My musical Culture

 Hello Everyone! My name is Ethan Watkins and I'm a sophomore Music Ed major. My primary instrument is Trumpet and I have recently been starting to dabble in piano and guitar in the past few years. My musical experience started when I took piano lessons at a young age but due to it being too expensive my parents took me out of it before I was in the 5th grade. In middle school I started playing the trumpet which was the instrument that I ended up falling in love with. In High school I joined marching band and grew a new even greater passion for my instrument and the rest is history. I knew when I joined college I wanted to pursue music so I decided to pursue Music Ed.  




1. Music I like right now: Currently my favorite band would have to be Imagine Dragons. They are a pop rock band who I had listened to when I was younger but have lately not been listening to. The reason why I started listening to them again was because they performed their newest song for a Netflix series which I got into over the winter break and became quickly obsessed over called Arcane. The series is a fantasy action adventure animated short series and the story goes through the character in the video game. You explore what is going on in their lives and show correlations and differences between each characters as they develop. Overall the music that they played encapsulated the whole show into one song and helped guide the story through the music.



2. Music that is personal to me: A piece that is personal to me would have to be Holiday by Green Day. This song means a lot to me because during marching band we would play this at football games and it brought me so much joy playing this with all my friends in marching band. I can still recall whenever our director would start it and everyone gets up off of their seats and everyone starts to smile. Holiday is a really fun song to play and whenever we went to football games this is what most people were looking forward to in the band.





Music I have trouble enjoying: Respectfully I have trouble enjoying any type of dubstep or electronic dance music. The main reason I cant seem to enjoy it is because I like more traditional music and with dubstep it sounds more like noise to me instead of music. I can see why it attracts people though because it has bass drops in a lot of it and sounds super intense and energetic.





Comments

  1. Aidan O'DonnellJanuary 5, 2022 at 11:34 AM

    Great blog, Ethan! I use to really enjoy listening to imagine dragons as well when I was younger. I haven't seen the show you're referencing, but I love that imagine dragons was involved with part of the music in it. Also, Holiday is one of my all time favorite green day songs as well. I'd love to hear your marching band version of it some day!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ethan WatkinsJanuary 5, 2022 at 11:57 PM

      Thank you so much Id love to find it and maybe one day I can go to my old school and see if I can get a copy. Unfortunately they stopped playing it at my school after I graduated or I would suggest we could just go to a football game and see it live lol.

      Delete
  2. JillianJanuary 5, 2022 at 4:09 PM

    I've heard that Imagine Dragons song before, mostly on tiktok, but I didn't know it was theirs. I'm not surprised though, it's excellent, and I've liked their other songs that I've heard too. They're good movement songs, really motivate you. I've never heard that Green Day song before but I like it, the vibe is not unlike the Imagine Dragons song- music that gets the blood going.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ethan WatkinsJanuary 5, 2022 at 11:58 PM

      yeah whenever my taste in music is more energetic which is funny considering my personality is very different comparatively. I'm glad you enjoyed!

      Delete
  3. Josh WoodJanuary 5, 2022 at 5:21 PM

    Wow Ethan, just wow! I had not heard this Imagine Dragons song before and it was pretty good, I'll definitely have to give it another listen or two to see if it deserves a spot on my playlist but it's definitely in contention. You seem like the kind of guy that would enjoy Green Day and playing that in marching band sounds so fun! If you have a video I'd love to see it so I can see how it worked. I will have to put you on some rock that I think is really good, bands like Chon and Pineapple Thief, I think you would really enjoy.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ahdi HortonJanuary 5, 2022 at 8:44 PM

    I have been hearing 'Enemy' from Arcane all over TikTok and now I finally know who its by! This is not a genre of music I usually listen to but I really like this song. I really like how they incorporated themselves into the world of Arcane in the music video. It really made the overall of the affect of the song more impactful.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sarah Beth MartinJanuary 5, 2022 at 10:26 PM

    Unlike my other cohorts commenting... I haven't heard the 'Enemy' song on Tiktok, but it does come across my Apple Music playlist very often, but I am going to hurt your feelings.. I usually skip it. However, I will admit that the music video that you embedded was pretty interesting. Nice song choice for the Green Day song. I can agree with you that the electronic music is a bit difficult to get into or to listen to just for pleasure.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Music MaddiJanuary 7, 2022 at 2:13 PM

    It's hard to fall in love with such an expensive hobby but music means the world to me, as I'm sure it means the same to you, so we deal with it anyway. I LOVE Imagine Dragons! They make so many styles of music and I can listen to them all day. In regards to "Holiday," did you play it as a stand tune? That sounds fuego!!! I played "Welcome to the Black Parade" (if you don't know it, how dare you!) as a percussion ensemble and it was the greatest experience of my musical life.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MUSIC OF INDIGENOUS AMERICANS

Image
1. One of the points that I wanted to learn more about was the drums that native Americans used, specifically how they were made. So I did a little research and googled "native American drums" and found out all sorts of fascinating info on how they are made and what they were used for. For instance they believed that the drums contained the power of thunder and lightning inside and were used to connect to the heavens and have spiritual connections to the gods. Drums were an important aspect not only in there music culture but there social culture because of this. Most native American tribes that used drums have there own unique way of making one and was passed down in there tribes. ( Source ) This video explains how a Hand drum traditionally was made... 2. One ceremony that I found interesting by doing research that we never mentioned is ceremonies for a sweat lodge. Sweat lodges are very sacred to native Americans and was used for rituals and ceremonies for healing. Sweat lo...
Read more

The Glory of Gospel

Image
Gospel music in the united states is one of the defining features of not only America culturally but socially. To know more about why gospel music is important you have to go back to before Colonizers came over to America and when Gospel music was created in Europe. When colonizers came over to the new world they brought with them influences from European protestant churches. A big overview of what im gonna talk about is the History of Gospel music, people involved in gospel, how gospel impacted culture, and a few specific artists.  Second Great Awakening  We begin the history of gospel music in America during the 19th century. At the time there was a great resurgence of religion and with that religious music. This was later called the second great awakening and begun  in the south in the 1790s and early 1800s among the Presbyterians, Methodists and Baptists. This awakening led to major growth in protestant beliefs and was a sense of comfort in America during the changing...
Read more

My moms musical experience

Image
So for this blog I will be doing something a bit different compared to my usual style. I will be interviewing my mother and sharing her musical experience in this blog. The format I will be using is like a script. So without further ado lets begin. Me: Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to do this interview Mom: No problem :) Me: What is your earliest memory of music? Mom: Oh, that's easy...my earliest memory of music was in bible school when i was little. The first song we learned was Jesus loves me. Me: Would you like to delve deeper into how that experience went, if you can remember? mom: Sure, at my church we had a little missionary group called GAs which would be all girls and in that group we would sing at bible school and begun with Jesus loves me and built upon that during bible schools and then performed in front of the congregation Me: Do you remember any of the other songs that you learned?  Mom: (Enthusiastically) YES, there was this one song that we sung...
Read more