We’re not talking reverbs and echoes – amplifiers of natural voice qualities – but the complete synthesizing and processing of a human voice, to fit within a limited palette of teen grunts, coos and gurgles acceptable to music industry execs.

And appropriately conditioned mass audiences.

Here’s a couple of videos for you, on the issue of social engineering through the mass market shaping of our lifestyle habits:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Can the same argument be made re: music industry? The video below, featuring author and media critic Douglas Rushkoff, uncovers come surprising facts about the industry, as seen from the inside.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You can by the DVD version here.

I learned about Carlin’s new never-to-be-captured-on-HBO routine in a wonderful interview piece by Jay Dixit for the Psychology Today blog done just nine days before Carlin’s death.

There it is, right at the end of the interview:

Dixit: So the last question is: What are you working on now?

Carlin: I have a piece of material that I’m doing on stage these days. I’m in Las Vegas now. I do weekends here, I do four nights on weekends as part of my year of touring. I go mostly to concert halls and theaters, around 80 or 90 of ‘em a year. But I come down here around three or four. So I’m down here. This piece of material called, “There’s Too Much Fucking Music,” which is my way of looking at how much music there is, I guess. It’s just my way of looking at the world and saying something that people don’t notice and figuring out a new way. And it’s filled with exaggeration and stuff. I’m doing that on stage a little bit. I’m not giving myself any pressure.”

O Irony of ironies for amateurmusicians.net! Carlin’s “new routine” successfully captures a perspective I’ve long been trying to articulate through this blog, in a single sentence:

There’s just too much music goin’ around these days!

on training to be an artist a human

The Dixit interview is valuable for many reasons – not the least being its blessed good timing, days before Carlin’s death. For me though, it especially stands out as an example of the rich results you can get from a well-prepared Q&A, conducted with someone you truly admire.

Kinda like a good Playboy interview, minus the pompous titties.

The essential lessons I got from this Carlin interview:

1. what his working methods were
2. his concept of the comedian
3. how method and mission inform one another

On Carlin’s concept of the comedian: a jester should always aim to be a court jester. A comedian should speak directly to power. A comedian should take risks. Reputation risks are therefore the holy grail of the comedian-cum-social-commentator.

With this in mind, we see that training to be a comedian is not simply a matter of coming up with good jokes. Rather, it’s about cultivating a point of view on the world, life, on absolutely everything, and doing so with courage. Thanks to Carlin therefore, I now understand that comedy is one of the many “genres” of human knowledge, one which leverages the “strategy of surprise” to teach important insights.

My own fave approach to obtaining insight is through cultivating paradox. In case you hadn’t already guessed.

So what did George Carlin do all these years, behind the scenes? He trained himself to be perceptive, as a life-long occupation. Indeed, the Dixit interview reveals that Carlin had a process for training his observational sense, a process he refined (and upgraded) over the course of his 50 years in the field of entertainment.

This attitude seems to me to be the psychological and spiritual key to the committed artist, whether amateur or professional. Without which you spend your life swimming in other people’s soundtracks.

where’s George?

All said and done, we certainly haven’t finished hearing from George Carlin. Therefore let this post be a message-in-a-bottle for all you Carlin fanatics out there: if you should ever come across a recorded version of the above-mentioned routine – text, audio, video – please forward me a copy! Or post it on Youtube!

With Carlin’s wise (and blunt) words, I suspect we’ll once again remember why we created the “off” button, and why we’re so afraid to use it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Person George Carlin

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That is, if horrible handwriting is an indicator of genius, my brilliance far outshines my shadow.

“Ah but, if this is true, then every doctor must be a genius too”, you say (of course, no self-respecting M.D. would dare write a legible drug prescription. That frisson of potential medical malpractice suits is so addictive!).

Anyways, I got this important clue about my unacknowledged semi-godhood from a display at the new Glenn Gould exhibition at the Museum of Civilization in Ottawa last week.

Here are pics of sheet music samples of the Goldberg Variations on display, covered – no, smeared! – with Gould’s prolix handwritten indications. A Glenn Gould coloring book, so to speak

What’s fascinating to me:

• Not only are the notes themselves unintelligible (or Gould-only-intelligible), but there’s so much scribbling that the music itself is unreadable!
• Lots of numbers and codes. Perhaps details about metre, finger positioning, track number. Dunno.
• Use of red for highlighting information.

Possible interpretations:

1. The note-making process is a key part of how Gould learns the mechanics of a piece (finger-placement, etc.).
2. Score annotation is an essential part of the memorization process (what some music teachers call “cementing”). When viewing a video clip at the Ottawa exhibit, I saw Gould in interaction with a producer, who told him after a take that a note was inaudible in his performance. Gould asked him the measure, and promptly cut in the passage for studio editing. Seems he had a precise visual memory of the score, like an orchestra conductor.
3. Obviously, since the scribbles cover the notes, the sheet music wasn’t used for performance. The music score in this case becomes a preparation document for musical interpretation. Gould really had structure and details all memorized, and used the approach of a conductor when playing music, often conducting himself with his hand, or even his body sway. In other words, his annotations are those of a conductor.

My conclusion? I got confirmation at this exhibit that Gould was truly breaking from of the “read-only” culture of concert appearances and making inroads into the “read-write” culture of studio manipulation, in his life-long pursuit of the philosophy of open-ended composition.

When I started this blog, I initially had this idea of a web resource for music practice advice.

Providing such a service, I thought, would help remedy a recurrent problem in music education. That is: despite the abundance of educational/mentorship options available to budding musicians today, useful resources on the topic of practice strategies and tactics – whatever the instrument – still seemed to be lacking.

To be sure, many music education publishing companies have published materials on the topic of music practice strategies (Homespun Tapes, Berklee Press, Hal Leonard, and others). And in any given urban area, musicians have access to a wide range of teachers and educational opportunities.

But in my own experience, I found that only a very few teachers have taken the trouble to systematize their tacit teaching knowledge into a set of principles, strategies, tools, etc. On the other hand, many published resources do just this, but they obvious can’t provide the personalized attention that teachers and mentors can, which is often needed for long-term learning projects.

My point: specialized music schools notwithstanding, there didn’t seem to be a real and/or virtual PLACE you could go to which would provide just such “integrated” support. So starting a blog based on giving practice tools, tips and advice would allow me, at the very least, to seek out such resources and organize them for a readership.

Well, that’s not where THIS blog went.

The reason? I realized this approach wasn’t really my strength. Turns out my talents and passions are better manifested in the creative treatment of educational ideas, and the analysis of new culture/communications trends. The “amateur musicians” part is simply the perspective from which I wanted to write and research my topics, the emerging “pro-am” movement.

So my original idea of an online guide for music practice tools and techniques went on ice.

oh when the saints, come marching in…

That said, I’m happy to tell you there’s a new practice tips and techniques aficionado on the block(osphere), and his name is Ben Clapton.

Ben Clapton is here to help you practice your instrument. That’s the name of his blog: Music Practice Tips. His mission:

How often does your teacher tell you to practice more, but doesn’t actually tell you how to approach it?
How many times have you practiced the same thing over and over, only to see it get worse in your lesson?
How many days have you not practiced, not because you don’t want to, but because you don’t feel inspired?
This site is devoted to these issues, giving you a resource that you can come to find inspiration, practice methods, and ways of effective practice and self-learning.

Looking through the articles, I’m impressed with the quality of content Clapton makes available for readers. New concepts and strategies are introduced and explained to help students re-think their approach, and integrate them into their (hopefully) daily practice routine. As well, the often-overlooked “attitudinal issues” – such as setting realistic goals and and practicing for performance-readiness – are given special attention on Music Practice Tips.

And it’s a well-organized blog, with a clear audience in mind. From the title page, a reader can see the latest article briefs (clickable, for full post access), a site mission summary to the right, and categories and popular posts to the left. The categories are well-chosen and relevant, mindful of problems and issues that typically arise from a music practice lifestyle.

how resourceful are your resources?

And more? I notice the curious “Practiceopedia” link in the Music Practice Tips blogroll, and click through, expecting to stumble upon some über-online resource or portal for musicians looking for “best practice”-type learning advice.

The Practiceopedia page reveals just such a resource.

Which brings me to the next point I wanted to make in this review: in a world where blogs and books are fighting it out for our attention, what makes a learning resource truly useful and valuable?

From what I can gather in the video overview, Practiceopedia is indeed one whopper of a resource. In a nutshell, the Practiceopedia value-added approach to learning music combines pedagogical theory with practical advice, into a set of logically organized sections navigable by learners, according to their needs.

Only thing: it is a book. In our case, this means a caveat: Practiceopedia’s greatest strength – from the point of view of its intended readership of young music students – may also be its greatest weakness.

For example, in Practiceopedia learning techniques are, from the user’s point of view, the means of navigating through the volume. As useful as this may be, it generally assumes that learners – and young learners in particular – are rational, purpose-driven, “best practice” seekers looking to optimize their learning process for best results.

In other words, in my view, the instructional design of Practiceopedia serves a somewhat-idealized reader: someone who is reflexive about their learning process, or at least will become so in his or her use the book over time.

In an instructional setting, who are the experienced learners? Music teachers.

So are students using the book as recommended? Is it producing good results? I’m not saying that the assumptions Practiceopedia makes about its readership are wrong, only that as a format it may not “hit the mark” with its intended audience, and rather may end up being a more useful resource for music teachers.

have hacks will travel

Since we are concerned about usefulness to the widest possible category of learners, I’ll contrast this “learning heuristics” approach to the “hacks” approach favored by Clapton on his blog.

Why the “hacks” format? For one, its sheer practical bent seems well suited to the hyper-fragmented attention world of the modern multi-media landscape. Indeed, many successful internet businesses owe their success in part to this format for content: Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Publishing has already reflected on the meaning of the success of his technology Hack Series. And if there’s one blog that is doing well in the blogosphere, it’s Lifehacker.com.

Simply put, the hacks approach is successful in providing focused answers to specific problems. Hacks can be simple, or they can be complex. In terms of advice, good hacks are mindful of the attitude of creative focus that learners have when they set their minds on solving a problem. Always a specific problem, mind you.

book 2.0

So here’s where the Music Practice Tips blog is, in my view, an improvement on book resources like Practiceopedia: beyond providing learners with a useful battery of learning techniques (no small feat!), it provides them with problem-solving tips that are easy to integrate into daily life, and does so in a timely manner.

Bottom line, here’s what Practiceopedia can’t do as a resource that Music Practice Tips can:

1. Practiceopedia is, again, a book. As useful and brilliantly designed as it may be, until it also turns into a blog (preferably with video and audio content), it risks suffering the fate that befalls books these days: Attention Deficit Disorder. Especially in the hands of young learners! That is, it may soon find itself at the bottom of a pile of other useful resources, on that dusty and neglected “serious stuff” desk, next to school homework. If it’s not part of their day-to-day culture…
2. Practiceopedia’s single-volume comprehensiveness also runs the risk of inducing in its users a passive psychology of “having all the bases covered”. In other words: it may ironically end up not being used as often as it should because “it has all the answers”.
3. Unlike on-line resources, Practiceopedia cannot evolve with its audience, nor create a community around the resources it offers. if there are any lessons we should have learned by now with regards to new media: design your information for knowledge capture, conversation… and tribes!

So there you have it. In the final analysis, if Music Practice Tips turns out to be a blog tribute – even extension – of Practiceopedia, then maybe this issue is all for naught and I can simply rest my case: we are getting the best of both worlds. To be sure, many of the concepts and techniques featured in posts on Music Practice Tips seem to be adaptations of concepts originating in Practiceopedia (…and if that’s the case, I’d recommend Mr. Clapton take Practiceopedia out of the Music Practice Tips Blogroll, and get an affiliate marketing deal going with the publishers of the book!).

For the moment, I’ve chosen to look at Music Practice Tips as an experiment in bringing ‘updated’ traditional music pedagogy out of the instructional setting, to the new natural environment of self-directed and passionate learners: the Internet and the blogosphere.

An experiment which I wholeheartedly endorse. Certainly, blogs that start off on the right foot deserve our full attention and support.

Funny funny, but were it only that simple, I say!

For, who has access to “one or two sonatas daily”, except… anybody with a digital audio player and the appropriate mp3 files or CD’s in his/her collection.

And this is exactly the assumption made by this tongue-in-cheek joke. Press the play button, and let Mozart take over your wounded psyche.

Right?

mozac prozac muzak

Certainly the idea of prerecorded instrumental music as mood enhancer is nothing new. In terms of industrial applications, music as mood-enhancement – or Muzak – is alive and well today in the service and retail sectors of the economy, as well as in many large organizations.

And the pharmacological equivalent is, of course, Prozac, the world’s most famous mood-enhancement pill – which the above faux-label is parodying, in a gesture of critique of our Prozac Nation.

To be sure. But as social commentary goes, how self-aware is this joke? For, whether we’re popping blue pills or music pills, shouldn’t we be asking: is the “instant mood-enhancement” way of life truly improving our lives?

In fact, has it ever? Like, if you’re hearing a Mozart sonata while being put on hold on your bank’s customer service phone line, does it truly relieve your stress?

music for the (moral uplift of the) masses

Yes, popping pills for every real or perceived ailment is here to stay. But as it pertains to music, how did this expectation of instant uplift become so widespread?

In reviewing the historical roots of the mood-enhancement view of music, I’m reminded of a little-known essay by the American idealist philosopher Manly P. Hall, called The Therapeutic Value of Music, published by the Philosophical Research Society way back in 1982.

In this small tract, Hall reviews various philosophies of music (mostly from Ancient Greece) , with an emphasis on the study of music’s effect on the human psyche. He notes that the therapeutic effects of music were well-known and understood in the Ancient world, and that philosophers thought of music as an “applied science” for mental health, what we would today call an “expressive therapy“.

The main difference between the ancients and the moderns being that the ancients thought music, in its everyday use, as integral to everyone’s mental equilibrium, whereas we moderns use music therapy approaches in cases of pathology and illness.

And this is precisely where Hall sides with the ancients. First, his description of the inner life of modern man is striking in its use of the Ancient Greek philosophical concept of psychic integrity, applied to the modern world:

Lack of personality integration also plays a part in the stress patterns of modern man. There is too much emphasis upon efficiency and not enough upon integrity. The individual is not equipped to meet shock and stress. He lacks self-control and self-directives. He is worried constantly by economic pressures due, at least in part, to the desperate effort to live beyond his means. Luxuries have become necessities, and the fear of debt hangs over millions of families. [...] We must realize that the intense struggle for economic survival has transformed our world into an economic battlefield. As in the case of most psychic disorder, the sufferer is his own worst enemy, and in many instances his troubles are due to his mental and emotional tensions. (The Therapeutic Value of Music, p. 24)

Having made a diagnosis of what ails us (economic insecurity due to debt financing), Hall goes on to suggest… the industrial application of the Ancients’ philosophy of music as the cure! That’s right, instead of suggesting corrective political action, Hall opts for the classic social engineering approach. You will no doubt be familiar with some of his prescriptions for “therapeutic music in industrial settings”:

First, as a therapy for nervous tension, the music should be heard rather than listened to. This means it must be played softly and the volume adjusted to the acoustical problem of the store or factory. If it is dominant and attracts direct attention, it becomes annoying and interferes with mental concentration. It may also conflict with the rhythm of industrial routine. Second, if the compositions played are too subjective, difficult or involved, they can cause concern or tip the listener into a negative mood. Also, unfamiliar melodies require more conscious attention and are therefore unadvisable. Third, background music – with a certain gentle insistence, pleasant and kindly, gracious and relaxed, and frequently repeated – becomes a suggestive therapy.

Fourth, problems of individual taste must be considered. When several thousand listeners listen at one time to a particular program, a common denominator of acceptance must be found. This involves the same type of thinking which endeavors to choose a popular program for radio or television. Experience shows that a certain type of music has the broadest type of appeal to every class of audience. Fifth, by trial and error it has been learned that jazz has little or no therapeutic value. If this seems to be an attack upon a popular music form, the outraged disciples of syncopation can take heart in the thought that grand opera is no better. Jazz is a stimulant and an irritant and so are all compositions featuring broken rhythms, dissonances, and exaggerated tempo. Most operatic selections require too much listening, as well as highly-trained acceptance and appreciation.

Further research has eliminated vocal music. Words do not always broadcast clearly, and the mind becomes actively intrigued and instinctively listens. Intense rhythms fatigue those who hear them and cause a positive reaction such as the effort to keep time with the feet or nodding the head. Semiclassical music, featuring persuasive melodies and familiar tunes – sometimes slightly nostalgic, is the more successful. A pleasant melodic line, carried mostly in the strings and not noticeable in the brass percussions, was found to be universally acceptable, fulfilling the old doctrine of Pythagoras. (The Therapeutic Value of Music, pp. 25-26.)

Does this sound like a program for the “psychic integration of the whole personality” to you? Or rather: the philosophy of elevator music?

from mood enhancement to sonic branding

It’s pretty clear to me that the model Hall prescribes in his Therapeutic Value of Music is what is known today as “easy-listening“. That is: that bland, formulaic, feel-good, endless-melody sonic streams that still pollute many of our indoor public environments today.

For most people, the entrenchment of elevator music in all spheres of public life is due to the successes of the Muzak Corporation. Indeed the word “Muzak” has come to be synonymous to elevator music, as “Kleenex” to snot rags.

This short video history of the Muzak Corporation briefly covers the corporation’s response to such intense negative branding:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’ve got a hunch that the Muzak Corporation’s radical makeover in the 1980′s has also something to do with the fact that the positive effects of easy-listening have been grossly over-estimated. I don’t know if such studies exist, but I bet one could establish a significant correlation between easy-listening music and an increase in ambient anxiety.

brave new leisure society

Perhaps Manly P. Hall and Muzak should be seen as products of the broadcast era, where the problem of mental health for the masses is viewed from above, and solutions are prescriptive. In other words, whether you’re popping Prozac, or your workplace broadcasts preselected playlists to optimize worker performance, the decisions about what’s best for everyone are made by expert psychologists.

To a great extent, this also still applies to the health sciences. In institutional contexts, therapeutic applications of music are in the hands of accredited experts in the field of music therapy, even if such applications are “personalized” and “patient-centered”.

But outside of the medical enclave, who’s privy to in-depth therapeutic uses of music? In other words: aside from your infinite mp3 playlists, how are you to meet your “personality integration needs” with music?

Taking our cue from Manly P. Hall, perhaps the answers may lie, after all, in a re-examination of the Ancient philosophy of music. But instead of a prescriptive approach, perhaps we could nurture age-old insights about music’s therapeutic properties from the point of view of learning to play an instrument, with self-expression as our goal, or deeper motive.

Here, I will give psychologist John Sloboda the last word:

We need living and socially relevant forms to replace the church choir and the village brass band. Recent pleas by major figures in classical music for the government to reverse cuts in school instrumental provision may have come too late, if the social institutions that support music making outside the academy are no longer there.

I have no idea what these social institutions might be, what they might build on, or how they can be encouraged. Psychology cannot provide the answer to such questions. All it can do is indicate some of the conditions that must be met if these institutions are to enable the flourishing of individual development.

The evidence [...] indicates to me that performance potential could be unlocked in millions of people if we could recreate social institutions that focused on musical enjoyment, and personal and communal fulfillment, rather than on the need to be best, or to meet the taxing performance requirements of a professional elite.

I’d argue that changes in our communication technologies are enabling this home brew entrepreneurship revolution. For example, the so-called “Web 2.0” paradigm shift on the Internet, describes a new way of creating wealth with tools such as wikis, blogs and interactive content portals, where the bulk of content is generated by users.

In other words: today, it’s participation, collaboration and “user-generated content” that make or break new brands on the Internet.

More important for a musicians: Web 2.0 services and apps have helped break the traditional isolation of the DIY’er and the amateur. Think of all those home bodies putting up their latest musical achievements on YouTube, and the feedback they’re getting as a result.

Three years ago? Unheard of.

the pro-am revolution

This new social norm of active leisure and “user-generated content” is one of the main themes explored by British think-tank Demos in its publications. In their Pro-Am Revolution, Charles Leadbeater and Paul Miller (published as a .pdf document) describe the demographic, economic, educational and technological trends underpinning the increase in participation by previously marginalized actors in all areas of the knowledge economy.

And who are these previously marginalized upstarts? Simply dedicated amateurs?

Better. Leadbeater and Miller call these “new knowledge agents” Pro-Ams: passionate amateurs working within professional standards.

As a consultant to industry and goverment in the UK, Leadbeater has been a major proponent of the concept of an “innovation commons”. In a presentation at TED, he describes the new culture of Pro-Ams with examples from the fields of science, manufacturing, and law, and further provides policy recommendations, applicable to both public and private sectors.

a manifesto for makers

The macro-trends described by Leadbeater and Miller help us situate the culture shift in the larger context. But that doesn’t necessarily give voice to the experience of the New Amateur (or “Pro-Am”), or describe the psychology of making as a way of life.

In other words, is Pro-Am activity simply “occupational”, or is it a new ethic?

I turn here to University of Helsinki researcher and blogger Ulla-Maaria Mutanen for some help. On her Hobby Princess blog (republished in Make Magazine) you’ll find a curious Craft Manifesto.

The Manifesto is Mutanen’s attempt to encapsulate – in the plainest language possible – the conditions, rewards and implications of making, as an economic activity and as a way of life.

Though I encourage you to read it in full (it’s short), here are some highlights as they relate to my talking points (note: though the statements below mostly apply to the making of physical craft objects, musicians should be able to “transpose” these insights at the level of music-making activity and creativity. If you simply replace “objects” and “things” with “music”, you’ll get my point):

1. People get satisfaction for being able to create/craft things because they can see themselves in the objects they make. This is not possible in purchased products. [...]

4. People seek recognition for the things they have made. Primarily it comes from their friends and family. This manifests as an economy of gifts.

5. People who believe they are producing genuinely cool things seek broader exposure from their products. This creates opportunities for alternative publishing channels.

6. Work inspires work. Seeing what other people have made generates new ideas and designs.

7. Essential for crafting are tools, which are accessible, portable, and easy to learn. [...]

10. Learning techniques brings people together. This creates online and offline communities of practice.

11. Craft-oriented people seek opportunities to discover interesting things and meet their makers. This creates marketplaces.

12. At bottom, crafting is a form of play.

What’s relevant from these statements (individually and taken together), is that we gain insight on the amateur as a passionate maker or crafter, engaged in his/her art or craft as a way of life (as I like to insist upon).

Further, this ethic of making can today become widespread and cross-cultural, as we gain new tools for socializing and sharing knowledge.

Finally, the communities of practice that arise from the new communication tools enable us to rediscover old forms of wealth that emphasize “relationship capital” – that is, what Mutanen refers to as the gift economy.

the cathedral & the bazaar

By all means, Mutanen isn’t the first cultural commentator on the (new) gift economy block. Indeed the concept of a “potlatch economy” most famously took off recently with the publication, in October 1999, of Eric Raymond‘s book The Cathedral and the Bazaar – another manifesto, this time for the open source movement in software and (networked) IT development.

Despite the brouhaha it generated around open vs. proprietary code and business models, the Cathedral and the Bazaar had the merit of analyzing the motivations of inter-connected individuals who dedicated time, talent and resources for the benefits of robust software, with no financial rewards in view.

Raymond’s conclusions? In the bottom-up, “bazaar” model of massively distributed collaboration, the sharing of resources, tools, techniques and knowledge are the new social norm. He saw that this type of wealth-creation followed the patterns of what anthropologists called “reciprocal exchange”: the gift economy.

In a nutshell:

• The more you give, the more prestige/value you have in the eyes of your peers.
• If making implies giving: the more you make, the more you are capable of truly bonding with all your significant others, since your gifts are personalized.

In other words, making is as inwardly focussed (creativity, self-expression) as it is outwardly (gifts, social prestige).

Thus, we can now measure the richness of our culture by the respect and recognition given to the most dedicated and unique makers – whether professional or amateur – in our midst.

So imagine this: I’m a musician, and I just woke up to the fact that I still don’t own an mp3 player. Pow! How could that be? I love music, and I don’t have an mp3 player!

After a bit of head-scratching, I came up with the following rationalizations for my outstanding mp3 player non-purchase decision:

#10 – Yet another object to dangle along when I leave home.

Does it seem that leaving home takes forever these days? Think of all the little stuff you’re sweating over at each and every home departure.

#9 – I don’t see the point of digitizing and compiling all my music in one place.

I’m (finally!) getting smarter with my computer system back-ups, and make digital copies of everything I can… except music. After years of iTunes use, I realize I actually only listen to a small portion of my iTunes library. Same goes for my CD collection: within the variety I only listen to a small segment, whatever’s relevant to me as a musician.

In other words, in terms of my music habits, there’s vastness in depth, not in coverage.

So – by and large – whatever I get on CD, I keep on CD, whatever I download stays in my iTunes library. And the whole point of having an mp3 player is about having your entire music library at your fingertips, no?

#8 – Self-inflicted noise-pollution seems a little pathetic.

Interesting that Apple should even risk getting sued for not putting an ear damage volume threshhold warning on their pod-thingies. What’s up with you, iPodders?

Seems to me this “self-inflicted deafness” phenomenon has a bit to do with addiction to loud music. People don’t just listen to their music anymore, they are their music. Better, they experience total identity-dissolving fusion with their music, in an act of sheer cosmic union. Just like in the Joy of Sex.

Great way to go deaf.

#7 – I have a lot of other things I need (and would like) to buy, before an mp3 player.

Yes, an mp3 player is in the “luxury expense” category for me, not the necessities. Not even leisure necessities

#6 – My daily commute (work, shopping, etc.) is pretty groovy as is.

Montreal is always pleasant to do the non-motor-vehicle commute through. And you miss a lot of interesting stuff on the way somewhere when you’re in your own little movie.

Not that I’m against having a (personalized) soundtrack for travel. On this topic, I usually prefer European film over American movies, for the following simple fact: as a rule, Euro-flicks give their audiences more emotional space by not filling in every dramatic moment with music.

#5 – I like quiet.

I live in a city. There’s always plenty of aural stimulation going on. My favorite city experiences are: quiet at home, or quiet in the park.

Besides, I grew up an avid reader of books. Reading books requires relative quiet. Now that my internet habits have mostly killed my reading habits, I still relish the (solitary) quiet that a reader grows accustomed to.

#4 – I do other things than turn on music when I get bored.

Even if I do listen to music on a daily basis, turning on the tunes isn’t a reflex for me.

#3 – Everybody seems to have one!

Always a big disincentive for me: mob rule. Oh sure, the variety of the stuff you can listen to on your mp3 player is infinite, but the trend itself seems rather conformist.

Well, perhaps this reaction of mine is a response to Apple’s pervasive and highly-successful iPod marketing campaign(s). And according to the iPod gospel, every self-expressive rebellious individual must have an iPod.

#2 – I’m a (slow learning) musician.

In my experience, listening to music is a more focussed activity when you’re a musician.

Musical recordings communicate a finality which is never there in the process of learning or performance. Therefore, for a musician a recording is primarily a record of musical interpretation, not simply a part of one’s identity and/or cultural experience.

For an experienced musician the act of listening to a recording implies hearing in one’s mind’s ear the rich possiblities of musical interpretation. Recordings are thus often used by musicians as reference media: a recorded piece of music can be a model performance, an archival document, or a learning tool.

As for me, I am a slow learner. I takes me a while to learn new musical ideas and techniques. Because of this, my listening pallette is rather selective, as a rule. I like to paint myself into tiny cultural universes, and dwell within many such universes as the course of my musical learning journey changes over time.

#1 – I have ears and I want to use them. In my daily life.

Ever wish you had earlids?

Perhaps this is one of the major uses of mp3 players: as a psychological filter against one’s environment. Many urban environments are indeed acoustically unpleasant, if not atrocious. Most of us usually adapt to the intensity of our aural and visual environment by focusing our attention on something of interest (i.e. bring a book in the subway), so that everything else becomes white noise.

Therefore, a portable digital audio player can be a great way to tune out your environment, or at least make it seem more pleasant, even more personalized.

As for me, I’d rather take in the ugly with the nice. The risk of tuning out is to live pertpetually in one’s own bubble, or inner trip. Ears have a huge survival value, and I’ve seen to many iPodder pedestrians get into near-accidents on the sidewalk (nevermind the street!) to warrant the daily use of a portable digital audio player with headphones.

And if you’ve every been to Montreal, you know that over 60% the car drivers here are clinically insane. Better to err on the side of caution.

top 10 reasons why I don’t own an mp3 player… yet

Ok, I should have said “yet” right from the beginning. You never know, you never know. Five years ago I swore I’d never get a cell phone, and today I can’t leave the house without it.

To be sure, I don’t mean to come across as a Luddite, fearing mp3 player techno-corruption. And I’ve also bluffed a little so far: my Nokia phone actually has an mp3 player, and I’ve even used it a few times while walking to work, listening to podcasts.

Tried it, but never really adopted it.

So perhaps one day my basic perception will change, but for the moment I still see mp3 players primarily as lifestyle and fashion accessories. And beyond the objections listed above, I believe that in the longer term, it is also my commitment to learning an acoustic musical instrument which will prevent my permanent adoption of just such a device.

But that’s just me. I’d be curious to find out if there are other similarly sensory-biased individals out there who identify with the reasons I’ve listed above in choosing to opt-out of the mp3 player habit. Or alternately, acoustic instrumentalists who just love mp3 players, and couldn’t live without’em!

So, you’ve got an mp3 player? What uses do you make of it in your daily routine?

Alas, before Santa Fritz can grab the first gift, your mom stands up, and blurts out to all ears: “Wait, wait! Before we open any gifts… Billy, why don’t you get your violin and play us a few Christmas songs? Wouldn’t that be lovely, everyone?”

pack o’ nerves with a bow in hand

Egad!! What did she just say? Alas, before you can raise any objection, the clamor to hear you summon the Yuletide muse overtakes the room. Every family event needs its music, right? Looks like it’s time to enter the ring and deliver the goods. No way out of this one!

Yes, this truly happened to me, on more than one occasion (different family, only passing resemblance to the characters above). And how well did I play those Xmas carols, prithee?

Here’s a video of truly bad kids’ violin playing, a tad worse than my own chops back in those days. I dare you to listen to it until the end.

Click here to view the embedded video.

know thine audience?

Back to my story. So the impromptu gig is over, everyone’s now fully gaga over the presents. As you pack your instrument, you think to yourself, in ultimate Christmas sag: “now every Uncle Tom, Dick and Jerry knows I play the violin. And badly, at that. Yeah, Merry Christmas, mom.”

OK, why this story? Here’s what I’m getting at.

You know your family. And they know you. A recipe for artistic triumph?

Today’s top internet marketing gurus emphatically insist that you gotta get to know your market/audience, that “your audience/client is your friend”. Driving this new reality is that we live in a brave new age of transparency, they say, and the trend is only going to deepen in every sphere of life.

Yet have we fully understood what we mean by such assertions? You wanna get to know all these people, warts and all?

First off, are we talking about individuals, or groups? We all know what difference it makes when you’re getting to know people one-on-one versus the round-table approach. How this relates to my point is that the communication tools which allow us to deepen our knowledge of our customers/audience today are both one-to-one and many-to-many, in terms of relationship potential and process. Blogs and wikis are two such examples.

And so in this new, more relationship-intensive marketplace, exactly what kinds of relationships are we looking at? In other words, in terms of my story, are you sure you want to bring everyone into the family?

Ladies and Gentlemen, I love/hate you all!

Professional musicians will attest to this experience, which can be more extreme from their point of view. How many times have you heard a pro say they’d much prefer playing to strangers than to a room full of family members?

After all, as the story goes: “these people know me! if my performance bombs, can I then truly carry the family torch in public?” In other words, in front of your folks a performance is always more than just a performance: there are unspoken expectations to meet, and reputations to carry beyond one’s own. Indeed, I’d argue that in the very nature of your performance and style the family must be able to somehow recognize the image it has of itself.

Indeed, an audience of strangers can provide a professional performer with two routes of escape from such pressures. If the audience doesn’t like it, they can simply bookmark their experience with a quick and dirty label: “it sucked”, or, “waste of time and money”, etc. Beyond faring worse in one’s career if this trend continues, there’s no weighty corporate responsibility to carry for the performer. And if the audience does like it, stranger-ness in itself is worth its own weight in mystique gold. An artist can capitalize upon this mystique effect, esp. in the creation of his/her public image and persona.

At the extreme of anonymity, there’s busking and street performance, particularly in urban areas of high pedestrian density. Here, you’re playing pretty much exclusively to strangers, whether passers-by or temporarily attentive throngs.

Not only does this remove the pressure to play to bolster family pride or to prove your stuff to friends, but at times it even removes the pressure of… having an audience at all. I myself have busked in such situations, in Vancouver, Canada, in Paris, France and London, England. I can tell you that after a while, the experience is pretty much like: “if a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it fall, is there really a tree?”

Therefore, I must inevitably conclude that any musical endeavor, no matter how private, at the very least implies an audience. You can’t remove performance from music.

so you play an instrument?

You know what they say about success: preparation meeting, uh, opportunity. Surely this saying should apply not just to those of us who aim for the stars, but to anyone clockin’ in the hours on their fave musical instrument, week in, week out, “just for the hell of it”.

Seriously. Unless you intend to keep your music passion and leisure activities an official state secret, someone’s bound to ask you someday to play for them. So what kind of preparation do you have up your sleeve for those moments opportunity knocks on your bedroom door?

It’s strange indeed how many amateur musicians don’t think of their learning progress in terms of performance-readiness. Think about it, when you say “amateur musician”, what come to mind? Probably one of two things: someone practicing an instrument at home, in cosy anonymity, and someone playing for family and a group of friends, again in a home setting.

Indeed, probably the most familiar image of amateur musicians in our cultural history is that of youth playing for the family in the living room or parlour. In fact, here’s a pic of me, at age 14, one year after I had formally quit my violin lessons. Apparently the family still craved more “shaky bow” experiences, despite my despondent retirement from dedicated music practice.

Strangers and Acquaintances! Introducing…

In the final analysis, you’re more nervous in front of your peers because it’s the family/tribe reputation that’s at stake. Though reputation is always an issue with playing in public, playing in front of family can be more emotionally distressing because of all that baggage that comes with family pride (or shame!). Not to mention that notoriously elephantine family memory, always ready to make you relive old embarrassments, 60 years down the road.

In terms of performance-readiness, deciding which style of amateur musicianship to go for might then also depend on your “standing” (i.e. the quality of your relationships) in your circles of allegiance, family, friends, etc. In a nutshell: how savvy you are with the high-stakes game of tribal politics.

So my guideline for “knowing my audience” is: whether you’re doing market research, or simply playing in the kitchen, take the “I like you, you like me” principle with a grain of salt. Rather, as Dame Evelyn Glennie puts it, focus on “making a difference” – to both the people you know and don’t know.

Listen, friend. Don’t even think about “getting tased”.

Rather, consider this quote by classical guitarist Julian Bream insightful, on his choice for a Life in Music:

As we settle, a little anxiously, into the 21st Century, it appears to me that we have become obsessed with speed and various forms of electronically induced communication.

The performance of serious music on the other hand pursues its own natural rhythm as its articulation unfolds organically in physical time. It was this natural and deeply expressive feature that drew me inexorably toward music as a young man, to become eventually the raison d’être of my life’s work.

En français:

Au fur et à  mesure que nous entrons, non sans quelque inquiétude, dans le XXIe siècle, il me semble que nous sommes obsédés par la vitesse et par diverses formes de communication induites par l’électronique.

Mais l’exécution de musique sérieuse suit son propre rhythme naturel et son articulation s’épanouit organiquement dans le temps physique. C’est cette caractéristique naturelle et profondément expressive qui m’a attiré de manière inexorable vers la musique dans ma jeunesse et qui est finalement devenue la raison d’être de l’oeuvre de ma vie.

Pretty basic, but works for me. The quote was gleaned from the booklet accompanying the DVD: Julian Bream, My Life In Music, which is produced and distributed by Music on Earth.

Paradoxically, as electronic communications speed up information to the point of pure pattern (pace McLuhan), doesn’t information overload actually slow down human communication? Communication requires that we make meaning out of what we perceive: this takes more time when you’re swimming in speeded-up info, no?

So it would seem that getting back to our senses is the ultimate art form, and ‘serious musicians’ – to use Bream’s expression – make this process their daily sacrament.

So… Ready to raise your fist and chant in favor of a worker’s paradise on earth? Or will a simple drunken picnic in the midst of a sun-baked crowd do for you?

Whatever the case, someone’s bound to break out a tune at some point during the festivities. To remind you that it’s always easier to love humanity in the abstract, here’s The Internationale, as performed by Barbara Scott and The Socialists. (Note that you can’t record your own version for sale and distribution, unless you clear the rights: the song is copyrighted under France’s copyright law until 2014).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Spring Fever Unites the World

May Day! Party time to some, distress signal to others, the mention of May Day celebrations evokes images of popular festivities, where a powerful mix of revelry and populist uprising have caused concern for authorities the world over, ever since the Papacy turned its jaundiced eye on the (spring-)fevered mob in heat.

By and large, the consensus on May Day these days is that there are two types of May Day celebrations, one seasonal or “pagan”, the other political. Historically, of course, the pagan celebrations came first. From wikipedia:

May Day is a cross-quarter day, associated with the Celtic festival of Beltane and the Germanic festival of Walpurgis Night. May Day falls exactly half of a year from November 1, another cross-quarter day which is also associated with various northern European pagan and neopagan festivals such as Samhain. May Day marks the end of the uncomfortable winter half of the year in the Northern hemisphere, and it has traditionally been an occasion for popular and often raucous celebrations, regardless of the locally prevalent political or religious establishment.

As Europe became Christianized, the pagan holidays lost their religious character and either morphed into popular secular celebrations, as with May Day, or were given new Christian interpretations while retaining many traditional pagan features, as with Christmas, Easter, and All Saint’s Day. Beginning in the 20th century, many neopagans began reconstructing the old traditions and celebrating May Day as a pagan religious festival once more.

Bearing no apparent relation to these pagan traditions is the more recent political makeover of May Day – emerging in the late 19th century – as a day to promote the the proletarian revolutionary faith, and as an official state holiday for collectivist regimes. Even today, one may witness in the political celebrations of May Day all manner of righteous causes, slogans, songs in favor of collectivist dictatorship (or, “worker’s rights”, to put it nicely).

Of course, I mention that there is no apparent connection between the pagan/religious versions of May Day and the socialist version. But, as with most popular traditional and religious celebrations – Christmas, Easter, Passover, Ramadan, Summer Solstice – whenever we dig a little deeper on origins, we often witness a protracted struggle over appropriate religious parentage. While there is no official connection between the pagan May Day and socialist May Day, recent research on the roots of socialism seems to indicate that there may exist a trans-historical connection between the two.

As always, the proof is in the pudding. Countries which officially celebrate May Day are usually current or former socialist regimes, or have a strong socialist tradition in their political culture, past or present. In the current socialist regimes, the din of the May Day political trumpets tend to distract from the religious themes implicit in the revolutionary faith. In the former socialist regimes, Marxist political rhetoric now must compete for attention with the revival of neo-pagan festivities.

So if you happen to be geo-located in a collectivist principality, no luck for you. Fist-rising and chanting is your only option. If, however, you are in more loosey-goosey regimes that tolerate all manner of hangovers, then you’re in luck: you can choose your (non-) party allegiance, and (not) get drunk appropriately thereafter.

Pole Vaulting Is More Fun

Hope my bias has been fairly clear so far. My Public Service Announcement to you on this May Day: must you get drunk, get drunk on the stuff of nature. If you truly do take the rhetoric of socialism at face value, then go ahead: raise your fist and sing The Internationale. But if stirring internationalist hymns chill your bones – as they do with me – try a traditional maypole party, good with family and friends. As Linus from Peanuts (or Jean- Paul Sartre) put it, “I love humanity! It’s people I can’t stand!”

So bust out your likable self, and break out the jam!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Magnatune founder John Buckman has just published the 2006 end of the year stats. As an amateur musician, I’m intrigued by the data.

Wait, wait, I know what you are thinking. You too are a musician, and you’re wondering: what’s so interesting about an internet record label’s business data? Business data is available everywhere if you know where to to look, right? And if you consider that corporations are legally beholden to their shareholders to publish quarterly reports, the mass of business data publicly available on any industry is overwhelming.

Or is it? And what kind of data is publicly available, exactly? Have a quick look at the Magnatune data, and try to find equivalent publicly available data from any of the major labels… Let me know what you came up with!

But Magnatune’s sharing of its business data has special significance for me. It has to do with the special pride the Magnatune people take in their open music business model. In other words, without undercutting his capacity to remain competitive, Buckman has made pro-active transparency the credo for his business.

Recall that Magnatune’s tagline is: We Are Not Evil. Magnatune’s business proposition put a special emphasis on palliating against the evils of the music industry. Magnatune’s contrarian stance to the music industry monolith speaks directly to me. Aside from my tendonitis injury that’s affected my career outlook – and the limited set of basic personalities that seem run the gamut of the pro musicians scene (in the jazz world) – the music industry is one of the major reasons I no longer aspire to being a professional musician.

Buckman is straightforward in his declarations that his business is an economic experiment (see “getting the word out”). Therefore, Magnatune business data is revealing of how the experiment is doing, and worthy of our attention.

OK now, what about the data?

One really encouraging trend for me, is Magnatune’s B to B sales data. Music licenses have increased 2.5X in 2006 over pre-2006 levels. According to Buckman, the lion’s share of Magnatune’s business is licensing artists’ work for use in soundtracks of various professional media content, for a variety of contexts – advertising, television, independent films, corporate events, etc. Buckman reports that he is selling on average one license every day.

As well, as Buckman points out in this video, Magnatune is about the only player around who sells micro-licensing of their music products.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Because Magnatune is an internet business selling albums and track licenses through unfettered end-user access to the music, the traffic stats are also worthy of our attention.

Buckman himself found the “unique visitors” stats – 50% increase in 2006 – encouraging. Caveat: as the number of unique visitors increased by 50% and consumer sales did not increase, the conclusion is that Magnatune will have to find creative ways to convert new audiences into paying customers. Strategies for this, such as a subscription service, a “fill-your-ipod” purchase option, free-song-of-the-day promo, a shopping cart purchase mechanism, as well as the entire Magnatune catalog on iTunes, eMusic (and others), are mentioned at the end of the presentation.

Lastly, on the micro-economics scale of things, Magnatune is a great example long-tail business. Witness the trend analysis provided in the 2004 year-end report. In other words, Magnatune is a business model for the internet age.

As Magnatune has a similar slogan to Google (Don’t Be Evil) let’s hope – like Google – that they’ll stay consistently innovative, and – unlike Google – remain sober in their successes. I feel that Magnatune’s positioning as a real alternative to the music industry will make this so.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The moral of the story: if a non-instrumentalist such as Lasse can edit out his performance mistakes to make a song, so can you! Of course if you just want to mix beats and notes, you can always go the way of the DJ, and dispense with musical instruments altogether.

Or if you’re a bips and beats kineticist, get rid of your turntables and mix your own funny noises, like Lasse.

And, why not, throw in my own practical and philosophical two cents into the wisdom-of-the-crowd pot. Since I myself have been active in finding amateur musicians to learn and practice with for some time now. Even played at quasi-official ceremonies, full of pomp and cheer.

My habit will be to research and write in conjunction with music practice, to share ideas and problems that emerge from the dedicated process of learning a musical instrument and trying to master a repertoire, whether alone or with others.

So, if you’re an everyday – or everyweek – perspiring instrumentalist you’ve found a home. Click deep into the links to find what you’re looking for.