Here is one of the most innovative and creative works of music I’ve heard in a long long time; ‘The Happiness Project’ by Charles Spearin (Do Make Say Think/Broken Social Scene). Mr. Spearin has taken recordings of his neighbors speaking on the subject of personal happiness and composed music to coincide with the speech. The compositions are designed to accent and pull out the often times unheard melodic tonalities that occur in everyday speech. He takes these melodies and extracts them from the dialogue and creates amazing, ingenious songs out of them. His experiment, if you ask me, was very successful. I’ve put two tracks below for you to sample. The first, Mrs. Morris, sets the stage for what he is trying to accomplish. It is a minimal piece with just the dialogue and a saxophone to match the tones. The second, Vittoria, is a much larger song which takes the stumbling cadence of a child and turns it into a big band romp. This album is definitely worth purchasing.

The Happiness Project – Mrs. Morris

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The Happiness Project – Vittoria

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