The state of music criticism today, methinks:
http://www.salon.com/2013/02/09/i_dared_criticize_taylor_swift/
Feb 9, 2013
How it is:
The state of music criticism today, methinks:
http://www.salon.com/2013/02/09/i_dared_criticize_taylor_swift/
Nov 20, 2012
all sounds the same?
Update: here is a link to the study:
http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120726/srep00521/full/srep00521.html
Source:
http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/07/26/us-science-music-idINBRE86P0R820120726
(Reuters) – Comforting news for anyone over the age of 35, scientists have worked out that modern pop music really is louder and does all sound the same.
Researchers in Spain used a huge archive known as the Million Song Dataset, which breaks down audio and lyrical content into data that can be crunched, to study pop songs from 1955 to 2010.
A team led by artificial intelligence specialist Joan Serra at the Spanish National Research Council ran music from the last 50 years through some complex algorithms and found that pop songs have become intrinsically louder and more bland in terms of the chords, melodies and types of sound used.
“We found evidence of a progressive homogenization of the musical discourse,” Serra told Reuters. “In particular, we obtained numerical indicators that the diversity of transitions between note combinations – roughly speaking chords plus melodies – has consistently diminished in the last 50 years.”
They also found the so-called timbre palette has become poorer. The same note played at the same volume on, say, a piano and a guitar is said to have a different timbre, so the researchers found modern pop has a more limited variety of sounds.
Intrinsic loudness is the volume baked into a song when it is recorded, which can make it sound louder than others even at the same volume setting on an amplifier.
The music industry has long been accused of ramping up the volume at which songs are recorded in a ‘loudness war’ but Serra says this is the first time it has been properly measured using a large database.
The study, which appears in the journal Scientific Reports, offers a handy recipe for musicians in a creative drought.
Old tunes re-recorded with increased loudness, simpler chord progressions and different instruments could sound new and fashionable. The Rolling Stones in their 50th anniversary year should take note.
(Reporting by Chris Wickham)
http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120726/srep00521/full/srep00521.html
Source:
http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/07/26/us-science-music-idINBRE86P0R820120726
(Reuters) – Comforting news for anyone over the age of 35, scientists have worked out that modern pop music really is louder and does all sound the same.
Researchers in Spain used a huge archive known as the Million Song Dataset, which breaks down audio and lyrical content into data that can be crunched, to study pop songs from 1955 to 2010.
A team led by artificial intelligence specialist Joan Serra at the Spanish National Research Council ran music from the last 50 years through some complex algorithms and found that pop songs have become intrinsically louder and more bland in terms of the chords, melodies and types of sound used.
“We found evidence of a progressive homogenization of the musical discourse,” Serra told Reuters. “In particular, we obtained numerical indicators that the diversity of transitions between note combinations – roughly speaking chords plus melodies – has consistently diminished in the last 50 years.”
They also found the so-called timbre palette has become poorer. The same note played at the same volume on, say, a piano and a guitar is said to have a different timbre, so the researchers found modern pop has a more limited variety of sounds.
Intrinsic loudness is the volume baked into a song when it is recorded, which can make it sound louder than others even at the same volume setting on an amplifier.
The music industry has long been accused of ramping up the volume at which songs are recorded in a ‘loudness war’ but Serra says this is the first time it has been properly measured using a large database.
The study, which appears in the journal Scientific Reports, offers a handy recipe for musicians in a creative drought.
Old tunes re-recorded with increased loudness, simpler chord progressions and different instruments could sound new and fashionable. The Rolling Stones in their 50th anniversary year should take note.
(Reporting by Chris Wickham)
Mar 28, 2011
Mar 22, 2011
Course Evaluation - please bring to lecture next Wednesday (March 30)
CUST 2045 – Course Evaluation – F/W 2010-11
Addressing these questions is an opportunity to do several things: reflect on the experience of the course (and what it has meant to you); explore its general strengths and weaknesses, and potential value for other students; and suggest useful changes. Please answer in as much detail as possible.
I You:
- How prepared for this course were you? Did you feel adequately prepared for the course material?
- How much time each week did you spend on the course?
II the Course:
- Was the purpose of the assignment structure clear to you? Did it help your writing? Did it help you in the course?
- Were there issues you feel are important that were not raised?
- Does the course need more attention to: music? social ideas? Anything else?
- How might the skills and ideas developed here be useful in your career? In your life? What difference has the course made to you?
III Lectures
- Did this style of presentation work for you? Any suggestions? (Other than the impossible “slow down, Michael!”)
IV General Suggestions:
- What can you suggest to improve the course, with respect to: syllabus and general format? music/musical examples? listening? texts/reading? discussion? assignments?
Addressing these questions is an opportunity to do several things: reflect on the experience of the course (and what it has meant to you); explore its general strengths and weaknesses, and potential value for other students; and suggest useful changes. Please answer in as much detail as possible.
I You:
- How prepared for this course were you? Did you feel adequately prepared for the course material?
- How much time each week did you spend on the course?
II the Course:
- Was the purpose of the assignment structure clear to you? Did it help your writing? Did it help you in the course?
- Were there issues you feel are important that were not raised?
- Does the course need more attention to: music? social ideas? Anything else?
- How might the skills and ideas developed here be useful in your career? In your life? What difference has the course made to you?
III Lectures
- Did this style of presentation work for you? Any suggestions? (Other than the impossible “slow down, Michael!”)
IV General Suggestions:
- What can you suggest to improve the course, with respect to: syllabus and general format? music/musical examples? listening? texts/reading? discussion? assignments?
Mar 12, 2011
Quotes About Music
Quotations about Music A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. ~Leopold Stokowski Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. ~Berthold Auerbach All deep things are song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls! ~Thomas Carlyle If the King loves music, it is well with the land. ~Mencius Without music life would be a mistake. ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons. You will find it is to the soul what a water bath is to the body. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music. ~Gustav Mahler Why waste money on psychotherapy when you can listen to the B Minor Mass? ~Michael Torke And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares that infest the day Shall fold their tents like the Arabs And as silently steal away. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Day Is Done He who sings scares away his woes. ~Cervantes Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness. ~Maya Angelou, Gather Together in My Name Were it not for music, we might in these days say, the Beautiful is dead. ~Benjamin Disraeli Music is what feelings sound like. ~Author Unknown There's music in the sighing of a reed; There's music in the gushing of a rill; There's music in all things, if men had ears: Their earth is but an echo of the spheres. ~Lord Byron Musical compositions, it should be remembered, do not inhabit certain countries, certain museums, like paintings and statues. The Mozart Quintet is not shut up in Salzburg: I have it in my pocket. ~Henri Rabaud Music is the poetry of the air. ~Richter If I were to begin life again, I would devote it to music. It is the only cheap and unpunished rapture upon earth. Sydney Smith There is nothing in the world so much like prayer as music is. ~William P. Merrill If in the after life there is not music, we will have to import it. ~Doménico Cieri Estrada Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it. ~Henry David Thoreau Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life. ~Ludwig van Beethoven I have my own particular sorrows, loves, delights; and you have yours. But sorrow, gladness, yearning, hope, love, belong to all of us, in all times and in all places. Music is the only means whereby we feel these emotions in their universality. ~H.A. Overstreet My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around us; the world is full of it, and you simply take as much as you require. ~Edward Elgar Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them! ~Oliver Wendell Holmes Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. ~Charlie Parker Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years. ~William F. Buckley, Jr. Music cleanses the understanding; inspires it, and lifts it into a realm which it would not reach if it were left to itself. ~Henry Ward Beecher Play the music, not the instrument. ~Author Unknown Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken. ~Ludwig van Beethoven Music is the cup which holds the wine of silence. ~Robert Fripp [An intellectual] is someone who can listen to the "William Tell Overture" without thinking of the Lone Ranger. ~John Chesson Music's the medicine of the mind. ~John A. Logan You are the music while the music lasts. ~T.S. Eliot Music is the universal language of mankind. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Outre-Mer Music rots when it gets too far from the dance. Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music. ~Ezra Pound He who hears music, feels his solitude peopled at once. ~Robert Browning You can't possibly hear the last movement of Beethoven's Seventh and go slow. ~Oscar Levant, explaining his way out of a speeding ticket The Irish gave the bagpipes to the Scots as a joke, but the Scots haven't got the joke yet. ~Oliver Herford What we provide is an atmosphere... of orchestrated pulse which works on people in a subliminal way. Under its influence I've seen shy debs and severe dowagers kick off their shoes and raise some wholesome hell. ~Meyer Davis, about his orchestra Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent. ~Victor Hugo ...where music dwells Lingering - and wandering on as loth to die... ~William Wordsworth, "Within King's College Chapel, Cambridge" Music is an outburst of the soul. ~Frederick Delius Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory. ~Oscar Wilde In music the passions enjoy themselves. ~Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 1886 Music is what life sounds like. ~Eric Olson If this word "music" is sacred and reserved for eighteenth and nineteenth century instruments, we can substitute a more meaningful term: organization of sound. ~John Cage Its language is a language which the soul alone understands, but which the soul can never translate. ~Arnold Bennett Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words. ~Robert G. Ingersoll Music is the literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends. ~Alphonse de Lamartine There is in souls a sympathy with sounds: And as the mind is pitch'd the ear is pleased With melting airs, or martial, brisk or grave; Some chord in unison with what we hear Is touch'd within us, and the heart replies. ~William Cowper When words leave off, music begins. ~Heinrich Heine Truly to sing, that is a different breath. ~Rainer Maria Rilke Music is the shorthand of emotion. ~Leo Tolstoy There is no truer truth obtainable By Man than comes of music. ~Robert Browning Most people use music as a couch; they want to be pillowed on it, relaxed and consoled for the stress of daily living. But serious music was never meant to be soporific. ~Aaron Copland What passion cannot music raise and quell! ~John Dryden The joy of music should never be interrupted by a commercial. ~Leonard Bernstein Music is forever; music should grow and mature with you, following you right on up until you die. ~Paul Simon Music, when soft voices die Vibrates in the memory - ~Percy Bysshe Shelley A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges. ~Benny Green The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes - ah, that is where the art resides! ~Artur Schnabel The pause is as important as the note. ~Truman Fisher The city is built To music, therefore never built at all, And therefore built forever. ~Alfred Lord Tennyson Silence is the fabric upon which the notes are woven. ~Lawrence Duncan Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without. ~Confucius Rock music in its lyrics often talks ahead of the time about what's going on in the country. ~Edmund G. Brown Music can noble hints impart, Engender fury, kindle love, With unsuspected eloquence can move, And manage all the man with secret art. ~Joseph Addison My whole trick is to keep the tune well out in front. If I play Tchaikovsky, I play his melodies and skip his spiritual struggle. ~Liberace Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes. ~Alfred Lord Tennyson Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music. ~Ronald Reagan The discovery of song and the creation of musical instruments both owed their origin to a human impulse which lies much deeper than conscious intention: the need for rhythm in life… the need is a deep one, transcending thought, and disregarded at our peril. ~Richard Baker Music is the medicine of the breaking heart. ~Leigh Hunt Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune. ~Frank McKinney "Kin" Hubbard, Comments of Abe Martin and His Neighbors, 1923 Country music is three chords and the truth. ~Harlan Howard An artist, in giving a concert, should not demand an entrance fee but should ask the public to pay, just before leaving as much as they like. From the sum he would be able to judge what the world thinks of him - and we would have fewer mediocre concerts. ~Kit Coleman, Kit Coleman: Queen of Hearts I think sometimes could I only have music on my own terms, could I live in a great city, and know where I could go whenever I wished the ablution and inundation of musical waves, that were a bath and a medicine. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson Are we not formed, as notes of music are, For one another, though dissimilar? ~Percy Bysshe Shelley Music, once admitted to the soul, becomes a sort of spirit, and never dies. ~Edward George Bulwer-Lytton A song has a few rights the same as ordinary citizens... if it happens to feel like flying where humans cannot fly... to scale mountains that are not there, who shall stop it? ~Charles Ives The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic. ~Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. ~Aldous Huxley, Music at Night and Other Essays Music is love in search of a word. ~Sidney Lanier It is incontestable that music induces in us a sense of the infinite and the contemplation of the invisible. ~Victor de LaPrade Music is moonlight in the gloomy night of life. ~Jean Paul Richter Music is a friend of labor for it lightens the task by refreshing the nerves and spirit of the worker. ~William Green If anyone has conducted a Beethoven performance, and then doesn't have to go to an osteopath, then there's something wrong. ~Simon Rattle Bach opens a vista to the universe. After experiencing him, people feel there is meaning to life after all. ~Helmut Walcha I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else. ~Lily Tomlin The scratches in Yoko Ono records are moments of relief. ~S.A. Sachs Music is well said to be the speech of angels. ~Thomas Carlyle, Essays, "The Opera" Opera is where a guy gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings. ~Robert Benchley No good opera plot can be sensible:... people do not sing when they are feeling sensible. ~W.H. Auden, Time, 29 December 1961 |
Jan 21, 2011
revised second term syllabus
Cultural Studies 2045Y: Music and Society
1. 4 short essays 40% (2 in1st term, 2 in 2nd term)
2. Midterm essay 10%
3. 4 listening quizzes 20% (1 in 1st term, 3 in second term) 4. 3 music analyses 15% (1 in1st term, 2 in 2nd term)
5. Final essay exam 15%
Type of Assignment Weight Due Date
Listening Quiz 2 5% Jan 19
Song Analysis 2 5% Jan 26
Short Essay 3 10% Feb 9
Listening Quiz 3 5% Mar 2
Analysis 3 5% Mar 9
Short essay 4 10% Mar 23
Listening Quiz 4 5% Mar 31
Final take home Essay 15% Apr 20
revised SYLLABUS Term TWO:
WEEK: Topics: Readings: Terms & Activities:
2 I-19 American Pop and the British Invasion, 1960s Starr/Waterman, 236-268 dance music, motown, surf/serf music, the Beatles
3 I-26 Blowin’ in the Wind: Country, Soul, Urban Folk, and The Rise of Rock, 1960s Starr/Waterman, 269-311 Nashville. Soul, Funk, Dylan, psychedelia, the guitar
4 II-2 The 1970s: Rock Music, Disco, and the Popular Mainstream Starr/Waterman, 312-349 dance clubs & subcultures, market consolidation
5 II-9 Outsider's Music: Progressive Country, Reggae, Punk, Funk, and rap, 1970s Starr/Waterman, 350-381 alienated subcultures, DYI
6 II-23 The 1980s: Digital Technology; MTV, and the Popular Mainstream Starr/Waterman, 382-419 changing dissemination& markets
7 III-2 Hip-Hop, “Alternative” Music, and the Entertainment Business Starr/Waterman, 420-464 digital dance music, women’s music, world music
8 III-8 Music and identity Starr/Waterman, 465-476 music, group and individual identity issues
9 III-16 The Biz and the Experience Becker, “Artworlds,” Kit 1 roles, division of labour
10 III-23 Alternate History I: Art & Commerce Dialectic Seeger, “Music and Class Structure,” Kit 2 social & ethnic class; acculturation
11 III-30 Alternate History II: technology’s musical momentum Wald, “Technology and Its Discontents,” Kit 3 musical labour market; consumption & technological innovation
12 IV-6 Alternate History III: acculturation works both ways? Wald, “So You want a Revolution,” Kit 4 Cultural Clash and Continuity
1. 4 short essays 40% (2 in1st term, 2 in 2nd term)
2. Midterm essay 10%
3. 4 listening quizzes 20% (1 in 1st term, 3 in second term) 4. 3 music analyses 15% (1 in1st term, 2 in 2nd term)
5. Final essay exam 15%
Type of Assignment Weight Due Date
Listening Quiz 2 5% Jan 19
Song Analysis 2 5% Jan 26
Short Essay 3 10% Feb 9
Listening Quiz 3 5% Mar 2
Analysis 3 5% Mar 9
Short essay 4 10% Mar 23
Listening Quiz 4 5% Mar 31
Final take home Essay 15% Apr 20
revised SYLLABUS Term TWO:
WEEK: Topics: Readings: Terms & Activities:
2 I-19 American Pop and the British Invasion, 1960s Starr/Waterman, 236-268 dance music, motown, surf/serf music, the Beatles
3 I-26 Blowin’ in the Wind: Country, Soul, Urban Folk, and The Rise of Rock, 1960s Starr/Waterman, 269-311 Nashville. Soul, Funk, Dylan, psychedelia, the guitar
4 II-2 The 1970s: Rock Music, Disco, and the Popular Mainstream Starr/Waterman, 312-349 dance clubs & subcultures, market consolidation
5 II-9 Outsider's Music: Progressive Country, Reggae, Punk, Funk, and rap, 1970s Starr/Waterman, 350-381 alienated subcultures, DYI
6 II-23 The 1980s: Digital Technology; MTV, and the Popular Mainstream Starr/Waterman, 382-419 changing dissemination& markets
7 III-2 Hip-Hop, “Alternative” Music, and the Entertainment Business Starr/Waterman, 420-464 digital dance music, women’s music, world music
8 III-8 Music and identity Starr/Waterman, 465-476 music, group and individual identity issues
9 III-16 The Biz and the Experience Becker, “Artworlds,” Kit 1 roles, division of labour
10 III-23 Alternate History I: Art & Commerce Dialectic Seeger, “Music and Class Structure,” Kit 2 social & ethnic class; acculturation
11 III-30 Alternate History II: technology’s musical momentum Wald, “Technology and Its Discontents,” Kit 3 musical labour market; consumption & technological innovation
12 IV-6 Alternate History III: acculturation works both ways? Wald, “So You want a Revolution,” Kit 4 Cultural Clash and Continuity
Dec 2, 2010
ideas for mid-term essay topics
Dear Folks,
As we discussed last night, I would like if possible for everyone to have a clear idea by next week what they would like to write about for the mid-term essay. The general guidelines are that it should be about twice the size of a term essay--5-8 pages, in other words--and synthesize some ideas and topics from our first term work, creatively and with reference to specific musical instances. Outside research is not forbidden, but mildly discouraged (as so much of it is, alas, baloney); personal experience, intelligently integrated as thought and not opinion, is welcomed.
Here are some draft possibilities:
1. Discuss the development of a genre of North American (popular) music. Some potential elements to consider: [changes in] musical form; vocal and performance style; beat feeling; social function; demographics [=who created, participated, was involved]; sound technology; business and economic practice; tradition.
2. Consider the quote at the bottom of page 199: "..the shift in musical marketing away from primarily racial and regional considerations (and their associated class-related aspects) toward primarily generational considerations." Discuss the shift, with attention to demographics, post-war economics, changes in the music business, and musical particulars.
As we discussed last night, I would like if possible for everyone to have a clear idea by next week what they would like to write about for the mid-term essay. The general guidelines are that it should be about twice the size of a term essay--5-8 pages, in other words--and synthesize some ideas and topics from our first term work, creatively and with reference to specific musical instances. Outside research is not forbidden, but mildly discouraged (as so much of it is, alas, baloney); personal experience, intelligently integrated as thought and not opinion, is welcomed.
Here are some draft possibilities:
1. Discuss the development of a genre of North American (popular) music. Some potential elements to consider: [changes in] musical form; vocal and performance style; beat feeling; social function; demographics [=who created, participated, was involved]; sound technology; business and economic practice; tradition.
2. Consider the quote at the bottom of page 199: "..the shift in musical marketing away from primarily racial and regional considerations (and their associated class-related aspects) toward primarily generational considerations." Discuss the shift, with attention to demographics, post-war economics, changes in the music business, and musical particulars.
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