Week 03 [Remix]

"Create a piece of music for Shakespeare's monologue To Be or Not to Be"

Before starting this week's assignment, I spent time reflecting. As someone with a more visual mindset, I often find it challenging to engage with sounds, even though I see it as an essential complement to the visual experience. I brainstormed several ideas and experimented with two different programs.

Ultimately, I decided to create a musical piece inspired by Hamlet's "To be or not to be" monologue from William Shakespeare, and to use "udio". I intentionally refrained from giving the model extensive instructions, as I was curious to see how much it inherently "understood" about this famous monologue and whether I could identify any narrative elements woven into the composition.

I was impressed by the dramatic piece model produced and how it managed and how it managed to build it with a developing structure -  given that the monologue deals with profound and complicated questions.

However, I found myself pondering the results, which, while interesting, didn’t quite feel "accurate" to me. This led me to listen to Patrick Doyle's "To Be or Not To Be" from the 1996 film Hamlet. Listening to his composition made me realize how thoughtfully crafted it was; Doyle's music seemed to wrap around the characters and different story elements, enhancing the text in a way that felt wise and supportive.

The contrast between my version and the film's musical piece raised many questions about the role of music in storytelling—its ability to capture the essence of a narrative and how it can either embody the story itself or serve to support the emotional expression of a given situation.

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