Meta-Critique - "I will survive"

I think I could get very nit-picky and critique a lot in this section. However, I do not believe that was the purpose of an eclectic analysis - to follow philosopher's guidelines to the T. I do believe this served to open our minds to a variety of different ways of approaching an analysis of a piece of art, both in different viewpoints and theories, and through themes as well. Therefore, I will spend a short time on each section, explaining my thoughts on my work.

Perhaps the largest critique I could make would be of my attachment to the Grateful Dead. I picked this piece because I have a pre-disposition towards the band and their music. This bias is difficult to remove, as Heidegger and Husserl have discovered. Therefore, I think separation from biases is ideal and not actually possible. Yet mine still is quite strong.

Open Listening - perhaps my best section. Although I had heard the song many times before, I had never listened for the purpose of listening and through watching the video was able to pull out new things in the song and through this first exposure to the video. I feel I was able to separate this piece and refrain from a comparative analysis.

Historical Context - I feel as if there is too much historical context to cover regarding the 1960's-1990's, so I stuck with the history of the band. I think I covered thoroughly enough for these purposes.

Syntax - This is where I feel the most lacking. I do not have the ear or the mind or language to describe with accurate musical syntax what I am hearing. I can tell you an overall pattern and things that stand out.

Sound-in-Time/Phenomenology - It was difficult at first to separate out virtual feeling and phenomenology. The lyrics also kept finding their way into my phenomenology and virtual feelings. I feel I could have been more metaphorical.
It was hard to find a lot of information regarding specific recording styles of the video. I was not able to get "The Making of The Grateful Dead's Touch of Grey Music Video and more!" which I think would have given me plenty of insight into the recording style and process of making the video. It might have helped with syntax as well. Oh well, "I will survive."

Virtual Feeling - I feel I was not as detached from my feelings of the piece to the feelings the sounds were representing. This is perhaps my greatest area of realistic improvement. Also my attachment to the piece has infiltrated once again. I am not quite certain if I was dominating the music and using it for my release, because I was not necessarily feeling particularly "jolly" while I was listening to it, it is what the music sounds like to me, but some happiness is inherent.

Textual Representation - I think this was another way of looking at how the lyrics influenced virtual feeling.

Onto-historical and Open Listening II went just fine.


All in all I enjoyed writing this in a blog. It made it available for other people to see, and it was less daunting and less formal than a print, staple, turn in paper, which could be a negative issue.
As I had mentioned previously, I am removed from the video. The Grateful Dead were very much "in the moment" as seen through their improvisation and adverse feelings towards recording studios, which is probably why this was their only music video. The medium of video further removes me from the experience. Yet so does 21 years.

I hope this was insightful,
signing off,
Lisha