just to see how far I could get toward realizing the potentials in podcasting.
I suppose in a few weeks it will be an embarrasment, but for the moment I'm not unpleased.
Right-click here to SAVE the 18MB mp3 file (about 18 minutes) ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: blackmer TITLE: CDs in Leyburn Library ALLOW COMMENTS: 0 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 11/02/2004 12:02:48 PM ----- BODY: I've extracted from Annie a set of more-or-less 'World Music' CDs in Leyburn Library.
I'm contemplating having students choose one to become familiar with and investigate
and produce a Web page contextualizing that CD... ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: blackmer TITLE: Some passages from John McDaid's brilliant story ALLOW COMMENTS: 0 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 12/12/2004 09:31:43 PM ----- BODY: "Keyboard Practice, Consisting of an Aria with Diverse Variations for the Harpsichord
with Two Manuals" [Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan 2005] "At this level, once technic rises to awareness, it falls to bits. A true
Zen emptiness is called for when engaging a repeat, which requires
subtle yet significant shadings of difference, spliced into a flawless
reproduction of the just-lived performance. 'The unconscious,' as Jacques
Lacan said, 'is repetition.'"
(the voice of an AI piano, commenting on a player's failings in executing a repeatAnd avant-garde leaders are often --perhaps necessarily always--
in a performance of the Goldberg Variations [67])
misunderstood by those not avant enough to appreciate the larger
karmic rightness of their vision. Everybody likes a fat, smiley Buddha; not so many are down with Kali. (73) Want to really inhabit a future generation's mind, gotta really do
something. Preferably salacious or exothermic. (80) You have to remember a mere hundred-odd years ago, music could only be heard
while it was being performed. [The Goldberg Variations] was not a
canonical work --it was considered technically rococo and unremittingly
cerebral. Unless you could play very well indeed, until 1934 when Wanda
Landowska recorded them, the Goldbergs didn't exist. Full stop. (81) Human life is a canon: Mind is the theme, and the populated world an
incomprehensible six billion-part modulation with physical reality as the
free bass line. (82) These tools are all writen by programmers driven by frightful agendas:
lobbying memos from marketing, quarterly marching orders from managers,
apologetic memos from engineering VPs descriing overblown promises made to
analysts by desperate CEOs, pet peeves, side bets on Easter eggs, crank
theories, smoldering resentment over midyeareviews, bad habits from
college programming courses, and the numb, looming horror of fixed
ship dates. It's a wonder any of this stuff works. Ever. (87) Bach was the first master of sampling. Canons, in a sense, are an acoustic
approximation of the delay loop. Imagine the compositional challenge of
developing a melody in real time --an interesting one, not just a
technical exercise-- while playing, listening to, and riffing off a time-shifted doop. (88) ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: blackmer TITLE: Hoping you'll succeed ALLOW COMMENTS: 2 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 01/04/2005 07:49:18 PM ----- BODY: in posting something with such minimal instruction. To some degree it should be
plug-and-play, easy to figure out. Elaborating on a couple of things I mentioned, you might want to take a look at this report
on the blog phenomenon, summarizing the recent Pew Internet & American Life Project piece on blogs. For more on remix and mashup culture, consider Rip 'n Mix (an mp3) ...and explore Negativland . ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: blackmer TITLE: Ears of the Hippopotamus ALLOW COMMENTS: 2 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 01/04/2005 08:38:07 PM ----- BODY: Just how BIG is this stuff that's happening in the world of portable media?
Carlo Longino is pretty convincing that its scope is just beginning to declare itself. If you've got 9 minutes to invest, this is pretty remarkable (from Negativland) ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: abplanalpk TITLE: growing big ears! ALLOW COMMENTS: 2 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 01/05/2005 11:06:13 AM ----- BODY: Because there is an audience for everything, I feel that everyone can be
happy with the availability of opensource and commercial music.
Musicians who just plain like to make music can provide it to listeners
through opensource; musicians who want to make a profit can sell to
listeners with particular taste. For that reason, I agree that there will
always be opensource music, but the danger comes when commercial
musicians are included in there as well. I understand Larry Lessig's
skepticism in enforcement of these laws with the freedom of commerce in
copying and sharing. I would like to know how they legislate infractions of
copyright laws. Unfortunately, the link to Larry Lessig's lecture is not working on my computer. Furthermore, another legitimate fear for commercial musicians is that they
will lose their fans as they listen to the wide variety of opensource
music. I think the danger is exactly as he outlined, and to which Long
Tail alludes: as people begin to know better what music they like, more
people may venture more to opensource independent labels as they become more available.
However, as long as there is still a pool of consumers
buying into the commercial advertisements of the "hits," those artists will not complain. It's interesting looking at how this has happened with books on Amazon:
"more than half of Amazon's book sales come from outside its top 130,000
titles. Consider the implication: If the Amazon statistics are any
guide, the market for books that are not even sold in the average bookstore
is larger than the market for those that are." Similarly, "as fast as
Rhapsody adds tracks to its library, those songs find an audience, even
if it's just a few people a month, somewhere in the country." I like the availability of music online because the connectivity of the net
may eliminate the need for musicians to gain "connections" and working
their way up the ladder in commercial recording. Instead of needing
recognition from big labels to promote music, musicians can share music
on their own and connect directly with their fans rather than needing
labels to advertise them! I like this development in letting consumers
choose for themselves what kind of music they enjoy. It will make us
all grow those BIG EARS! . Again, I would like to learn more about how copyright laws are enforced and
how to ensure that consumers are still respecting and reimbursing the
musicians. So far, my favorite option is idea of magnatune.com in
offering a range of prices for the consumers to use their discretion --
along with a listen before you buy policy. I wonder what the average sale is for each record. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: blackmer TITLE: musicplasma ALLOW COMMENTS: 2 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 01/05/2005 04:03:27 PM ----- BODY: Try this with some of your favorite musicians/bands: musicplasma.com ...and you might check out globalFEST 2005, which has some sound clips
that might knock socks off, if you're wearing socks. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Peter EMAIL: jonesp@wlu.edu IP: 65.41.104.246 URL: DATE: 01/06/2005 06:04:14 AM The site is pretty cool, in giving quite a few options of similar artists
who are good. But it kinda worried me... I typed in Miles Davis, one of
the most famous jazz musicians ever on trumpet. Not surprisingly, it
gave me a long list of jazz artists who had worked with him, trumpeters
who emulated him, etc. So it got the genre correct, but it missed
Charlie Parker, who worked with him and was only the most famous bebopper
ever and Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong, two more trumpet players
who are arguably more famous than Davis. Perhaps I'm missing the point
of the website, but not including either of these three in the realm of
Davis is jazz (nerd) sacrilege. Also, they have the obscure tenor saxman
Tina Brooks and Booker Ervin, but no Paul Chambers, Tony Williams, or
Wynton Kelly (from his classic quintets)... no Gil Evans (his right
hand man for 10 years), it seems just a bit sketchy. Typing in Beethoven
was even more hilarious. Who knew that Beethoven, Fountains of Wayne,
Randy Newman and Raffi were so related?
The site's content definitely needs a bit of help, but its a pretty cool concept and visual. ----- -------- AUTHOR: jonesp TITLE: Internet Music ALLOW COMMENTS: 2 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 01/05/2005 04:42:51 PM ----- BODY: The internet has always been a double-edged sword of music distribution.
Being able to listen to Edison recordings from the 20s and the newest
hit from Britney Spears is an amazing resource. The sheer variety of
music I found on webjay was also astounding. Of course, while I was
listening to music from various streams for the past two hours, I didn’t pay
a dime. This doesn’t bother me, but it seems if I was one of the
artists that poured quite a bit of time and money into equipment, recording,
and creativity, I would like a little something more than gratitude.
Webjay bills itself as an opensource for music that is alternatively
copyrighted, and I know there are plenty of artists out there who love
people to just listen to their music. One of the tracks I listened to
was by Bill Laswell, a pioneering remix producer. The track was from his
album remixing some of Miles Davis’ fusion stuff on “In a Silent Way”
and “On the Corner.” I own this cd, so I know it was released by Sony in
1998. Bill Laswell is now a mostly independent producer and has his own
label so that he can release whatever he wants (even for free online),
but this album was certainly Sony’s. So even if he does give permission
to broadcast his music online, I’m pretty sure Sony would not.
Furthermore, Sony probably paid the Miles Davis estate and/or Columbia for
the rights to use material from the records. I’m also pretty sure that
Miles wouldn’t let his music be played for free judging from how hard he
fought for song writing credits on a couple songs in the fifties. This is
just one example of the problems of even a site like webjay which
purports to have only authorized songs. I also have a special spot in my heart for live musical reproduction, which
the internet and mp3s don’t satisfy. First of all, mp3s don’t contain
the entire musical spectrum. The webjay streams I saw were all at 128k
which is less than half of cds. The experience of listening to music
from your computer is also completely different than in a brick and
mortar venue with real acoustic instruments. No where was this most apparent
than in John Udell’s example of Schumann’s Quartet in A minor performed
by his computer. While it does take the notes on paper and make them
audible, any humanity that Schumann put into those notes is taken away.
Besides this performance, almost any recording will be different from
the live representation, which I prefer. Besides some of these limitations, I had a blast listening to a ton of music
I had never heard. Webjay opened up a huge arena of new music, and I
really liked that. That it was all free to me was nice too. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: doughertyt TITLE: Yowzer! ALLOW COMMENTS: 0 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 01/05/2005 08:07:51 PM ----- BODY: I agree with Pete - the internet is an amazing resource for music, musics,
and musicians. The webjay site was like someone ate a whole lot of CDs
and then vomited all over the page - there was such a variety of
choices. I even managed to find a concert by a band called Pinback that I'm
just getting into, and it was really awesome to have a live concert of
theirs at my fingertips when it took me forever simply to find one of
their album tracks to download from my downloading service.
However, though I do love being able to go find a piece and download it, I
also agree with Pete in that mp3s are not great quality. It is very
difficult to find a perfect mp3 that sounds even comparable to the
actual recording. I have always felt that a lot is lost in the technological
world. You may gain a whole new world in terms of communications and
gadgets and advancements, but I think that computers and the Internet
have taken a lot of humanity away - I'm one of those people who still
likes to write letters because they're much more personal. Likewise, I
would much rather see a band live or buy their CD than get their music
from the Internet. To me, music has always been intensely personal, and
I feel that the Internet takes some of that away, especially when
dealing with who actually owns the music. I love ideas like Danger Mouse's
in terms of mashups and whatnot, but there is so much legal hassle that
goes on, it almost seems as though it's not worth it. The artistic
capability is there, but there are people who try to prevent the art from
ever taking fruit. There were a few things that annoyed me with Jon Udell's program - first
off, he never let a song finish. If he's going to play something he
thinks his listeners might be interested in, he should at least play it all
the way through. His voice almost put me to sleep a few times.
I have actually seen that musicplasma before, because my best friend at home
sent it to me. I have discovered a lot of bands that way, and I love
them all. The resources that the Internet provides are excellent, but I
hope that we get to study the actual music as well as the sources of it. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: hsings TITLE: I want it LIVE! ALLOW COMMENTS: 0 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 01/05/2005 08:17:39 PM ----- BODY: After listening to the 21 minutes of Jon Udell’s Open Source Audio, one
thing became increasingly apparent to me. I cannot listen to commentary and
music by simply sitting in front of a computer with headphones. Don’t
get me wrong, I have downloaded my fair share of music from the Internet
and I am a huge fan of the availability, access, and variety that can
be found, but nonetheless something is always missing for me. When I was
sitting there listening to Mr. Udell, all I could think about was whether
or not he actually stepped away from his computer into the real
world – real air – and listened to music LIVE! Although I find the issue of copyright laws over the Internet a prevalent
concern due to the increase of sharing technology, it is one that I find
little interest in. The people who truly gain from the money earned
from the selling of CDs or downloads are the cooperate figures of music
labels, not the musicians themselves. Musicians instead seem to only
earn their money through touring and merchandise. Therefore, unless
musicians begin to actually earn their fair share of those earnings then
I find this issue to be one of little concern to me. If indeed the
sharing of music over the Internet took away from the earnings of
musicians in a drastic way, then I would probably care more, but I find that
it has actually given more musicians the chance to be heard. The only
musicians that may be suffering from this surge of technology are those
that have already earned their fair share of cash – those great hit-makers of the MTV generation. What I find more frightening is the idea that the art of live music could
disappear from the radar. As technology increases it seems as if people
are leaving the world of the tangible to one of keystrokes, clicks, and
computer graphics. If a person can find some amazing new music on the
internet with a few clicks, why will they head out to a bar, and pay a
$5 cover for some band they’ve never heard before but could possibly
love. Because, essentially what we are dealing with is the sharing of
music. What if the Internet became our only source of music exchange?
I feel something would become incredibly lost. Music is not simply the
sounds created. It can also be the connection created to a person,
place, event, feeling, ect. This discourse is lost when simply found on
the Internet and played with the click of a button. But I guess my
concern deals with more than just the sharing of music and more with the
increasing trend of technology and how our lives, and perhaps access to
reality will be changed. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: luc EMAIL: clinitla@hotmail.com IP: 137.113.31.33 URL: DATE: 01/11/2005 11:24:25 AM No matter how many times I listen to the songs of my favorite artists, I
will never miss out a concert (IF they actually come to my hometown.. or
to the big Lex ^^). Also, I don?t think people go to live performances
only to listen to music.. at least I don?t. In live performances, music
comes across in a way that it can never come across through machines. I
enjoy live performances for the atmosphere, the company, and the fact
that I can see the faces/movements/passion of performers as they
communicate with their audience through music. ----- -------- AUTHOR: djalalievp TITLE: Open Source or not? Live or not? ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 01/06/2005 12:42:48 AM ----- BODY: There seem tobe a few things that intrigued me in this. First, if I may speak in economic terms, I think there will always be demand
for both live and downloaded music. To me these seem to be two ways to
listen to music or to convey musical messages. "Collectively
discovered" music doesn't know any borders in the Internet-connected part of
the world. If I want to see a concert of the same band in Boston and
in D.C., I don't need to be in Boston and D.C. too. Podcasts are even
harder to describe in terms of geographical borders. We can make a parallel with globalization. Many people say that
globalization kills local cultural values and traditions. But for people
who value cultural traditions, are they really killed? Just the same
way we enjoy the benefits of global communications and at the same time
also aim to preserve cultural values by following the customs and
traditions of our families and societies, we can also enjoy the benefits of
shared open source music downloaded from online and at the same time
still go to a concert or a local bar and listen to live music. To me,
the two ways to listen to music bring different kinds of experiencs and
both have their advantages and disadvantages. The discussion about open source music brought me back to the continuing
discussion about open-source software. Is it going to survive, can we
build viable business models on top of them? For software, the answer
slowly but sure seems to be "yes." Nowadays, there is a usable open-source
application for almost any general closed-source one. New
applications are developed all the time, old ones are improved and their
release is not restricted or forced by marketing or strategic business forces. So can the same be done with music? For me for long the answer was very
unclear and was more closer to "no" than to "yes." "The Long Tail",
however, gives me an entirely different prospective - it asserts that the most
money are made in these niche markets, which Chris Anderson is
talking about , and where most open source music probably falls into.
Hence, why couldn't viable business models be built on top of the open
source music paradigm, too? To me this comes as a new idea... The
economics of open source everything has been a quite intriguing topic for me for a while... ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: blackmer TITLE: Copyleft ALLOW COMMENTS: 2 CONVERT BREAKS: __default__ ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 01/06/2005 06:21:46 AM ----- BODY:
We'll clearly have to include considerations of intellectual property rights, and this posting from BoingBoing is a nice bit of provocation.
UPDATE: take a look at the discussion on Larry Lessig's posting today
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TITLE: A case in point
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I have an RSS feed from http://www.blogdigger.com/media/, and the site offers a search feature.
I tried it this morning, with "Skip James" as the input. One hit:
kingblind.com ...and this one includes links to some
others from archive.org. The links don't work (why not?)...
but I'll bet we could find The Nugrape Twins-I Got Your Ice Cold Nugrape if we
explored archive.org
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AUTHOR: blackmer
TITLE: More on The Long Tail
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This really is an interesting and widely-applicable idea. It might be
worth your while to keep track of its evolution via Chris Anderson's "public diary on the way to a book"
--a blog, of course, and therefore accessible via an RSS feed.
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TITLE: Bring da noise?
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There are a number of interesting points that arise as one listens to
Jon Udell’s commentary. The first thing to notice is that some people,
myself included, do not absorb information all that well when listening
to speeches through headphones; the same goes for one’s inability to
grasp the text on a computer screen. Of course, these problems can be
countered by taking notes to what one hears or reads, just as we do in class
when taking notes on a professor’s lecture. However, I wonder whether
repeated practice can reverse this trend and improve my ability to take
in such information – in many ways, as an English major I don’t care
all that much, as I prefer books to text or information stored on a
computer. With that in mind, I began to ponder how much I really get out of
listening to music, specifically music containing lyrics. Again,
because I listen to music which I really enjoy multiple times, the point
becomes moot as I gradually come to learn and appreciate the lyrics. It
will be interesting to see what transpires in the coming years; might
we witness a further change in the preferred modes of communication
(whether speeches such as Udell’s eventually become commonplace and the
dominant mode of communication)? To be sure, as a number of people
have rightly noted, including Larry Lessig, this provides the general
public with information to which they might not otherwise have access.
At the same time, however, one must then ask whether people such as me
will really be able to absorb and appreciate their exposure to new music and commentary.
I have digressed, and would like to briefly comment on the content of
Udell’s speech itself, as it surely begs several crucial questions. As
far as online music is concerned, I don’t know a whole lot about
copyright law, although from listening to Lessig’s brief clip it is obvious
that current legislation only limits our access to music. Some
musicians overcome this problem by allowing their music to be downloaded for
free on a public domain. With such domains, many are encouraged by the
prospects of what they call “collaborative discovery,” in which others
can discover the music of obscure musicians from all parts of the
globe. Indeed, as all of the musicians (on a public domain) want their
music to be heard by as many people as possible, I think it’s a great
idea, as it grants people the ability to find their own musical “niche,”
a niche which they probably would not have found a decade ago. Because
of its nearly limitless access to these various niches of sound,
alternatively licensed music is becoming more and more popular with each
passing day, and may in fact threaten the future success of large scale
music labels (a fact explaining why these corporations are making every
move to instill legislation hindering these alternative labels). The
question then becomes, what happens to those professional musicians who
rely on such alternative labels for their income? Perhaps I don’t
completely understand how these labels work, but from my viewpoint it seems
that while some alternative labels may provide the artist with 50% of
sales (compared to the much smaller amount given to artists by large
record companies), how much will these artists make if their music is
available for free? Will listeners exhibit their charity and make a
donation to these artists despite the fact that they have access to free
music? I have no answer to these questions, and I am sure that many of
them will be answered in class. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to
see in the years ahead if, and how, alternatively licensed music labels
deal with their transformation into a larger influence in the
burgeoning online music scene.
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AUTHOR: luc
TITLE: Amazing!
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It’s amazing to see how the world of technology grows every year. I
remember that a few years ago I was thrilled by a gift from my uncle: a
stereo system that allowed me to play CDs and audio files from my computer
(I’m sure we’re all familiar with this “great thing to have”). Now I am
learning about this fascinating new “tool” that can broadcast
sounds/videos/images around the globe: podcasting.
Two thoughts:
About copyright…
Whenever I hear about downloading music from the internet, the first things
that come to my mind are the issues concerning pirating, copyrights,
etc. But what about those artists who do not make their music for
profit? What if all they want is to simply have their music out there for
the world to listen? Podcasting is the perfect tool for all those
musicians who just want to have fun with their music and be discovered.
Consequently, this may drive people to explore and learn the
technologies available for sound production. Think about this.. Almost
everybody can write a text for blogs, but how many people can produce sound
files with good quality (not to mention decent video files). When I was
in high school, my friends and I created a CD with some of our favorite
songs. The project was much more difficult than what we had expected.
Even though we had decent equipment, our final result did not come out
as good as we expected, mainly because we were unfamiliar with what we
could do with the equipment (and we did not have enough time to make improvements).
If amateur musicians would like to “publish” their music and “be
discovered”, they would most likely be eager to expand their knowledge on
the recording/mixing techniques and the different technologies that are
available (I’m not talking about purchasing professional equipments, but
just to explore what’s out there that’s affordable).
About live music…
I do not think that podcasting will diminish live music performances. No
matter how many times I listen to the songs of my favorite artists, I
will never miss out a concert (IF they actually come to my hometown.. or
to the big Lex ^^). Also, I don’t think people go to live performances
only to listen to music.. at least I don’t. In live performances, music
comes across in a way that it can never come across through machines.
I enjoy live performances for the atmosphere, the company, and the
fact that I can see the faces/movements/passion of performers as they
communicate with their audience through music.
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AUTHOR: kosciolekd
TITLE: So much music
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One line that really struck me was “Too much great music remains in
obscurity.” There are so many musics out there, and no possible way to
listen to them all. What if there’s a song that I would love, but I never
find it? These webj’s that Udell refers to, like oddiokatya, are
perhaps my key, and I probably never would have found out about them, just
like most music on the internet. In fact, I doubt many people realize
that there is this wealth of free music floating around. Mainstream
music is what reaches everyone, not pockets of obscure music on obscure
websites. Because I think the general public does not have the patience
to find music on the internet, I do not think a chart-topper will come
from an internet label, like Udell does. Certainly not anytime soon.
Udell brought up a great point about Napster and other file sharing
programs. It is not used to “explore music together,” but to get mainstream
songs without paying for them, or get one song off an album because the
rest of the album might not be worth it. That’s how I viewed it, and I
consider myself an average teenage consumer.
One very interesting point was that perhaps the future of big music business
will not come from the established bands and supergroups, but, rather,
the collection of sales from the enormous volume of music at the
obscure end of the spectrum. I think that is highly possible, and in this
case, could not happen without the internet. I don’t know what to make
of this really, but it would be interesting to see what happens to
mainstream music if the big money was being made somewhere else.
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AUTHOR: palazzolocm
TITLE: Musings
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I have often thought about the issue of music copyrights and how they
can/should be applied to internet resources, and I must confess that I am
still torn. I can sympathize with the artist and record companies that
have an economic interest in copyright decisions, not only so that they
have an income source with which they can continue to make music, but
also so that they are rewarded for their creativity and hard work. From
a capitalistic point of view, if someone makes a desireable product that
others want to consume (aka: a popular song), he should receive
monetary reward for that.
However, I also sympathize with those who want to protect their rights to
freedom of information flow on the net and resist regulations on what
they can or cannot share or garner from the internet.
But today, there are more than just these two traditional sides to the
issue. When someone remixes a song, who's song is it? Who should get the credit for it?
Alternatively, what about those artists who do encourage free file sharing
so as to spread interest in their songs for the pure sake of spreading
the music, or even in the hope of increasing ticket sales to their live
shows? For instance, everyone knows that Metallica and other popular
bands had issues with Napster that resulted in the lawsuits and close-down
of the program and eventual change to charging customers for their
downloads. But on the other hand, would most people even know who OAR
was without Napster? Could anyone have ever heard Dave Matthews Band's
Lilywhite Sessions CD without it? And weren't both of those examples
positive consequences? One could argue that limitations/regulations
should only be put on the popular bands so that smaller bands can get
their music out there and people will be encouraged to explore those
smaller bands' music because it is free. But then that simply rewards
the bigger names and leaves the smaller names profitless and perhaps
unable to contine producing this wonderful music... Not to mention,
there are some things available now that the public should have
access to, like the Edison recordings. But that just seems to complicate
the issue even farther...
Realistically speaking, I don't think that there can be much control over
file sharing and even downloading. It has spread too far too fast. I'm
not even convinced that such control should exisist in all cases. All
in all, it is a very sticky subject that, quite honestly, I have no clear idea how to handle!
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AUTHOR: djalalievp
TITLE: After reading the whole "The Long Tail" article...
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DATE: 01/09/2005 07:42:32 PM
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I found "The Long Tail"
pretty interesting. I myself was probably not aware of
the big amount of "underground" music out there. I definitely like it, though.
I liked the idea of decreasing the price of music as you go down the tail,
this would lure the audience to more and more different music and at the
same time will not hurt the established music labels as much. They
seem to be hurt enough already...
Personally, some time ago I realized that buying CDs doesn't make much sense
anymore when you can just buy and download the music online, at least
for that music, which is available online. The online distribution
process clearly skips many middle-men and thus cuts the price, gives you a
lot more choice and also eliminates the need to carry lots of CDs around
when my whole music collection can fit on an external USB device smaller
than the palm of my hand. I find this new freedom quite enjoyable.
The transformation of the way we buy and listen to music can be paralleled
to transformations in many other technologies. Floppy disks by now are
or soon will be getting almost obsolete, replaced by USB memory sticks;
parts of the computer and telecommunication technologies are converging
- see smart phones, wireless technologies. In the next decades
computers will not be the same either. Bill Gates gave a lecture in MIT about the
future of computer science and technologies (and the role of Microsoft
in this). I might not have agreed with his vision of the role of
Microsoft in the future, but he said something that I fully agree with: in
the future, the personal computer will get more and more disassembled
- for example, we will probably be carrying our harddisks in our
pockets and will be able to connect them to any computer, so that we have
our data always easily accessible. Well, in that respect the future
might have come - if the iPod and iRiver were not so limited by company
product strategy (reflected in the way their software is configured and
limited) and copyright laws, they can easily serve as normal USB storage
devices - only with a lot more capacity than any other device.
So, in "The Long Tail" I find another example of revolutions in technology
and entertainment (the two are tightly connected after all).
Since we are after all dealing with music, here is what the rapper Nas sings
about this in the song "New World" of his album Nastradamus:
" What I feel is contrare:
Alexander Graham Bell made the telephone - yes,
but now we request for your e-mail address,
I might be old-fashioned, stuck in my ways,
but nothing makes me more happy than what I am seeing today."
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AUTHOR: John
EMAIL: ruminj@wlu.edu
IP: 137.113.161.5
URL:
DATE: 01/10/2005 10:47:07 AM
I agree with much of what Peter had to say- “Long Tail” is a very
provocative article, and it raises a number of good points. When reflecting
upon my experience of collecting both books and music in the past few
years, I definitely notice a shift in how I gain exposure to new pieces
of art. Sites such as Amazon and cdnow.com, for instance, provide me,
after I perform an initial search, with alternative selections that I
would not have otherwise found- for this, I am most grateful. For the
same reasons, I have become more and more disenchanted with the
selection of music at stores such as Best Buy, as they provide (for obvious
economic reasons) with an incredibly narrow selection of music- it is
hard enough to find the Bob Dylan CD that I am looking for, let alone
music of another country- they are all hidden behind the newest release
from America’s most famous (saying nothing of “talent”) recording
artist, Brittney Spears. So, it is nice enough to follow the “long tail”
and see what eclectic pieces of music that I can find. The same logic
follows for stores such as Barnes and Noble (and our school’s own
bookstore, if one can call it that). I am bombarded by the latest
bestsellers, which take up the space which might otherwise be reserved for
Ezra Pound, Yeats, etc. Again, Amazon helps to solve this problem,
because, as the article explains, their medium and target audience gives
them the economic wherewithal to provide their customers with an
incredibly broad range of music. That said, one cannot overstate the
relaxing, lazy feeling of stepping into a stores such as Barnes and Noble
and browsing through the shelves there, finding a book that you like,
and glancing through it for an hour or so. This is one pleasure that
Amazon cannot afford me, among others. Nevertheless, it seems clear
that Amazon and other similar sites are here to say, and as far as I’m
concerned, that’s a good thing.
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AUTHOR: Peter
EMAIL: djalalievp@wlu.edu
IP: 137.113.76.126
URL:
DATE: 01/10/2005 12:20:50 PM
I agree with John about the limited selections on many web sites for online
music. I became a member of Columbia House - a very good deal in terms
of cheap CDs and special offers, but they would never have even all of
the hits nowadays. At some point of time, I would go there, want to
buy a CD, but I wouldn't find anything I like enough in order to buy
(I tend to buy CDs only that I like a lot and know that I will listen a lot to).
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AUTHOR: gaiteric
TITLE: Almost free, very expensive, and the grandma test
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As some j-pop is trickling into my computer @ 3 kps from a server of dubious
legality a couple of thoughts about the trajectory of digital music and
ubiquitous listing have interrupted my hovering over the precious stream.
I may be willing to scrounge all over the internet for obscure pieces of
work by my current obsession, but my parents aren’t going to ply
rotation sites or fiddle with hacked versions of kazaa. To some extent,
that’s just an issue of technology penetration. However, when my
87 year-old grandmother gets back from the golf course I don’t
think any amount of slick packaging will entice her into the
digital realm because it simply not part of the social context in which she sees music.
If I can generalize the relative influence of digital music across these 30-40
year age gaps, there does seem to be the potential for individuals to
retreat into customized musical bubbles. However there are two
structural reasons that I think will prevent this from occurring.
For all the development and all the hype about highly portable audio it
surprising how little is said about the audio itself. At this point I&#
8217;d much rather have a 128mb mp3 player with some decent pc speakers than
the equivalent amount of cash invested in ipod gigabytes. This is part
of a long standing goal in audio – to make it sound just like a
live performance. I think that new avenues for music reproduction have
confused this with access to music.
So does this mean that we will all end up with the “world’s best
audio system” $125,000 ? As the range of available (and what will be incredibly cheap)
music becomes apparent to the general population, the
real battleground will become competing recommendation engines/people as
listeners seek to minimize the time they are lost in this huge musical land.
In this case the sort of time-money balance will shift to favor
hardware investment as there is increasing pressure on human resources to
create useable access to music – taking on a role just as crucial
to experience of music as it has been in the past, just in a modern form.
So anyway, there seems to be some invariant quantities (gear, price per
song, human interaction) that determine music consumption. Digital music
may have fundamentally altered the balance of these components, but I
don’t think it has changed the underlying dynamics.
There's my audiophilic vision at the moment– agree?
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AUTHOR: Peter
EMAIL: jonesp@wlu.edu
IP: 65.166.9.50
URL:
DATE: 01/10/2005 12:57:35 AM
The Wilson audio stuff looked nice, but I think I would prefer this room:
http://www.royaldevice.com/custom.htm#TITOLO
Second... I'm not sure the digital realm is where we will find an
audiophilic nirvana, but I think you're right about how digital music hasn't
changed the underlying dynamics of music consumption.
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AUTHOR: Chris
EMAIL: lookmeup@wlu.edu
IP: 137.113.108.4
URL:
DATE: 01/10/2005 01:55:21 AM
I remember reading about this in awe when the monster came out - "releasing
more than 110 dB/1W/1 meter sensitivity starting from below 10 Hz
focused on the listening position" rediculous and wonderful.
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AUTHOR: Chris
EMAIL: willgooglepickthisup@wlu.edu
IP: 137.113.108.4
URL:
DATE: 01/10/2005 02:00:20 AM
on the subject of digital audiophilia... Allofmp3 - if you haven’t heard
about it - offers a huge selection of music at any quality in just about
any format you want for a cent a megabyte – just be sure to switch to
English from cyrilic if you go to the site. This re-export business
model it the first service I can actually see my parents using, that
carries major hits, caters to audiophiles (on a budget) and which is so
cheap it’s not worth the time to downloading the stuff for free some other way.
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AUTHOR: Peter D.
EMAIL: djalalievp@wlu.edu
IP: 137.113.76.126
URL:
DATE: 01/10/2005 12:42:17 PM
I also agree with Chris about the unchanged dynamics of music consumption.
However, I believe that this consumption is now greatly expanding (is
expansion considered change in this case???). Before we could get
really high quality of sound at home with a superb sound system, but didn't
have mobility, now we can get both (even though not at the same time).
For example, as the mobile audio technologies mature, audio quality
will only continue to go up I think... Higher-capacity storage devices
after all can also store audio with higher-bit rate which also improves quality.
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AUTHOR: Chris
EMAIL: yo@wlu.edu
IP: 137.113.42.9
URL:
DATE: 01/10/2005 04:41:00 PM
I agree that currently there is a trade off between storage and quality, but
at the same time it's difficult to make use of anything > 128kps on the
buds than come with your average mp3 player ( think), and which most
people keep. If you want to boil it down to marginal utility, I guess
what I'm saying is that audio gear will only increase in its value in
the face of a highly social network that provides access to massive amounts of music.
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AUTHOR: hannonj
TITLE: Some Thoughts
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DATE: 01/10/2005 10:47:34 AM
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I have been considering the copyright issue of downloading music for free
from various music sights. As an artist wouldn’t you want people to be
listening to the music that you created? For example, I just came
across this band called Keane, or actually it was introduced to me by a
friend.( I suggest everyone checking them out because they are talented). So
I went home and found some of their music on one of the free download
sites and made a CD from what I found. Now technically, what I did was
illegal because I took something without paying for it. But, in the age
that we live in today where more and more things are being digitized
and becoming more readily available to the masses it is crazy to think
that people use the technology that is available that allows a person to
download music for free. Honestly, I so feel kind of bad for not paying
for music, because it is someone’s work that they spent hours creating.
To make up for this I have probably told at least 30 people about this
band by now, so I feel like the word of mouth credit I am giving these
guys can hopefully make up for me not buying their CD in a store.
However, will there ever be a true middle ground between downloading for
free, or paying the 99 cents that itunes charges for downloading a song?
I’m interested in what others feel about this, and I will close this
idea with one more thought – music is created to be listened to and
enjoyed by everyone. For years it identified tribes, happy occasions, sad
occasions, the list can go on and on… But when and why did people start
placing a monetary value on music. Is this part of a capitalist society or greed or both?
Another similar thought that has been interesting to me, is if the
music industry is so worried about being compensated for each song
that’s downloaded, then why does it support people taking other people’s
songs and redoing them? For example, one of my favorite bands to listen
to is Counting Crows. They have recently remade the song Friend of the
Devil which was a Grateful Dead song. The new version sounds great and
honestly I like it better than the Grateful dead version, but when
looking at this from a legal point of view, this is worse then simply
downloading a song; it is bordering on plagiarism.
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AUTHOR: derek
EMAIL: kosciolekd@wlu.edu
IP: 137.113.33.56
URL:
DATE: 01/11/2005 12:34:53 AM
While I agree with you that ideally music should be created to be listened
to and enjoyed by everyone, there are still artists who create it, and
thus their music’s fate should lie with them. It would be great if all
artists created for the sole purpose of creating and sharing, but if
they want to make a profit off of it, and are good enough to do so,
that’s also their decision. If a band, after months of work, finish a CD,
distribute it freely and get nothing back for it, then where do they
stand? Without money coming in, they probably won’t be able to make
another CD. Making music has become a profession; a way to support
oneself. I think that there has to be a medium like you mentioned between
free music and charge for it.
I think the problem with these high charges for music arose when not the
artists, but their representatives, realized that people will pay a lot
to listen to music, just like they will to watch sports and movies.
The consumer culture in America has steadily grown through the years,
and why should it slow down when we will still pay 500 dollars to watch
grown men play a kids game like baseball, or 18 bucks to buy a CD.
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AUTHOR: Pete
EMAIL: jonesp@wlu.edu
IP: 65.166.9.50
URL:
DATE: 01/11/2005 02:16:01 AM
Hey, lets not go picking on baseball. But, continue picking on Consumer culture in America.
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AUTHOR: holcombm
TITLE: Raging Against Conformity
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DATE: 01/11/2005 12:00:51 AM
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It seems that we live in a world that is moving towards convergence on many
levels. In the world of business, we see companies merging together to
form larger and larger conglomerations. This is evident in the media
industry where we see multibillion-dollar unions, such as AOL’s merger with Time Warner in 2000.
Convergence is also the buzzword over in the Journalism Department, where we
are watching broadcast media merging with traditional print media to
create new web-based forms of communication.
In the world of technology, we see the convergence of multiple products into
single hybrid forms. My dad just acquired a cell phone that is also a
digital camera, camcorder, Palm Pilot, text messenger, mp3 player, and
internet browser. The only thing you can’t do with it is shave with it.
Maybe in a few years they will develop one that will do that too . . .
I see this convergence being mirrored in the world of mainstream
entertainment. And not in a good way. As the business end of entertainment
media is merging, so to is the creative side. Pop music, for example,
seems to me to be melting into a single pool of homogenous, tasteless
banality. After listening to mainstream music for a while, I feel like
all I’m listening to is countless variations on the same theme. Just
look at the pop icons! They’re all the same! I’m sure we’d all agree
that Brittany sounds like Christina who sounds like Jessica . . . They
even look alike, as if they’re all clones of some secret corporate
prototype for mainstream entertainment celebrities. They’ve completely lost
whatever humanity they may have had and are now brand names---plastic
icons of a generation of insipid, one-size-fits-all music.
However, I think that the internet, the main force moving us on this path to
convergence, is also providing us with a backlash against this societal
tendency towards conformity. Within cyberspace, there is a veritable
explosion of individuality that flies in the face of the cultural
melding going on around us. As we have seen in class, any person with a
computer can set up a blog and post his thoughts and opinions to the world.
Underground artists can make a name for themselves in cyberspace and
strange and new forms of music are created by anonymous web DJs. Now,
individuals can find music that appeals to their particular, unique
tastes, as opposed to accepting the bland, homogenous fare the mainstream
music industry would feed us.
And, hopefully, this enhanced information sharing will enable our path
towards cultural convergence to be marked by the convergence, union and
integration of different individual ideas and concepts. And so, like Dad’s
cell phone, we’ll evolve into a new hybrid culture, a single whole
comprised of many unique individual parts. Instead of letting the mainstream
media mold us into a formulaic plaster cast of conformity.
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AUTHOR: Chris
EMAIL: yo@wlu.edu
IP: 137.113.42.9
URL:
DATE: 01/11/2005 01:16:00 AM
"They even look alike, as if they're all clones of some secret corporate
prototype for mainstream entertainment celebrities."
Zing!
I think your idea about utilizing the positive aspects of convergence to
foster an emergent mosaic culture through musical individuality is
great. It may be part of a key to developing useful distinctions between
distribution and access in music, based on where we would like to steer the industry.
What do you see as the potential role of music from “other”
cultures in effecting this revolution – and how to you see the influx
of technology into less developed countries affecting what more
developed countries pull from those different musical traditions?
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AUTHOR: Peter
EMAIL: jonesp@wlu.edu
IP: 65.166.9.50
URL:
DATE: 01/11/2005 01:57:43 AM
In most ways, youre right... Pop culture is really bland cookie cutter
stuff, but every once in awhile something like Modest Mouse or Five For
Fighting comes along. These two bands had been way off the mainstream screen
for a long time, working hard, playing tiny clubs, releasing albums
that didn't sell... and suddenly after over a decade in the music biz as
a small fish they finally hit it big. So you never know where Pop culture is going to turn.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: katie
EMAIL: katieabplanalp@yahoo.com
IP: 137.113.14.141
URL:
DATE: 01/11/2005 10:05:35 AM
Isn't this amazing? Your dad's phone, our ipods. . I keep seeing technology
separtating from the control of industry and placing their services in
the hands of individuals. I first thought about it when I realized
that I almost always go through the "do it yourself" check-out line.
swipe your items, pay, and run! Then, when my dad bought a digital camera,
I saw it again. There was no longer a need for the camera shop to
develop film - just do it yourself at home! Now, with music, we don't have
to wait for musicians to record and produce their music.. . we can just
record a live concert and reproduce it ourselves on our cd burners.
Rather than convergence, I guess I feel like we are being defragmented in
that what used to be professional jobs are now becoming every-day,
common knowledge tasks. I wonder sometimes where this will take our society
-- this broad movement that is making us so self-reliant. As you say,
we may become a "hybrid culture, a single whole comprised of many individual parts."
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AUTHOR: sandenb
TITLE: Music for money - come on!
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DATE: 01/11/2005 02:09:15 AM
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In listening to Udell's thoughts about the evolution of music and reading
the thoughts of my classmates, several thoughts come to my mind. The
first is how exciting I find the spread of music during this time. I am
a music major and the availability of music to all people, I find, to
be a monumental and thrilling advantage to the day in which we live. I
am not entirely sure the world was ready for this surge of technological
power at the time it arrived, but here we are in the thick of it.
Accompanying this new-found availability, we find ourselves presented with
questions. Will bands loose money? Will people no longer attend live
concerts? Will the humanity behind the music cease with the increase of
technology as it's own instrument? Maybe I am just one with a simple
mind, but music will be fine and will healthily endure this change.
The humanity of music will survive just as it has throughout the 20th
century. Imagine how afraid the grandmothers and grandfathers of the
world were when the first radio broadcasts were being done, or the first
records were being recorded. Didn't they face the same fears of 'will
people stop attending the live symphony'? Well the symphony has endured
as will the appreciation for humanity behind and within the music. Now
if the music composed in these upcoming years lacks humanity in it's
content, that is another issue entirely and one I am not going to tackle today.
Regarding the issue of economics and a loss of money by these artists, I
guess I am not the best person to sympathize with the artist. I agree
with Justin when he cites that music has been a form of expression
throughout time, and I'll add it has only been considered a profession for
the past several hundred years. I myself am a music major and I will
be the first to tell you that I am qualified for very little in terms
of a future of big money. I study music because it has nothing to do
with the money - and I realize most any career I end up with will be far
from my major - but there is a love and a need within me to study music
that cannot be explained, understood to non-artists, OR PAID OFF. If
someone is in music for the money, I think they should find a career they truly love.
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AUTHOR: katie
EMAIL: katieabplanalp@yahoo.com
IP: 137.113.14.141
URL:
DATE: 01/11/2005 09:34:25 AM
I think you bring up an interesting point in looking at the history of music
and music making. The recording of music in general has not ceased
concert attendance, but rather (as many classmates have mentioned)
broadened the crowd. It's like the survival of the fittest in my mind. Now
that music has become so easily available, people will learn what they
love, and support the artists they enjoy! As an artist myself, I like
to believe that there is an audience for everything (be it one person or
one thousand). With these new resources, maybe that one person can
find a second, then a third, even as the thousand becomes ten or twenty
thousand -- as Brooke says, it's not always about the money (especially
in the arts). I may be an idealist like her - but I like to think
people listen and create things they love.
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AUTHOR: iten
TITLE: better late than never
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comments on the Udell podcast:
This podcast has left me more confused than ever, not necessarily about the
copyright connundrum which Udell proposes, but about his program in
general. At first I struggled to identify what the program was even
about... the random music clips which he talked over and read the
copyrights for their entirety were rather misleading, but finally I realized
that this was a podcast on the resources and the legality of them on the
web. But this did not cease my confusion...
Rooster Kale says that the Internet Archive is a do-able and cost effective
way to catalog all of human knowledge on the web. I have to agree with
Brooke here in saying as a music major... my god is that exciting, if
only this had been around longer, we could have seen if any of our piano
or violin greats even compared to the virtuosity of Liszt or Paganini.
However, the introduction of this tool now will only serve to allow the
music community to develop even further and reach even greater heights.
Okay, it all sounds great on paper, but what about all that crap on the
archive, which Udell plays a clip of one example. I don't know about this
stuff so maybe some one else can answer it, would it be possible for all
of this seemingly useless stuff to pile up and compound and waste
unbelievable amounts of space? Or is space on the web ever-increasing?
Regardless, who wants to hear that stuff? And who would listen to this Udell
podcast other than a scholar on the topic? He was monotonous and
boring. "too much great music remains in obscurity," but lots of terrible
stuff does too and there is a reason, if all of it is given an equal
front it could just be a recipe for wasting mass quantities of time
because one doesn't know what they are looking for.
After listening to the podcast however, I have come to one surprising
conclusion. People are human, and as much as we would like our artists to be
in it for their art, many are not. They cannot be penalized for this,
even though I am surprised to see myself type this, I fully respect the
right of the musician to sell out.
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AUTHOR: palazzolocm
TITLE: what's wrong with a professional musician?
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DATE: 01/11/2005 11:42:56 AM
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i totally agree with beth. i do believe that there is such a thing as bad
music. granted, that label is relative to the listener, but i still
maintain that it is a possible label to place on a song or clip or some
random ensemble of weird sounds. and is it worth anyone's time or
energy to record, upload, name, and save someone scratching their finger
nails down a blackboard to the tune of beethoven's 5th just because it
is sound and can therefore, in a very loose interpretation, be called
music? call me crazy, but i really think there are better and more
important things people could be doing with their time.
as for the issue of a "professional" musician, one who is in the industry to
make money, i don't have a problem with that, either...to a certain
extent. people often complain when a musician starts to make money and
become popular because somehow that makes them less passionate about the
music itself. yet no scientist is ever accused of selling out just
because in grad school he was interested in cancer research but now he
is employed to develop a new, cheaper way of producing plastics. so
why is it just artists that face that kind of chastisement? moreover,
as Brooke pointed out, entering into the music industry does not
guarantee making money by any stretch of the imagination. so if someone has
the courage to pursue their dream, knowing there is a very real
possibility of living in a cardboard box on times square, then shouldn't we
be glad for them if their cd becomes a huge hit?
but, like i said, there is a limit to all this. when an artist starts to
record songs in a new style simply because he thinks that is what the
masses want and because he sees a chance to turn a pretty penny, then i
take issue with that. i guess what im saying is that i define "selling
out" in much looser terms. making money on music is not selling out.
giving up music to make a living is not selling out - thats being
practical. even someone who is not passionate about music but who is making
money from it is not selling out (it could be argued that he never had
anything to sell in the first place). for me, selling out is when an
artist becomes popular and makes money off of their original work, then
conforms to the popular sounds of the era just to increase their profit.
i guess you could say its when the artist becomes too greedy. a
little greed or ambition can be a good thing - it can motivate people. its
when people have too much greed or ambition that troubles arise...
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AUTHOR: iten
EMAIL: itenb@wlu.edu
IP: 137.113.41.11
URL:
DATE: 01/12/2005 04:52:24 PM
but how would we know if some one was a sell-out in your terms, how do we
distinguish that from an artist's natural stylistic evolution?
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AUTHOR: Chris
EMAIL: yo@wlu.edu
IP: 137.113.42.9
URL:
DATE: 01/13/2005 02:05:06 PM
I think comparison of increased popularity to grad school/productive careers
for scientists is highly insightful. There does seem to be a double
standard for musicians... literally "selling out" is a good thing for a
store and the mark of sucessful business - why not a musician? I think
the schism boils down the the fact that we have a twisted idea of what
"natural" is. Namely that it exists at all.
We may see a lonesome impoverished croner as an abstraction of the ideal
musician, but the music of your average lonesome impoverished.... "musician" isn't that hot.
Obviously I'm taking an extreme example, but I think what we should be
focusing on in our analysis of originality is the kind of "natural" that we
want to create, because ultimately "natural" is only a useful human
definition of an evolved system. It would be interesting to try and set up
objective grounds for "natural" in the career of a musician... but I
don't think that's entirely possible.
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AUTHOR: blackmer
TITLE: Spam cleanup
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I went through and CLOSED the posts before 10 January, deleting more than a
dozen instances of offensive spam and banning 12 IP addresses in
perpetuity. It's probably best to CLOSE comments after a couple of days...
You do have to SAVE after changing the 'Allow Comments?' to CLOSED, so
that the entry will be rebuilt in the new configuration.
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AUTHOR: blackmer
TITLE: Haitian? Sudanese?
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A question from Katie: did I have any sources for Haitian and Sudanese
music? My first thought was for stuff I have on vinyl, which is certainly
not current (though not without interest --got some incredible Haitian
piano, and some wonderful Sudanese oud). The next thought was that the
Haitian emigrant community might have Internet radio, one term for which
is 'shoutcast'... so I did a Google search for those words and sure
enough... the first hit in the list is Signal 42, and
one of the links there led me to heritagekonpa.com... and so on. So there IS Haitian Internet radio.
So what about Sudanese? Naaaaah, I thought... but did a Google search
for the phrase "sudanese music" and lo and behold,
900+ hits...
So the moral is: it really is the 21st century, and there really
are unprecedented affordances for us to explore and discover.
Thanks to Katie for the object lesson.
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AUTHOR: katie
EMAIL: katieabplanalp@yahoo.com
IP: 137.113.14.141
URL:
DATE: 01/16/2005 10:16:03 AM
wow! not only did we find some radio links, but there is also a recording
of Aristide's first response to the world after his 'kidnapping' last
year. I remember there being many obscurities at that time as to what
exactly was said on both the US and Haitian sides. I hadn't seen any
hardcore evidence until this! I don't know if any of you are up to date
on the situation, but it's been a concern of mine ever since my parish
here in Lex matched with a "twin" parish in Fond Pierre Haiti. So
here's the link for Aristide's speech (translated on radio and also typed
out): http://www.flashpoints.net/aristide_translation.html
Furthermore, when I pursued the Sudanese music, I found a great website that
has links to radio stations in Africa. WOW. it's amazing some of the
songs they have on there. If you're interested: http://www.findafrica.com/radio.html
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AUTHOR: ruminj
TITLE: Do the "Mash"
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I just read The New Yorker article “1+1+1=1” and am quite intrigued by
several dilemmas that arise from “mashups.” Prior to this class I had
never heard of the term, and quite frankly in the subsequent week of
thinking about mashups I was never compelled to equate them with the
remixes that we as a generation have grown up with. However, upon thinking
about the relationship between the two, I first began to wonder about
the legality of remixes themselves (this is perhaps where my utter
ignorance concerning these matters comes into play). Admittedly, I don’t
know a whole lot about remixes, not having listened to them all that
much. For me, what comes to mind is the fact that a dj take one
artist’s work (do they give notification to the artist whose song they are
using- are they supposed to?), and “re-mix” it so that the song’s melody
is still discernible but nevertheless changed, or perhaps the song’s
rhythm is altered. Is this a fair enough definition of a re-mix? I’m not sure.
If remixes are in fact legal, I see no problem with mashups (unless,
as some of my classmates have noted, they completely destroy the
original songs that they mash together). However, this small objection then
raises the question, who is it that decides if a mash is a “good” one?
As the article tells us, some artists whose songs have been used to
make these mashes, including Madonna and the Sex Pistols, “admire” the
artistry of mashups and therefore have no problem with artists using
their material. Does this mean, then, that the original artists should
be designated with the task of deciding what is “good” and what is
garbage? For if this is in fact the consensus, it provides a solution to
the problem but also obviously severely limits the number of mashups
that are out there, meaning that although I may have the technology to
do so, I could not legally create a mashup (but really, would the public
really want me to? I doubt it). On the other hand, even if mashups do
remain illegal, Temple-Morris, one individual who does invent these
mashups, encouragingly says that “We get our wrists slapped by the
record companies and publishing companies and whatever. But these days
there’s much more love, much less paranoia.”
The bottom line is that I’m sure that there are a lot of horrible
mashups out there, many of them which would waste my time- a problem which
may have no solution. Nevertheless, I believe that mashups are original
pieces of art, in some ways similar to William Burroughs’ “cut-up”
style of literature (although mashing is certainly less random than
Burroughs method), and therefore possibly worthwhile endeavors. For
instance, I am dying (if my technological illiteracy allows it) to hear the
mash of Christina Aguilera and the Velvet Underground- the prospect of
such a mash alone thrills me, and I simply must hear it. Certainly
there are a number of questions that remain unanswered at this point in time
concerning mashups, but I remain convinced that they, like MP3 players
and remixes, are here to stay.
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AUTHOR: blackmer
TITLE: responding to John's posting
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I'm not sure if this is THE Aguilera/Velvet U. mashup (kinda think maybe
not), but this site does list one such remix. See also this one
for more ("dj jonny moire hops on the mashed-up bangwagon, and brings you a hearty meal of
mashed bangers ”the best banging tracks, all mashed up in jonny's big
beats blender. chunky electro with sweaty r'n'b, slick synthpop with
punky pop. mashed bangers pulverizes jonny's previous popstarz manic mix
hands down” 47 songs from 45 different artists crammed into 21 tracks
spanning 76 minutes. can you handle it?") --103.4 MB... And try this soundfile
for a come-on. The January Wired article is here.
Seems to me that many of these are being offered as slight extensions of
what club DJs have been doing for a very long time.
I see lots of remix sites out there, but I'm not sufficiently familiar with
the music being mashed to hear/recognize the artistry (it just sounds
like music-I-don't-listen-to to me). Seems to be a lot at www.engineerzofsoul.nl, but there
are many other claimants to the crown. Another: mashmix.com
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AUTHOR: blackmer
TITLE: What They Sang To Me
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DATE: 01/13/2005 09:33:15 AM
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An interesting example of a music podcast, in this case an exploration of
the author's personal involvement with Bob Dylan's Tangled Up in Blue
(links directly to the mp3 file, more than 20 minutes).
It's really from the heart, and probably says more about
David Johnson than about Bob Dylan, but hey... The site What They Sang To Me
is on my RSS feeds, and I've often found his perspectives interesting and illuminating.
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AUTHOR: John
EMAIL: ruminj@wlu.edu
IP: 137.113.161.29
URL:
DATE: 01/13/2005 02:02:00 PM
That's an interesting take on one of Dylan's most famous songs, one that
marked his return as America's premier singer-songwriter. I don't
completely agree with Johnson's reading, but it's always nice to broaden my
perspective of any Dylan song- good one.
-John
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AUTHOR: katie
EMAIL: katieabplanalp@yahoo.com
IP: 137.113.14.141
URL:
DATE: 01/16/2005 10:54:36 AM
Interesting perspective here - it was a hard line to draw between what
really was just what Dylan said and what was Johnson's reaction to it.
However, I like his presentation of his perspective by prefacing that he
does not mean to imply what Dylan meant, but show how the song affected him.
I want to read "Chronicles" now, and learn more about what's behind this
musician's life and lyrics. I like the quote where Dylan didn't want to
explain what he was doing, because he didn't feel like there should be a
need to explain. . . I feel like that should be true with all art, but then I think about the next quote:
"Musicians have always known that my songs were about
more than just words - but most people are not musicians." - Dylan -
. . .and I realize even more that there are some things you just CAN'T
explain. .. this definitely hits home for me, because (as I said earlier)
- sometimes I listen to a song and really don't even know what the words
are, but FEEL what it means (to me, at least). It's an amazing experience.
I also like how Johnson describes music as an extension of a self, and how
that extension can connect with people who may not even know you. In
reference to Dylan, speaking about Hank Williams:
"I didn't have to experience anything that Hank did to know what he was
singing about. I had never seen a robin weep, but I could imagine it and it
made me sad." Re: (I'm so lonesome I could cry)
We're sitting here talking about good and bad music -- well this could be a
definite test for me in defining good music: anything that I can
identify with even if I haven't experienced.
I love how Johnson describes his connection with "tangled" more than "blue"
saying that he feels"the emotion of a tangled feeling. . .close but not
there. . . glimpse of hope, then loss of hope." And yet at the same
time, all those things make up the blue. beautiful.
p.s. - anyone have "Bob Dylan biograph" that I could borrow?
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AUTHOR: doughertyt
TITLE: Folk melodies, and ahoy to Brooke
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We had an interesting class discussion on Tuesday about whether folk
melodies retooled by other artists should be considered copyright
infringement, because really, who owns those songs? When asked in class
whether or not people should be allowed to do that, my answer was, as long
as it's not crap, and to that I hold. If someone who considers themself
an artist (for this is the work of an artist, not a musician) decides
to do a techno remix of "Amazing Grace", which I'm sure exists
somewhere, though I personally don't care to listen to it, then surely they
should do it. However the muse moves you, you go ahead and act upon it.
However, if it's crap, don't allow me to hear it. Keep it to yourself.
In my personal music library, I have two very different versions of
"Amazing Grace", one by Ani DiFranco, and one by Tori Amos. Both of these
are very different - Ani brings in a whole brass section at the second
verse and keeps the other instruments to a minimum. Every artist has
their own interpretation of a song, and they should be allowed to
release that... if it actually qualifies as music. For instance, Britney
Spears's little cover of "I Love Rock & Roll"? Hardly music. It sounds
more like a little kid with a cold playing dressup and pretending to be
a badass. To me, that is not music.
Will people be offended if we take their culture's melodies and make them
into our own songs? Possibly. That is not something that I haven't
considered. I also realize, however, that you can't please everyone. If your
version of their song gets back to them, and they think it's
sacriligious/total crap, then to honor them, take it off the market. It
wasn't "your song" to begin with.
In reading the other entries, I stumbled across Brooke's entry in which she
stated something along the lines of, "If you are in music for the money,
find something else that you love." I am also a music major, and I am
most definitely in music for the money. Granted, I know it's not much,
but if I can make a couple of cents by writing a few lines, of course
I'm going to. It will be a labor of love, the fruit of which the entire
world could possibly hear. I want people to hear the music that I
create, and I want to make money from the music that I create because that
is time I could have spent doing something else, like, you know,
working a "real" job. But I chose music, because I love it, and I want to
ensure the future of the sound of music is to my liking, and what better
way to do that then to be a part of it?
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AUTHOR: blackmer
TITLE: Harry Partch
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I first heard of Harry Partch when I was in high school, and I've been
keeping track ever since. You hafta spend some time exploring
this amazing page of examples and explanations. Partch's Genesis of
a music; an account of a creative work, its roots and its fulfillments
(ML1400 .P3 1974) and Bitter music : collected journals,
essays, introductions, and librettos (ML410.P176 A3 1991) are really
worth a look if you're interested in experimental music... or
maybe that ought to EXPERIMENTAL.
Seeing this page makes me realize that I need to spend some more class time
on instruments and the building of musical sound affordances. After the flamenco stuff, I think...
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AUTHOR: blackmer
TITLE: Playing around with Webjay
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DATE: 01/16/2005 10:24:30 AM
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The general subject of social software (including but not limited to
bookmarks shared among many people, most of whom never meet except via the
medium of the Web) has absorbed a good deal of my attention in the last
six months. I haven't started messing with Webjay myself until quite
recently, and like most such environments I'm finding that its utility
grows rapidly with use. Others have been at it longer, and have
developed some really cool approaches. Take a look/listen at/to
Chris Corrigan's rolling list of world music ("My own ever-changing top 40 of eclectic world music ...).
Today I happened upon a large collection of 1940s-1950s Bollywood filmi music
and put one particularly tasty item into my newly-established
Bollywood playlist (try it out --Bogi Bogi Bogi).
I have the feeling that my playlists could grow explosively, if I turned my
attention in that direction. Would that be ...ummm... wise?
phauly (Paolo Massa) seems to be covering the bases very nicely, though I've only begun to
explore the riches he's gathered in his playlists.
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AUTHOR: hourenk
TITLE: music borrowing
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Upon listening to the topic of the first assignment, I couldn't help
wondering about the niches of music that could potentially be the future of
the music industry. With the internet and the vast body of information
and meda transmitable to a worldwide audience immediately, I find that
it is impossible to think that MP3 files could not be the future of
music. I also think that musicians that have taken a cue from napster and
other free music sites have seen the wave of the future. It seems to me
that the web has become a constant free, virtual concert for interested
musicians interested in sharing their art more than making money from
their art. But I can't help but separate the musician from the music
business. Bach, for instance, was never a well known musician during
his lifetime, but instead an unknown, albiet prolific, church musician
later discovered by Mendelssohn in the Romantic period - some 200-300
years after his time. We now consider Bach a staple of the Baroque
period and classical music studies in general. Is it those "free" musicians
that see their art as an entity to be enjoyed firstly and bought
perhaps secondly or not at all that make discovery of incredible music
unknown? Are they following in the footsteps of all great starving artists
before them but instead cutting out the middle man - the great explorer
or discover, the Mendelssohn to our Bach? I don't know what the
internet will hold for the future of music, or the entity of the album for
that matter. But I await new developments with interest. Final thought
- in these changing times, will the internet destroy the album as our attention spans wane?
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AUTHOR: blackmer
TITLE: What are we to make of...
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DATE: 01/18/2005 06:36:20 AM
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I'm always on the lookout for stuff happening at the fringes of anything
I'm interested in, and this blog posting
on an emerging media type (repurposed sound with new video
content) is a case in point. If you have no clue what "badger badger" is all about, you really must follow
the link... and then see its Potterite sequel...
The overlay of Japanese text on a Romanian pop song is surely a bizarre
facet of globalization, and we can confidently expect a rash of such ...erm... creativity.
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AUTHOR: gaiteric
TITLE: fractured fractals freckle
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DATE: 01/18/2005 02:33:54 PM
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Listen to this midi - it was created with the same algorithm that generates the
mandelbrot set – not bad for something you can do with ~7 lines of code.
I’ve been thinking about the relationship of self-similarity to music
hedonics not just in a particular piece, but in music as a whole
Do fractal pattern in some sense direct the development of music within a
tradition – i.e. are minor innovations just as important as major
ones, or conversely, are major shifts not really that surprising? I
think that the answer to this question relates to the balance of
diversity and stability in music as a complex system. If this is the case,
another important question to consider is whether music is multiply or
infinitely connected.
Indeed, is the (potentially) fractal nature of music what we value about it
– that we hear all of “our” other music in each new
song? In this case it would be our interaction with music that creates
what might be termed a meta-fractal whose structure drives our
fascination with arranged noise.
Basically… is music fractal (on a discipline level), fractured (Chris,
this attempt is sophomoric), freckled (hybrid listener/music fractal) or all of the above?
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AUTHOR: blackmer
TITLE: Replying to Chris
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DATE: 01/18/2005 06:00:30 PM
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(bloggery tells me I can't post a comment... so here's my entry)
I found that RealOne fetched a plugin for .mid files and played it with no
problem. What it puts me most in mind of is the work of Conlon
Nancarrow, whose medium of choice was piano rolls. I put a link to
material about him in my log file last week: A Sense of Place: The Life and Work of Conlon Nancarrow
30-minute PRI program from archive.org ...and now of course I'll have to bring in an example or two.
What a great question in paragraph 2. The writer to whom I would point for a
comment on this is Douglas Hofstadter (if y'all don't know about
Gödel Escher Bach you really should ... see the A9.com search here for more).
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AUTHOR: sandenb
TITLE: A discussion of cante jondo
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I found the singing we heard today in class absolutely fascinating. I do
not know if those singers are just trained a different way from
westerners or if they are ruining their voices by the 'westerly trained'
definition or if their voices sound the way they do because they have
been abused, but the result is like nothing I have ever heard before.
I won't spend this whole blog talking about vocal technique, but it
definitely cannot escape mention the amount of resonance most of those
singers achieve. They are allowing their voice to use so much of their face
for the tone of the singing that the vibrations through their nose and
face creates almost a buzz in their tonality and that is a totally
legitimate, practiced and desired characteristic of western professional
singers. It is the way to get the best and most powerful tone with the
least effort and damage... that having been said - how do they make
their voices sound so "brazen, overwrought and tortured?"
I am torn in attributing this sound and style to the nature of the emotions
they are expressing, and the explanation that they are just taught to
sing that way. I feel the answer probably lies between the two which
means that we, having western ears are caught looking for emotion in the
tone, but knowing that the entire sound is different and emotional
because it is so new to us. I feel this cante jondo could be compared very
readily to opera because so much emotion IS expressed through the
sound. The way I have always understood opera is that the text is of such a
secondary importance that many people attend operas barely knowing the
story, much less having read the libretto. All the sentiment expressed
in the story is within the music - perhaps that is how flamenco songs
are meant to be explored. Perhaps the true message and rare emotion is
within the tone of the singer and the motions of the dance and not in the text at all.
If you remember the Gypsy woman who mournfully sang on top of the hill while
her little boy built a fire, we did not hear her text in English until
after the song was finished, but it was clear to me as I am sure it was
to many that she was in great anguish long before we understood her words.
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AUTHOR: katie
EMAIL: abplanalpk@wlu.edu
IP: 137.113.171.9
URL:
DATE: 01/25/2005 09:53:42 AM
I agree completely -- this type of connection between emotions and
projection creates a completely different gut-wrenching reaction to the flamenco songs.
This makes me question, however, where the "advancement" of music has taken
us. As you indicated once when we spoke about the rhythms developing in
more modern "western" music - I wonder sometimes if that comes at the
expense of the natural expression that the freedom of flamenco allows.
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AUTHOR: jonesp
TITLE: cant get it out of my brain
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DATE: 01/18/2005 11:24:39 PM
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So after seeing all the Flamenco stuff I was really jazzed up. I knew I had
heard this stuff before on a latin jazz cd I had. Its the soundtrack of
the movie "calle 54" by Fernando Trueba. The movie is much like the
flamenco movie we saw today with various "music videos/scenes." There is one
that is almost totally like we saw today, except minus the guitar and
add really harmonically advanced piano and bass playing with a jazz
drummer. In the movie you see the dancer and the background clappers, but
unfortunately no copy in the library. There was a website with short
clips but now that is gone and even the internet wayback machine can't help me.
You can listen to the really sweet clip here
piano - Chano Dominguez
singer - Blas Cordoba "el Kejio"
My other favorite track on the album from Michel Camilo's
trio with Anthony Jackson on bass and "el Negro" Hernandez on drums
sorry the tracks take a long time to download...
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AUTHOR: gaiteric
TITLE: responding to Hugh, responding to me
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DATE: 01/19/2005 12:47:37 AM
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Hofstadter - what a mind. So perhaps we're fascinated by the inevitably
incomplete, and our interaction with music forms a kind of strange loop
- very roughly "freckled" - but in that case does humanity play for a cosmic ethnomusicologist?
BTW, have you ever read "Time: A Traveler's Guide" by Clifford Pickover?"
He uses music as more of a major plot element, but it's one
of the most enjoyable books about modern physics I've ever read. A few
people of the board could probably chime in on that too ;-)
Here's a brief summary of GEB
if someone hasn't read the book. And tangetially related... auditory illusions.
I'm unable to post comments as well, so my apols., this is living large...
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AUTHOR: Hugh
EMAIL: blackmerh@wlu.edu
IP: 137.113.104.128
URL:
DATE: 01/19/2005 12:52:00 PM
The problem with being unable to post comments is because the "include
HTML?" is turned off to discourage spammers. Not sure what I think about
that, since I often want to include URLs myself, so I've taken to just
pasting in the URL without its hyperlink anchors.
Meanwhile, I'll plug another Hofstadter book I'm really fond of:
Le Ton Beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language
--which is about Translation, sort of (well, it's about Everything, because it's Hofstadter...).
Jaw-droppingly excellent.
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TITLE: Impressed
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DATE: 01/19/2005 09:55:47 AM
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First off, I am not a music major so I can't really discern the
significance/sophistication of what many of these flamenco musicians are
doing with their talents. Insofar as the singing is concerned, I am
fascinated by Brooke's comments on their approach- looking back upon what I
saw, they definitely used their facial contortions/nasal passage to
create a resonance which many Western singers lack. Likewise, the
choreography of the dancers really amazed me- even taking into consideration
the practice which goes into these dances (which we witnessed in "Carmen"),
the fluidity with which the dancers moved and their
interpertation of the music's rhythm was pretty stunning. Again, not a very
sophisticated comment, but those were my initial impressions. Having
dabbled at the guitar myself, I was most interested by the flamenco
guitarists. Their creation of the sometimes complicated flamenco rhythm
was impressive enough, but I was really excited by the close-ups of each
guitarist's fingers. The finger-picking was incredible, I know that
from my own experience I have struggled tremendously in that area.
Likewise, the rapidity with which they moved around the fretboard was as
fast as I've seen in a while. That said, could anyone tell me the name
of the last guitarist that we saw? I missed it when it was mentioned
in class and would like to check out some more of his stuff. I can't
say that I'm a huge fan of flamenco music yet- I sometimes found the
vocals hard to handle. But as far as the instruments are concerned, I
have to admire the skill of their craft and certainly left class
impressed with the innovations of this particular genre.
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AUTHOR: Hugh
EMAIL: blackmerh@wlu.edu
IP: 137.113.104.128
URL:
DATE: 01/19/2005 12:46:00 PM
The guitarist is Paco de Lucia.
http://www.flamenco-world.com/guitar/pacodelucia/pacodelucia.htm is one Web site with a lot of stuff.
His recent CD Cositas Buenas is, well, brilliant
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AUTHOR: hourenk
TITLE: flamenco
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The flamenco music we looked at in class seems strikingly similar to the
gypsy music we discussed the class before last. I find the genres most
similar in the vocal technique used. But we should all notice a trend
- these musicians tell us much about their culture and what is important
to them through the music and the especially the lyrics. The emotion
displayed through the vocal technique of each genre points to the
hardship each culture has faced, and I think that it clues us westerner's
into the difficulties of living in a largely nomadic lifestyle. There
is something very free and exciting about living a trancently, but also
uncertain. I think that the range and arpeggiatic nature of the
vocalizations is especially important to consider in conjunction with the
uncertainty of this kind of existence. The lyrics, which seemed to me
mostly about basic human relationships and specifically male-female
relationships are very important to the music and these cultures, because
ultimately they only have each other to rely upon for emotional
sustinence. I hope to find these kinds of similarities in the other genres
that we study and to explore each cultures' interest in these very
basic but fundementally important and human relationships in the future.
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AUTHOR: jonesp
TITLE: african drumming
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There hasn't been much mention of this, but there will be African drumming
lessons in the Commons tonite at 8pm as a part of "Uncommon Grounds." should be ethnomusical...
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AUTHOR: luc
TITLE: love it!
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All the vignettes that we watched are absolutely fascinating!!!
Flamenco.. it’s full of energy, force, and power. It’s an expression of strength, courage, and dignity.
In choir, we are always advised to NOT oversing so that we would not damage
our vocal chords, so when I watched/listened to musicians from the
vignettes, I was astonished by their vocal technique. It was amazing to see
the way in which they use their voices to tell their stories of
hardship and struggles… an intense expression of their lives and conditions.
In the film Carmen, it was interesting to see how the musicians practice—
Yes, they do need to practice because they need the physical, mental, and emotional discipline.
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TITLE: the rhythms...
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DATE: 01/20/2005 10:47:08 AM
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I had no idea there were so many variations of the flamenco. I have only
danced it once, and that was so long ago, all I remembered was the 1-2-3.
I remember it being tricky, but while watching the videos I really couldn't keep up with the beat.
Watching the musicians, and even the singers - when they tap the table with
their hands - helps me to see the beat, but actually tapping it out on
my own was SO hard! I wonder why it is that westerners (or is it just
me) find it difficult to feel those rhythms. Also, it makes western
music look so tame. . . we think that our songs express emotion, but I
don't think they do so as much as these musicians do -- I keep seeing
images of those last two men singing. There was no need for
accompaniment, no rhythm really either. They just sang it out - our sounded
- or released. It was beautiful. That's a music with power.
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AUTHOR: Pete
EMAIL: jonesp@wlu.edu
IP: 137.113.171.129
URL:
DATE: 01/20/2005 01:11:23 PM
Of course, the harmonies of Western "classical" music have advanced much farther
than the harmonies of Flamenco.
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AUTHOR: katie
EMAIL: abplanalpk@wlu.edu
IP: 137.113.171.9
URL:
DATE: 01/25/2005 09:59:06 AM
yes, I agree that our harmonies have become more technically arranged and
systematic - but do you not find awe in how they sing from this
outpouring vat of emotion and experience to create sounds that aren't read from a page but rather felt!?
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AUTHOR: kosciolekd
TITLE: flamenco and the blues
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I have never seen anything like the flamenco stuff that we looked at, and it
was absolutely wonderful to hear it, and especially see it. Looking at
the faces as they sang the songs with all the emotion really reminded
me of watching blues singers. It’s fascinating that the area where
flamenco and blues come from are so geographically far, but there are
similarities that bring them very close to one another. The recurring
phrase about “having you at my side” that seemed inserted in many of the
flamenco songs is like recurring phrases in blues songs that artists use
for years and years. When I hear a line like, “I ain’t had no lovin
since you been gone,” it makes me think, what a great blues line. And
now, whenever I hear “with you by my side” I know I’m going to think of flamenco songs.
Both flamenco and blues songs are hardly wordy, but they definitely get the
most out of what they use. I’m not sure what the view of flamenco
artists is, but I wonder if its something like old blues guys in that you
don’t want to live their life, but the lifestyle is romanticized.
Watching the younger people dance and sing was great, but what really
grabbed my attention were the two older guys sitting and singing without instruments
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TITLE: Brilliant!
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I was fortunate enough to watch "Flamenco" in its entirety and by the end I
realized it was brilliant. What struck me immediately was the stark
contrast between the vibrancy of the music – the sounds, the emotions
– with the simple, crisp backdrops. I thought it was such a strange
combination of what seemed like complete opposites. But then I thought
about it and realized that Carlos Saura was brilliant and how perfectly they
fit together. Even in our class discussions of what the terms flamenco
and gypsy brought to mind, we never hit the amazing intricacy, control,
and accuracy that is found in it. Although, the music sounds wild and
free, crazy and amazingly vibrant it still has this sense of control
that perhaps gives it the freedom that we hear. Oddly enough, it is
somewhat like ballet, extremely controlled and precise but visually
amazingly fluid and free. This is what flamenco is too! The balance of
precision and fluidity. Therefore, the simple backdrops of solid color
and solitary light seem perfect. The wild (yet controlled) motions of
the dancers, as they stomp out every single beat perfectly, against the
solid backdrops works to show this balance. I thought it was just brilliant!
On a side note: after watching the movie with my friend, he burned me a
c.d. he thought I should have. It is an album from the “group” Ojos de
Brujo. If you have ever heard of the Gotan project it’s the same basic
idea, except instead of tango, they use flamenco. So if you haven’t
heard it, it’s a mix of traditional flamenco with hip hop, jazz, and a
little electonica mixed in. It’s pretty amazing too! And a bit more
accessible to people who aren’t familiar to the sounds of traditional flamenco.
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TITLE: swooshing dresses and pained faces
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Those two things in my title were the things I noticed most about the
flamenco movies. The contortions the singers's faces took when they were
singing those notes were absolutely amazing, awe-inspiring, and
incredibly real emotion. I heard that come through particularly well when
their voices cracked and you could see the strain on their faces when
they tried to sing the next note. To me, that was absolutely beautiful.
But you were right - if I had heard anything like that on the radio, I
probably would have turned it off. Seeing the musicians actually do it
made it that much more compelling. It seemed appropriate for silence in
the room for two minutes after each scene simply because there was such
a heavy mood and intense expression in each dance that it seemed
overwhelming to even begin to comprehend. Each little grace note in the
voice, each little arpeggio in the guitar, each twirl of the skirt and stamp
of the foot has a meaning that the musicians and dancers pull from the
deepest places of their being. To be able to share in that experience
by witnessing a dance was definitely amazing, to say the least.
The expressiveness of the whole dance was something that really stood out to
me, particularly in the first "Bolerias". The flamenco skirt can do so
much in terms of its own vividness and movement and everything. The way
the woman's heels clicked as she moved with the man and the sensuality
that flowed between them though you knew the dance was rehearsed was
brilliant. I'll write more when class is done.
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AUTHOR: palazzolocm
TITLE: Flaming Flamenco
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I really enjoyed watching the film on the flamenco genre. I was entralled
with the dancing, although I must admit that the majority of the
singing was a bit too guttural for me. I suppose that's my Westernized ear
speaking. But that did not prohibit me from recognizing the extreme
passion and deep emotions that they communicated in their songs. The
English subtitles helped me understand the context of the songs, but I
still would have been moved without them. Moreover, the colors were
spectacular and the beat was so infective that I found myself tapping my
hands and feet on more than one occassion. But I think what struck me
most of all about the film(s) was the effortlessness with which each
song was performed. Even in the first film when the girls were rehearsing,
there was never a question of their talent or ability to perform
the moves. It simply a question of when they would all come together to
execute the dance in unision with all the emotion they were supposed to
deliver. But the dance itself, its techniques and even identification
with the message contained in each song, seemed truly inherent in their
very beings. Watching them dance really brought out the
"inside/outside" factor we discussed in class, not because I felt I did
not understand what was taking place, but because I knew I could never
move/sing like that, and my subsequent conviction that no one but these people could.
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AUTHOR: jonesp
TITLE: dot com blues
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DATE: 01/21/2005 02:09:34 AM
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Well, I stand corrected on not being able to play the blues about computers. Check out dot com blues
You also sing the blues about Tuition with "Tuition Blues"
Jimmy Smith is one of the originators of the Soul-Jazz organ-guitar-drum
trio thing. Also has great gospel influenced jazz going on "The
Sermon." This album is a sort of resurrected Jimmy Smith with a variety of
big blues names like BB King, taj mahal, etc. I have one of his other
new cds called "Damn!" which is appropriate, because he rocks.
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AUTHOR: iten
TITLE: the breaking point
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DATE: 01/23/2005 08:17:38 PM
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On the flamenco film... I was loving it, absolutely loving it, until I
believe it was the second to last example we watched. It was the one which
made Hugh say afterward that if we only just heard the music and didn't
see it we would probably be able to relate to it less. I agree with
that, but that one example was just too much for me, not sounding
anymore like soulful lamentations but just whininess. Perhaps if I had more
background on the particular song, I would appreciate it more, but I
hit my flamenco appreciation breaking point there. I'm not sure about
everyone else's opinion on this particular piece, but if it was similar
than perhaps there is something that will always separate (at least
some of us) from those who can truly comprehend and perform flamenco.
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AUTHOR: Brooke
EMAIL: Sandenb@wlu.edu
IP: 137.113.41.2
URL:
DATE: 01/26/2005 09:40:42 PM
Yeah, Sweetie, I know what you mean but not in regards to the flamenco
music. I was still with it for the old men singing - my breaking point was
Janice Joplin in our last class. I did not know I had a breaking point
in music, but I DO! I could tolerate the other two bands we saw from
the same DVD - The Animals and The Who... I could at least stomach it,
but Joplin was over the edge. I can empathize with your broken-ness, just not in the flamenco men.
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AUTHOR: iten
TITLE: mashup?
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DATE: 01/24/2005 12:15:10 PM
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Found this on Boing Boing... what do you guys think, is this thing really a
mashup or is it more of a medley??
Whistler's Delight mashup mixes 22 whistling songs
DJ Riko's "Whistler's Delight" is a mash-up that mixes together dozens of
songs in which part or all of the action is accomplished through
whistling -- Andy of Mayberry theme, Sweet Georgia Brown, Dock of the Bay,
Whistle While You Work, and so on. Twenty-two songs in all, expertly
pitch-bent to the same key and mixed together. I'm really digging it.
www.djriko.com/music/DJ%20Riko%20-%20Whistler%27s%20Delight%20(Full%20version).mp3
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AUTHOR: ruminj
TITLE: "Weary" Blues
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I'm really enjoying this section of the class. I've always been fascinated
by the emotion conveyed by the blues and the virtuoso of guitarists
such as Robert Johnson. Likewise, I'm interested in the impact that
bluesmen such as Johnson and Son House have had on more recent rock
musicians, and I thought that the Hendrix video clips were a perfect
demonstration of this- you have to love Jimi, both for his musical genius
and his presence on stage- the man knew how to work an audience. But
what I liked most on Hugh's log file were the numerous postings
commenting upon the details surrounding the life and death of Robert
Johnson. Admittedly, I don't know a lot about the Mississippi Delta region
and so that aspect alone intrigues me, especially his association with
other musicians such as Son House and Charlie Brown. But the myth
surrounding Johnson's sudden emergence as a guitar genius, and the
speculation (by his friends no less) that he sold his soul to the devil in
exchange for the devil's tuning of his guitar is pretty incredible. I'm
not sure what to think of it, but it is definitely provoking to read
differing accounts of this event, specifically the take that one
African American (I can't remember his name) provided concerning the
divergence in opinion between black and white blues enthusiasts; his
explanationof the way in which the "Devil" can be traced back to an African
trickster is enlightening and useful when considering the origins of
this myth- pretty cool stuff.
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AUTHOR: abplanalpk
TITLE: flashback
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DATE: 01/25/2005 10:14:51 AM
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With all this talk of Flamenco videos and enjoying seeing it while listening
- I thought I may make a suggestion, as far fetched as it may be:
Flamenco [videorecording] / de Carlos Sauro; una produccion Juan Lebron
Producciones con la participation de RTVA Radio Television de Andalucia. New
York, NY: New Yorker Video, 1998. 1 videocassette (100 min.) [Hoak] PN1997.F57 1998 VD
I watched this last summer while I was at JMU - also a FANTASTIC video
tracing the story of a flamenco dancer (with a little love story in there as
well). It has the same brilliant-colored backgrounds behind the
dancers, rehearsals and performances, and I believe one of the best male
flamenco dancers is in it too - I knew his name at one time, but can't
remember. Definitely worth a watch. They have it at the JMU library
if you're ever up near Harrisonburg.
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AUTHOR: abplanalpk
TITLE: question on the blues
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DATE: 01/25/2005 10:23:42 AM
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Last week, we outlined our impressions of the blues - and we noted that they
have their roots in spirituals and further developed into Gospel.
After the reading, however, I am confused about these connections. The
quotes about the blues sounded like they were much more rooted in the
secular, every-day workings of life. So, can someone explain this connection again?
=from the attempts to define the blues =
"The blues singer has no interest in heaven, and not much hope in earth - a
thoroughly disillusioned individual. The spirituals were created in
the church; the blues sprang from everyday life."
"Blues lyrics could be light, mocking, risque, or could deal forthrightly
with the most highly charged subject matter -- intimate details of love,
sex and desire; a fascination with travel . . . "
== I guess one connection is in the call/response? - and "praise the lord"
"yeah" interjections in blues as well as gospel? -- any other ideas or leads?
SIDENOTE: I was just introduced to an AMAZING Gospel singer - Ginny Owens.
She's a blind woman singing about her love and dependence on God.
very intimate and uplifting lyrics with amazing tone of voice. Her song
"Be my vision" is INCREDIBLE - with this intense rumbling in the
background the entire time. Tell me if you want to listen - I have it on my ipod.
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AUTHOR: gaiteric
TITLE: the Delta Dao
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DATE: 01/25/2005 07:41:39 PM
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Blues performers pull emotion into their lyrics by relating it to events in
their personal past, as well as reaching out to embrace an audience
with similar experiences. Yet there is a definite emphasis in blues on
effortless performance and contrivance seems to be discouraged.
Some descriptions of the superb performances we’ve seen demand that
(like a good speaker) the performer disappears when the music comes on.
Thus the demands of an audience for a “pure” musical
experience and the personal and professional demands on the performer are,
at least to some degree, at odds.
This seems to be a case in which the Dao that can be told is not the eternal
Dao. Maybe when we perceive a performer successfully threading this
paradox we know what music is. At the same time it’s certain
possible to study how the paradox comes about.
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AUTHOR: doughertyt
TITLE: janis and the blues
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DATE: 01/27/2005 12:58:14 AM
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Thank you, Hugh, for showing us the rest of the Monterey Pop Festival clip
even though you were trying to keep us on the topic of the blues. i
apologize for wanting to see more, but i couldn't help myself. im greedy when i get the chance.
i have only gone through one of the examples, but i am so excited to hear
the rest, especially the prison songs. i can't help but think that
watching the rest of the Monterey festival was, in some sense, applicable to
the topic we were covering because rock and roll has such an important
link to the blues. i would define rock and roll, or at least the very
primitive forms of it (buddy holly, elvis presley) as the white man's
blues. most early rock and roll songs are based on the same chord
progressions as the blues songs that influenced the artists, and some of the
songs are simply remakes of blues classics. so groups like the Animals
and the Who owe a lot to Janis Joplin's predecessors, if not as much as
she does herself. as i was watching Janis's performance, i couldn't
help but be reminded of a banshee screaming. it is quite clear why she
burned out so quickly. she has an extremely unique quality to her voice
that is both enticing and repulsive at the same time.
all the blues stuff that we have listened to thus far chills my spine - i
can't get enough. blues is one of those things that i know exists but
never sat down to listen to much because i didn't think it would suit my
tastes, so to speak. but everything we've listened to has tingled my
skin. just the raw emotion, heart, and soul that the musicians pour into
their playing and their singing is so much to handle - it's easy to see
why there wasn't much musical accompaniment to blues songs. the vocals
and the rhythmic aspects really shine. the prison songs especially
exemplify to me a kind of community that isn't really present in any other
form of music - they're the songs of shared hardships, and the power of
music is what keeps them sane and alive and even, dare i say,
optimistic. it's all just so beautiful.
i hope we come up with more examples we can listen to in class, because this is really fantastic.
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AUTHOR: blackmer
TITLE: Scratch Track and the Blues
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I just ran across this band today, and I'm quite impressed as I listen in
the context of a personal binge of blues and blues-related music over
the last 10 days or so. It occurred to me last night that ALL the items
on the list I've made for you are historical --the people who
recorded them are all dead dead dead. The trio Scratch Track are very
alive indeed, and what they do owes a lot to the blues legacy. See the link to mp3 at Eclectic Bougaloo,
a site that I'll be revisiting, and it looks like there are more examples at the band's own Website.
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AUTHOR: blackmer
TITLE: On breaking points
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I thinks it's a GOOD thing to have --and recognize and examine-- breaking
points. I pride myself on finding value in some pretty indigestible
sonic material, but even I recoil from some kinds of music, and some
excesses. Same thing with food... The image of the baby hippopotamus
(something so ugly only its mother could luvvit) is useful to me on a
daily basis. Anyway, I think it's valuable to articulate just what one
is put off by, Janis-wise or flamenco-wise or any-wise. So thanks for those comments.
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AUTHOR: Hannonj
EMAIL: hannonj@wlu.edu
IP: 137.113.114.136
URL:
DATE: 01/27/2005 10:55:49 AM
I want to comment on the posting made about scratch track and the blues.
One thing that fascinates me about music is an artists ability to create
amazing sounds with the use of the human voice. Scratch track is
similar to this, it is very unorthodox music production when compared to the
stuff that we are hearing on the radio. However, these guys are not
using synthesizers or layers, they are creating big sounds with their
big talents. One of my new interests that in music has become a capella
music, because you can hear different voice parts, the harmonies they
produce, and the pureness of the voice. This past weekend house I heard
three Norwegian woman singing harmonious and notes that I didn't even
know existed. I mean this is stuff that I have been thinking about since
last Sunday… its truly remarkable. Hugh, what is the name of that group?
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AUTHOR: palazzolocm
TITLE: Got Me Wondering
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DATE: 01/27/2005 02:48:06 PM
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all our discussions about Blues has got me wondering more about the origin
of this genre. Most experts say that the basis of the Blues is in
spirituals/slave songs. But to me (and I am definitely not an expert on
African music!), those spirituals sound nothing like any traditionally
African music that i have heard. And they are nothing like the white
music of that era. so it seems that these spirituals, the foundation
for the Blues, came out of nowhere. This in itself is surprising, but
even more amazing to me is how widespread the phenomenon was. it seems
like the Blues was a prevalent musical type in the South very early in
its origination, but how is that? did slaves really travel enough and
interact enough with other slaves to be able to teach their music to
them? or did music legitimately grow out of those trapped in the same
type of life situation and just happen to be similar/the same? i just
can't figure where exactly this music form come from!
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AUTHOR: blackmer
TITLE: Answering Christie
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DATE: 01/27/2005 06:31:00 PM
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...which is probably as good an excuse as I could have to make Africa be our
next musical destination. There are certainly identifiable elements and
parallels that make sense to the ears, though the hunt for THE origin
of this or any other musical form is sort of a mug's game: the answers
generally take the form of interwoven strands of influence, leavened
with leaps of faith/assertion, and it's sort of like genealogy: people
perpetuate stories that please them, whatever the real realities might
have been. Perhaps the real answer is that it's the STORIES that are the most fun.
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AUTHOR: jonesp
TITLE: ubu's 365 days
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DATE: 01/28/2005 01:52:28 AM
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We briefly looked at ubu.com's ethnomusicology page... but this site also
has a treasure of ridiculous songs in its 365 day project. A song per
day with such hits as Louis Farrakhan (former leader of the Nation of
Islam) singing calypso is a good one. My favorite is a very intoxicated
Van Morrison singing such hits as "It looks like you've got ringworm"
and "Want A Danish"... the rest of the songs are in the same spirit.
ubu web
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AUTHOR: djalalievp
TITLE: My first encounter of blues
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DATE: 01/30/2005 08:12:23 PM
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As many other people, probably, the first place I encountered blues music
were the Looney Tunes cartoons - Tom & Jerry, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig,
etc... This type of music goes extremely well with these cartoons -
conveys a sense of peacefulness and playfulness at the same time.
Anybody have an idea how they chose exactly blues music for the background
of these cartoons? Is there any cultural reason?
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AUTHOR: djalalievp
TITLE: digital music compression algorithms
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DATE: 02/06/2005 09:45:30 PM
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Upon one of Hugh's many pages describing this course, I stumbled upon this
article about digital music compression algorithms. Being a
Computer Science student deep in my bones, I couldn't overlook that...
Since I am looking at this from a more technical point of view, I wonder
what the others in the class think about this...
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The article in its essence deals to some extent with one of the most
fundamental principles in Computer Science - the trade-off between space and
time/speed. When talking about digital music, this recurrent principle
is obvious (size of file vs. time for downloading), but in other fields
it is not so directly connected and still very powerful and dominant...
I can personally see a market or an audience for most of these algorithms.
WMA has strong copyright management principles, AC-2 (or AAC) might
replace MP3 in the future, OGG is open-source - vital for some business
models where paying for the compression technology would raise production costs too high.
As the article says, the most exciting news are yet to come as researchers
strive to develop algorithms combining the advantages of the existing
ones... I personally think that open-source algorithms won't quite
catch up with ones where money are being invested into research, but hey
- many people a decade ago would not (and still don't) consider open-source music a viable model either...
If you want to learn more about the different algorithms, this is a link
provided by this articl