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Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Music cognition


Preface and Chapter one in Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks
So far two pages into this book and I know it is going to be an interesting read. Sacks writes, “music has great power, whether or not we seek it out” (x). As I’m writing and reading, I’m listening to, in my mind, one of the most powerful songs that I’ve ever heard, Josh Groban’s “You Raise Me Up”. I first heard this song in 2003, and for me it was such a powerful song and being the official second song from him, it had a huge impact. Josh would eventually sing the song at the memorial for the Columbia Space shuttle disaster.

Sacks writes in the preface that the arts do not have any adaptive function (x and xi). I think they do. What I mean is that for me personally, I find someone more attractive who can sing and/or dance. Those are big parts of my life and so somebody who can do that is more attractive to me. What do you think? Do you think the arts are just a special offshoot of some other adaptive traits or are they adaptive traits?

Sacks writes about a man, after being struck by lightning starts to hear music (5) and it reminded me of the movie August Rush (if you haven’t seen it, go! It’s an excellent movie) and while August hasn’t been struck by lightning, he does hear music. It makes me wondering how amazing and frustrating that would be.

The rest of the first part of Sack’s book is about the musical ghosts that sometimes haunt people from tunes after seizures to full on musical hallucinations. It was a very interesting chapter. I have to be honest here and say that I’ve had musical hallucinations and up until reading this chapter tonight, I thought I was bonkers. They aren’t very loud and I don’t hear them all the time. It is mostly at night when I hear them and unlike most of the people in Sacks’s chapter, I don’t have hearing loss (to my knowledge).

Chapters 2 and 3 from A Manual for the Performance Library
Chapter two covers where items for the library comes from, do they come from donations, purchases, or other sources?

Chapter three covers cataloging music and how it is different from cataloging books. Having taken cataloging I can tell you that it is both easier and at times more complicated than books because of different performers, producers, etc. One thing in this chapter that I didn’t realize is that in a music library it is important to catalog instrumentation (30)! What a complicated job that seems and this is the one area I feel in a music library that you would truly need to know how to read music.

I am planning on reading This is your brain on music but will be putting it on my Nook as it’s just too hard to read on my laptop

Website Reviews
Interesting site, however, not really much to review except a bunch of questions that are asked in looking at musical cognition

Well laid and easy to navigate site, Just about the program at Ohio State

This first link I clicked on was broken, not a good sign for me. I am not a fan of the red writing; it is too harsh on the eyes. Examines the origins of music and looks to have good information.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Music Librarians


Blog for 220 Music Technology
Thoughts about Ch. 7 from The Future of the Music Business
Gordon writes about using music in the background of a DVD on page 106 and I wonder if the same rules apply to say televised Ballroom competitions (on PBS) (for example see Tony Dolovani and Elena Grineko’s Rumba?

It’s interesting that Gordon talks about ringtones in this book, especially now that if you have iTunes, you can make your own ringtone (p. 106). There are also other programs out there for free that will make your own ringtone… the problem is getting it to your phone. P.S. I hate ring-backs. Most annoying thing ever. Just let me hear the phone ringing! (p. 106)

The rest of the chapter looks at licensing for video games (and their soundtracks), ringtones, and music on websites.

What is interesting to me is that there are lots of websites that have midis playing on them but I highly doubt they got the copyright stuff out of the way… Policing this stuff is just so hard because there are so many people!

Chapter 8
Gordon writes that the case against Grokster was similar to that of a VCR. It is very interesting to me in that the music companies were going after companies, yet the motion picture industry was not going after people recording stuff off the TV on to VHS or nowadays, DVRing programs. (120)

The rest of the chapter includes two interviews about the “crises” that the music industry is in

Introduction and Chapter 1 from A Manual for the performance Library by Russ Girsberger
I found this statement interesting: “Performance librarians are first and foremost musicians” (1). I don’t know if that’s true nowadays and if it needs to be true. I feel that there are probably plenty of people who aren’t musicians (for a multitude of reasons) but could be performance librarians. It problems helps a lot of to know what Girsberger discusses under education but I don’t think it is a catch-all for what is needed.

The rest of this chapter looks at what goes into being a performance librarian. It is interesting to note about that most music librarians should have a much more intimate knowledge of music or be a musician themselves to help with their job.

Website reviews:

Digidesign Protools
Good website, probably won’t ever have a need for their tools but one thing I didn’t like about their website? It has a semi-black background. So incredibly hard to read!

Looks like an excellent program and Adobe does make great stuff

Interesting name for a product but okay… It’s really hard to judge this products by their website without actually using the product…

Says that the file isn’t there plus it’s in German and as much as I would like to, I can’t read it

Immediately I’m completely turned off by the black background, although this one is better than the first one because the text is on a white background. Looks like lots of different programs

Music Notation Software -
Finale
http://www.codamusic.com/
I’ve used this program before and it’s quite fun. Also if you’re a movie, buff, this is what Piper Perabo’s character uses in Coyote Ugly

Audio editing software that I use in the archives is Audacity, which according to their website the program can
·         Record Live Audio
·         Convert Tapes into digital recordings or CDs (which is what I’m doing in the archives, we convert them into .wav)
·         Edit Ogg Vorbis, mp3, wav, or AIFF sound files
·         Cut, Copy, splice, or mix sounds together
·         Change the speed or pitch of a recording             


Wednesday, February 9, 2011

The Digital Age

 
The digital age

I’ll be frank, I’m young. Well not so young. But young enough that I grew up with computers (it also didn’t help that my father has a masters in computer science). I remember being on the computer from about 5th grade and onwards.  I participated in my first online counter-culture when in 1999 and by that time the digital age was just starting out. It’s interesting, I remember when Napster got started but I never used it. Thanks to family members, I used other sites at the time.  I remember burning my first CD around the end of freshman year in high school.  As high school progressed, CDs were burned and ripped so that I could play them in my car stereo. I have never been a big fan of radio, especially around where I live, partly because I feel the music they play sucks and because the radios in my cars have never been the best so the stations are always somewhat fuzzy, even if they’re local. I did get an mp3 player from my brother my sophomore year in high school but it only held 10=15 songs and didn’t work all that well with our computers. 

I finally got my first mp3 player my first year in college. It was an iRiver made by a South Korean company and I loved it. It was 80gigs and I was even able to put a remote (seen here) for it and it was marvelous. In some ways I really miss it. After two years of hard use (thanks to college “sharing” ;)), my iriver finally died (though not for lacking of mechanical surgery on the part of my brother and I, trying to replace the batteries (which helped for a bit) among other things). I broke down and got a 60gig ipod classic. At this point, I had, what I thought, was a lot of music and a 60gig was the best that I could do, with the money I had. I loved being able to have both music and videos on it. I finally started hinting to my parents that I could really use a new iPod for Christmas (of 09). I had a ton of music and so I was very fortunate enough to receive a 160 gig video classic for Christmas of 2009. It’s been awesome and I don’t even have it halfway filled up (though I could if I wanted to). I couldn’t imagine ever going back now.

Professor Simon asked “Are library music collections and technologies keeping up with these changes?” Yes and No, at least my local public library isn’t in terms of mp3s. They still have cds that you can check out.  At my local library you could potentially download a mp3(s) if you had your own laptop and where on the wifi but on their computers I doubt it, though I don’t really know as I’ve never used their computers for internet. The library, though a contract with the state library now has audio books available to download. Some download as .wma’s (For me as an ipod user though, this is annoying as these files don’t play on ipods. So you have to convert them, but there are free and easy conversion programs out there) others download as mp3s. Some you can only play for two weeks, some you can’t burn to CD, and some you can play as much as you want and burn to cds if you wish. So in that sense they are keeping up with technology (this contract also allows you to download ebooks as well).

Thoughts on Gordon
Chapter 5 – Music Videos, Audiovisuals, Concerts, and Documentaries.

Before I comment completely on this chapter, it is interesting to note that while watching videos on the internet has risen, it seems that the viewing of them on TV has fallen. The two main cable channels that show videos (and yes I’m aware that there is MTV2, etc) are MTV and Vh1. Both of these channels have consistently more show programming such as reality shows, than music videos. This is what both networks started out to be.

Gordon makes a comment about how videos are being played more and more on the internet and how companies are requiring those who do to get certain licenses. Well, there are programs out there that will take any video and will edit the audio out of the video for you. This is yet another issue that music companies will have to face with the internet.

The rest of this chapter deals with the issues surrounding concerts and documentaries streamed live on the internet (or even showing them on TV). It is such a complicated process that it is a wonder music videos, concerts and documentaries are even produced!

Chapter 6 – Music Licensing Fundamentals.

This chapter looks at all the different types of licensing that happens with different types of recordings and sounds that happen.  One thing in this chapter that really interested me was that “generally producers are not obligated to clear songs or masters for programs produced on PBS or other public broadcasting stations as defined in the act” (88). This got me wondering: Does this mean anybody who produced a program for PBS can play any song they want? What about programs like “American’s Ballroom Challenge" where the music is played in the background?

Here’s a question: In today’s ballroom competitions, there is music played of course, do these competitions have to get licensing to play the music? Or are they paid for in general stuff like PBS does?

Website Reviews

 This website, specially this article gives a great detailed article on what is an mp3 and where does it fit in with all the other different types of sound files

I don’t buy mp3s all that often (I tend to buy CDS) and if I do it is from Amazon. Why? Because iTunes is non-customer friendly and their system is easy to hack. I had my account hacked (even though I have never bought anything from them before) and the person stole over $105 dollars from me in terms of buying music and apps (I had my credit card on there because I bought my first ipod from the website). Itunes refused to do anything about it and even though I had a police number (I called the cops), they finally got so fed up with me trying to get somebody to answer my question on how itunes was insuring my credit card number safety as well as what they were doing to track this person down, they finally told me that they were going to sick their legal team on me if I didn’t quit contacting them. So I do not use itunes in terms of the store anymore.

I also don’t use satellite radio, as much as I would love to (because XM Radio has a Broadway station!) because it is expansive and I don’t have the money to put that type of system in my car.

As for artist information, sites, I tend to use the artist's own webpage (most artists today have one) for information. Or I will ask around. I never use Wikipedia for information on people.



Thursday, February 3, 2011

Week two

If you’re interested in musical language, I highly recommend checking out RadioLab (from WNYC) and their podcast about it. It’s so interesting!

Chapter 3 in the Future of the Music Business

I feel that webcasting, which is what chapter three is about, is probably one of the internet’s greatest “gifts” so to speak. Where I live, I’ll be honest; the radio stations pretty much suck. It’s pretty much either rock, pop or country, though I will admit there is one station that plays other stuff, stuff I like, but my car radio kind of sucks so I can only get the pop station clear and NPR (but NPR single has to do with it being broadcast directly from my hometown). So I don’t listen to radio all that often. It’s usually cds or my iPod. Internet radio on the other hand, is amazing! In the space of a couple of clicks I can get all the music I like! It’s fantastic! Gordon makes exactly this point when he writes about how webcasting completely expands the listening base for the traditional radio station.

Gordon writes that “the labels successfully argued that, unlike analog signals, listeners could copy digital transmissions of music and make a recording of the same quality as a cd” (40). I wonder if anybody on those record labels tried it. It is extremely complicated and it takes a ton of time!

While I understand why it is important to look at these rights and what webcasters have to pay and the like, but at the same time, I find all the details a little dry and boring.

Chapter 4

Gordon writes  about how many record companies did spoofing which is a term used to describe the practice of sending out fake digital copies of songs for downloads (Gordon gives the example of Modonna) (p 65). Well in the reverse it also works as a promotion tool. In spring of 2010, the acapella group, Straight No Chaser) was setting to release their first non-holiday EP. On April 1st (the day before the CD was set to drop) they “released” a digital copy, which it was a copy of the EP but it was an instrumental version. The joke was on SNC’s fan base as they are an acapella group, so no instruments of any kind anyway. Read the full April Fool’s Joke (http://www.sncmusic.com/blog/the-straight-no-chaser-album-with-a-twist-has-leaked/). But it was a great promotional tool to remind fans that the new album was coming out. I even fell for it!

The rest of chapter four looks at the different laws governing downloading (legal) and streaming music. It’s hard to believe how complicated all this process is! So many legalities, laws, and prices for playing music, even online.

Website reviews

International Computer Music Association

Looks like an interesting website… however I was searching under their resources directory and many of their links are broken. Quite sad for a very professional looking site.


International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres

Site looks awesome and would be a great resource but you have to pay L


Musipedia: Musipedia Melody Search Engine

Oh my this site looks soo interesting! I can’t way to play around with it more. I tried the searching (http://www.musipedia.org/microphone.html) and the microphone portion; the sound came out extremely quiet. I whistled a Disney song and it couldn’t find it which was surprising. I then tried it using the Keyboard and put in a well known Bach tune and when I searched, it couldn’t find it. Not sure if it works all that well. I tried a couple of other well known tunes and it couldn’t find them either. Not a very good search engine… at least for now.

Thoughts on Music Information Retrieval
 Downie talks about in this article being able to tell a machine a tune and it finds what the name of the tune is and he says this system doesn't exist yet. However, Downie is wrong, sort of. There is an app for iphone and itouch that if you hold it up to a speaker while a song is playing, it will tell you the name and artist of the song. It is not perfect but it does work.

Downie writes "A given lyric fragment is sometimes not informative enough to identify and retrieve a desired melody and vice versa (Temperley, 1993)" (301). For almost any song out there there are lyrics. I have run across a couple that don't have them but probably 98% of the stuff that I listen to and have searched for is there.

I agree with Downie with that the reason Music Information retrieval is so hard is because music is changing all the time. It's a very exciting field and with that newness and excitement comes challenges. I agree with Downie when he talks about the reason a system of humming a song into a machine to get title/artist/etc is so hard because of all the different elements that go into music.