One Song, 27 Countries

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One Song, 27 Countries

Muzikifi Preview #1
 

· Travel,Music,vlog

One Song, 27 Countries: Muzikifi Preview #1

Like you, I jump around my room singing to a spoon, the closest thing I own to a stage microphone.

Also, like you, my eyes are fixed on my computer, or my phone, and I mostly imagine living in the real world.

But, unlike you–unless you’re more like me than I think–occasionally I feel a stirring in my heart so powerful that I can’t sit still. So I close my laptop, look up and think: "The real world still exists!"

And then I do something insane, to prove it. Something no algorithm could ever predict.

On summer holiday once, when everyone else was out of the house, I picked up my friend’s older brother’s guitar, and wrote a song.

And I thought…

If I did what The Beatles did, I wouldn’t be doing what The Beatles did, deep down. Because what The Beatles did deep down, was do what no one else had ever done before.

They formed a band, with guitars and a bass and drums. Fifty, sixty years later, people are still doing what The Beatles did on the surface–forming old fashioned bands–but they’re not doing what The Beatles did, deep down, which was do what no one else had ever done before. They’re just being copycats.

A few decades later, people started scratching records and sampling, and using drum machines. See, these guys were doing what The Beatles did. They were being original. They were doing what no one else had ever done before. But now, thirty, forty, years later, anyone who makes hip hop is just a copycat.

So now it’s down to me, I thought. I’ve got a song, but who’s going to play on it? I can’t form a band with other people on bass and drums, because that stopped being interesting a half a century ago. I can’t sample sounds and scratch records, because that stopped being interesting a quarter century ago.

So what do I do, to do what they did, deep down? Which was do what no one else had ever done before, but what they felt a passion for.

So I went to the craziest places on earth, found myself in hopeless situations where I still managed to rely on my hope to get me through– and found the most fascinating people making the most amazing music, who added their own flourish, and a piece of themselves, to my song.

In other words, I'm getting the world to sing and play on my song.

I know people have done things that seem like this, on the internet, but it’s not the same. What they do, the ones I’ve seen at least, is sad and pathetic. They get people, other people just like them, alone in their bedrooms, like I was, to add their own lonely part to a chorus–to a symphony–of loneliness and computer-generated isolation.

I, on the other hand, doing what no one had ever done before, got lost in strange countries where I didn’t know the language, and I had no friends.

And I made friends, and they made music with me.

When I do this I learn about people and music. Because isn’t that what music is supposed to be? About people, and life, and the songs inside of all of us?

Wake up, is what I say. Wake up, and share the music.

***

After I wrote that song, I found myself in a family friend’s house, in Germany.

Fortunately, the father of the family was a music teacher.

Good luck, huh?

In fact, when we went on walks, it was a musical experience.

Anyway, he set something up at his school, and so I went in one day and we got people to contribute to my song.

No Beatles, no band, no drum machines, no computers.

People.

This is the way it sounded, let’s start with the chorus–with just me and my computer, and the built-in drum machine.

[Chorus of ShareMusic Song]

So, one of the first things we did was get a kid there to play the drums.

Okay, full disclosure, someone–maybe me–forgot to push the record button, or whatever it was, on the computer, so the only sound for this guy is on the camera, the camera’s microphone is not the best in the world, and it’s not in sync with the music, but I kind of edited it in.

Wow, I said that. I edited it in. I dare you to say that three times, or even once.

I edited it in.

I edited it in.

I edited it in.

And I did not edit that, I said it three times.

[Chorus of ShareMusic Song with Drums, un-Muzikified]

Okay, kind of cool, but what if I pushed those magic recording buttons, you know, EQs and filters and all those fiddly widdly woodly oodly goodly foodly things.

Would that make it sound even cooler?

[“Please hang up and try again”...Chorus of ShareMusic Song with Drums, Muzikified!!!]

Now that, kinda, rocks…(!)

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