Week 14

A Review of the introduction of The Cognition of Basic Musical Structures by David Temperley. I'm kind of glad we didn't have to read this book. The introduction was extremely dry. I don't completely understand exactly what Temperley was talking about but there were a couple things that struck me as interesting. He writes about "these structures are most often simply taken for granted as musical facts" (19). As a musician, there aren't a whole of things that are fact so this statement is interesting. One possible issue that I see is that the says "I speak of the ``correct'' analysis of a piece - as I often will- I mean the analysis that I assume listeners hear" (27). With music, you can never say there is a correct way to analyize a peice or hear a piece. Everybody's going to hear something different.

I have definitely learned some things in this class and a lot of things because of my musical background have been old news. 
So I leave you with a video of Anthony Warlow singing "This is the Moment"

Charts and Humanity

First thoughts on a article titled: Counting Down to Number One: The evolution of the meaning of popular music charts by Ernest A. Hakanen.

 I think its funny that Ernest mentions ranking human attractiveness . (2). While humans do do it, part of the reason behind it, is that there are scientific studies as to why certain people find others attractive. With straight males, there is a scientific ration for hips to waist, and that subconsciously, men know what this perfect ratio is. There also have been studies with symmetry and what men find attractive. Case in point, on a recent episode of the TV show Criminal Minds, the unknown subject (UNSUB) was attracted to murder those women who had dystopia which means that their eye sockets are not symmetrical. Now granted it caused the UNSUB to murder but in another person it may be found to be attractive.

Hakanen writes "Radio  stations use  them  to  develop  playlists  and  fine  tune their appeal" (4). However, for users like me, I don't listen to the radio unless it's NPR. I do listen to Pandora but those "stations" are based on what the user likes so if I don't want to hear Katy Perry I don't have to. Ever. So I think it a couple of years, a lot of charts that Billboard has will be obsolete because people won't be listening to the radio as much. That being said, it is a little sad for me because every Sunday morning when I was growing up, we would listen to Casey Casem and we got out of church just in time to hear the number one song in the land.

Hakanen goes on to talk about their research models including looking at the the history of "charts" and then what they reflect of the market. One thing to note that has just happened dealing with charts since September of 2010 is that the singles and albums of the tv show Glee have broken all kinds of records... BUT and it's a huge one (:)) is that 98% of the songs on that show ARE NOT original! They're covers. So even though the charts say that Glee is the number one selling band/artist, whatever it's not really true because all their stuff is covers. So it's important to know about the songs on those charts.

Next, a look at the article Human- Centred Musical Studies: Towards a charter of Musical human rights by Gino Stefani
This article looks at whether there should be specific code for human rights in terms of music. . I get where they are coming from but... I don't think they realize the definition of Genocide which is:

"...violent crimes committed against groups with the intent to destroy the existence of the group. Human rights, as laid out in the U.S. Bill of Rights or the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, concern the rights of individuals" (United States Holocaust Museum encyclopedia).

The USHMM also spells out Genocide  as it relates to the UN definition. Unfortunately, I don't think Stefani understands that music falls under human rights as well as part of the underlying definition of genocide is the destruction of cultural property, which music falls under.  To destroy a group, part of what you have to do is tear down their culture against themselves as well as the surrounding populations to get them to see it as a bad thing. An example of this, is that during the Holocaust, the Nazis persecuted Jewish musicians and banned all music that was written, sung, or produced by Jews.

Next an article titled Analysing popular music: theory, method, and practice by Philip Tagg.
This article looks at why popular music should be analyzed and what the point of that analysis is. the first page of the article looks at a pop music conference and the stereotypes that were protrayed in other media (1). While I understand that there is significant studies on popular music, I do think it is a little strange to have a conference on them. The article also mentions physical stereotypes that they thought would be at the conference.
This article also looks at how popular culture has affected different areas such as the communication process as well as looking how the listener interprets the song and how the artist interpret the song which was interesting because they can and more the likely probably are two (or three or four) different things.

For articles, we finally look at Music, History, Democracy by Paul Oliver. This short article looks at short papers presented about how songs are influence by current political events as well as how they influence the events themselves. There was a short obiturarie on Ewan MacColl who wrote one of my favorite songs "The First Time Ever I saw your Face" (though not the Roberta Flack version... I hate that version). Here's Leona Lewis singing it:

 

And a male version

Review of Amnesty International's website
Good site but what do the Beatles have to do with Amnesty International?  I'm very confused why the Music for Human rights page is all about John Lennon... Frankly I think the website is poorly designed as it tells NOTHING about music for human rights... just about Lennon.

wow

So Seth Rudetksy retweeted this video and I thought I'd share. It's pretty awesome:

What makes an artist?

As you read, think about the following questions: based on the topics we've explored in this class, do the authors characterize the future of music as you see it? Do you think their vision of the future is complete? What do they leave out or fail to consider?

It’s interesting that this author separates publicity and promotion (p. 17). To me they’re part of the same cog of the system. To get publicity you have to promote. To help promotion, you get air play and publicity… But then they do say that the four fronts are interconnected which is very true.

In Chapter six they write that with CDs, “Confusion reigns. CDs are thought to be too expensive for what you get one or two worthwhile songs. Prices vary too much from record club prices to store prices” (244). I disagree with at least the first part of that quote. Some of my favorite songs by artists are not the ones released to the public. They’ve been the ones that have been “buried” so to speak on the album. One the best examples I can think of is the song “Gira Con Me” from Josh Groban’s first album, Josh Groban. It wasn’t any of the three singles that came off that album but it’s one of my favorites of his, after 5 albums, it’s still one of those.

The authors write about how artists can use sites like Youtube to promote their stuff (244). Frankly I think “artists” who vigorously promote themselves on Youtube aren’t artists. Anybody can upload a video singing to that site. Look at Rebecca Black. People think that she’s a hit sensation and an “artist”. Not to hurt her feelings (like some were doing) but she’s not. She’s auto tuned, her song has like five words and is tonal. I truly think the mark of a good artist is one who can sing (and belt in the case of females and belt well) is to sing acapella and be on key and tune. It is not easy. See Straight No Chaser do it: 

I think the authors did a really good job in looking at the future of music and they covered more if the internet side of the business than The Future of the Music Business did. I don’t know if their vision is complete; I don’t you can ever say something like this will be complete. The music world is ever changing and so it’s not something so concrete.

Next, review the following Music Markup Language website http://www.musicmarkup.info/ . This site attempts to delimit music informatics to specific technological considerations. Do you think the authors of this site get it right? What do they leave out?

It’s hard to know what the authors of the site got right or what they left out as I have never used XML or any experience with it. I have worked with HTML however. This is such a complicated website and it has a lot of technical jargon on it that goes right over my head… I do like that they have a section describing the project

Music, culture, and life

What and where are the "places" for music in your life? 
Music is huge part of my life.. I'm constantly listening to music, usually while I'm at my computer or at work. What I listen to really depends on my mood... for some things, like reading school stuff it's classical or music without lyrics; for work, it's usually just a random shuffle of my music.

What place does music have on the Internet? How is it the same or different from the physical places that exist for music in our culture such as concert halls, record shops, music stores, and music schools?
I think music has a very important place on the internet and it's changing how music is promoted, sold, and even created. It's different because people don't have to leave their homes to listen to new music or buy music. However, I truly feel that, even though you can listen to a concert on the internet, you don't get the same experience that you do when go them live. Not to mention, you find other people with similar interests and you never know where that will lead.

I was reading in the first chapter of Soundtracks: Popular Music, Identity, and Place and it talks about what is popular music and it's place in culture. It asks "what is popular music"? It is a very good question. While I don't listen to and can't stand Katy Perry, she is considered popular because she's on major radio stations. However there is artists like Carrie Underwood who is an country artist and mostly played on country stations. Is she still pop music?  Same for artists like Rod Stewart... He's popular on adult contemporary stations, so is he pop music?

On a side note, I wish people would take this title and apply it as it should be. Soundtracks provide a track of sound for something. They don't help the something along, they don't move the plot in a movie, tv show, or video game. However, CDs of musical theatre shows ARE NOT soundtracks. the songs on those cast recordings help move the plot along and if the show did not have them, the show wouldn't move.

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 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…

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

http://www.music-cog.ohio-state.edu/what_is_music_cognition.html

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

http://www.music-cog.ohio-state.edu/

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

http://www.greenwych.ca/2001-2.htm

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.

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

http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm

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!

Adobe Audition
http://www.adobe.com/products/audition/

Looks like an excellent program and Adobe does make great stuff

Apple Garage Band
http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/

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

Steinberg Cubase
http://www.steinberg.net/983+M52087573ab0.html

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

Cakewalk
http://www.cakewalk.com/

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             

Source

It’s also free at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/