like butter sizzling in a pan, a door slamming, and a car revving. The weirdest part of this process was that I realized how easy it was to record a sound, put it into Garageband, and then with a few clicks, a sequence was created. I say this because I just had fun putting different sounds together. It was surprising to realize how easy it was just to mash up different sounds from my environment whether they were natural like the ocean or something manmade like someone typing on a keyboard. 
	There was no real reason for why I picked each sound; however, I tried to pick sounds that I knew would make the audience question what it was. For example, at the end of the piece, the song ends with a clicking noise that slows down. I doubt most people would think that it was a bike’s wheel turning and slowing down. With the new technology that society is creating, I am able to make music just like an artist, even if its not as good as the artist. According to Aram Sinnreich’s, artist vs audience is a binary distinction where an artist, or talented audience member, separates themselves from the audience because of the artist’s skill in musicianship (Sinnreich, pages 94 - 99).  My personal experience with recording sounds and creating a song on my computer opposes Sinnreich’s arguments because I was able to make a song and create something anyone would be able to listen to, and yet I am not a skilled or talented artist and I am still part of the audience. With the technology in this era, anyone with a computer and a mic is able to make music and show it their audience, which is the world. However, I do admit that my work is far from being up to a skilled artist’s level of musicianship. With saying that, I am not a genius who separates themselves from everyone else, but I can still be an artist that is part of the audience. I say this because with the new technology, any person in the audience has the ability to become an artist even if they aren’t talented. The cause of this situation is configurable culture, or the way technology has shaped society, we live in. Even if someone isn’t a skilled artist, anyone with the right tools can make a song and feel like an artist, yet still be part of the audience. 
	With this 2 minute and 7 second piece of work, I feel accomplished not for creating a great piece of work, but for being able to create a song of sonorous objects. All of the sounds I used were very common but very hard to decipher. This project was very eye opening as well because I am a musician and have been playing the trumpet for 9 years, and it was so unfamiliar and strange to use sounds that weren’t produced by an instrument. This project, along with this whole class, has shown me that anything and everything can become part of a song. I was in charge of creating this slur of sounds and it was a wonderful experience to be able to control where each mysterious sound occurred and found its place in the song. 
Works Cited
Sinnreich, Aram A. Configurable Culture: Mainstreaming the Remix, Remixing the Mainstream. 	Diss. University of Southern California, 2007. N.p.: Aram Arthur Sinnreich, n.d. Aram 		Arthur Sinnreich. Web. 1 Dec. 2013. <http://aramsinnreich.typepad.com/				SINNREICH_DISSERTATION_FINAL.pdf>.

colmstead