Friday, June 29th
Who are these they they keep talking about?
We have rearranged our living room again- but the new arrangement will not work unless I have a 30 foot double rca cable for the turntable. So I call up Sam Ash Music:
Me: Do you have a 30 foot RCA cable?
Sam: NO!!
Me: What's the longest RCA cable you sell?
Sam: 20 foot. They don't make them longer than that.
I always wondered who these mysterious "they" are.
Me: Really!? I've seen them up to 50 feet on the internet.
Sam: For pro audio you don't want to longer than 20 foot. There is serious signal degradation if you go longer than that (and blah, blah, blah)...
So I wonder- if "they" don't make them longer than 20 feet, where are these 30 and 50 foot cables coming from? Either someone other than "they" is making them, or they just appear spontaneously from time to time and opportunistic vendors grab them and sell them.
My 30 foot cable arrived in the mail today. There is some loss of high frequencies that is fixable with an equalizer- perhaps "serious" signal degradation in some applications- not in mine.
Nancy and I have been married 24 years and a week and a day today. In that time a marriage takes on a personality of its own greater than the sum of the two individuals. Yesterday I asked a woman who lives on my route, "How long have you lived here?" She answered, "We've lived here over 30 years now." She assumed the plural "you," i. e.: "how long have the two of you lived here?", not "how long have you, Diane, lived here?"
Interestingly her husband has been dead for a year. It takes more to kill such a marriage than the death of one partner.
I like being married to Nancy. Not just because she arranges my living space nicely. She helps define who I am.
Thursday, June 21st
Listen to "the music"? What does that mean?
The eleventh century was ... crucial in the history of music. During this time certain changes were beginning- changes which, when eventually worked out, would result in giving to Western music many of its basic characteristics, those features which distinguish it from other musics of the world. Those changes may be summarized as follows:
1. Composition slowly replaced improvisation as a way of creating musical works. Improvisation, in one form or another, is the normal way in most musical cultures and was probably the exclusive way in the West up to about the ninthh century. Gradually the idea arose of composing a melody once and for all instead of improvising it anew each time on traditional melodic pattern structures; and thenceforward a piece of music could be said to "exist," in the way in which we ordinarily think of it now, apart from any particular performance.
2. A composed piece could be taught and transmitted orally, and might be subject to alterations in the course of transmission. But the invention of musical notation made it possible to write music down in a definitive form, which could be learned from the noted piece. The notation, in other words, was a set of directions which could be executed whether or not the composer was present. Thus composition and performance became separate acts instead of being combined in one person as before, and the performer's function became that of a mediator between composer and audience.
3. Music began to be more consciously structured and made subject to certain principles of order- for example, the theory of the eight modes, or the rules governing rhythm and consonance; such principles were eventually formulated into systems and set forth in treatises.
4. Polyphony began to replace monophony. Of course, polyphony as such is not exclusively Western; but it is our music which, more than any other, has specialized in this technique. We have developed polyphonic composition to a unique degree and, it must be admitted, at the expense of rhythmic and melodic subtleties that are characteristic of the music of other highly civilized peoples, India and China for example.- Grout: A History of Western Music
So I've gotten all the way up to page 100 in my music history textbook: all the way up to the eleventh century. I found the summary above very interesting. Based on points 1 and 2, the argument could be made that we have made a colossal step backward in the 20th century. Generally we no longer speak of songs as being composed, but written. In other words, songs are in one sense conceived similarly to before the eleventh century: rather than notating specific musical instructions for a performer, the text is the only exact instruction actually put on paper when "writing" a song. The written song may contain chord symbols that are not exact instructions, but guides for a rhythm instrument or section to improvise on. The early middle ages had a similar system with melodic rather than harmonic symbols written over an exact text. Thus in this particular sense we are in exactly the same situation that we were in 1100 years ago.
On the other hand, we still have a sense of a song as a particular piece of music, which is not how things were before the eleventh century. However, what people think of as "the music" is becoming very different than the several hundred years prior to the twentieth century. Usually a musician can still ask, "do you have 'the music' for this song?" without getting blank stares. However most people will blink or otherwise mentally pause as their minds do what is basically a paradigm shift back to what is quickly becoming a bygone time.
Of course, a classically trained musician, if pressed, would admit that a printed score is not really "the music." The music is really all past and potential performances of a particular song. However the material representation of "the music" has for hundreds of years been the score.
For all intents and purposes this has changed, although we still understand the old paradigm. The new paradigm can be seen clearly in the response to the question, "Have you heard Elvis Presley?" No one thinks that it is necessary to have actually heard Elvis perform to answer "yes." If I have heard a recording of Elvis Presley, then yes, of course, I have heard "the music." Again, if pressed, I might say that the recording is not really the music, but serves as a material representation of "the music," just as the score used to in the old paradigm.
This paradigm shift explains the apparent backward leap from composed songs to written songs. If a song will ultimately be recorded, then to notate the details of a song's performance is ultimately a waste of time. Any notation system can only convey "essential" information about the music, whereas listening to a recording conveys complete information about the music.
What is interesting about this is that music, almost unawaredly, served and is serving as a forerunner in the area of "virtual reality". Well before anybody had heard of that phrase, people were experiencing virtual music in the form of recordings. Thus it may be possible to test whether all of the dire consequences that people are predicting from the proliferation of virtual reality in other areas have become or are becoming true in music.
Monday, June 18th
I've got the protected music files blues
This morning in my e-mail was an invitation to try itunes plus- a new service that sells you DRM free music files that are supposedly virtually indistinguashible from the original recordings. Only 30 cents more than the original service.
I have my doubts.
Really if it's just a matter of getting around the DRM, that's a cinch. Just burn the purchased files to a CD and reimport them in whatever format you like. Or record them via free software such as Audacity and the Lame MP3 encoder. This last process is a bit of a pain in the ass, but still way way easier and resulting in less loss of quality than I used to experience recording my records to tape.
All of this has become an issue for me recently since I switched to using mainly Windows Media Player to manage music on my internet computer. I was having a lot of problems with itunes on this computer, so I made the switch. Lately I realized that the major problem was not so much with itunes as it was with my USB 2.0 card which I installed about a year ago. I have been reading on the internet that this particular card has a lot of problems with sophisticated USB devices, including of course, ipods.
Too late. I've already got itunes set up on my recording computer (which is not hooked up to the internet).
What I have discovered is that Windows Media Player is superior in a lot of respects, though certainly not all. The online store that I have set up with Media Player (URGE) takes a really long time to set itself up when you access it through Media Player. Possibly this is because there is a lot more music on URGE than there is on itunes- although I don't really know that this is the case.
The bottom line is that, given that it is simple to get around the DRM attached to files that both itunes and URGE sells, what is the point of paying an extra 30 cents to get DRM free files? Well, if the files are genuinely of better quality than the old itunes files, then... maybe. The old itunes files certainly suck compared to the ones that URGE is now selling for the same price in terms of audio quality.
Sunday, June 17th
Happy Father's Day?
This is the first father's day I visited my dad's grave instead of his home.
Last night I dreamed that dad and I were walking through a town in Pennsylvania to visit his friend Eddie. (Strange because Eddie lives in Seattle.) I had no idea where we were going, so I followed dad as he led me through the street. We walked through a store which had some records which I wanted to look at, but dad ignored them although he looked at something else; I had no idea what they were. I followed him out of the back of the store and the city gave way to countryside. The records had made me think of guitar playing and some disagreements I had years ago with a musical friend. I stopped to think about these, and then I realized that dad had disappeared from sight. Panicked, I began to ran until I caught sight of him. He was walking very quickly and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to keep up. I saw him come to a staircase which for some strange reason was cut into a downward slope. He started to go down the stairs and I realized I could catch him if I slid down the slope. When I caught up to him I grabbed hold of him and hugged him and sobbed. I realized he was dead.
Friday, June 15th
The foot report
music: Rosehips, Smiles & Chuckles, Sings Like Hell
A couple months it has been since I went back to work after being treated for tendonitis in my foot. Thing are going fairly well, I guess. I bought some pricey custom made orthodics and ice my foot every day after work. Most importantly I think I'm watching how and where I walk: walking more on the sidewalk and less on the grass. I never appreciated before why they spent all that time and money digging up apparently perfectly good soil and installing big flat concrete things to walk on. Reason: it's easier on your feet to walk on a perfectly flat surface.
Ditto for steps: easier for your feet to climb a series of flat surfaces than a sloping incline.
One unexpected and unpleasant bit has been the return of my femoral/patella syndrome. I was diagnosed with this many years ago but pretty much forgot about it. Probably my feet were doing some unconscious adjusting to this condition which is the reason the pain for the most part went away. Now that my orthodics are forcing my feet to walk in a healthier way, my right knee is making known it's displeasure with the situation. However the knee hurts less than the foot did, so this is a good thing.
How hard do you think it would be to come by one of these?:
They're on ebay of course, if you don't mind paying 4 buck shipping and handling. I got mine for $1.75 at Jack Price's vintage pen and record supplies store; 3481 N High St. Jack told me that he sells tons of these- he's the only one that has them. He's pretty much right! The only other one I found was up at the Stereo Lab repair store on Indianola. It was cool: had a DUAL logo on it. But he wanted 10 bucks for it?! NO, thanks!
I needed the adapter to play my new single from Rosehips, an all female band. I happen to know 2 of the 4 women that play in it. I was amused to read a recent article in The Other Paper by somebody who calls himself "Night Moves" in which Rosehips was referred to as an "ultra-emo band." I just had to hear what an ultra-emo band sounds like.
Another record that I just had to have:
I saw a copy of this in a local thrift store, but the vinyl was absolutely beat to hell. I found a copy from Martin Records and it's in really great shape, too. It's great to have some music that is just plain fun. This record was recorded here in Columbus, a beautiful translucent blue vinyl, and features among other people trombonist Vaughn Wiester; whose famous jazz orchestra Nancy and I will have to hear someday. They play every Monday night at Columbus Music Hall.
Purchased just yesterday:
This wasn't a record. Thrift CD's I find to be a much more risky business, much less likely to yield good music. But who can resist a title like "Peter Case Sings Like Hell" for 99 cents? I had to find out if he really does sing like hell.
Saturday, June 9th
Has the volume control ruined music?
music: Red Hot Chili Peppers: Coffee Shop/ Beethoven: Symphony #4
Once upon a time, long long ago, in a land not so far away, musicians had absolute control over how loud their music was. There was no such thing as electronic amplification and almost all music was live.
Then came the wonders of the electronic age and the introduction of prerecorded music. For all of the advantages this allowed, there is one "small" problem. The musician no longer has control over how loud the music he/she creates is going to be. The listener has to decide where to set the volume control.
At first, this doesn't seem to be a problem at all, but an advantage. Isn't it great that people are no longer at the mercy of the musicians, but can decide for themselves how loud they want their music to be?
In a word: NO! The unforseen result of this catastrophic development is that the musical tool of dynamic range has been virtually completely removed as an option in recorded music.
Dynamics in music has been so completely obliterated that I often find myself having to explain to non musicians what dynamics in music means. This shows how much this aspect of music has been devastated. Dynamics simply means the variations between loud and soft in music. Music which has a lot of variation between the loudest and quietest moments is said to have a lot of dynamic range. Music with not much variation between loudest and softest doesn't have much dynamic range.
Most people get that it is a good tool for musicians to have to be able to play with a lot of dynamics. But it is not often realized how the everpresence of recorded music has destroyed the ability of musicians to do this. The problem is the absolute necessity now to run the finished music through a device called a dynamic compressor in order to raise the overall volume of the music. The compressor takes whatever dynamic range is present in the music and literally squashes it.
For centuries the musician knew how loud the final product was going to be, but now that is an unknown: mathematically representable by a variable such as X. Let's say we have two pieces of music. One of which has a difference between the loudest and softest moments of 30 decibels, the other has a dynamic range of only 15 decibels. We can represent the dynamic range of the first as X - 30, the second as Y - 15. The first piece of music could perhaps be a classical symphony and the second piece a folk song.
This is not a big problem in a live setting, because a symphony is going to get louder than a folk singer. But in the world of recorded music where thousands of songs sit together in an ipod, every piece becomes subject to the same dynamic ceiling. This is because people don't readjust the volume for every song: they leave it the same. Thus the loudest moment of every piece of music, although unknown by the musician, can be reasonably assumed to be the same in the mixing and mastering process. This means that our classical symphony has a dynamic range of X - 30 compared to the folk song which is X - 15.
This is all rather theoretical and abstract. Perhaps a picture would help:
The first track is a bit of a Red Hot Chili Peppers tune. The second track is a vinyl rip of a bit of a Beethoven Symphony. Obviously, in an ipod the symphony is going to sound much much quieter than the rock song. Although on one level one could argue that this makes the symphony much more interesting, in an ipod the symphony is only going to be annoying because its quiet parts are hard to hear. So the end result is that in the present musical environment, all music is compressed in production to bring up the overall volume.
Now the big problem is that meter depends mostly on dynamics. When we talk about "beats", we are talking about momentary times in the music which are louder than the surrounding times. If you look at the Beethoven symphony, you can see the beats quite clearly. One would suspect just by looking that the Red Hot Chili Peppers song doesn't have a beat at all, it looks like just one big wash of sound. Of course, when you hear it, the beat seems quite obvious. But this is something of an acoustic illusion. Because the natural way to create meter has been taken away from musicians, new ways have been found to create it.
One obvious change in music has been to substitute guitars for the string section of an orchestra. For centuries the violin ruled as the king of strings. The reason for this is that the violin is capable of a much larger dynamic range than other stringed instruments, especially the guitar. But in today's musical environment, this dynamic range has become a liability instead of an asset. Everything is going to get subjected to the iron hand of the compressor, so instruments with a large dynamic range are actually going to sound less like the original after compression. If you take the string section of an orchestra and subject it to the large amount of compression necessary for today's recordings, you end up with a steaming mass of acoustic goo.
The guitar of course reacts similarly to the violin dynamically in that it becomes louder when you play it harder. But this dynamic difference is much less with a violin. The more significant difference is that a guitar played harder will have attack characteristics with a much larger mix of higher overtones than a guitar played softer. The compressor spares this when it does its dirty work.
Another difference is the virtual omnipresence of the drum set in contemporary music with a strong meter. Not because drums are dynamic (although they are) but because their notes are of much less duration than other instruments. The quickly passing notes of a kick drum, closed hi-hat, and snare serve to mark meter in an environment where the most natural way of marking meter has been excluded.
Tuesday, June 5th
Vinyl from Sunday Garage Sale- total $4
Frank Sinatra- Songs for Swingin' Lovers
Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass- Whipped Cream and Other Delights
Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass- Going Places
Henry Mancini- Dear Heart and Other Songs About Love
Henry Mancini- Our Man in Hollywood
Benny Goodman- The King of Swing Vol 1
Charles Ives Symphony #4- Leopold Stokowski/American Symphony Orchestra
Vaughan Williams Sinfonia Antartica- Bernard Haitink/London Philharmonic Orchestra
Deodato- Artistry
Carl Orff: Catulli Carmina- Eugene Ormandy/The Philadelphia Orchestra
Rimsky-Korsakov: Le Coq d'Or- Opera-Symphony Orchestra of the All-Union Radio
The Harpsichord Volume One/Fernando Valenti Plays The Scarlatti Sonatas
The Mahavishnu Orchestra with John McLaughlin- The Inner Mounting Flame
Friday, June 1st
national accordion awareness month
music: roll out the barrel
mood: humorous
Q. What do you call 1000 accordions at the bottom of the ocean?
A. A good start.
I see somebody has created national accordion awareness month. I'm glad someone finally saw the need to bring attention to this vitally important subject. And it comes at a very good time, too: right on the heels of national dog bite awareness week.
I'm in a unique position to contribute because I have musical training and I am also a mailman. Dog attacks and accordion playing are not exactly the same, of course. Dog attacks tend to sound better and cause less permanent scarring than accordion playing. However the defensive techniques are essentially the same:
1. If you unexpectedly come upon an accordionist, do not panic. Avert your eyes, take a defensive posture (cover your ears), and back away slowly. Do not turn and run; you may startle the accordionist into playing. You cannot outrun the sound of an accordion. I have tried. Many times.
2. If you come upon an unattended accordion, do not attempt to control the beast unless you are specially trained. Improper handling could cause the accordion to play. Instead, call your local noise control unit. They will quarantine and, if necessary, destroy the accordion.
3. Always use extreme caution when within hearing distance of an accordion. Never trust an accordion owner who says, "My accordion doesn't play." Although we tend to ascribe human characteristics to accordionists, we must always remember that accordionist's behavior can often be irrational, and they may play without provocation or warning.
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