Rebecca Black ‘Friday’ For Orchestra by Walt Ribeiro
“Fun Fun Fun Fun”
Regardless of what people say about this track, I actually love it, and so its the one I wanted to arrange this week.
It’s on par with Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Why? Well, I constantly say that music isn’t about eighth notes and harmonic minor scales. It’s purpose is to create emotion. It doesn’t matter what that emotion is – it could be happy, sad, fear, uncertainty, anger, calmness, or in this case – hilariousness.
To me, it’s a successful piece of music because it got people talking, it got people emotional. Even Simon Cowell would agree. Released on February 11, 2011 by Ark Music Factory, the song sat dormant for a month until The Daily What and then Tosh.O wrote up about it on March 14, 2011, and gave it life upon the internet.
The piece is incredibly happy in it’s emotion, and I wanted to capture that with the violins, so I had them play triumphantly in the beginning and in the ending. The most difficult to arrange was the rap by Pato Patrice Wilson. I had this same problem with my Rage Against The Machine piece because unpitched vocals commonly seen in rap is incredibly difficult to arrange for pitched instruments, but I’m thrilled with how the rap was performed by the xylophone.
I love the honestly of this piece, and really wanted to transcend the feeling of “fun fun fun fun”. For all the people who are hating on Rebecca, I say learn to love them, and besides, lovers whisper
If there is anything, ANYTHING, that can make Rebecca Black’s Friday sound like a masterpiece….it’s this. I kid you not.
my jam.
