issue 13 // volume 43 A note on history: Real music, animated artists > The history of virtual bands Caroline Ho Arts Editor A lot of music listeners probably don’t ave much direct interaction with their favourite artists and musicians. Aside from seeing them in concert when they come to town, and maybe a meet and greet if you're lucky, we hear and see artists through music videos and taped concerts. But what if the real musicians don’t actually exist? That’s the idea behind virtual or cartoon bands, made up of fictional members who are animated characters. Although there are of course some humans producing the sounds on some level, the music is marketed and sometimes even “performed” as if entirely created by the virtual artists. The first group that can be considered a virtual band is Alvin and the Chipmunks, created by Ross Bagdasarian Sr., who used the stage name David Seville. In the holiday season of 1958, he released the wildly popular “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late),” featuring Seville and his three fictional rodent companions: Alvin, Simon, and Theodore. Bagdasarian sped up recordings of his own voice to create the distinctive high-pitched voices of the chipmunks. After the success of “The Chipmunk Song,” which won Bagdasarian two Grammy Awards, Alvin and the Chipmunks released several more singles and albums, began appearing in comic books in 1959, and had their first animated TV show, The Alvin Show, in 1961. More virtual musicians from TV cartoons followed in the next few decades. The Archies, made up of the main characters from the Archie comics universe, debuted in 1968 with The Archie Show. The music was made by real-life studio musicians, but “performed” by Archie, Reggie, Jughead, Veronica, and Betty. Their song “Sugar, Sugar” became the Billboard Hot 100 top track of 1969. After the Archies, other TV shows that featured fictional bands started popping up, like Josie and the Pussycats (1970-71) and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids (1973) from animation studio Hanna-Barbera Productions (the studio behind cartoons like The Flintstones and Scooby-Doo). None of these cartoons quite reached the popularity of the Archies, but shows following the adventures of fictional musicians still appear—like Adult Swim show Metalocalypse (2006-13), featuring metal group Dethklok. Dethklok has released four studio albums, and the real musicians behind the songs have also gone on tour. But probably the most obvious and successful virtual band is one that wasn't created for a TV show. Gorillaz were formed in the late ’go0s by British musician Damon Albarn and comic book artist Jamie Hewlett. According to an interview with Wired Magazine, the duo created the band as a comment on the emptiness that they saw on MTV. (There’s also a very detailed backstory on the band’s four virtual members 2-D, Murdoc, Russel, and Noodle.) Since 2001, Gorillaz have been producing alt-rock hits like “Clint Eastwood” and “Feel Good Inc.,” with music made by Albarn and many guest musicians. They've gone on plenty of tours and put on concerts, some of which have live musicians playing in front of projector screens showing graphics created by Hewlett, and some of which show the band members as holographic projections. Gorillaz also hold the Guinness World Record for Most Successful Virtual Band. And sometimes there aren't even real musicians directly behind virtual artists. That’s the case for Hatsune Miku, a mascot for the Japanese Vocaloid software. Vocaloid is a kind of singing voice Original compositions featured. in upcoming concert > Student Composition Concert preview Caroline Ho Arts Editor Gincen's are getting ready to present their newly-written musical works at the Douglas College Student Composition Concert taking place on Friday, December 2. The free concert, which is put on by the Music Department at the end of every semester, features original works composed and performed by students taking Introduction to Composition I, as well as private students taught by Doug Smith, head of the composition program at Douglas College. The pieces written over the semester span a wide range of genres: classical, avant-garde, jazz, popular, and more. “It is an extremely eclectic selection of music,” said Smith. There are few restrictions on the types of music composed, and he encourages students to explore stylistic boundaries with their compositions. The pieces are written for—and will be performed by—a variety of instruments, including piano, guitar and other strings; many different percussion instruments; horns, woodwinds, brass; and a couple of larger ensembles with g or 10 players. For the most part, these works have never before been performed outside of classrooms and practices, and the concert will be their premiere to a public audience. It has also been some of the students’ very first experience composing original work. Smith believes that having students write and perform their own pieces is an excellent learning opportunity. He also has an assignment where students are required to write a piece of music to be played by someone else, which teaches them how to communicate their musical ideas to another person through paper. He hopes that learning to compose augments the students’ appreciation of the art by discovering how a musical work is created and assembled. “It’s one thing to look at it and watch it and appreciate it, another thing to actually put it together, whether it’s [to] write a piece of music or build a piece of furniture,” he said. Some people benefit more from the technical aspects of composition, others see it more as a poetic way to explore ideas—there are many different insights to be gained. Smith said that writing a piece of music for a class isn’t hugely different from composing on your own, although it does impose requirements and deadlines, which can be very helpful for the more pedagogical side of development. It also lends a level of structure that students often find beneficial. “Music is an art, but it’s also a craft,” said Smith, and like any craft, it requires practice and discipline. Of course, this is froma professional perspective, and many of the students who have gone through the composition program have gone arts // no. 7 Image via mrblahg.com synthesizer where a user inputs lyrics and a melody, and pre-recorded vocals are used to “sing” the music—basically, you put in a song, and Miku sings it. First released with the Vocaloid 2 software in 2007, she has since been featured in her own anime and manga, video games, and has done numerous “live” concerts around the world as a singing, dancing projection, drawing massive crowds. Miku has tens if not hundreds of thousands of user-created songs to her name, and she was even an opening act for Lady Gaga’s ArtRave tour in 2014. Virtual bands are the curious confluence of virtual reality and celebrity culture. Maybe next we can just be virtual listeners, too. Image via Thinkstock on to become professional musicians. But for an amateur musician who wants to write music, Smith said, the only important thing is to enjoy doing it. The Student Composition Concert will take place at 7:30 p.m. on December 2 in the Laura C. Muir Performing Arts Theatre. Admission is free and it is open the public, so everyone is welcome to attend with an open mind, open ears, and an open heart.