Andrew Goodwin

Theories on Music and Star Image

Who?
Andrew Goodwin is an Australian operatic tenor who plays the violin, piano and organ. He has an extensive knowledge of music theory and has become a practitioner of theories based on demographics and social aspects of music. In his music video theory, Goodwin points out five key aspects that audiences should be aware of:

Thought Beats
Not quite like sound waves

Or being able to see the sound. What is meant by this is that in a music video, you can see the voice that sung the song in the first place, and possibly the band that played depending on the genre of the video. This links heavily into star image, as the association helps to develop visual/aural links and trademarks. The theory here is that when you hear the song, you remember what the artist looked like and are reminded of his/her/their image in the long term.

Narrative and Performance

Goodwin thought that if a song tells us, the audience a story, then it is incomplete and that in order to fully comprehend the narrative, we must read into the music video. At the same time he states that a music video should ignore common narrative in exchange for more unorthodox methods, and that this plays an important role in advertising the video. His theory also dictates that a video should be able to be watched over and over again without the audience losing interest, combining narrative and performance. The artist increases the authenticity of the video if there are elements of both narrative and performance combined, although the lip-sync tends to be the heart of the video.

Star Image

Plays such an important role in music videos, as it is one of the main ways through which the artist's trademark(s) are developed, along with live shows (footage of which is regularly included as the performance element of the video. Trademarks form the image of an artist that audiences will conjure up in their minds upon hearing a song. Some examples of unique trademarks are Michael Jackson's 'Beat It' jacket, Slash's top hat and Alice Cooper's snake eyes.

Relation of Visual Elements

This is simply about how the way videos are filmed and edited and what effect that has on the audience in relation to the meaning of the song. Music videos can be a way of illustrating a song by lyrical interpretation, though often there can be a strong juxtaposition between the nature of a song and the nature of it's accompanying video. Sometimes the video can be completely irrelevant to the song, purely there for entertainment purposes. In the end, it matters little and less how the video is interpreted, only that it is viewed, as it advertises the artist.

Technical Aspects
of a music video include camera shots/angles, mise-en-scene, and editing as these are some of the main signifiers in relation to mood and genre. The things that audiences will notice immediately are set, props and costumes, because of the immediate visual impact. A pop video will feature a scantily clad female in a well lit room with some brightly coloured balloons or something happy and poppy, whereas a metal video would most likely be in a warehouse somewhere, with the band wearing jeans and surrounded by sharp things. Audiences denote and find visual clues in the video subconsciously.