Music and Me

    Hey guys! My name is Noah Lipari, and I am a Sophomore Deaf Ed major with a minor in music. I have been singing for as long as I can remember, and I plan to keep singing as long as I can even if it isn’t my career.

    My dad was in the Army for 21 years, so I have lived in a wide variety of places. I was born in Germany and have lived in Alabama, Virginia, Florida, Washington, and North Carolina, but for the past 7 years, I have called Summerville, South Carolina home.

1. Current Musical Interest

     The King's Singers - As a primarily choral singer, I have always had a soft spot for acapella music in both the modern, pentatonix style and the more traditional, harmonically-based style. One of my favorite groups for the latter kind is the King's Singers. Somewhat recently (this past summer), they released an album that has been my go to spotify pick whenever I want to get lost in some harmonic music or I need to put something on that will be interesting but won't distract me from doing work. The whole album is great, but for this post, I have only included two of my favorite songs: "Rainbow" and "The Rose." If I don't have time to put on the whole album, I will usually play one of these two songs.

 

2. Music That is Important to Me:

      How to Train Your Dragon Movie Soundtrack - One of my favorite movie series of all time is the How to Train Your Dragon series because I grew up with the series and because of the soundtrack. Whenever I need something to listen to with no words at all in order to focus, I put on this soundtrack and it brings me back to some of my favorite movies growing up.

     Sea Shanties - When I was in high school, my brother and I would always ride to school together, listening to his Spotify playlist on the way, and a large portion of that playlist was made up of sea shanties. To this day I still listen to that playlist (though it has been updated over time) to stay connected to my brother, and listening to sea shanties will always take me back to those car rides to and from school. These particular recordings came from a community song project put together by one of the specific groups we would listen to. The first project, like many virtual song projects, began during COVID, but it has been continued to this day.

 3. Music I Don't Really Care For

    Metal - I have never really cared for metal music. Don't get me wrong, I understand the appeal of apologetically loud music, the melodies are usually enjoyable, and the lyrics are often very poetic (a particularly important criterion for me). I could just never bring myself to enjoy it out of a fear of vocal strain for the singers and because I don't really care for overly loud music. This particular band is one I have been recommended many times by a friend, but I could never really get behind it.

 4. Other Miscellaneous Interests - Joke Songs

    One of my favorite kinds of song is when the song was either made entirely from a joke premise or it actively parodies the genre of music it is. Here are just a few examples of some songs like this.

    Flight of the Conchords, "Robots"  - This song falls into the first category as a song based entirely around the joke premise of what people in the 90s might have thought a robotic takeover might have looked like. When listening to this song, keep in mind that this song actually came out in the mid-2000s.

    Rob Cantor, "Shia LaBeouf" - Born from a random joke between a couple of musician friends, this song tells the over-dramatic tale of someone's fight with Hollywood superstar Shia LaBeouf. While initially just a quick joke, this song and its music video quickly turned into a massive production through a series of "I know a guy" moments which escalated this small joke into a massive ordeal that somehow managed to catch the attention of Shia LaBeouf himself.

     The Longest Johns, "Beyond the Light" - This song, and the album it comes from, fall into the latter category of joke songs which actively the parody the genre they fit into. This song in particular parodies a stereotypical Scottish war song, including bagpipes, while actually talking about a more mundane, yet equally tense, struggle.