Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
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- All Subjects: Music
Description
Music both created and consumed by Soviet soldiers during the war in Afghanistan provides an insight into their opinions and criticisms of the war. Music allowed soldiers to vent, to give voice to their experiences, as well as to rationalize their participation in the conflict, enabling them to inject their personal opinions and perceptions of the war into memorable and poetic forms. Through analyzing the Soviet songs about the of Afghan war, we can create a chronological timeline charting the development of resentment and disillusionment among Soviet soldiers: the initial patriotic songs borrowed from prior conflicts soon declined in popularity, replaced with mournful songs reflecting soldiers’ nostalgia for home and fear of death in their daily lives. Their lyrics reveal feelings of anxiety, disenfranchisement and abandonment, all resulting from the Soviet state’s ineffective handling of the war. In addition to songs produced by soldiers themselves, bands within Soviet borders such as Kino also wrote songs about the conflict, using their star power to draw attention to the conflict in their own fashion. By tracking both the creation and spread of these songs about the Soviet-Afghan war (referred to in this essay as either the “Soviet-Afghan War” or, more simply, the “Afghan War” as it is known in Russian), we can find vital, overlooked expressions of if not protest then discontent - among the many bubbling to the surface during the last decade of the USSR. This thesis therefore presents a chronological analysis of representative songs from the Soviet-Afghan war that also takes their popularity and methods of propagation -- the material technologies that allowed for this music to be spread -- into account, plotted alongside the major turning points of the war. It uncovers an otherwise forgotten form of discourse between soldiers about both the war itself, as well as the Soviet government, exploring the political implications of the war’s musical memorialization.
ContributorsBellard, Alex (Author) / Schmelz, Peter (Thesis director) / Stoff, Laurie (Thesis director, Committee member) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
I will demonstrate through analysis that the effectiveness of music in social movements relies in large part on two unique elements: authenticity and collective action. I will then argue that these elements are antithetic to the actual conditions of music production as the 21st century progresses in America. While this paper does not explore the possible effectiveness of movements without music, I emphasize the well documented ((Futrell, et. al. (2006), (Roy, 2010), (Dyck, 2017)) link between music and social movements, and conclude that this relationship between music and social movements is in danger.
ContributorsCochlin, Fallon Julia (Author) / Fette, Don (Thesis director) / Lauderdale, Pat (Committee member) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
Runaway is the 34 minute short film released alongside Kanye West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” album in 2010. The overall purpose of my project is to conduct a descriptive analysis of this film to analyze its visual messages and how they are influenced by the album’s lyrics as well. To dissect Runaway, I researched multiple perspectives of the film to further inform and provide a holistic view of the decoded messages in addition to my own analysis. Through use of the Stuart-Hall encoding and decoding model, I found multiple meanings for respective sections of Runaway and ultimately constructed a narrative path mirroring that of the album.
ContributorsBezawada, Ajay K (Author) / Ingram-Waters, Mary (Thesis director) / Chris, Lambert (Committee member) / Travis, Bean (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
“Loose Lace Baby” is a multimedia creative project that includes the creation of a song, a music video, and cover art. The project began with the songwriting process, which became the inspiration for the video concept. The final cover art is based on the themes and aesthetics of the song and video combined. This project’s purpose was to explore the creative process across multiple media forms and how those forms can work to inspire and enhance one another. The first stage of the project was the songwriting and recording stage. The song is a simple love song about feeling insecure in a relationship and is centered on the metaphor of “tripping over loose shoelaces”. The process in this stage included creative idea exchange, songwriting, music production, and research in different methods of song creation. This portion of the project was then used to inspire the second stage, which was the music video. The music video is about a young boy’s first major crush and follows him on his journey to tell her how he feels, which ultimately ends poorly for him, but goes to show that love can be a divisive but also binding force. The caveat to this boy’s crush is that it ends up being his babysitter, who is much older than him and therefore does not reciprocate his feeling despite having a meaningful connection of a different nature with him. This portion of the project involved many elements, namely using sound as a source of inspiration for moving visual art, production and design, learning about camera work, directing, scripting, screenplay, acting, editing, and most of all, collaboration. Finally, Once these stages of the project came together, the final stage was to draw on the core ideas of the two to create a piece of cover art that represented the messages from both the song and the music video, cohesively binding the multiple media forms into one final product. This stage involved photography, image editing, and pulling from the two other media forms to create a cohesive representative image The final product is a music video and song that are approximately four minutes long each, and a single cover art image. The main software used for music production was Ableton Live. The camera used was a Sony A6300 and the main video editing software used was Adobe Premiere. Many learning outcomes were reached, including multiple filming and editing techniques, video production and the work that goes into organizing and directing a film project, music production methods such as vocal recording and processing, live instrument recording, song arrangement and the use of a Digital Audio Workstation for production and mixing. An in-depth analysis of the entire process is given in detail in the following pages.
"Loose Lace Baby" music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5uPf7Psht8&feature=youtu.be
"Loose Lace Baby" music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5uPf7Psht8&feature=youtu.be
ContributorsMazaheri, Thaddeus Mohammed (Author) / Kaplan, Robert (Thesis director) / Ganssle, Gene (Committee member) / Caves, Larry (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
Binaural beat therapy is one acoustics technique used in music; a technique utilized in the music most people listen to when they have trouble sleeping or concentrating. The binaural beats technique, along with other therapeutic methods in music, have always fascinated me. This topic is something that I’ve wanted to research for some time. So for this creative project I want to challenge myself. I am going to learn how to produce music intended for musical therapy. I’ll be implementing methods based on my research. I hope to produce a piece of music that can help others. My goal is to create a song that has the potential to be added to the vast online library of therapeutic music.
ContributorsRaymond, Connor Nelson (Author) / Gray, Nancy (Thesis director) / Lee, Christopher (Committee member) / Department of Marketing (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
In its totality, “Love and Everything After” consists of five tracks. In musical circles, this is considered an EP (extended play), a collection of music longer than one song but generally more brief than a full album. Each track combines varying degrees of my own acoustic and piano instrumentation with modern production elements, all tied together with a corrected vocal and a quick mix and master by my producer who doubles as my sound engineer for this project. I will outline my experience with the creative process here as well as break down the development of each song. A fair bit of the lyrical composition is dedicated to background information that may seem to verge on oversharing, but alas, I am a writer. I consider verging on oversharing an inevitable cog in any successful songwriting operation. I’ve decided to tackle the songs in chronological order, prioritizing the time during which the bulk of the piece was first assembled.
ContributorsNelson, Christopher Michael (Author) / Wells, Cornelia (Thesis director) / Swoboda, Deanna (Committee member) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Hugh Downs School of Human Communication (Contributor) / Department of Marketing (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
From different backgrounds and different genres, three young female artists work toward a life in music. They struggle to find relevance in the age of social media, and face a challenging balance between authenticity and trying to make names for themselves. Here is a visual representation of their lives and stories.
ContributorsMurphy, Alisa Orrantia (Author) / Lancial, Alex (Thesis director) / Sullivan, Jill (Committee member) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Comm (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
The goal of this product was to create a highly customizable application in which any individual, musician or not, can create a harmony for the user’s melody. This Automating Music Composer is built on the underlying rules of music composition, rules that are unique for each type of music available. This program is built on rules that are similar to how a Finite State Machine works (Fig 1). Each state represents a different chord in a given key, where the first roman numeral represents the first note in the chord progression. Each transition represents the action that can be taken by the chord progression, or the next note that can be reached by the current note. The user is able to manipulate these rules and styles, adjust different musical parameters to their liking, and is able to input their own melody, which then will output a unique harmony. This product aims to bridge the gap between predictive technologies and musical composition. Allowing the user to be more involved in the composition process helps the program to act as a tool for the user, rather than a separate entity that simply gives the user a completed recording. This allows the user to appreciate and understand what they are helping to produce more than they would if they were to simply be an inactive consumer of a random music composer. This product is meant to feel like an extension of the user, rather than a separate tool.
ContributorsKumar, Dhantin (Co-author) / Lopez, Christian (Co-author) / Nakamura, Mutsumi (Thesis director) / Blount, Andrew (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
Personal branding within the music industry has long fallen under the supervision of profit-centric major record labels, whose control extended throughout artist’s music, copyrights, merchandising, and fair-use compensation. This paper explores how artists’ branding has evolved within the recording industry alongside the development of emerging technologies and the discovery of certain patterns in consumer behavior. Starting with an overarching exploration of the origins of commercialized music, this paper iterates how certain record labels ascended the corporate hierarchy to influence consumers’ accessible listening options. This understanding leads to an analysis of the inception of illegal file-sharing websites as an outlet for music distribution, as well as its long-lasting effects on industry distribution tactics and music streaming platforms. This paper then narrows to the origins of the rap industry, delving into the traditionally-rooted experiential celebrations that birthed such an impactful genre. Following an understanding of the history of the recording and rap industries, this paper identifies the modern music listener’s behaviors and choices, supplemented by an examination of how consumer social technologies have motivated these changes. To best understand the role of these evolving perceptions, this paper evaluates four successful rap artists - Chance the Rapper, Tekashi 6ix9ine, Lil Nas X, and Travis Scott - and determines the strategies employed by these individuals and their branding teams. Finally, in determining these strategies, this paper outlines the essential takeaways from this research that would aid in the advancement of an artist’s personal branding today.
ContributorsBoyle, Jared Devin (Co-author) / Schneider, Garrett (Co-author) / Giles, Charles (Thesis director) / Lisjak, Monika (Committee member) / School of Music (Contributor) / Department of Marketing (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-12
Description
Composed by Adele Etheridge Woodson in 2018, Thrive is an original composition for live euphonium and prepared electronic backing track; it was commissioned by David Gonzalez and premiered at the International Women’s Brass Conference at Arizona State University. The musical piece incorporates multiple audio bytes from personal interviews and videos found online, including words said by pop figure icons, Congressmen, and President Donald J. Trump. The goal of Thrive is to creatively highlight the fight for gender equality among a male-dominant, misogynist society. It also serves as a fresh piece of repertoire for the euphonium, which often lacks original compositions by living composers. This paper will discuss Etheridge Woodson’s creative writing process, creation of the backing track, its world premiere, audience reaction, and a personal reflection.
ContributorsEtheridge Woodson, Adele (Author) / Swoboda, Deanna (Thesis director) / Roumain, Daniel Bernard (Committee member) / School of Film, Dance and Theatre (Contributor) / School of Music (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-12