Archive for the 'Music' Category

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20 Music TED Talks

January 19, 2011 4 Comments

Via Bachelor’s Degree. I think I might spend some time going through these.

  1. David Byrne: How architecture helped music evolve: David Byrne is so cool he could power a room full of cryogenic pods just by staring at them. Here, he channels his impressive experiences playing everywhere from CBGB and Tootsie’s to Carnegie Hall and Disney Hall to discuss the impact that architecture held over his compositions. Everything had to be written to suit the challenges of a specific space, and Byrne broadens his observations to encompass the whole of music history. He even points out similarities between this phenomenon and similar concepts found in nature, using sparrows and tanagers as an example.
  2. Adam Sadowsky engineers a viral music video: Emerging technologies and social media have changed the face of music forever, and bands such as OK Go discovered creative ways to yield the internet as a promotional tool. Even those who don’t much enjoy their music still appreciate the imagination and painstaking detail that goes into their viral videos. “This Too Shall Pass” charmed audiences in early 2010 for its immensely clever, highly competent use of Rube Goldberg-inspired engineering — and, as intended, quickly went viral. In this illuminating TED Talk, the man behind the plan reveals the methods behind designing and building the wondrous machinery that became a massive online hit.
  3. Eric Whitacre: A choir as big as the internet: Another excellent video demonstrating the increasingly more intimate relationship between the internet and music, this time showing off an impressive understanding and utilization of both. 185 participants hailing from 12 countries submitted videos and audio files of themselves singing the individual parts of conductor and composer Eric Whitacre’s original choral arrangement “Lux Aurumque.” A showstopping virtual choir results, with everyone’s submission carefully, passionately pieced together into one video. It especially warrants viewing by music students and aficionados with a particular interest in how art can blend with technology in new and exciting ways.
  4. Bobby McFerrin hacks your brain with music: Music fans looking for a little stimulation on a time crunch should check out this amazing talk by 10-time Grammy winner Bobby McFerrin, famous for the ubiquitous “Don’t Worry Be Happy.” In only three minutes, he uses audience participation to illustrate the pentatonic scale and points out some stunning facts lurking behind it. With only a small amount of hinting, he’s able to conduct a spontaneous, improvised choir capable of following his musical commands. How this phenomenon works is not exactly explained — scientists themselves might also find it baffling — but it definitely highlights the wonderful mysteries inherent in the human mind and its relationship with established musical patterns.

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Guitar Sweatshops

January 13, 2011 0 Comments

via Another Line of Flight

Musicians usually show up at rallies to protest labour rights but it is very rare for that protest to be at a guitar show! If you own a Cort, Fender, or Ibanez guitar you will want to read about labour relations at their Korean factory.

Embarrassingly, I have never thought about labour conditions in Asian guitar factories. I reflected a little on this after hearing about this action. I think I can boil it down to a blind-spot: because it is music, there couldn’t be anything truly negative surrounding it” I mean guitar making, what could be more pure a pursuit than that? But of course there are always material conditions associated with the creation of things, and thus why should large scale industrialised guitar making be any different than shoes? I own one custom made instrument, I know the maker personally, and I saw the guitar emerge from pieces of raw lumber to become the instrument I now play. I also own an excellent Korean made guitar, a G&L “Tribute” Series. I have now learned that this guitar was very likely manufactured in a Cort facility, I now find this embarrassing. I also now have to question all of the other guitar accessories I own. One thing is for sure, I can use the guitar as an entry point into discussions of labour conditions in guitar factories, commodity fetishism, ideology, and labour more generally — as I pull it out of the case, or if someone remarks on it, for example. In this way, perhaps the workers can speak through the instrument? I dunno.

There has always been a highly racialised discourse about the supposed superior quality of American made instruments over their Asian made counterparts. This is part of a far reaching discourse that characterises the American labourer as a craftsperson, working with his/her hands to extract a beautiful instrument from a block of carefully chosen wood. This is contrasted with the common perception (and realistic) of the Asian factory, with all its attendant “Toyotaisation” (just in time shipping, hyper-Taylorist factory organisation, etc.), and the suggestion that it is impossible for anything truly beautiful to come from such a technologically sophisticated organisational paradigm. Perhaps this perception of the Asian factory has aided in dehumanising the labour process. But it turns out that there are still actual people at the end of that line, working to bring instruments to aspiring and accomplished musicians alike. We need to think beyond the commodity fetish and acknowledge the chain of events and human actions that bring us our products, perhaps we need to do this even more so for things like instruments, to which we attach such mythologies of purity and beauty that further mystify the material conditions of their makers.

What you can do: http://axisofjustice.net/how-to-support-the-cort-workers-namm/

Tags: , , , , . Categories: Music, Politics and Rant

Chuck D – Never have so many been pimped by so few

January 12, 2011 0 Comments

Chuck D speaks out on media:

HIP-HOP NEWS spreads like any other mainstream NEWS in America. The garbage that’s unfit to print has now floated on websites and blogs like sh*t. For example a rapper working in the community gets obscured while if that same rapper robbed a gas station he’d get top coverage and be label a “rapper” while getting his upcoming or current music somewhat put on blast, regardless of its quality which of course is subjective like any other art. RAP sites and blogs are mimicking the New York POST.

It does the people of the planet little good to hear that an an artist is famous and rich, will wear expensive jewelry straight from the mines, show it off, stay it the hotel, ride in limos, do the VIP with chilled champagne in the clubs, ape and monkey the chicks (meaning not even talking) and keep the dudes away with slave paid bodyguards when real people come close.

Tags: , . Categories: Music and Politics

30 Years

December 8, 2010 3 Comments

Tags: . Categories: Music and Teaching

Futures: Speculation and Creativity – A Conversation with Michael

December 6, 2010 0 Comments

Over at Another Line of Flight, Michael and I are having a great conversation about the intensification of intellectual property and the further expansion of capital into creativity.

Here, here, and here.

In the most recent development, a quick and dirty taxonomy of speculation and creativity:

Speculation and financialisation of:

1. Past, “public domain” works: here there are works that sneakily resist easy domestication. They are part of an “old school” way of thinking IP. Thus, they are kind of “grandfathered” in as universally accessible, part of an antiquated notion of serving the public good. But, they can be appropriated by capital for the cultural capital that accrues through their use. Case in point, many of the musical selections used in period pieces (I’m thinking Boardwalk Empire here). Also, such pieces can be used free of charge to create new works, which are made in the context of current IP frameworks and are thus more easily integrated into the profit machine. Speculation and financialisation can occur on future creative uses of older works. In this scenario, these stubborn old works must be tweaked in order to fit the needs of property.

2. Royalties on Past Works: as you say, tried and true and currently informing things like the Bowie Bonds and the SBCEA. Here, the global juridical apparatus is ensuring the future profitability of creative works that have already proven their viability, and betting on continued viability. The vast catalogues of recorded music already form a large part of the stock value of major labels and media companies. Here, the property referred to in intellectual property retains a tangibility. A song can be said to exist, and thus it can be made into property.

3. Future Economic Success: …of yet to be known creative work. Here’s where your Idol analogy seems to fit. A populist speculation in which the audiences of the idol show provide, free of charge of course, the “ethnographic” market research needed to determine future preferences. What is a talent show but the (emotional or financial) investment in one or another performer to win? Add some healthy betting and odds to this and you’ve got speculation on future success. Here, the wager builds on the notion of a mental property that exists, but as yet has no specific form. The bet is that it will take form, and that form will have some success according to the logic of exchange in the market for actualised creativity.

4. Future Potential Creativity: this is where marketisation is fully internalised, such that the very potential extant in every human being is what speculated on. From birth, bets are waged as to whether or not an individual will actualise that creative potential at all, or whether they won’t, and this is done regardless of form or potential for success in the market for acutalised creativity. Here the wager is on the moments between thought and action, on the affect itself. Thus, an investor stands to gain if a person steps into some predefined creative role as such: makes a recording, paints a painting, dances, etc. (Or stands to gain if they invest in the default swap option, where the bet is on the non-expression of the creativity.) Here the juridical apparatus takes steps to define and track creativity in order that they be accurately catalogued and reported back to the investment houses. First, through campaigns to achieve the full hegemony of the notion of intellectual property are waged so as to ensure that creativity itself is understood as a property before it takes on a form. Second, through the creation and maintenance of a marketplace for that property, a mental stock exchange if you will, in which potential creative actors are speculated upon. This could be with or without their knowledge, of course.

Tags: , , , . Categories: Music