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Who is Jack Stauber?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUAVzOeejhg

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No really, Who is Jack Stauber?

Jack Stauber is a 23 year old dude from Pennsylvania. He is known for his “Avant-pop” music and unconventional music videos. He majored in marketing and has a minor in Art (Newsphoto). Not much else is credibly known about him. 

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On the Music

Themes

o   Stauber’s work tackles themes from childhood and growing up, to mental illness, to how odd every day really can be. He can take a shopping trip and turn it into an epiphany about making decisions and overthinking. It’s often hard to decipher the themes from just hearing the lyrics because the way he sings is unique.

Lyrics

o   Stauber is quite infamous among his fans for having an unintelligible singing voice. On top of that when you do look up the lyrics, they don’t make any more sense. When asked about how his lyrics seem nonsensical, Stauber replied “I get playful with the words but they’re always chosen very carefully. They all make perfect sense. I wouldn’t sing something if it didn’t.” (Zistler)

Creation (sounds)

To spice up his music, Stauber gets resourceful with his sounds. Though he uses many synthesizers and other instruments, he’s admitted to using even an empty water bottle and incorporating it into his work. Now, using non-instruments isn’t out of the ordinary in music. In the pivotal Beach Boys’ Album Pet Sounds, the band members would use things like juice jugs and coke cans to contribute to their songs (Runtagh). Stauber and Beach boys share something in common in this endeavor, and that would be experimentalism.

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His Aesthetic

Stauber creates all his videos himself using multiple mediums such as: computer generated animation, MS paint, claymation, and others I’m sure. Stauber loves animation and puts his art minor to work. Once his work is put together, he runs it through a VHS tape to make it look as such. This gives his videos an eerie, nostalgic air about them. The synthesizer notes, as well as the various techniques he has to get different sounds only add to the unique vintage tone. All this nostalgic, typically childish expressive work create his overall nostalgic image.

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On Experimentalism

Musical Experimentalism tends to have no set definition, as that’s the point. Often experimentalism is more about the process than the actual outcome. Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond states that “Experimental composers have evolved a vast number of processes to bring about ‘acts the outcome of which are unknown’ (Cage). The extent to which they are unknown (and to whom) is variable and depends on the specific process in question.” (Lockwood) Sure, many genre’s and artists have a process to create music, but in the case of experimentalists they are not quite sure what they are going to make, just how they will do it.

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What is “Avant-Pop”?

Avant-garde and experimental music used to be interchangeable in terminology (Piekut). Now, there is a larger degree of separation. Though they are different, they still connect on the ground of evading typical genre classification (which becomes a genre in and of itself.) They can differ in ways such as technique and composition (Lockwood). As for pop, pop music can just be classified as anything popular. Most genre classification is quite vague (Scaringella). It could be said that many pop songs fit that category because they follow specific formulas and specific chords. So, it’s possible to pull inspiration from those pop processes and use the influence in music that is not “pop”. Though Stauber’s music is commonly generalized as “experimental,” it also holds pop elements. Because of a past bitterness toward pop, he began playing around with the pop “sound” so to say and became more partial towards it. Now his work is more a focused pop sound with a twist. This goes to show how unique Stauber’s work really is, as this term is only used for him

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Why is Experimentation Important?

Discoveries cannot be uncovered without experimenting and finding what works. The fact that experimental music relies more on the process than the product is why this kind of music can be hit or miss. So, music that is thought to be “experimental” is usually underground. Experimental music is underrated, but it’s not the kind of music made for fame or fortune. Experimentalism exists to further music as a whole and that is why it’s so important. We owe more than we think to people who bang on a keyboard and upload it to soundcloud. Stauber started out just making grungy, obscure animations on his own time. He combined this with equally obscure music and carved in his own niche that is sure to inspire for years to come. You can never know what the next big hit will be, so the only option is to try everything and find it. Experimentalism walks so modern music can run.

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Works cited

Harper, Adam. “What Does ‘Experimental Music’ Even Mean Anymore?” The FADER, The FADER, 25 Apr. 2018, www.thefader.com/2015/05/08/system-focus-experimental-music.

Lockwood, Larry, and Michael Nyman. “Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond.” Notes, vol. 32, no. 1, 1975, p. 57., doi:10.2307/896320.

Newsphoto, Pitt. “Jack Stauber gets weird” Youtube, Promotion for his album Pop Food by Jack Stauber, 13th Apr. 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJFvq_zn3vs

N. Scaringella, G. Zoia and D. Mlynek, "Automatic genre classification of music content: a survey," in IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 133-141, March 2006.

Piekut, Benjamin, George E. Lewis, and Jeffrey Skoller. "Experimentalism." Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. : Oxford University Press, , 2014. Oxford Reference. Date Accessed 22 Feb. 2020 <https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199747108.001.0001/acref-9780199747108-e-282>.

Runtagh, Jordan. “Beach Boys' 'Pet Sounds': 15 Things You Didn't Know.” Rolling Stone, 22 Sept. 2019, www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/beach-boys-pet-sounds-15-things-you-didnt-know-186297/.

Zistler, Andrew. “An Interview With Jack Stauber NewRetroWave - Stay Retro!: Live The 80's Dream!” NewRetroWave, 20 July 2018, newretrowave.com/2018/07/20/an-interview-with-jack-stauber/.