Journal Week Fourteen

Temperly’s introduction to The Cognition of Basic Musical Structures is intriguing. It definitely explains a lot of his process, but does not begin to hint at what his findings were. I would like to read more of the work, and hopefully as the semester winds down, I will have a chance to.

I was struck by his comment about neurological study of the brain and its functions, especially in regards to music cognition. I have a friend who is a psychologist and have talked briefly to him about some of his work, and about the broader field. It appears to me that most of the studies are funded based on the funder’s criteria, whether it be a grant or institution. This means studies are subject to what the funder deems as critical or important. It’s expensive especially to conduct fMRIs or other imaging of the brain. So who pays for it to examine how the brain processes music? I imagine it would be hard to secure funding for this type of study. It is important, though, especially as it has been shown that studying music can aid students in other types of study, like math.

I liked that Temperly said that trained and untrained listeners share a lot in common in the way they process so much that I stopped reading mid paragraph to write a note about it. I was a little disappointed that he then went on to emphasis the differences, but nevertheless I think it’s an important piece. A lot of the reading I’ve been doing for my paper is about Absolute Pitch (AP) and many psychologists have researched it. One thing found is that though possessors of AP perform very differently in pitch identification tasks, non possessors may be closer to possessors than generally thought. Meaning, pitch memory and pitch identification may be better than previously thought in non-AP people.

I also thought it was interesting in this discussion that linguists ignore the more detailed and extensive education they have when considering their research. I wonder why the two fields have evolved in that way?

I am not sure I totally understand Temperly’s discussion of the piano roll representations but I like the idea of the visual representation of music outside of the standard staff. It’s always been a slightly sad thing for me to admit, but I’m really more of a visual than aural learner, and I’m fascinated by the way that music can be visually represented. My aunt has a player piano, and I used to love looking at the roll. Same for music boxes, I loved to see how the knobs on a canister could move the tines to make the noises that I liked so much.

I found it interesting that Temperly won’t be discussing timbre. Timbre was always a topic or word that my music theory teachers avoided discussing, either because they weren’t sure how to describe it or didn’t think it was important. However, in a reading by Levitin, he mentioned how those of us without AP don’t identify pitches, we identify timbre. We know, generally, a violin from a bassoon from a guitar. Sure, there is fuzziness, and maybe you don’t know the name of the instrument, but you know it’s different. When I read that, I realized how important timbre really is to us as auditory creatures.

Lady Gaga, Capitalism, and 1984

Hakanen’s article Counting Down to Number One : The Evolution of the Meaning of Popular Music was a really fascinating article. I liked how it drew many different disciplines together to assess and dissect such an omnipresent facet of our musical culture. I’m not much of a TV person anymore, but David Letterman’s top ten lists were always a favorite of mine. I also used to fairly avidly follow some of the BillBoard charts. My first radio job was at a station that played a mishmash of country hits and ‘popular’ hits, and subscribed to BillBoard. I read it every week and also read several old books that were around that would have the top 100 BillBoard hits for a certain year and a description, artist biography and other releveant information. Most of them were from the 1980’s. It may have been 1998, but I was my high school’s expert on 1984’s number one hit songs.

One of the things that I felt I learned from the article was not specific to music. The author mentioned the theory behind the counterfeit and its relationship to class. This really resonated with me, and I would love to know more about it. It reminded me of several articles I’ve read in newspaper in the past few years about fashion counterfeit. Upscale designers are angry that the replication of their styles is becoming easier. I understand this for the most part – designers are one of the few jobs that really seem to be artistic and they can make a living from it. Who doesn’t want to be credited for their work? On the other hand, many of the designers who are being copied do not make clothing that is affordable or accessible. Their items, regardless of any artistic value, are symbols of status. At least part of that anger may be that anyone can look like they have the money/desire/fashion sense to buy a certain designer’s item. And, as copies get better and better, who can tell who has the real thing? Again, I’m not much of a TV person, but it reminds me of an episode of the American version of Ugly Betty where Betty somehow gets a very fancy handbag. Her co-workers are jealous, and through some sort of manipulations, she ends up with two bags – one real and one fake. She gives one to a co-worker and keeps one for herself. I don’t remember if it was clear who got which bag, but that was kind of the moral, too. Sometimes the idea of something is worth more than the thing. I also wonder if any of the anger from musicians about unpaid for access to music might be related to previous status given to music owners or consumers?

I disagree with Kakanen’s assertion that “ musicians had little interest in composing their own music because of lack of financial incentive” (p. 102). I think some people make music for music’s sake. Even if they weren’t being paid, I am sure there were people writing music for their own pleasure or the pleasure of others. Also, I think this stands in stark contrast to the argument in The Future of Music that musicians only make music for the sake of music. Neither is entirely correct. People make music for so many reasons that to generalize is offensive, especially if you do not support the generalization with a coherent argument.

The article had an incredible, succinct history of song publishing, music radio & royalty payments. It was such a strong condemnation of the capitalist system and what industrialization has done to music that it almost made me want to stop listening to Lady Gaga out of principle. Almost. Then, the article Analyzing Popular Music made me want to listen to it and discuss her!

Journal Week Twelve

I don’t really have much to say about the MML website. I think there could be circumstances under which it would be very helpful. I can’t really think of how I would ever use it personally, but I could see it being useful for music libraries and archives.

Our other reading, from Music is Your Future was interesting. I enjoyed the very clear way the authors laid out how they saw the music business functioning. I guess I was a little surprised that they didn’t feel they had seen how the business worked until many years of working in it. Maybe I’ve been lucky enough to read many different written accounts of people’s experience in the music industry so I feel I have an idea of how things work. I’ve also seen the DIY side of things as a fan, musician and friend of musicians.

I definitely agree with their assessment of the Catch-22 of the industry. It seems the only thing to do is to get out there and do it. Just starting somewhere can seem so intimidating that I understand why people don’t get out there more often. Everyone has to start somewhere, though, whether it’s as somebody’s opening act or on a college radio station or at a coffee shop.

It’s interesting to read the discussion of the big eating the small now, after some of the other reading from this semester. I don’t think anyone is doing all that well at this point and time. There are some large acts that are, and some smaller, independent ones that are. I think we are moving away from a music culture where only a few big acts are successful and to one where regional music scenes are stronger and more independent. And regions may not be geographical, they may be self chosen regions by genre. At least, it is my hope that we are moving toward systems of distribution online and physically that will support or engender this. I’ve seen quite a few US acts find success in Europe and not in the US. It’s not as if this doesn’t have precedence, many jazz musicians were well known and well paid in Europe while unknown or largely ignored in the States. It does make me feel better that there are people somewhere who appreciate music that does not get listened to in the US.

Mongolian Hip Hop!

I decided to write my research paper on autism and absolute pitch. One of the books I found that had extensive writing on absolute pitch was in a book called The Psychology of Music. Something I read reminded me of my earlier post about absolute pitch. The author of the chapter on absolute pitch talks about the phenomenon that I mentioned where a person can recall a pitch at will but does not have absolute pitch. It’s called quasi-absolute pitch. It is not a very glamorous name, and I don’t particularly like it. It is also not a very descriptive term. I would prefer something like selective pitch recall or selective absolute pitch.

The reading from Soundtracks certainly jumped right into a controversial topic right away, that of what is and isn’t popular music. It is a thoughtful discussion of an issues that engages musicians and music lovers across genres. Foa very long time I was very dismissive of what I thought of as ‘popular’ music. Now, I understand it as something to be enjoyed. Sometimes I take it seriously, sometimes I don’t. I no longer beat myself up for having ‘bad taste’ for liking the latest overproduced top 40 hit single. I think that this type of discussion was what I was hoping for from The Future of Music. Even if I didn’t get it there, I’m getting in this book.

The second chapter I read was the chapter on lyrics. The discussion of hip hop outside of the US reminded me of this story from NPR: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112514136. It’s interesting in Soundtracks they mention how French hip hop objects to nationalism, but Mongolian hip hop is all about the nationalism.

The discussion about punk was interesting, and made me wonder is punk really a middle class vehicle? I think punk has more of a working class background than the authors give credit to. I would be more likely to say that hippies were decidedly middle- to upper class kids disenchanted. I have seen punk scenes that encompass a little more of lower socio-economic classes. Sure, I have seen enough trust-fund gutter punks, but I don’t know if I would characterize 30 to 40 years of punk movements on that basis. Patti Smith is a bit of an enigma in that way – both obviously well exposed to literature but working in factories right before Horses. Of course, all these issues of authenticity have been hashed and re-hashed in punk scenes since the 1970s.

I would have liked the authors to draw a clearer line between country and punk. Joe Ely toured with the Clash in the 1970s, I’ve heard a rumor that Dwight Yoakam had some sort of relationship with the Sex Pistols, but I’ve never been able to substantiate that. Also, what about Hank Williams III? I am at least glad they mention the connection and debt owed by country music to African American musics. I grew up in the American South (Kentucky, to be specific) and have always lived with a long cultural history of segregation and racism. However, as I’ve gotten older and learned more about the many complicated ways people interact, I think that it often overlooked the interplay between white and black cultures in the South over the years. White culture and black culture, though segregated by law still had a lot of give and take over the years.