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February 26, 2008
Play Listen Repeat Vol. 32
Philip Alperson, in the introduction to "The Philosophy of Music," describes "the four broad areas of music which were to become standard areas of inquiry in Western thought" about music. They are:
Formalist, which is "concerned with the qualities of musical form itself."
Expressive, which is focused on "the connection between music and human emotion."
Metaphysical, concerned with the "ontological, cosmological and religious significance of music."
Ethical, concerned with "the effects and role of music within society."
I read and hear lots of you talking about how the music feels, how it makes you feel, and things like that, so I bet that the expressive camp would be well-populated. And the idea of an ethical perspective on music might help clarify that muddy thing that so many people seem to be concerned with when they talk about how vapid and empty some music seems to be.
Maybe the formalist camp would be reserved for the most esoteric and avant-garde among us; and the metaphysical might be populated by new age listeners and certain composers.
Of course, we'd wander between camps. We might be in two or three at once, even.
Even so, do you think you can place yourself in one or more of these groups? What are your concerns when you listen to music? If you have no concerns, does that automatically mean you are an "expressive" listener? Are there any things that are missing from this list?
Posted by Michael Zapruder at 02:30 PM | Comments (26)
February 19, 2008
Cleveland Get-together Thursday, February 28th, 2008!
We are having a Pandora meet-up at the Tower City Cinema at the Tower City Center in Cleveland. Hope to see you there--excited to meet our Cleveland listeners!
If you would like to attend, please RSVP by sending an email to Angie at tour@pandora.com with CLEVELAND in the subject line.
When: Thursday, February 28th, 2008 @ 7 PM
Where: Tower City Cinema at the Tower City Center, 230 W. Huron Road, Cleveland (map)
Cheers,
Tim
Posted by Tim Westergren at 03:33 PM | Comments (6)
Play Listen Repeat Vol. 31
[Music] exists as and for appearance. There is no actuality underlying it... Musical coherence is abstracted from actuality, not based upon it... [Music's] appearance and its actuality are one and the same.
Geoffrey Payzant, Glenn Gould: Music and Mind
Clearly, it's possible to create believable, effective, amazing recorded works independent of the quality of the music on which the recording is based. Even when a recording's musical content is lackluster or unremarkable, vibrant elements (a great vocal performance, a hook, or clever stylistic choices, etc) can work to make the recording itself into a potent creation, such that the so-called "deeper" content doesn't matter.
This seems obvious enough. Is anyone really going to be troubled by the suggestion that the sounds within a recording are of comparable importance to the so-called content (i.e.,the musical ideas, words, melody) that we ordinarily perceive to underlie it? I doubt it.
Now, some critics might say that this sort of music makes silk purses from sows' ears, and common sense would probably agree. Anyone who has ever noticed a vapid lyric or a tired chord progression underpinning a beloved popular song has had that view, if only for a minute. Silk purses from sows' ears.
But when we look more closely at a recording, we get into some trouble, because (to state the obvious) the true contents of a recording consist only of the actual recorded sounds themselves, and nothing more. The recorded sounds are not just of comparable importance, they are all there is.
Music is, as Payzant says, "entirely phenomenal... [it] actually appears, and its appearance is the kind of actuality is has." In other words, that "coherence" that we recognize as a song is something that we abstract from the actual music.
This is both obviously true, and also more than a little unsettling, since most of what I hear when I listen to music, and most of what I am seeking when I listen, has to do with the sense of a song that is behind the one I can hear. I am hearing content that is implied by the recordings contents; or, to use Payzant's terminology, I am interested in what I can abstract from the sounds I am hearing.
It is usually the excellence of those perceived deeper implications, and the quality of the communication transmitted through the music from another human soul who somehow found and adapted their experience into art, that matters to me, much more, apparently, than what I am actually hearing.
Posted by Michael Zapruder at 11:59 AM | Comments (17)
February 14, 2008
Boston Get-together Wednesday, February 27th, 2008!
We are having a Pandora meet-up at the Morse Auditorium on the Boston University campus in Boston. Hope to see you there--excited to meet our Boston listeners!
If you would like to attend, please RSVP by sending an email to Angie at tour@pandora.com with BOSTON in the subject line.
When: Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 @ 7 PM
Where: The Morse Auditorium at BU, 602 Commonwealth Ave.(on the BU campus), Boston (map)
Cheers,
Tim
Posted by Tim Westergren at 10:05 AM | Comments (9)
February 13, 2008
Contemporary Christian Music comes to Pandora
In our ongoing effort to continue expanding the Music Genome Project, CCM is now live on Pandora! Over the past year we've received a lot of requests for this, and we're very pleased to finally bring this collection to its many fans. Although we've had a small number of CCM artists for a while, what we've done in addition to massively expanding the selection, is added a playlist feature that creates CCM-only playlists when launched from a CCM song, or an artist whose work is overwhelmingly CCM. That is the unambiguous desire of our listeners.
So pick your favorite artist/song and give it a spin - we have all sorts of CCM; rock, gospel, hip-hop, acoustic, country, bluegrass, pop, you name it... And, as always, don't be shy about letting us know what you think.
Enjoy!
Tim (Founder)
Posted by Tim Westergren at 05:24 PM | Comments (30)
February 12, 2008
Austin Get-together Monday, February 25th, 2008!
We are having a Pandora meet-up at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin. Hope to see you there--excited to meet our Austin listeners!
If you would like to attend, please RSVP by sending an email to Angie at tour@pandora.com with AUSTIN in the subject line.
When: Monday, February 25th, 2008 @ 7 PM
Where: The Alamo Drafthouse, 1120 South Lamar Street, Austin (map)
Cheers,
Tim
Posted by Tim Westergren at 02:03 PM | Comments (8)
February 11, 2008
Play Listen Repeat Vol. 30
The Red Hot Peppers records are the prototype for a school of phonography that includes Ellington, Monk, Mingus, Zappa, Miles Davis and The Beatles - master builders who would mean much less to us if their work had been done only on paper. Evan Eisenberg - The Recording Angel
(As per my last two posts, I recently read The Recording Angel, Evan Eisenberg's book on the significance and influence of recording, recorded music, and recordings as things. This week's post continues to explore the ideas from that excellent book, specifically the idea that records are examples of an art form best described as "phonography," or the art of making recordings.)
I don't know about you, but I have for many years used the word "song" to refer both to the composition and the recording of the composition. I'm sure we all do this, like for example when we're driving with friends and a long-forgotten record comes on the car radio, prompting someone to say "this song is so incredible," or "I love this song."
We use the word "song" as shorthand to describe something that encompasses both the song and the recording, and while it's sometimes true that the song we're hearing in that car is in fact a great song, I am certain that there are also many times when it would be more accurate (if a little bit tedious :)), to say "this record is incredible," or "this is a great recording."
I'm thinking for example of some old hit song that might be kind of silly, dated or just somehow dubious as a musical or lyrical piece of writing, but which still carries real power, impact, and maybe even deep truth. That truth may be coming from the recording, not the actual song as written, and the piece may well be deriving most of its identity and power from some artistry, achievement or serendipity in a recording studio.
Looked at from a certain angle, these records are no less good because they are good as recordings, they are simply good in a different way (one might argue that a great recording that also carries cliched words and/or music is a bit of cultural pollution, but that's another subject...).
As it is, if we adopt this viewpoint, then we have to admit that our experience of recordings far outpaces our experience of songs, in the sense that we mostly hear the songs as recordings (and if we go to see a performer in person, we are then experiencing another form of mediation: the performance). The song then is possibly an abstraction: an ephemeral lead/lyric sheet delineating the words, melody, and harmony, without locking it into any one iteration.
Personally, this resonates with me. I like the way this notion disengages the contents of the song (the words, harmony, melody, etc) from any particular version of them, and therefore allows for two simultaneous dimensions to coexist: the song and the record.
I also like considering the resulting [slim] possibility that none of us has ever really heard a song in its purest form....
cheers,
mz
Posted by Michael Zapruder at 12:33 PM | Comments (10)
Syracuse Get-together Friday, February 22nd, 2008!
We are having a Pandora meet-up at the Palace Theatre in Syracuse. Hope to see you there--excited to meet our Syracuse listeners!
If you would like to attend, please RSVP by sending an email to Angie at tour@pandora.com with SYRACUSE in the subject line.
When: Friday, February 22nd, 2008 @ 7 PM
Where: The Palace Theatre, 2384 James Street, Syracuse (map)
Cheers,
Tim
Posted by Tim Westergren at 11:12 AM | Comments (10)
February 04, 2008
Play Listen Repeat Vol. 29
Last week I described my experience seeking out and listening to a fantastic Brahms intermezzo. After listening to the piece many times at work, I ended up scouring the web to find a copy to have for myself, and now a vinyl copy of the recording is wending its way from somewhere in the UK to my house in Oakland.
Why did I do that?
In The Recording Angel (the book that started me off on this quest in the first place), Evan Eisenberg posits a "tentative list" of reasons why people collect things. Quoting the first line of each of his reasons, they are:
1. The need to make beauty and pleasure permanent.
2. The need to comprehend beauty.
3. The need to distinguish oneself as a consumer.
4. The need to belong.
5. The need to impress others, or oneself.
I'm sure I can find myself in every category on that list in some purchase or another. In this case, I'd say my motivation is largely related to the first and second items on the list, in that I want to hear the music whenever I want, and I want to absorb whatever threads of insight and vision it might have to offer.
There's also something else happening for me personally, which is that I want to hear the music in full audio, and I want to hear it in a good listening environment.
Eisenberg (mostly) wasn't confronted with this when he wrote The Recording Angel, but the typical digital music file not only usually contains about 1/10th of the audio's full information, but it is also often competing with the considerable visual distraction of the computer monitor, and the considerable temptation to do something else (i.e., check email) while listening (for the curious, we have discussed the digital music listening environment a bit in an earlier post).
With all this in mind, I've got a whole gang of music-collecting questions for you this week:
1. What motivates you to buy music as opposed to just listening to it when you happen to come across it?
2. Do you feel that the digital and physical music you buy are of equal value?
3. Do you feel that it is possible to collect digital music in the same way that you can collect CDs or vinyl records?
4. (Extra-credit) Is the intangible nature of a computer file something between traditional radio and traditional records?
5. (Ultra-double-extra-credit) Is there something about music's new intangibility (aka digital files) that might allow it to be more essentially itself, by returning to the intangible nature music had before recordings were invented?
All ears,
mz
Posted by Michael Zapruder at 10:05 AM | Comments (10)
February 01, 2008
SAVE THE DATE! Cleveland Get-Together February 28th, 2008
Details to be announced soon!
When: Thursday, February 28th, 2008
Where: TBD
Cheers,
Tim
Posted by Tim Westergren at 04:15 PM | Comments (9)
SAVE THE DATE! Boston Get-Together February 27th, 2008
Details to be announced soon!
When: Wednesday, February 27th, 2008
Where: TBD
Cheers,
Tim
Posted by Tim Westergren at 04:14 PM | Comments (5)
SAVE THE DATE! Austin Get-Together February 25th, 2008
Details to be announced soon!
When: Monday, February 25th, 2008
Where: TBD
Cheers,
Tim
Posted by Tim Westergren at 04:12 PM | Comments (1)
SAVE THE DATE! Syracuse Get-Together February 22nd, 2008
Details to be announced soon!
When: Friday, February 22nd, 2008
Where: TBD
Cheers,
Tim
Posted by Tim Westergren at 04:10 PM | Comments (1)
