hello world

So diverging from my usual topics, I just had to bring this up. Guess where I'm writing this post from? My Blackberry, while I'm sitting in the Kaplan testing centre in Leicester Square. This could open so many opportunities- on the go blogging, telling the world what you think as soon as the thoughgts pop into your head. (Sorry for the spelling errors, this really is quite a small keyboard).

I mean, Twitter and Facebook is a form of micro-blogging, but accessing Blosser from my phone is actually blogging...it's kind of cool.

First EVER audio recording

Back in March 2008, a clip of a woman supposedly singing the classic "Au Clair de la Lune," recorded in 1860 by the French inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville on his "phonautograph" machine, which looks like this:

"When I first heard the recording as you hear it ... it was magical, so ethereal," audio historian David Giovannoni, who found the recording, told AP. [photo and quote from here]

It was previously thought that the oldest recording in history was of Thomas Edison singing a children's song, from 17 years later in 1877.

This is incredible!! Can you imagine, finding a 150 year-old, previously-unheard clip? I didn't think they had the technology so far back...to put it in perspective, that's BEFORE the Civil War.

You can listen to this amazing, tiny slice of audio history, with commentary from the head scientist afterward, at the BBC site here (let it play a bit...you might not hear anything at first, but then let it load and go back to the start in order to hear it)

Caught in a Bad Romance

OK, so I've gotten on Julia Nunes' case for being awful, so for the case of being fair to all YouTube stars, this is AMAZING.

It's Lucas Silveira of the Cliks' version of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance," and wow. This is what I'm talking about!!!

I wish I had this when I was in 3rd grade...

This is really cool. It's a PDF/PowerPoint presentation on this inner-city school in New York City, around Central Park, that has been using state-of-the-art music technology in their classes, with help from a pretty darn passionate teacher, Ms. Karen Garrett.

The basic premise, at least at this school, is that a select number of third-graders (around 50-100 each year) get to go into the lab for an hour a week, and just use the whole array of keyboards, computers, and internet services at their own speeds. They learn how to use the keyboard and read, write, compose, print, and publish music using a computer...something that is simply amazing, something that I thought only well-to-do schools like mine would be able to afford and provide for.

Supplementary to that, Garrett has created an online website at Music Technology where she and her associates put up links to help other music/tech teachers with their classes. There are a whole array of music lessons, quizzes, and how-tos, and for her hard work she was voted TI:ME teacher of the year.

This is amazing. I love music, and I really do think there is a strong, positive correlation between music use by kids and their quality of life. Music makes me happy - there is scientific proof that there is a connection between our emotions and the music we're listening to...just read this. By bringing music into the classroom, you're really bringing happiness to the kids, and that's something really wonderful. The fact that they're using technology to push it to that next level is even better.

There's a place for us....

I know, I know, tech blog and all that, but I'm on such an X-Factor kick right now! I sang this song for the musical two years ago, so I know how much determination and vocal stamina it takes to sing this, and Stacey just blows it out of the water. Wowza. Wait until the end, it's perfection.

To Find A Star

I've talked a lot about how technology can benefit the listener on this blog, but one of the ways technology really helps in the business is for the actual musician. Before the rise of the internet, getting publicity for a new singer or band to get an album put out was hard work, and it took a lot of time and money. You needed to get into the recording studio, pop out a solid single or EP, get yourself on the Ed Sullivan Show or an equivalent and hope to high heaven that the public liked what they heard. Or, you would slip some radio DJ a couple hundred bucks to play your song a couple of times, enough so that the people listening would start to go, "Hmm, what's that?" and go out and buy the song. It was a tricky business, publicity.

Now, not that payola isn't still an issue (an a big one, to all sorts of smaller labels that can't afford to be paying Z100 to play their artists' song ten times a day), but the internet makes it 100x easier for smaller bands and artists to make their way.

Just look at MySpace. Their music site has given so many musicians - and a couple of very, very famous ones - the chance to get their music out there to be listened to. For example, Lily Allen started on MySpace, posting a couple of songs, including her big hits Smile and LDN. She made so many "friends," got so much online hype that she garnered up huge publicity and huge demand for her debut album. Gnarls Barkley's massive hit "Crazy" also came into the limelight on MySpace - people were listening online, and suddenly so was everyone on the radio.

YouTube has also helped many people find their 15 minutes of fame - and for some, that 15 minutes has blown into actual celebrity. Esmée Denters, who posted a number of videos on her account of her singing popular songs, like JT's "What Comes Around," got massive numbers of views, and eventually grabbed the attention of Justin Timberlake himself, who asked her to open for his worldwide tour, and signed her to his record label.

The danger of this, of course, is the number of two-bit "music stars" coming out of this. One immediately springs to mind (and she has a pretty large cult following, so I might get in trouble for this), and that's Julia Nunes. Oh God.

By now, you guys all know how I feel about the Beatles. So that this has gotten such praise? It's embarrassing. Even a bit offensive. Every time I hear this, with its annoying ukulele and nasaly singing, I get a little bit angry. Because she's getting a record contract, and other more talented people are not, and it's just because there are thousands of fans out there that just eat this right up. Come on, people! I know, I know, to each their own, and "Everyone should have a chance to express themselves" and "Let the girl sing if she wants to" and "I like it so shut up who cares what you think" and "Oh yeah and you could do better?" and "It makes me happy so why are you being mean???" but this is just really bad.

And that's the downside of the whole internet fame. This Nunes girl will get her 15 minutes, and if she's lucky, a top 100 hit or two, but then she'll fade into obscurity, playing little gigs in small town bars until she retires and gets a desk job somewhere, or maybe a place on a reality TV show. Maybe that's harsh. But isn't that the truth? With so many "celebrities" popping up every other day, the actual meaning of "celebrity" has shrunk. Anyone can have those 15 minutes - everyone can have some sort of celebrity. Fame is no longer some special thing, it's actually pretty readily accessible if you have a computer with a microphone or even just a video phone.

Finding that "true star" is so much more difficult now...sure, anyone can have a top 10 hit nowadays if you have a six-pack and a smart record producer, but so few people have that infamy, that long-lasting quality that people will remember in 50 years. I have to wonder who the definitive celebrity is in this era. The 50s had Marilyn and Audrey, the 80s had MJ and Madonna, and the 00s have...Beyoncé? Britney? Every Kim, Kourtney, and Khloe can be a star, so the "wealth of celebrity," so to speak, is thinning. What's being famous when everyone is?

Our real lives, our real personalities are being hidden behind both a cyber wall and the wall of the protective public. Maybe Perez Hilton knows every detail about Britney Spears' life, but she's retreated emotionally so far away from the outside world that we don't know who the real person is anymore. So I'm going to throw it out there and say that in this time of growing exposure, with the paparazzi at every pseudo-celebrity's door and TMZ finding out gossip the second it happens, we are actually growing more and more insular and anonymous as a society.

Just something to think about on your Sunday afternoon.

And on a similar note...

And I'll get off my pedestal now, but this version of Franz Schubert's classic "Ave Maria" by Barbara Bonney is stunning. It's recorded, but no amount of studio magic can make this:

What Technology Cannot Do

You know, for everything I say about how technology is improving our auditory enjoyment of music; how it's advancing music production quality, giving us more and more excellent songs, I have to take a step back and say there are some things technology cannot do to music.

Technology cannot create that feeling that you get when you listen to something truly beautiful. Maybe this is a matter of taste, but I truly believe that sound bites and computer chips, no matter how pitch-perfect and flawless, can't give you goosebumps. They can't make you cry. They can make you want to listen again and again, but in the end, imperfections are what make a song perfect. Does that make sense? When I want to listen to a fun dance tune, that's one thing - bring out the AutoTune, I'm all ears. But when I'm in the mood to hear true art, true beauty, I look for one thing - the skill that it takes to make it.

Maybe it's because I'm in a choir who does operatic, choral music, but to me, nothing and no one demonstrates the true futility of technology than Pavarotti singing Nussun Dorma. This is classical music, but dear God it's absolutely gorgeous. There's no editing in this; actually, the backing choir could probably have been amped a little more and there's some annoying distortion, but you HAVE TO LISTEN TO THIS. The imperfections are what make it so legendary - that he can pull notes like this so deep from within his body and make it look like there's so little effort involved. This is LIVE. This is not in a studio. This is Pavarotti and his voice, with a full orchestra behind him.

And so I sound like my grandpa, but where can true artisanship, true beauty, and true emotion be expressed in electronica or techno? How can Lady Gaga (no matter how much I love her) call herself an artist? THIS is art. THIS is true music. And it just goes to show that real talent, real musical might, transcends all technology.

4-Chord Song

This is an amazing video! It's a mash-up of a bunch of the songs that have been popular in the past couple decades - all of which use the same four chords. How much fun is this? Obviously these are just really catchy chords, as so many catchy songs have been made with the four-part combination. And it brings up the question (and this might be a bit out there, but oh well)...are we just hearing the same song over and over again? There's only so much one can do with four chords - is our understanding of music based simply in the auditory pleasure in hearing those same chords? Hmm...

Wired Magazine Tech + Music Timeline

This is a really useful timeline from Wired magazine, where it shows the progression in music from the experiments in sound technology by Thomas Edison, the father of the gramophone, to the early 1990s and the digital multitrack systems. Obviously, since it doesn't go up until the present day, it's a tad outdated, but it is still very interesting. Music technology really came into fruition in the 1980s with the invention of the compact disc (CD), and now, with the common utilization of the mp3, music is becoming more and more accessible.

This is from Edison to email (oh, I'm so clever....)

CLICK FOR THE TIMELINE

AutoTune in Time

I was looking through some of the back issues of Time, and I found this really great article from February 5, 2009 that talks about the emergence of AutoTune into the music market. It talks about the history of the technology way better than I ever could, and it's very readable, so if you are even slightly interested in the subject, or if you have a couple minutes to spare, pop over to the website and read the article.

I've taken out a couple of my favorite quotes for you all, just to get a good flavor for the piece:

"It's like Photoshop for the human voice. Auto-Tune doesn't make it possible for just anyone to sing like a pro, but used as its creator intended, it can transform a wavering performance into something technically flawless."

"Of the half a dozen engineers and producers interviewed for this story, none could remember a pop recording session in the past few years when Auto-Tune didn't make a cameo--and none could think of a singer who would want that fact known. "There's no shame in fixing a note or two," says Jim Anderson, professor of the Clive Davis department of recorded music at New York University and president of the Audio Engineering Society. "But we've gone far beyond that.""

"It usually ends up just like plastic surgery," says a Grammy-winning recording engineer. "You haul out Auto-Tune to make one thing better, but then it's very hard to resist the temptation to spruce up the whole vocal, give everything a little nip-tuck."

Very interesting. It's like the hidden secret of the music industry - everyone's using it, but no one wants to own up to it.

Anyway, here is a list of About.com's top 10 best songs made with AutoTune, including "Believe" by Cher in 1998, which started the entire phenomenon.

Music Production @ NYU

From this website:

"Music Technology at NYU Steinhardt is a leading and internationally recognized program in music, sound and audio technology. Students prepare for successful careers in sound engineering, computer music, audio-visual production and post-production, mastering, scoring for film and multimedia, audio for games, software development, and multimedia production.

Students study with premier faculty in New York City, the heart of the nation's new media and music industries, and join an active community of scholars, artists and engineers exploring the cutting edge of technology and music.

State-of-the-art facilities include 11 fully equipped recording and computer music studios, listening rooms and research labs where over 40 Music Technology specialization courses are taught.

The Music Technology program offers an extensive internship program at major recording studios, new-media web-related companies, music-scoring houses and other music industry enterprises."

I think it's amazing that so many universities are offering full-on courses in music production. Achieving high quality sound takes time, practice, and experience, and programs like Steinhardt's help educate a new generation of producers.

That these programs are so widely received by students clearly demonstrates that the passion for great-sounding music has not died with the tinny iPod speaker. They can obviously appreciate something more, and this program proves that point exactly to those older naysayers who label this generation as one with no esteem for music quality.

Radio 1 Live Lounge

One of the ways music is coming to us faster than ever is through the radio. You wouldn't believe it, but the radio is still a great way of finding new music - new songs and new artists get airplay. It's the mother of all mediums, and some of the new improvements on your old radio include satellite technology like Sirius, which allows access to innumerable stations and static-free listening (for a price, of course).

I love jamming out to Capital Radio in the morning as I get ready for school, but I also love listening to Radio 1's Live Lounge - in case you don't know, artists come on to the show, play one of their own tunes live, and then usually cover another song. It's brilliant. There are some duds, as would be expected, but so much of what comes out is simply amazing.

And whoops, in case you miss it on the radio, you can tune in right away on the Capital Radio website, or even look at old videos of the recording sessions that have been put up on YouTube (once again, thank you, Steve Chen, for arguably the most useful site on the web).

Here is one of my favorites, the Noisettes (famous for "Don't Upset the Rhythm"), performing The Killer's classic, "When You Were Young" (click on the links for these originals). This is pure class.

X-Factor and Public Consumption

OK, I might be stretching the boundaries of what is acceptable on this "music and technology" blog, but it's my party and I'll post if I want to, right?

Anyway, the X-Factor is so stellar this year, but I rarely have time to sit down and watch it, because I'm usually out on Saturday nights when it comes out. Woe is me, but that's where the almighty YouTube comes in. Thank the stars for Channel 4's more lenient public broadcasting laws, because almost as soon as the program shows on live TV, they upload the performances to YouTube so I can watch them. In HD video and sound, too.

Some people might gripe that the C4 bosses will be losing revenue because more people will watch it this way, for free online, but I think the opposite - more people will tune in when it they're watching TV because they've seen it online first. They're reaching a whole new audience with this free online situation, which is brilliant for both the consumer (who is getting their show for free) and the producer (who will get more publicity, and thus more money). Win/win.

So, that being said, enjoy Olly Murs performing on Diva week. I like the flapper dresses in the background:

Last.fm

Technology can help music in a multitude of ways, as we've seen so clearly on this blog. The internet ties in very neatly with that...blogs like this one can give information on new songs, new bands, new ways of looking at the musical world....but sometimes, the internet is just perfect at taking what we already have and putting it in a different way.

A perfect example of this is Last.fm, the online music site that takes every play count from your iTunes and "scrobbles" (aka uploading the song to their database) it, determining what kind of music you listen to and how much of it. It then gives you recommendations based on the information it receives from you, makes a playlist to listen to, and finds "friends" who have similar musical interests to you. It tells you what gigs of artists you like or would like are playing in your area. It shows pictures, concert and official videos, and biographies of every artist on the site (of which there are thousands, from Britney to the most obscure indie band).

Basically, it's amazing. I would recommend anyone with even a slight taste in music to check it out - it's free, and there's a great downloadable applet that scrobbles your songs as you play them. So go do it!

Headphones and Sound Quality

Back in the day, when music wasn't about what beats could be played loudest in as many clubs as possible, musicians and producers really and truly cared about the sound of their product. They created special microphones to pick out the right vibrations of sound waves, went through reels and reels of tape to get the right sounding takes, and listened to the songs over and over again to make sure it was perfect. Now, I'm not saying that music today is sloppily thrown together - with the implementation of computer technology into the equation, it is simply easier to make louder, stronger bass and drum lines.

We also have forgotten what it is like to listen to these songs at their premium. No longer looking for the best speakers in town, we tend to be content with our tinny computer speakers and those little earbuds they make for a dime a dozen in China. When I got my first pair of "real" headphones last year, I was amazed at the difference in the sound quality.

These Sennheiser HD 800 are the best on the market, and although they are most certainly out of my price range at just under $1400 a pop, I still want them! Imagine the quality of the bass, the distortion-free clarity.

picture from http://www.headphone.com/selection-guide/sennheiser-hd-800.php

I Love iTunes

How revolutionary - all your music, every single, every album, every great hits collection, all in one fast, easy place. It seems so normal, so ordinary, but it is truly incredible that we no longer have to go trawling through mountains of EPs to get the song we want to listen to. The sorting options are amazing - just plug a couple letters of the title and whoops, there's the song in all of two seconds. Plop in the artist, the album, the genre, or sort by highest rated, or most played. Put any random combination of these songs into a playlist. Listen to all your thousands of songs at the touch of a button. Stick them all on your iPod and carry your entire album collection with you in your pocket. It's amazing, when you think about it.

Anyway, here are a couple of songs at the top of my own "recently played" playlist:

1. Ghosts - Laura Marling

2. Cry Me A River - Michael Bublé

3. Bad Romance - Lady Gaga

4. Oh My God - Lily Allen

5. 3 Words - Cheryl Cole and Will.I.Am

6. Fascination - Alphabeat

7. Dreams - Fleetwood Mac

8. Daniel - Bat for Lashes

9. In My Life - The Beatles

Musicians and the Media

Accessibility has always been essential to the music market. Even back in the days of Mozart or Tallis, the composer who knew the most important kings or nobles of the day was invited to perform at their balls or concerts, thereby elevating their status, and inviting more invitations of the same sort. Exposure equals money and fame, and although some musicians might say they're only working for the love of the job, I like to think (and this is just me being a little bit cynical, but this is my blog) that they understand that. They know that they have to get their names in the papers, that they have to be seen, because when they're seen, they're heard.

The Beatles rose to superstardom in America after they performed on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. Had they not, who knows if they would have gained the prestige they are known for today. While television was the most important technological medium in the 1960s for getting word out about an album or singles, it can be argued that today, the fastest, easiest, and most reliable way to tell others about an album drop is by way of the internet.

Stars are born and flourish on the web - just look at Lily Allen, who was found on MySpace, and who has now had multiple number 1 singles, a wall of awards, and more celebrity than you can shake a stick at. Even your average single 20-something, singing Beyoncé songs in their basement can get their name out there to that critical public audience just by putting a couple videos on YouTube - just look at Esmée Denters, who was recently signed to Justin Timberlake's label and whose first single "Outta Here" was an international hit.

Even the reality-show flukes find fame and fortune on the Internet - Susan Boyle, the crotchety, granny-looking contestant on Britain's Got Talent whose amazing voice shocked the judges, and the rest of the online audience. Everyone from Oprah to Larry King wanted to interview her, and even though she came in second in the competition, her album has the highest-selling pre-release figures of all time on Amazon.

The internet is the source of fast and cheap marketability, which is perhaps why there are so many stars that we see just briefly as quick flames of interest on Digg.com, or as trending topics on Twitter, or as this week's top-watched on YouTube. But how many of these have lasted? Will any of them prove to be long-lasting? It will be interesting to find out.

Tomorrow Never Knows

My friends know that I am pretty much a crazy Beatles fan, so it should come to no surprise that I have to feature at least one of their songs somewhere on this blog.

"Tomorrow Never Knows" was one of the most progressive songs of its time. Using a mix of the Fab Four's amazing musical ability, and their producers Brian Epstein and George Martin's technical mastery, they created something so other-worldly, so strange, and actually a little bit frightening, that it must have shocked those who were listened all the way through the end. "Revolution 9" might have been infamous for its experimental production techniques, but "Tomorrow Never Knows" was an experiment that succeeded.

Auto Tune

Love it or hate it, you can't deny that Auto Tune technology has rapidly become the focus of a lot of the music industry. The charts are filled with it, and everyone seems to have an opinion on whether it is simply a progression of the industry technology, or whether it is destroying the entire concept of a musician generally needing singing technique to make a song.

Auto Tune uses something called a "phase vocoder" to correct pitch in vocal and instrumental performances. It was originally used in the industry as a quick fix for some of the more basic pitch errors, but now the technology has evolved into something much more than that. Perhaps the most evident example of Auto Tune usage comes from Kanye West in his song "Love Lockdown."

This is not a singer - this is an rapper hitting notes close to the ones he's aiming for, and letting the software do the hard work for him. It's a catchy song, but what does this mean? Can anyone be a perfectly-pitched singer? What use will any sort of talent factor go in an industry that can provide just that for anyone that signs on to a label?

Rapper Jay-Z has these same concerns. In one of his recent singles of "Blueprint 3," he goes on a four-minute tirade against the software in a song called "D.O.A," or "Death of Auto Tune."

"This is anti-Auto Tune/Death of the ringtone/This ain't for iTunes/This ain't for singalongs" raps Jay-Z, and waxes lyrical later on about some of his more prominent contemporaries, like T-Pain and Little Wayne, who use the software frequently on their tracks.

The media has taken a keen interest in the technology as well - this time as a comedy tool. One of the most popular YouTube subscriptions is to "Auto Tune the News," where the software is used on everything - from Palin's speeches to health care debates, and puts it to a beat and backing vocals. This is a classic example:

What's it all about?

Music and technology have always gone hand in hand. Back in the day (read: in the 1960s), new technology came in the form of fancy microphones, advancements for in-studio editing, and a growing number of electric instruments. Now, it sometimes seems like technology has completely overwhelmed the music industry; from T-Pain's Auto-tune to Apple's iTunes store, the gap between music and technology is rapidly closing. This can be for better or for worse - we've all heard the earphone-splitting noise that results from when the synths become inseparable from over-produced vocals. But technology has also made it incredibly easy to find, download, and listen to music at a click of a mouse. Good or bad? I don't think we'll ever find out, but we'll discuss it here.