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'Canon' fodder and remix

There are some brilliant examples on the Web illustrating just how important the read/write web is and the culture of remix. Along with these examples are also some really interesting stories. Take for example, the story behind the funtwo "Canon Rock" video on YouTube. This video was put up on YouTube about two years ago and has been viewed over 33 million times. Another version of the same funtwo video has been viewed over 1.7 million times. By any measure that is a staggering number. Canon Rock was a remix of a piece of classical music (Pachelbel's Canon in D major) 'published' by a Tiawanese guitarist (Jerry Chang) several months earlier. Chang (JerryC) took the classical piece of music, made orignally for violins and applied his electric guitar to it. The result was sensational. Inspired by this effort, funtwo recorded his own effort at JerryC's work and an Internet phenomenon was born. Do a search on Google Video or YouTube on 'canon rock' and there will be thousands of results. Have a look at some of these and you can see that a massive number of amateur musicians and learners have been inspired not only just to try and learn this great piece of music, but to publish their efforts. They are remixing, adapting creating, participating, and most importantly, learning. You will find all ages, all abilities and people from widely different backgrounds having a go. Its not just those with electric guitars either - acoustic guitars, keyboards and all manner of 'instruments' are being used. One guy is teaching himself how to play it on his acoustic guitar for his daughter's wedding - he is giving himself plenty of time to master it as she is only three! If, as Garry pleaded in 'We watched TV...they make TV', you viewed the Lawrence Lessig video he refers too, and you take a look at what is going on here you will really start to understand the notion that people are producing/remixing for the love of it and how important it is to our culture. So.... back to all those amateur musicians, and as Lessig very importantly points out, amateur and not amateurish, here is a sample of participation and remix: In how many ways does this relate to learning? For a start, its giving classical music a new life with a new generation. As stated before, it is inspiring others to have a go and learn something new. As a personal learning aid, some of the efforts published on Youtube, particularly from those who are not guitar geniouses and are brave enough to publish themselves, you can really pick up (sorry about the guitar pun) on the techniques that are being applied and demonstrated at a level you can understand. How about participation itself. Those who are are learning all the time and benefiting from it. If you played the funtwo video linked to earlier in this post (and I recommend you do if you appreciate music want to see an amazing performance ) and want to find out more about funtwo see the NY Times article 'Web Guitar Wizard Revealed at Last'.

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