Music Libraries

Chapter 14 in the future of the music business

This chapter is quite dry because it is yet another interview. While I think it’s interesting, it really should be a supplemental to the book not in it… if I wanted to read the interview, I’d go find it. Anyway, this interview is with John Buckman who created his own record company. What’s new about his record label is that “it offers free mp3s streams, all the of the music don’t have DRM or copy protection, and Creative commons are part of its business model” (265). Another thing that is interesting about this company is that the revenue from cds is split with artists/musicians fifty-fifty (270)

Chapter 15

This chapter discusses creative commons, what is, and what it does. According to Gordons, Creative commons “seeks to foster a more permissive atmosphere in which creators will not be afraid of being sued each time they use portions of existing work to create something new and original” (272). In my mind, the most one that I can think that gets used a lot is the license that says “the creator can also choose a license that permits only noncommercial use, thus retaining financial control over their work” (272). This license is like to get used by those performing or auditioning for things. Also in this chapter is an interview with Thomas Goetz who writes for Wired about Creative Commons in the real world, as well as how creative commons is used a business model (to get promote different artists on one cd)

Chapter 16

Yet again, Gordons has two interviews as part of the chapter. It’s getting really old and very very uninteresting. Both of these interviews are with CEOs of internet record stores (CD Baby and Beyond.fm). It’s a little interesting to read about these websites beginnings but since I have no interest in using either one, it’s rather dull and not really all that fun to read.

10 sites of your choice from the Harvard College Library Online Resources for Music Scholars

1: NYPL Digital Gallery

Really well done site. Colors are easy to read. Search functions well and how to browse is simple yet effective! This site not only has music but images as well. One thing I didn't like, with the images is that to get the details about the image you had to click a + to get it. It really should up and a user shouldn't have to click anything. Another thing that was hard on this site was to actually found their digital music. It seems that this site is more about the images than music. To find it you had to go to the different library divisons and click on the Music Division.

2: The Center for Popular Music

Good design and colors. Searching and browsing their collection is really easy. However you can't really see or listen to anything as it's all through MTSU so that was rather frustrating. Would be nice if I could see things

3: The Archive of Popular American Music

Their browsing is fine but the type is super small.  Would make that bigger... You can't hear any of the music but you can see the titles of the sheet music which is neat. Most of the music is from the early part of the 20th century. What is neat about this website is that you can put in your own scans of the music and make your own virtual collection.

4: Digital Scores and Libretti

Since I like to browse new cites by their index, this site has an index by title which is extremely nice! Its very easy to read and the search function works well. One issue that while you can see the digital collections, it takes forever to load them...I don't know if its because I'm not part of Harvard but none of the digital scores ever loaded which was frustrating.

5: The George Balanchine Catalogue

As someone who loves Balanchine ballets, I was super excited to see and review this site. Not a fan of the color scheme but at least its not black and white. This site includes Balanchine's life, bibliography, videography, and filmography. What's to bad about this site is that there are no photographs, no videos, no sound recordings. Just a catalogue of his works.

 

6: The Internet Archive

I heart this site so much. I've really only used it to look up past web pages but now that I know that it does media, I'll be using it even more.  Searching for anything is super easy and love the layout

7: Library of Congress's "It's Showtime! Sheet Music from Stage and Screen

I love that you can search by Composers, lyricists, names, and shows. Such an easy way to do things! Plus it's Library of Congress, so I know it's going to be a good and trusted site. If you need to see sheet music or scores, this is probably the site to do it (for free). The shows in there are older shows however. It only gives that the LoC has them. 

8: The Leonard Bernstein collection, ca. 1920-1989

One of the most well known composers and conductors of all time, this collection, done again, by the Library of Congress, is a landfill of material. It includes material about the man as well as photographs.

9: The Metropolitan Opera Archives

Having become reccently more interested in opera, this site is a good one for finding information about different operas. Not a big fan of the opening graphic but hey that's their choice. Lots of different search functions, I chose to browse. Quite easy and ordered alphabetical. One cool think about the Met is you can listen to whole operas on their site through their "Met Player" or on satellite radio if you have it.

10: The Aaron Copland Collection

Like the Bernstein collection above, this Library of Congress collection has letters, photographs (which you can view) and information on all the music that Aaron Copland composed. Very helpful to research.

Review of http://evolver.fm/

 I cannot get past bad website deisgn! Black/gray background with white letter is a web design no no! Just don't do it! This site seems to be geared toward people with smart phones (which I am not one of). So it's very uninteresting to me.

Does radio really have as much influence

I'm watching TV today and also because it's St. Paddy's day, Celtic Thunder and Celtic Women are huge groups (though in the grand scheme of things, a lot of people still haven't heard of these fantastic groups) and have never had any of their songs played on radio! They do tour (I'm hoping to go see Celtic Thunder this fall!) but most of their promotion comes through PBS... Just a thought about how much radio really has nowadays.

Another artist that has success despite not being played on mainstream radio. Yes he's played on adult contemporary but not as many  people listen to it. That artist is Josh Groban... A lot of his big success early was by word of mouth and the internet.

So it makes me wonder how much influence does radio really have and if Billboard shouldn't change their "radio plays" list.

Music Improv

My musical life has been, at times, at odds with each other. When I was younger, music was serious training and no improvising allowed. Classical and traditional Lutheran music doesn't allow for it. When I switched to flute in middle school, I did Jazz band for a semester and while I love listening to Jazz music, not a huge fan of playing it. Its hard to play jazz on the flute. Classical music was all I played in my flute lessons and frankly, it's kind of why I didn't seriously peruse it in college (in terms of joining an ensemble). Don't get me wrong, I love classical music (The "Troika" movement from Lieutenant Kijé is one of my favorite classical pieces) but I had enough of playing it, at least for a while. So when I went to college, I did want to sing (I had been singing all my life) but I wanted something nonclassical, or at least less classical.  The group I sang with definitely did some classical stuff, but we also did other stuff too. When I started voice lessons, because I already had the classical background (which, don't let anybody tell you differently, classical music influences EVERYTHING.), my teacher didn't feel the need to sing that stuff, not to mention he was more a non-traditional voice coach. So what did we work on? Pop songs and musical theatre. I fit so much better into the musical theatre realm. While there isn't as much improv in musical theatre (depending on the show), it's a lot more "free" than classical music.

What's funny is that as a swing dancer, everything is improv. Yes the moves are learned, but what order they're done in and how they're done is up the lead. Yet, I don't mind it... Maybe it's because I'm a follow, but I don't have really any issues with it as a dancer (same with Social ballroom). One improve thing that I love watching is Improv on Ice.

Chapters 11, 12, 13 (part III) in the future of music business
11This chapter looks at how to build a website to show off your music and why its important. I think this chapter should be read by everybody, not just musicians. There are sooo many crappy websites sites out there. Gordon gives examples of "doing it yourself' (213) and while he explains HTML, there are huge range of programs that do the HTML for you (I use and love Dreamweaver!).
Another thing Gordon talks about is using the internet to promote live performance (215) and even that today is out of date. A lot of small artists now give concerts live on the internet. Harley Jay is one of these. He regularly gives concerts and chats on a service called Ustream.

12This chapter is a bunch of interviews with artists who use the technology. The first one is with Will Calhoun who according to Gordon, is a Grammy winning artist (231). Yet, I've never heard of this guy.... can't think he's that well known then... The other interview is with a Jazz artist, whom I've heard of but I'm not a huge fan of....

Not sure which part of chapter 13 is part three... interesting...

Website review:
Wikipedia - Improvisation
I don't go to Wikipedia.  I think it's a worthless place. There are better sites, more reliable sites. A little surprised as to why this needs to be reviewed. Here is a better site to learn about Jazz improve: http://hum.lss.wisc.edu/jazz/


Live Plasma 
Can't access the site


Musicovery
I discovered this site about a year ago from a friend, and while I like it, it's not as broad as you think it would be. It's very limiting in my mind and MUCH more prefer Pandora.

Music economics

In writing about the patient with amnesia (7 seconds remembrance time!), Sacks writes that “a piece of music will draw one in, teach one about its structure and secrets, whether one is listening consciously or not. Listening to music is not a passive process but intensely active, involving a stream of inferences, hypotheses, expectations, and anticipations” (226). This is so true! Even if you’re not actively listening, anybody who listens to music, even half-heartedly, will be engaged with it.

Sacks also mentions Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in the footnotes which in hindsight, should have been called the Riot of spring because when it was first played, the crowd went nuts, literally and caused a bloody riot. This isn’t the first time that I’ve heard this story. Jad Abumrad & Robert Krulwich talk about it in their podcast: “Musical Language” (From RadioLab). The Rite of Spring is now a famous classical piece and it is hard to imagine why they rioted over it but to the listeners in 1913, it was new, unconventional, and strange.

In Chapter 23 as a footnote, Sacks writes about a woman who sings in “dozens of languages, without knowing the meaning of any of them” (304). This isn’t all that special. I do this as well.  I don’t know them from memory but I do sing in Italian and most of the time, I don’t know what the song means.

Also in Chapter 23, Sacks discusses dreams and music and while I do dream in music, it’s never in fragments like talks about on 306-307. I dream in musicals. Like that I’m in them… 

If you dream in music, do you agree with Massey when writes that “music is the only faculty that is not altered by the dream environment”? (Sacks, 309) At times many of the times I don’t remember my dreams and while I can sing, it seems that I sing much better in my dreams. Or is this just a projection on my part?

Chapters 6-7 are two chapters in the performance manual that focus on the user part of being in a music librarian. In these, distribution, check out, care and keeping audition lists is something a music librarian does. What’s interesting here is that the music library associated with my undergraduate college did not post any audition lists, either for the school or for local events.

Free Press - Who Owns the Media?
http://www.freepress.net/resources/ownership
Interesting website about who owns what media…

downhillbattle.org
http://www.downhillbattle.org/itunes/
Another interesting article about how iTunes is screwing over the artist again

Taxi
http://www.taxi.com/
Being an unsigned artist is extremely hard. This site is a good place to start looking for information

Music XML
http://www.recordare.com/software.html
Good website for comparing all the different types of music software

Week 6 Social aspects of music

Chapter 7 in Musicopilia

The first part of this chapter, Sacks discusses two different people, one who has the heart and desire to play the piano but just doesn’t have the ability and another who has all the ability but just doesn’t have the heart. It reminds me so much of the ending of Center Stage. One of the main characters, Maureen played by Susan May Pratt, who says to her mother when Maureen doesn’t appear in the final performance because she has an eating disorder: “You didn’t have the feet [meaning that her mother didn’t have good feet for ballet], I don’t have the heart”. There are many people who have the ability but not the heart and many people who have the heart but not the ability.

He mentions Joshua Bell!!! (102). See this video:

I disagreed somewhat absolute pitch can be achieved by musical training at an early age (pg 103). I feel that is a small part of it but more importantly it has to do with genetics.

Chapter 11 in Musicopilia

This chapter looks at loss of hearing and how the brain changes to compensate. It was a very short chapter.

Chapter 4 and 5 in music library manual

You know, growing up with all the music in my life, I never realized there was an order to music scores, which is part of this chapter on how to process music library collections.  

Chapter five is interesting because it talks about how different parts are processed. They talk about making sure there are no awkward page turns…. I have never known any library to deal with this, even the university music library. They live the music as and yes, sometimes there are awkward page turns, most musicals memorize those parts so that they can turn the page differently. This chapter also looks at how parts are divided and doubled.

Website reviews

Sociology of Rock Music (Deena Weinstein, DePaul University)
http://condor.depaul.edu/~dweinste/rock/
I love that that they have a Rock vs. Pop section. Sometimes it can be both but many times they are separate! I love their section on Controversial albums. Seems strange today for some of them (http://www.retrocrush.com/archive/controversy/)

Music-Map
http://www.music-map.com/
Ohh this site is cool! Though it doesn’t know some artists (the first search I put in was Harley Jay) but when I put in Josh Gran, it gives you artists of similar genres!

Royalty Calculator
http://www.mosesavalon.com/calculate.shtml
interesting calculator… Since I don’t make records I don’t really need it…