Talk Description to Me

Episode 34 - TikTok Sea Shanties

January 26, 2021 Christine Malec and JJ Hunt Season 2 Episode 34
Talk Description to Me
Episode 34 - TikTok Sea Shanties
Show Notes Transcript

If you heard a gleeful squeal of delight echoing through the halls of podcastdom last week, it might well have been Christine discovering the latest TikTok sensation: Sea Shanties! With JJ describing and Christine singing, it's all hands on deck for this wee musical bonus episode.

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Christine Malec:

This is Talk description to Me with Christine Malec and JJ Hunt. In this fun bonus episode we get to talk about one of my very favorite subjects sea shanties. And although we don't get to hear JJ's excellent impression of a Newfoundland accent, we still promise great fun. I kept coming across references to the tick tock sea shanty phenomenon, and I was determined I was not going to get in. I'm not a tick tock user. I'm not interested in learning a new interface for something I'm not going to use. I don't care that I love sea shanties. I was not going to get sucked in. But then JJ sent me a link to YouTube compilation, he said, Oh, I think you might like this. And I don't even think JJ knew how much I love sea shanties already. He just knew I would like it. So I said, All right. All right. And I opened it up, and it was pure joy. Absolute pure joy. And so I'll give a little bit of background a sea shanty is basically a work song. So it's a very rhythmic, usually acapella song that is sung to accompany tedious or tiresome work. So a sea shanty is a particular kind of work song that sailors would sing back when you would do things on boats like he ropes and those are called lines by the way, and and do do things on a boat that were tiresome. And so sea shanties have a long history and I have personally I have a long history of singing them because I think they're great. They're typically a pretty a pretty masculine form of music. mostly men singing them, it's a lovely expression of men doing work cooperatively together. And so what started happening on tik tok, if I understand it correctly, was someone would sing a sea shanty and post it and then someone else would take that and layer on top, and then someone else would take that and layer on top of that. And sea shanties are when they're well done. They're typically done with lots of layers of harmony. So there's, there's lots of musical groups who that's their focus, they do see shanties and they're phenomenal if you if you like that sort of thing, which I do. So I was filled with pure joy when I was listening to this and, but at the same time, I said, Okay, tick tock is a visual medium, I get that. So I was curious about the visuals. And so, JJ and I decided, Okay, well, it was mostly me doing super high pressure saying, could we please cover this because we got to talk about something good. Can you know, say, Can we just talk about the visual? So we're just releasing this little bonus episode to, to describe the visuals of what's going on on Tick Tock with us. So take it away, JJ. Yeah.

JJ Hunt:

So I am very much like you I'm not on Tick Tock. And I have been avoiding another platform, same same. So I've been watching this phenomenon on YouTube. So all of these descriptions are based on that YouTube compilations, and there's lots and lots on there. There wasn't a shortage of material. So my understanding is the first person who records this, these a song puts it out. And sometimes they actually write the lyrics, you can put typed out messages onto a tick tock video. And so for songs, people will write out the lyrics. And then I think you invite others to, you know, perform a duet with you. And for these sea shanties a lot. Some people have not only written out the lyrics, but they'll color coded. So there's like my part, your part and the part we sing together, so that if you are not familiar with the song, you can sing along, and you know how to jump in and where to jump in. And the way it seems to work is the first person records their video, and then another person layers on top of it, and then that becomes a new video. And then someone else can do a duet with that video, and then someone else can do a duet with that video. And visually, the way that looks is you have a cas ade of rectangular vertic l videos that recede into the di tance to the far right. So the newest videos are in the front eft, and the older videos are to the back. Right. And that's how visually that plays out. T e most popular one, the most p pular sea shanty seems to be sta ted by a tick tock user named athan Evanss. And he's a Scot. e's a thin white guy. His videos are in black and white. He ten s to wear a hoodie and a wool h t. And he pounds his fist on the back of a guitar, that's how he performs. And then others layer n top of that. The most notabl singers that I've seen over a d over and over again, There' a guy who calls himself Luke t e Voice. He's a squeaky clean, pretty young white guy who we rs flannel shirts and a baseba l cap and he has a very, very d ep voice. Then there's anothe guy named Johnny Stewar. This is a bearded redhea ed man like right out of sea sh nty central casting. Someti es he wears a blue robe, but mo tly he wears a cable knit sweate. And then someone came in to o a remix, this really fantas ic almost like pop dance remix ith a pounding baseline. And fo his or her visuals, what they d d was they put up a video of the r mixing software. So you can se all of the separated tracks and the faders and the auto a justing levels. And that's how they added their visual to this. So you can hear one pe son on top of another on top of another as they layer their ideos and you can see this s me phenomenon with all of these ideos all layered one on top of the other on top of the other.

Christine Malec:

Thank you for indulging me

JJ Hunt:

My absolute pleasure!