Blog 10: I'm glad my computer screen is water proof #Dontcry

Reactions to Creative Commons Reading Video:

Copyright is a very complex and mildly annoying hassle for anyone wishing to protect his or her work.  But Creative Commons offers a different method to go about how one could share parts of their idea to the public with still retaining rights to how the information would be shown or taught. This type of copyright also helps collaboration from those who wish to build on the work of others or get inspired from it to make a whole new application for it. Any idea is stronger in a group, and for a lot of people, group collaboration is way more productive than isolated work.  It was helpful to view this video as a quick nod to how and why someone would want to share their work but also places safe guards in how their open information works.

Reflection

This class has taught me quite a lot within one semester. The most valuable skill it taught me was how to seek an answer. While we have more or less access in the future in regards to our informational capabilities, but how to analyze our information and determine credibility is ideal when trying to make any observation or revelations about the world around us. The era in which we will be active in is filled with distractions, misinformation, and desires to form complacency. Having the notion and or drive to look past these beautiful and seductive traps and ask if what information we are getting is bologna. Being critical of information you find to be valuable is the idea for determining the validity of your thoughts. This is important to anyone, but in the performance practices of music, properly vetted sources are a must when trying to do any accurate historical rendition or work. Going off of one source from a non-peer-viewed source and taking that information, as gospel would result in ideal horrible outcries of butchering facts. This reaction doesn’t always happen, and during certain terrible instances, one could accomplish some rapture level apocalyptic outcomes if one’s ego could live with not fact-checking his or her work. Regardless of all the sad facts of the world that one must accept when taking this class, I have made huge strides in how I wish my education to proceed and what topics interest me. Using the tools I’ve gained from this class, I feel confident in continuing to uncover anything and everything I find interesting.

Blog 9: Darkest Fear #43564: No One Really Cares

Reactions to “analysis”

            Trying to understand someone art take a great amount of compassion and care from the one who is doing the analysis. While that compassion can quickly disappear, leaving a rant that rips apart someone’s expression for what it does and does not do. The amount of care that was involved writing it will still exist. With interpretation being rooted in opinion we must take comfort in that we cannot not please everyone. But the process they use to go about their argument positive or negative is vital for grow of art as a whole.

Reactions to “Criticism”

            Criticism, such a crisp word to instill fear into so many young artists. Acceptance to the idea that any criticism is helpful is what allows you to define yourself as an artist. This of course discounts my drunken uncle who’s drunkly critics during drunk Christmas carols, which leave you with an impairment of mental stability from the ludicrous criticisms stemming from said from uncle. Also, I don’t have an uncle….but if I did, I wouldn’t take him to heart. But as a society we need criticism, not only for the artists but also for quality control. If everyone stopped caring about refining their art because they knew no one was going to talk about it, the decay of the level of refinement would slowly deteriorate. Hopefully that never happens…

Reactions to “Music criticism has degenerated into lifestyle reporting”

            At this point in the blog, screaming profane language would seem ideal. But to avoid criticism on being vulgar, even those after reading this article it wouldn’t seem to matter; I won’t.  Why do we focus on shock value? Most reviews or critics have this crazy love affair with words that sound good and mean nothing. This is mainly from the fact they rarely define anything with how. Luckily enough for the marketing machine that is capitalism, we have moved the relationship with art to be more focused on the lifestyle of the artist. Why? Because those who are not majoring in music, is far more relatable to read about then what was the form, lack lustering chord progression, and production quality. This could be from people caring about the glamor of a music artist and this surely wouldn’t have any parallels with film critics…

Reactions to “Please, critics write about the filmmaking”

            I’m starting to feel like money has ruined everything great about art. Or that people are so rooted in their routine of information that the quality control of what people write about in terms of critics has never really been rallied for. I don’t think theirs an outcry from the people in regards to this topic. If anything it could be why so many people are against reading critics reviews for them not believing in their opinion. I personally think if you care about critics’ thoughts, you should refine which critics you actually engage with. If you only enjoy zinger words like “elegant, edgy, refreshing, or defining” with no recount on how or why, then you will find no trouble in engaging with a variety of critics. I think we should ask from them. That being said, it shouldn’t be too intellectual that it would alienate everyone. Maybe educational reform is needed…..more then I already thought.

Reactions to “Devaluation of music: It’s worse than you think”

Dear god, I know I don’t ask for much, and recently I feel that you might owe us one after this last week. But how have we fallen to astray. Could this be the greater ripple effect from cutting so many art programs from schools? Could this be from the entertainment companies’ understand of marketing? Could this be from the amount of hours the average American works and the time in which they have to care about this issue being so small that it is a never-ending cycle from hell? Simply, more likely….yes. I feel like this harks on the power of social identification and esthetic. What one might gravitate to could involve so many different social conditions that bring them to the acceptance toward enjoy and not questioning their choice. Could be they simply don’t care, “its music” and or they found a camp, enjoy their camp, and simply don’t enjoy change. Could be the identification with a lifestyle they wish they had, letting the song be an escape from how they see themselves. Could be, that a song or artist, esthetically supports ideals they have trouble expressing themselves, and everything else becomes accepted as ideal personality shifts towards their social identification. Regardless of why types of music are accepted as gospel pillar of art’s creation, I hope that the level of message and analysis of their (future art) continues to work hard to strive away complacency.   

Blog 8: This is the way the world end, This is the way the world end, not with a bang but with the mass corruption of our informational tools

Blog 8

Reactions to “Only in America: The Unique Status of Sound Recordings under U.S Copyright Law and How It Threatens Our Audio Heritage.”

            U.S copyright law is an amazing complex web of … unique perimeters. While a variety of words could better describe it, these laws were made to support and protect intellectual property. One huge issue when it comes these kinds of lawsuits is it citing which law or act did pass and interpret the words to their advantage. This has allowed a majority of the issues that plague sound recording today. With corporations being an entity with larger sums of money then an average citizen, this allows them to collect and hold the rights to huge sums of copyright.  Luckily we had a cap on how long one can hold on to a copyright. But that doesn’t always work out. A reissue of copyrights are more common and more important for today’s market, which is horrible for those needing music for their concerts or needing to study a work for their research. Giving me the wish for changing the laws, which quickly lead to remembering the state of the world right now, and knowing most laws given to congress have the same odds of passing no matter what public opinion is on the issue. If you are fighting for the side with less money then you will most likely lose. Even with that said; the academic community should be their own bubble. While the terminology of that kind of bill could easily be distorted, the idea of giving colleges a pass on these copyright constraints would allow scholarly studies to flourish a bit more. 

Reactions to “How streaming media could threaten the mission of libraries”

             Lovely, instead of buying music, we rent it…I think my favorite part about this was the disconnection between the artist the consumer. While personally I agree that downloading everything is a waste of space with how streaming works now. We need to be able to keep things we enjoy other then a playlist to share. But I said personally, this should not apply to libraries. Most people who go to a library are going to one with a good reason. We shouldn’t hinder a community’s education because companies are trying to piggyback on the education debt till it crashes and burns. (Companies make the colleges pay more for access, makes colleges spend more money for that access, which makes the school more expensive, which means they need to cut costs, which keep those teachers adjunct, which pisses off the teachers who then piss off the students, which makes them temperamental so they stress eat, which leads to why there are no blueberry muffins left in the library coffee shop after 8am bib) All jokes aside, this isn’t funny, this allows companies to have all power in relation to where our content is held. For profit entities with that level of power is only asking for corruption to grow and profit from surrounding citizens.

Reactions to Belfer Audio Archive

            The Belfer some lovely programs within it. These project stem from the resources by Syracuse University. The Sound Beat project has these cool archive episodes that showcase old audios within their archive and talk about its history and additional thoughts about the music. Pairing these old recording with their history in a small blurb is fantastic to gain information quickly about a recording. Their first episode was posted March 4, 2011 and it was about Les Paul’s horrible car accident.  Another big program is the Belfer Cylinder Digital Connection, which gives online access to the cylinder recordings they have. This is an ongoing project with new addition regularly. They have a surprisingly limited set of solo accordion music, but hopefully that grows in time.

Reactions to Nation Jukebox Project

            The Nation Jukebox Project project is from the Library of Congress. These historical sound recordings are made free to the public. In addition, this project has other libraries and archives contributing to this project to help grow this resource. I was very happy with my browsing of this project’s archive. I found some lovely yodeling pieces. One that was quite impacting to my current mood was “Sleep, baby sleep” by Ward Barton. It was perfect way to end my browsing.

http://digilib.syr.edu/cylinder/image/267.mp3

http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/4283

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.