Blog #7: Happy Halloween

Reactions on “ Scholars perspective: Impact of digitized collections on learning and teaching”

I always love when the conversation or one’s perception lands on the ideal popping concept of social power and its influences. In the reading of David Harrington Watt, he brings up a few quotes from historians/ teachers of what their hopes are for their students. One of the quotes being “I want them to understand the way social power influences which sorts of primary sources et preserved and digitized and which do not”.

 I’ll preface my interest with this quote with the fact I have been reading a lot of news recently, so my added interest could be stemming from that. But conspiracy theories aside, the more we read the more we can understand how the realm of academia works. Then apply that to how media and “journalism” might spin the research for only purpose is to cast doubt on mostly agree upon concepts in a given field. In our class we practice finding things (papers, books, journals...etc) that are hard to find if you don’t know how to correctly search. I bring this up because even if the idea that a primary source could be tossed out because it has evidence or conclusions that don’t jell with whatever entity has influence on it’s archiving. It would be far easier to archive it and have it so much limited access that that it might as well be lost. We are already dealing with enough corporate funded studies that interpret their findings with a heavy degree of bias. Regardless of that mess of troubling horrors, the library in terms of material in relation to monetary investment should be enough of a nightmare to satisfy this Halloween season.

The barriers of education are already so tied with a monetary investment that to account for size and access that a school’s library verse another school you didn’t get accepted to, is annoyingly frustrating. While interlibrary loan is a beautiful thing, you can easily see how $9 million dollars to a library is very different from $34 million. All of this only harks on our need to make a virtual realm in which was can access and research from.   

Reactions on “Review of imslp.org from Notes”

Aw yes, Imslp, the lesson saver of “oops I forgot my music at home” website of the ages. A review of imslp was quite nice to read, for it brought up a few interface issues I came across during the early years I used imslp. While nowadays I barely use the imslp website when search. I found it was easier to add “imslp” to any google search and it would give me the direct link I needed. Personally my favorite part of imslp is looking at a composers’ works. Always nice to see what types of ensembles a composer leaned to.  I’m happy to know that IMSLP should continue to grow as the community continues to archive.

Reactions on “ Never Trust a corporation to do a library’s job”

Why get the nostalgic gamer mind going. I’m pretty sure I sunk an extra few hours in to looking up these games like Spacewar and Pitfall, which then lead to just searching for other old school games and playing them. Regardless of the lovely amount of procrastination that happened, it’s sad to hear google’s struggle with the need for money and less lawsuits.  But they are right, having access to history like this is very magical, even more so when you add what was cutting edge and exciting in the gaming community to be available years later at your finger tips. Lastly, Andy Baio final point is sadly very true. “We can’t expect for-prot corprations to care about the past…”, Baio point shouldn’t be grim, but should highlight the needs for collaboration.

Reactions on “ Google’s slow fade with librarians”

            I really enjoyed this break-up letter. I wish we had more information on why. But if I were to guess, and not take the time to full google this question (awe the irony) then I would look into Google’s lawsuits during the year before the drop in communication. At the same time, I think it’s best that libraries aren’t so tied to a corporation that is today’s google or ABC’s..whatever they call themselves now. While I understand and appreciate what they do. I still value how nice our library is in comparison to other college libraries I’ve seen. 

Reactions on “ The cobweb: Can the internet be archived?”

Too much data, if only we had Data to go through this much data, then maybe we could hold onto some of this data that Data got from this data. Besides my love of Star Trek, the issue we face with The Wayback Machine, is where science fiction meets reality. Overall I find this fascinating when put in the context of comparing the library of congress to be an inch of information in this mass array of computers. If there were ever a need for a truly useful AI, this would be the time. Mind you, with the mass of information that that AI would have to deal with, a Skynet type of uprising would also be justified. Hopefully the mass of cat related videos and articles might sway that result. But it seems like every day the issue of trying to archive this information becomes more daunting. Also sidenote, pop ads seem to be so evil that they time travel in that information web. I don’t think we will ever be able to escape the bots that spam these ads everywhere.

Blog # 6: Don't Worry, Beethoven isn't watching ;-)

Reactions to “Urtext” (Slonimsky)

           

            What is right and what is wrong; this is a very troubling distinction to make for anyone. In music, we find ourselves at a consent debate of who’s interoperation is valid. I very much enjoyed the comparisons between different composer’s (i.e. Ives and Rimsky-Horsakov) conversations their editors. In today’s music, when encountering a weird note you have a variety of options to deal with it. I would email the composer if he were alive. If he were of the recently departed, then I would check with different recording. But I feel like this question of correct or wrong notes is the job of an editor to ask. While some composers might have a witty remark to accompany their answer it shouldn’t be a guide to any consensus to dismiss a constructive artistic conversation.

            Reactions to “Early Music” from the Grovemusic Online

             Early Music grows as we move through time. But understanding the context of a piece during its original practice is still very important to any performance. Historical performance rose in important as scholars made “quest” towards authenticity. I’m glad that so many groups emerged from this refocus to early music. It’s a very important distinction to make that early music is equal to new interpretations. Allowing artists to feel open to changing, editing and recreating from source material is needed for today’s music world. Which only harks back to the importance to understanding its historical practice.

Reactions to “Spin Doctors of Early Music”

            I really enjoy how Taruskin framed his point about Early Music within the context of what it is really trying to accomplish. With Taruskin’s ending remark of what Early Music is doing with the recreation of the past, I wonder when that process will encompass music being written today. This idea should allow composers to be from flexible when it comes to the performance of their work. I myself would be happy if anyone was inspired to work to any degree in relation to something I made. Overall this was an enjoyable read from Taruskin. Seeing him have this stance on Early Music when he is such a notable musicologist, with an almost Zen ideology approach giving the notion that everything has its purpose and place. 

Reactions to Composer’s Intent? Get Over It: [Arts and Leisure Desk]

            This was my favorite article from this weeks reading. While I’ve only had a few occasions in which I was blessed with another performance one of my piece. Every time has been a wealth of tweaks and or different way I planned to rehearse a piece. Types of descriptive language will be altered in hopes to better convey a type of texture and balance the piece needs. This all possible by a chance to try something new, I feel like composers need this. If I truly wanted to relive it, I would listen to the recording. But as it is now, I rather have a different spin, for it makes every recording a new treasure. Hopefully this allows players to be a bit more expressive with their interoperation of the music at hand. Even if the idea they have isn’t what the composer had in mind, that collaboration could spark new ideas that will make the performance even more memorable. Needless to say, this article was a very satisfying read.  

Blog # 5: Revenge of the Letter Press

This blog’s reading had a few terms to read about before our articles. Which went quite in-depth into the terms’ meaning, use, and function in time. I was familiar with most of the terms like autograph, facsimile, and sources. But holograph, urtext and overview were not firmly defined in my head.  I only put overview for the length of information that came along with this definition that I never thought about in terms of it’s practice through history.  Urtext meaning orginal text was pretty easy to wrap my head around. With holograph being no different being original manuscript. I now really enjoy the word holograph, now that I know what it means.

The question: What’s the shelf life of Urtext?  Answered by Annette Oppermann was a great post in helping provide function and purpose of urtext. Seeing the revisions was quite entertaining. I’ve had pieces over the years where practicing certain versions/revisions of the work needed if I wanted to mimic a great recording of a soloist. Knowing what version they were performing on would be vital to be able to look up.

The next link from G. Henle Verlag was concerning a postcard from Brahms. Which turned into a detective story of finding in what piece and where he was talking about in the postcard. I enjoyed the pride in the publishers to stay on top of current research studies. The Last article reading gave my eyes a bit of a blur. I tried to read the first page and it looked weird, so I scrolled to the bottom and it hard gotten worst. Luckily I found the page in English the 3^rd time around….out of 3 pages. But it this also had to deal with Hungarian Dance no.5 by Brahms which dived into a performance practice problem concerning the Vivace middle section. But after his note to Tappert, it is common practice to how it should be played.

Lastly we had two videos this week. A lovely video that broke down how to bind a book as well as the craft needed to make it. It was called “the art of making a book: Setting type, print and binding by hand”. It was quite nice to watch, but the music almost put me to sleep, but thanks to the process of the back binding, for being thrilling enough to sway me back to the land of the living. The other video called “Upside Down, Left to right: A Letterpress Film”, was my favorite. While I mainly dreamed about using a letterpress system for a score and how nice it would feel to get all the indentation to a score. It was nice to hear that letter pressing is making a comeback.

Plagiarism- How to ruin your life with one intelligent thought expressed poorly!

Plagiarism has always been a deep dark fear in my English writing. In most cases, anytime I needed to quote something in a paper, I found myself with tons of anxiety towards how to properly cite and quote the information.  On top of that, every syllabus I have ever seen has had a clause for plagiarism with added detail of all the lovely horrible things that will happen if you are found plagiarizing.  I was very happy with the Styles Manual article by Sampsel which showcases the different types of plagiarism. I think the unintentional plagiarism is the most daunting concept to corrupt one’s enjoyment of writing papers. But Sampel has given one trick that I’m excited to try.  The trick being to wait thirty minutes after reading something to better distance yourself from the topic that the author was trying to convey. I was thankful to have this as a reference tool to remind myself of the different types so I can better check for unintentional Plagiarism as well as others.

Ithaca library’s plagiarism quiz was actually quite entertaining. Well I guess academically entertaining, but entertaining nonetheless. I was interested in who picked the image choices for this website page, it was an amazing selection. I didn’t really find the questions too difficult, but one stuck out as annoying in terms of me not properly understanding para-phrasing in the terms of too little or too much. Thus causing plagiarism unintentionally. This quiz also tied in with the following reading by Dr. Crystal Sands.

This blurb about how to handle plagiarism when dealing with both true and untrue claims, which I now wished I had more practice doing proper citation and quoting before being in grad school. I enjoy the examples used by Sands, but while I enjoyed hearing how this related to politics of the day, I was as interest far more in the other reading, which might be because of Sand’s writing style. Also the blurb from Sand’s didn’t keep my interest level through out the reading. I even thought it was because I was tired and tried reading it later and found it still to being different in terms of how it was related. Overall I think if she treated this more like a formal academic article, it might have been more insight with citations.

Lastly, saving the best for last, Kenneth Goldsmith. My new hero, Goldsmith has a very important take about today’s world of information. When dealing with concepts, he feels that most things have been created, thus pointing towards it in terms of how we plagiarize to today might be more valid when applying them to art. His idea to drop the worth of the art (its value in terms of money) towards freeing the art is quite intriguing. While this practice doesn’t really work with living in America. But I had two favorite parts of Goldsmith’s podcast, besides the poem “traffic”, I really enjoyed this quote, “the camera forced painting to go abstract”. This in terms of how technology has changed art’s usefulness and its form of express is a very unique and evolving medium.  

            The reading this week was quite terrifying, but Goldsmith made me feel much better overall. While I’m going to review all of my annotations, I’m happy to add these to my growing resource wall of “how to properly write something” folder on my laptop.