week 9

final thoughts:
I want to buy music the correct way, to benefit the artist and not necessarily the music companies in equal measure. All I know to do is buy my music as I am. I most enjoyed learning different perspectives on what can be done to better the situation. I have always been a "solutions" kind of girl. I can see the problem, tell me what might fix it.
I already do not and have never downloaded illigally, so I do not need to promise to change my ways.
I enjoyed the musicology textbook very much. I did not care much for the other one as I found it too dry and full of jargon and acronyms.
I enjoyed the different websites but did not feel that I knew enough of what I was looking for to distinguish them all.
I really enjoyed being exposed to the "cd baby" and new artists that I am now trying (have already found some new ones that I am really liking- thank you very much!).
Our collections this week. These were fun, I tried mostly to see who had what that was different, etc. Several of these places are dear to my heart, so I was curious to see what they had to offer and what their sites looked like. Here they are:
1) UCLA Jazz Archival Collections
They have journals, additional sound recordings. The core of the collection is 1150 books (works) which are (understandably) non-circulating.
They have collections of business papers which I find interesting as it would give students a chance to study that aspect of the profession and how it has changed, etc. Could be interesting.
2) USC Ray Herbeck LA Swing Band Collection
How big is this- it doesn't say. It also doesn't tell you what is in the collection, you just have to contact these people. This collection seems to just be Ray Herbeck's music, not sure.
It says it may have restricted access? Not that that in itself surprises me, but what about the material that is not restricted access?
3) DC District of Columbia Library of Congress Archive of Folk Culture
This was created back in 1976. I love how they break down the contents of the collection. The collection is available in their reading room (makes sense).
4) The Smithsonian Insstitution National Museum of American History Archives
They store their stuff (at least partly) at off site locations. They are the only ones that have mentioned that. Hours are very limited. Instructions are nicely detailed however.
I thought this was interesting, they allow laptops and cameras, but no notebooks.
copies are $.25 a page. That's a little steep. But they don't mention not wanting you to photocopy their material, like some places do.
I looked at women in jazz, very nice!
5) University of Georgia Johnny Mercer papers
I am from Savannah, of course I picked this one! I clicked on their Johnny Mercer bio and it took me back to ask.com (what I happened to be using at the time). I don't like that.
I LOVE the microphone on/off switch. Is this only for a year? It looks that way- that can't be right can it? I can't access the photos (unless it is my computer not letting me).
I also like that it tells you how to site. That's being pro-active.
6) Southern Illinois University Lovejoy Library National Ragtime and Jazz Archive
These are jazz musicians from the St. Louis area (it says). I love the fact that they have a faculty band "The Old Guys" that play and do benefits to benefit the archive. I love that!
You can click on interviews with 17 musicians. Awesome!
This is great oral history
The recordings page is under construction so I did not get a look/listen to that.
7) Louisiana State Museum Jazz Collection
This was formed in 1948. The history is well written and entertaining. They say that they have the largest collection of instruments owned and played by important figures in jazz. They even have pictures of all the instruments.
They have over 10,000 photographs with another well written description of the collection.
They have a huge number of recordings in tons of formats, including piano rolls.
Lots of film donated by a local cameraman and a collection of artwork.
How wonderful! I was really, really impressed with this site. I loved the writeups and they have an awesome collection.
8) Tulane University Hogan Archive of New Orleans Jazz
They also have a faculty band "The Louisiana Repertory Jazz Ensemble" and a newsletter (first one of those that I've seen). They have an introduction to New Orleans jazz, it's ok, rather dry. Too brief and I bet #7 would have done a great job with something like that, why don't they have one? All in all, I was much, much more impressed with #7 and I find that very dissapointing. I expect more of Tulane.
9) University of Michigan Jazz Oral Histories
150 interviews. Almost all conducted by one person. Not sure if that's really good or not. You can read the interviews. Awesome! This is something that even I, a nonmusical person can relate to. So I read a few. Here are my brief thoughts:
Ray Charles. Very casually spoken. He talks about basically being forced to play classical music as he was learning to play. But the interview is incomplete.
Frustrating! OK, let's try one more
Ella Fitzgerald. Now this one starts in mid-interview. That's almost just as frustrating!!
She says she's not a musician (interesting). This one is full of more casual talk and less musical. She seeems like a very down to earth easy spoken person.
But I am not happy with either one of these. I am sure that this kind of thing just goes with the territory but how very frustrating that would be to a researcher. I think it probably would go down better if they warned you before you clicked on it that the interviews were incomplete.
10) University of Mississippi Center for the Study of Southern Culture
I wanted this degree SO BAD. But I will NOT move to Mississippi. Sorry, no. Not in this lifetime. But the minute they do a PHD online, I am there!!
I went to the archives (I was not sure where to go, your links were not working for me, so I probably did not start from the correct site) So, I started at archives and went to the blues archive. They have a great breakdown of the numbers in their collection and the types of materials. The inventories were very incomplete. You would almost have to contact them for information- which you have to do anyway. Everything inventoried seems to be CD's. It does have a really good page of links attached.
so that's it. I really enjoyed it.

Week 8- Improvisation

Reading about this as a form of musical style made me feel better- at least this is a talent I can relate to. I did improv speaking in high school and I remeber the basics of it and what makes you sucessful and what makes you not sucessful. I am assuming it is a similar concept with music (I could be wrong).
wiki's definition partially as follows: bringing one's personal awareness "into the moment" fusion of awareness and understanding.
this seems a little dreamy. Maybe that works for music.

voices: this looked interesting, I bookmarked it for more detail reading later.
Interesting about the border-line patients who are fixated in the operational thinking and unable to manipulate symbols- music maybe more like a means to carry out their chaotic thinking.
I know a borderline person but am afraid to ask for her opinion of this. I would like to know it though, few things are more interesting than personality disorders.

I spent a great deal of time this week on research for my paper on music and autism. I am not happy at all with what I am finding. Nothing exactly like what I need. Journal articles aren't what I need, the books at my library are too old (anything over 2 years is really outdated on autism) and my brand new (expensive) stuff does not say anything about music specifically. Pretty frustrated right now but I still want to stay with it.

Lesson 7

Musicophelia says on page 94 that motor cortex can show changes within minutes of practicing such sequences. That is absolutely astounding to me. It is said that you keep your mind "sharp" with mental exercises, puzzles, etc. The book basically validated that and it is very sobering to think of the physical literal changes taking place in our brains at all times.
It also makes me despair again for the child on my case load with uncontrollable seizures that is actually in the past four months or so regressing (let's be honest, he couldn't exactly do much to begin with). He has now lost the ability to roll over- he used to roll like a tumbleweed. Is this reversable? I just think of the lightning sparks in his brain and I wonder how much is left undamaged at this point.
What to do?
Very frustrating being his therapist, I'll tell you that.
On page 148, Dr. Sacks mentions a reconstruction of function, so I guess I can hope.

So..... lesson 7
-freepress- The article entitled, ask yourself why... cable rates got so high was highly entertaining. It strikes me that these kinds of bribes are illegal in the pharmeceutical world. Who polices this?
And about the a la cart cable, I have been asking for this for years. I was told that they consider all premium channels a la carte. We have a big cable monopoly up here. One company-which everybody I know hates. I have satellite and I love them.
the next site was interesting,

-downhill battle- about apple tunes. This was depressing. I want to hear about positive people doing good things, all these people are so negative! I enjoyed reading about the musiclink.com and cutting out the middleman and actually told several people about it this week.

-full sail- I had no idea this existed, Great site. This looks terrific!

-taxi- Advertising + Resources. Awesome!
This looks really clever. Their FAQ's are great. Answered a lot of questions. You pay about $300 a year and $5 a song. It seems to me like an investment that would be worth it.

-music business solutions- I don't like this.
looks more like an infomericial. This looks like a smaller shop although they do tell you who they are at least...

-music big academy- I like the blogs. You can never have too much information about the legal things.

-google audio processing- I don't know how many people would be interested in this...
0 comments

-music xml- I don't even know what this is. It's a recent site. The about us tells me about the people, it still does not tell me about the company.

-Gnod- I want to talk-- but I don't want to log in!!!! AND it knocked me off!! Very uncool.
So again, I had a good time playing with bands and again I am bemused as to how they link music. I don't even know the people that this site is recommending I listen to. But,, I dutifully write them down on my ever growing list. Boy am I going to have a lot to listen to in the fall when I have NO SCHOOL!!

Lesson 6 Sociology of rock music

These are some really interesting sites this week!
I printed out a few things to read from the first site, I got to an article called Getting Dumber and Dumber: MTV's Global Footprint by Simon Philo which had some fascinating points in it. Mr. Philo states, correctly I think that "In its world-wide context, MTV has triggered debates in which the fear of possible cultural imperialism mixes with concerns over the debasement of culture and the merits and de-merits of mass or popular culture". MTV is such a great catalyst for this because it has been so far reaching. There are some statistics later in the article that give numbers of households that MTV touches in staggering numbers. Who can forget the power of their "Rock the Vote" campaign. This was MTV flexing muscle demonstrating the hook they had in the youth, not of America, but the world. I found this article interesting probably most because I really felt I could relate to it.

Then, I enjoyed some of the parental advisory highlights of the recent past.
These were great.
Some of them were just absolutely absurd.
Did the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence really forbid "Danny Boy" during funerals?????
and then it says in the 1990's that a Nebraska radio station led a boycott of k.d. lang for her anti-meat beliefs.
Is that a joke???
The station didn't even play her music, but, let's boycott it. I mean, she's a raving lesbian (not that I care about that) but you mean she's a vegitarian!!!!!
Honestly, I laughed so hard I hurt. You should really warn us first.
The other thing that I thought was so funny in all these censorship highlights, was how many times Wal-Mart popped up in them.
You know, let's just put this out there. Wal-Mart has no sense of humor at all.
They just don't work and play well with others.
If you haven't, you should check out wal-mart sucks . whatever (Wal-Mart keeps making them change it anyway, so it jumps around.). I never knew Wal-Mart had so many dastardly evil policies and their hatred of free speech extends to music.
Boo.

on to the next site::
music map- This is interesting, but,, how is this comprised? It didn't seem to make a lot of logistical sense to me, but I dutifully wrote down the names of groups that I have never heard of that were close to the ones I searched (Rob Thomas, Kings of Leon, Muse (I think)). It would really matter how they set this up, is it album sales? I went to the creators site but apparently he is German. Back to German again. I told you I don't speak it yet!!

Where music will be coming from- This was interesting and well written. I don't know who this is though. The three stages of copydom were thought provoking (perfection, freeness, and liquidity). At least it was a great deal more optimistic than some of the articles we have been reading.

noise- now this was really fascinating, I bookmarked it for future perusal.
I like the philosophical aspect, it feels more right somehow than all this talk of money, etc.
I liked several of the major points that the author made here, that music is a mirror and a prophecy (very true I would say, and well put), music gives structure to noise (but does that mean that nature itself is music?), If we can see where music is headed, we can see where all of society is headed (interesting, but what about your authors and artists also, I consider musicians poets so I don't include them- but what about your other artists?), and then,, noise is violence, which is murder (basically). Interesting thought. Rather extreme, and I think, completely wrong. Music is like any other art, it is what you make it. If it symbolizes violence to you, then I would say that is your subconcious speaking and you should get to a therapist quickly :)

week 5

I really enjoyed the readings this week (in Musicophelia). It was a great new way to look at music. I have worked with psychological issues for years but I never had a client with any of these musical sensitivities (not counting schizophrenics who think the radio is talking to them or the songs REALLY are about them... etc). I actually had a lot of those! So I was intrigued, even though none of it surprised me exactly.
I was interested in page 15 where it talks about the centers of the brain that show developement in these musical abilities, it said that the other dominance in people that don't have that development is in abstraction and language. Since I have no musical abilities, I found that of interest also. There is no question that abstraction is no problem for me and I would say that is also true of languages. It was a fascinating concept, like saying that left handed people are more artistic and all that.
The field of music cognition was great!
These are wonderful questions they are addressing, I just wish they had more development here. The articles on the next music cog site were interesting.
The last site looked pretty neat (the origins of music) but really, there didn't seem to be a whole lot to it. I am not sure that people who might really use it would find it, but perhaps.
I think it is wonderful that these questions are being studied, hopfully this will lead to some new exciting research, I mean hey- they are doing things like this that relate to autism so- why not?

lesson 4-- ring tones and garageband

This was a hard week to get through.
I don't feel that I am understanding this, it all seems complicated to me. But my thoughts are these;
it seems to me (in my very unformed opinion) that the music industry is doing itself way more damage with the way it has been acting towards all these topics we have been discussing (music for fee, illegal downloading, etc.). It struck me while reading the part about ringtones and ringbacks that several big artists don't participate in it- according to the textbook. I wonder if that is because it is just too much bother or not enough reward?
It does seem that everything is way too complicated. Can't somebody just write policy that is not so friggin complicated?
And why are there so many middle men in music? There's your profit!

the websites for the week:
ok, a lot of these there is just not much to say about but here goes,,
- digidesign- This sibilius 6 sounds awesome (yes, I read about it on this site and then did not want to read about it later when you wanted us to).
You said you like adobe auditions. What do you like about it as composed to these others?
- garage band- Now this impressed me greatly. Take lessons- what a fabulous use of technology!!! I particularly liked the artist lessons. I also looked at those artists as possibly people that are more open to new technologies, or at least faster to jump on new bandwagons.
okay, steinberg is in German. which I can't read (yet) although I swear to start learning it before my trip to Germany next year, probably won't benefit me in this class.
Really, I don't know what to say about the rest of the sites. They are selling things which seem interesting, but I'm not sure how to apply it at this point.
What I like about these sites is seeing all the new technology- I am amazed.

Lesson 3

Sorry it took me a while to get this post up, I tried to spend a lot of time on each site- and there were a lot of them!!
I feel that I am beginning to see some of the bigger picture. As I identify the "hot topics" I spot them all over and this is helping me connect the dots. As an example: I had just finished reviewing Universals site when I saw the headline that Cher is suing them for royalties. The name would have meant absolutely nothing to me before but I was able to visualize all that I had just seen about them. A lot of these music sites are so similar, that I have little if anything to say about them. I tried to look for distinguishers in all these sites. And I tried a search for my favorite singer where applicable so I could use that to judge content and presentation.

- soundstage av- great definition of MP3s as well as pro's and cons. Its great information, I just don't know who this is.

- Fraunhofer IIS - This is nice! I love how the site is divided to show you what this company does in various areas such as communication and automotive. They advertise their services at the most applicable spot. I also like that they have a point of contact for these services/products.

- wmg - Rob Thomas!!! If he likes them, they must be allright. They claim to be the worlds only publicly-traded major music company. I like the recent achievements. For one thing, it helps me to see what they consider an achievement. I like the green initiatives. Hey, at least they are advertising that they are trying to do something!!
I can't help but notice that there are no women present in management. I'm just saying...

- sony - I've certainly heard of them. Kings of Leon!! They are so cool!
Back to Sony,, I see that they only have 2 executives listed. ?? There is no company info listed here. ?? Under pro music there is some good stuff for musicians getting started. Good "free music myths" typos and all. I'm not impressed. I'm also not impressed by their soapbox about "free music" and all that. I don't know if its because they are not actually giving you anything to back up their arguments or what but I'm not sold somehow.
You can't tell me on the one hand that artists don't make money anymore anyhow because they are being so ripped off and then tell me in the next paragraph that digital music is the devil.
convince me.
And what is Sony's mission statement? Everybody else so far has managed to have that.

- universal - Ah yes, Cher's buds. They say they are comprised of two core businesses: recorded music and music publishing. They claim to represent 98% of the music market. I see that Luciano Pavaratti is still listed as being represented by them. Does he still need representation? Is this the legal coverage (because I would not have thought so). Universal represents All American Rejects!
Universal has a neat little timeline under history that shows universals idea of what their biggest accomplishments are. They also have a good FAQ section that is very informative.

- emi - They have Norah Jones! This is divided into three business units: New music, catalogue, and music services. They claim to have been in the business since the very beginning of recorded sound. They claim to be the only privately owned major music company. I am really unsure of the pros and cons surrounding that. In the real world, if you work for a private company there are two disadvantages, you are subject to their whims with little recourse and you may be fired at any time. I am unsure if the same laws apply to music companies....
They do have a helpful graph of the music industry.

- riaa - cannot be found.

- bmi - They say they formed in 1939 as a non profit making performing rights organization. They also claim that they founded in part to assure royalty payments and to provide an alternative source of licensing for all music users. I like that very much. Having options is one of the greatest rights of civilization. I also see that they have one female senior vp.

- ascap - They give a discount on college classes at the Berklee college of music. Neat workshops, at least they sound neat, you have to be a member. They claim to be the only US performing rights organization created and controlled by composers, songwriters, and music publishers, with a Board of Directors elected by and from the membership.
Of course, that makes you feel that there is no big brother here. I hope that's true.

- eff.org - Ok, I really liked this site! I am just learning here, but at least they are presenting alternative viewpoints. I have mentioned briefly above that I am seeing whiny trends from the big companies about digital music and illegal downloading, etc. At least these people are using numbers and legislation, etc to make their points. I respect that. The truth is usually somewhere in the middle. There are some really great stories here about federal rullings and re-education. Now I see why they have the little donate button at the top of the page. Lots of women on their staff, they even have an "activist".

- apple - not much to say here. I am an i pod junkie, I should be given stock in that company I have turned so many people on to the i touch!! Now, I see that I can have it engraved. Sweet!

- usf - This would be wonderful. Instead of the occasional live lectures, this would be so much better. Come on USF, get on the ball.

napster (never used it), rhapsody, and amazon, I don't really know what to say about them. To me, they are all pretty much the same.
I can distinguish yahoo as they have blogs and radio stations that the others don't have advertised.
The only thing I can say about sirius and xm is that I did not know that xm had individual plans.
I really like the artisthouse music and I will buy some cd baby.