Audio Artifacts (From A to D and Back Again)

Mary Cliff moves to WAMU

2007-01-30T01:21:00.000-05:00

One last post of the evening...

WAMU is picking up Traditions with Mary Cliff!

WAMU 88.5 picks up Traditions with Mary Cliff

Longtime host will bring show to 11 p.m., Saturday evenings
On Saturday, Feb. 3, WAMU 88.5 will begin airing Traditions with Mary Cliff from 11 p.m., Saturdays, until 1 a.m., Sundays. Since 1970, Cliff has hosted the acoustic music show, keeping fans up to date on the local music scene.

YAY!!!!!!!

Read WAMU's press release here.

Go get 'em Mary. Sorry you can't have one free Saturday. But that's radio.

Bring back those good ol' days

2007-01-29T22:46:00.000-05:00

In the course of "discovering music" today (on the Live635 Barbershop channel), I stumbled upon a barbershop quartet based in Vancouver. Their name is Realtime, and they won the 2005 SPEBSQSA* World Championships. I heard a very interesting arrangement of Loch Lomond from their album, Four Brothers.

Realtime (Barbershop quartet)

This may not surprise many people, but I used to sing barbershop. I started in high school when they did The Music Man, and our quartet stayed together and sang a lot of concerts. It was fun with the four of us singing one to a part. I joined the local barbershop chorus. We sang lots of different shows, wore tuxedos, learned choreography, and competing in contests. (Is this starting to sound like a drug confession?!) I sang in a chorus out of Elyria while I went to school, and tried to convince my fellow music majors of the greatness of barbershop harmony. Heh. Ringing 7th chords, total lack of irony or postmodernism, and trying to move an audience through song. Pretty corny, huh? Maybe. But if you sing and know how all these chords work, and have a large repertoire (in your head), you can spend all night ringing chords and singing your hear out. I miss that sort of community.

* = Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America. (Wait, it's been renamed as something else, the Barbershop Harmony Society. Not as much fun.)

Input vs. output

2007-01-28T18:17:00.000-05:00

I haven't been in much of a writing mood lately, although I've had several topics I'd like to discuss. Information just keeps coming. I think I'm starting to shake the inertia now, as I have several projects coming due this month and next.

I've been gathering content for a Live365 station. I had been leaning either towards an all-Celtic (with local emphasis on the DC area) or all-Canadian oriented show. I have settled on the latter, and I look forward to having it up in the next few months. Live365 seems to be the way to go, since for the fee you pay, they pay all the royalties for music played.

I'm investing in some technology to set up the operations, plus increasing my CD collection to deliver an interesting mix. It's going to be mostly folk, but spiced with jazz, blues, bluegrass, country, popular, spoken word, and classical selections to give a big picture of our neighbor to the North. Listening to CBC Two has also given me a lot of ideas. I hope I won't duplicate them too much, it's meant for as a Canadian music for residents of the United States. (Mustn't call ourselves Americans.)

If anyone has a favorite Canadian artist or song, please send your ideas. I'll be happy to incorporate them. What's your favorite province? I'll be getting another blog started for the show too, and I'll keep all Audio Artifacts readers up-to-date on how the stream progresses.

On Mary Cliff's Traditions

2007-01-28T18:10:00.000-05:00

One of the casualties of WETA's format change was the dismissal of Mary Cliff and cancelation of her long-running folk show Traditions. Last night was Mary's final show on WETA after over 34 years. I worked with Mary for a short time, but I really feel she taught me a lot about what I know about the musics we call "folk." What impresses me is her deep appreciation of all music, and how open the boundaries really are between the genres and formats. Like jazz and rock, classical came to be because of traditional musical forms. Without traditional dance forms and entertainments, court musicians wouldn't have started writing operas, symphonies, and string quartets for royalty, and later the public. I'm babbling...I hope Mary's show will continue on another local station. The strength of her show is in building the local folk music communities into one.

Traditions was a place where singer-songwriters, bluegrass musicians, blues guitarists, sitar players, gospel groups, and sacred harp singers (among others) could find equal representation in one 5-hour show every week. It was a show directly aimed at the greater Washington DC area (broadly defined as far as I can tell as the mid-Atlantic region between Richmond, Philadelphia, the Eastern Shore, and West Virginia).

I don't know of another forum that could do that and provide access to everyone in the community in the same way--NOT EVERYONE IS ON THE INTERNET. (Okay, no more shouting). Mary, enjoy your week. You deserve a rest. Hope to hear you on the air soon.

On the new classical WETA

2007-01-28T18:06:00.000-05:00

I am ecstatic that WETA, my former employer, is returning to a classical format. They will be 23/7* classical, taking up the mantle of WGMS, which has been on the air in Washington, DC for over 50 years. WGMS was commercially owned by Bonneville International, and they had really good ratings a couple of years ago (going up to #3 or 4 in the market), and even after they switched the station to a lower-powered signal, their ratings were still respectable for an all-classical station. But as of last Monday, they changed their format to a popular mix format, dubbed "George 104". For the full story, please check out
DCRTV or the Washington Post.

* = I say 23/7, because the one hour that is not classical is weekdays 7-8 pm for the Newshour with Jim Lehrer (produced across the street from WETA and taped in the WETA production center). Why this hour and not another show? Only SR knows.

Tonight's Canuckian playlist

2007-01-18T23:36:00.000-05:00

Some songs/albums/performers I've been enjoying via radio and recordings:

1) Artist: The Polyjesters
Album: Ka-Chunk

2) Artist: Sarah Harmer
Album: I'm a Mountain

3) Artist: Stuart MacLean
Album: History of Canada/I Remember Wayne

4) Artist: Stan Rogers
Album: Northwest Passage

5) Artist: Wailin' Jennys
Album: Firecracker

6) Artist: Be Good Tanyas
Album: Hello Love

7) Artist: Tragically Hip
Album: Fully Completely

8) Artist: Northern Pikes
Album: Hits & Assorted Secrets: 1984-1993

9) Artist: Joe Trio
Album: Set 'Em Up Joe

10) Various artists
Album: Due South soundtrack, vol. 1

More Canadian albums to come...

To the Land of the Midnight Sun

2007-01-09T16:49:00.000-05:00

This is how much the warm weather in DC is messing with my mind. (Ok, it's not that cold right now, late 30s, but still...it was almost 70 the other day!)

I was looking up vacations to Greenland last night.

That would be an adventure.

Please make it snow soon!

Currently reading: McGhee, Robert. The Last Imaginary Place: A Human History of the Arctic World (Oxford University Press, 2005)

He writes:

I began to write this book as an attempt to understand our vision of the Arctic as a world apart, a place where past and present merge in a distant and compelling land of brilliant light.

Men with Brooms burns the rock a bit

2007-01-04T09:43:00.000-05:00

Fair warning: January 12 is Hockey Day in Canada.

I watched Men with Brooms last night. Yup, it is definitely about curling. It's got some very dry Canadian humour. It's not brilliant enough to be a parody on other sports movies, and it's not full-out on being a buddy sports movie. It doesn't succeed in being a great movie, but it's a good-enough film for those of you who want a glimpse of one of Canada's national obsessions. I did learn quite a bit about curling that I didn't know before. And it is pretty spectacular to watch a player cast a stone. The script is a bit hackneyed, but it's enjoyable enough watching Leslie Nielsen and Paul Gross in a strained father-son relationship. There's also a subplot with beavers. 'Nuff said.

Definitely not a sport to take for granite.

Current media obsessing

2007-01-03T20:23:00.000-05:00

Done with:
Due South (why only 3 seasons?!) and associated fan sites.
Call of the Wild and Mounty [sic] on the Bounty are the highlights of season 3.

Waiting for:
1) Slings and Arrows, Season 1
2) Men with Brooms (movie about curling, eh!)
3) Corner Gas (50 miles from nowhere)
4) Paul Gross's Two Horses (CD)

Wanted:
1) Anything with Paul Gross
2) North of 60 (never released)
3) Trailer Park Boys
4) Due South soundtrack, vol. 2
5) West Wing (seasons 6 and 7, no hurry though)
6) Six Feet Under (seasons 2 and 3, again no hurry since Bravo's carrying it now)
7) Other Canadian media, esp. if it features a presentation of a Musical Ride.

Just a moment for activism

2007-01-03T19:51:00.000-05:00

Happy new year!

Polar Bears May Be Listed as Threatened in the USA

But, there's no such thing as global warming.

Only 362 days left to make a difference.

Guilty pleasures

2006-12-19T20:17:00.000-05:00

Ok, I admit it. There are times when I love listening to country music.

Now, I don't mean the classic stuff, bluegrass, the honky-tonkers, western swing, Cash, etc. (which I love, but good luck finding on the airwaves except weekends on WAMU).

I mean the new stuff...the kind of music that puts you the divide between cultured and "ig'nt". You know, guys with cutoff shirts, wifebeater t-shirts, chaw, pick-up trucks, and wouldn't miss NASCAR for anything. As opposed to who I'm "supposed" to be. You know, classical music loving, wine-swishing, haute cuisine, pansy-ass, egg head liberal. Well, aren't I a paradox? Aren't we all, or wouldn't we like to admit that some of our likes don't fit the little boxes we put ourselves in?

Every so often I turn on a DC country station, WMZQ (a Clear Channel station--I know, double evil). I just need a quick hit of Martina McBride, Trace Adkins, or Keith Urban. (With the repetitive programming, I usually tune out after a few hours).

Country music gets my blood pumping, reminds me of the simpler pleasures in life, and could even inspire me change my oil in my car someday (HAH!). I'm not saying a lot of these songs are profound, innovative, or even musically interesting. But they serve another function to me than other types of music do. For example, folk music often makes me contemplative, Celtic music makes me feel like dancing, and music theatre...well, again the stereotypes. I guess it reminds me of where I'm from, my grandparents, and about the folks from high school that stayed on in my hometown.

That's my honky-tonk ba-donk-a-donk. :P

So, what's your guilty pleasure?

Please let the spinning stop

2006-12-18T12:13:00.000-05:00

An excellent article in the Los Angeles Times on how new musicians are making it in the new media landscape. It talks about who the new players are (blogs, Starbucks, NPR), how locality is still important (hip-hop, Nashville), and how critics are tired of buzz for buzz sake.

Catching up on reading

2006-12-17T21:54:00.000-05:00

I've been perusing some books on radio broadcasting which I picked up at a used book store outside of West Chester, PA last month. One of which is a 1980 book called Radio in the Television Age by Peter Fornatale and Joshua E. Mills (Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1980; ISBN: 0-87951-106-0) which discusses what happened to radio [and not in the usual negative way that golden age radio broadcast historians like to proclaim] after the dissolution of networks, and the fall of network programming.

From the book jacket:

"The authors...discuss: the impact of commercial television on radio programming, listenership, and advertising revenues in the 50s, 60s, and 70s; the great technological inventions--the transistor, FM, car, and clock radios...the creation of formats--including Top 40, All-News, country-and-Western, Disco, and classical music...and the pervasive influence of rock-and-rol ont he industry."

Being that this book was written in 1980, they can't get that deep into the great FCC deregulation of the 1980s, but it had started by that time. There is a good chapter on the history of non-commercial radio, including public access, community radio, college low-wattage stations, the Pacifica stations, and National Public Radio.

They start out with some interesting statistics (bearing in mind, again, this is 1980):

* There are nearly twice as many radios in the U.S. as there are people.
* More than 95 percent of America's cars have radios, and the average household has 5.7 sets.
* About 71 percent of American bedrooms are equipped with radios, and 60 percent of all homes have clock radios.

There are lots of amusing anecdotes about the power of listening and how radio has saved lives by playing the right song at the right time to depressed listeners.

I'll leave you with a story about a local station and the "service" it provided to its listeners:

Religious broadcasts on WOOK, Washington, D.C., that proved to be tips on numbers to bet in lottery rackets. A typical sermon: "The first three figures is 547...My God, my God. And take the mysterious two that was blessed through last week, if you place it on the five you'll see it's still working for you, and the 74th and the seventh verse was a blessing to Washington, D.C." The station lost its license in 1975 (xx).

Search vs. browse, or downloading vs. broadcasting

2006-12-16T16:30:00.000-05:00

HERE'S TO RADIO IN THE 21ST CENTURY: A Librarian's Perspective

I listen to audio all day long. Whether it's the digital files my library creates or its collection of over 1 million recordings in all sorts of formats; WAV and MP3 files, and my ever expanding collection of CDs and iTunes, both my apartment and my workstation (and computers) are filled with them. I could start with John Adams's Chamber Symphony, and in a year, never make it all the way through my classical section to James Conlon's recording of Alexander Zemlinsky's two-act opera Der Traumgörge. The same is true of a number of other genres as well: folk, jazz, musical theatre, soundtracks...everything, well, except contemporary pop or hip-hop. As a music major, I started to collect classical recordings to build a basic music library, sort of an audio encyclopedia. Why would I do that now that I can subscribe for $20.00 a year to Naxos's subscription service where I can stream every piece of classical music they own and license from their online? Sure there are pieces they don't have, and hundreds of unique performances I crave. But as an encyclopedia Naxos does pretty well. (Alexander Street Press has a similar service through their Classical Music Library, Smithsonian Global Sound, and African American Song).

As a librarian and a music cataloger, searching is what I do best. I can write metadata with the best of them; I tag my Gmail with multiple subjects for efficient retrieval; and can devise complex search strings using keyword or Boolean (limiting my searches by date, language, format, etc.) operators. But what do I enjoy most about going into a library, bookstore, or record store? BROWSING. Whether it's finding a book that I've heard of, but have never seen in person before, or impulsively buying the complete set of DVDs from a television series long since canceled, some joys can not be calculated or quantified so easily. Computer searching requires precise logic, but we can let our imaginations wander and take us to unknown lands when we browse. The audio equivalent of browsing is listening to radio.

I no longer think of the standard radio itself as the only (or even the predominant) means to receive programming. Through the web, via satellite radio, and yes, through their AM/FM band on your car's stereo, one can receive opinions you've never thought of, discover music you've never heard before (even re-discover a piece you thought you knew), and hear other people's stories through music and voice. (OK, internet radio is still sort of stuck in search mode, buried beneath the avalanche of Internet content which only a search engine can penetrate). Why do I forsake my own collection to listen to a medium that's constantly changing? I don't often know, but I keep doing it, just like my grandfather did. In a way to tune into radio is like throwing open a window, rather than rummaging through your attic. You may know what you have, but without radio (in all its modern forms), you'll never know what you're missing.

New tunes from the Kitchen Party

2006-12-11T22:36:00.000-05:00

I've been collecting audio artifacts again. Fans of my radio show, The Kitchen Party should appreciate of some of these:

1) Cornbread Nation
Tim O'Brien
Sugar Hill Records 2005 (SUG-CD-4005)
Favorite songs: Hold On, Moses, Cornbread Nation, Foggy, Foggy Dew, House of the
Rising Sun. Offbeat arrangements of folk songs which lsoose none of the energy
of the originals. Can't wait to get his twin album of 2005, Fiddler's Green.

2) 3-D
Casey Driessen
Sugar Hill Records, 2006 (SUG-CD-4016)
Favorite songs: None yet, but I like the album's energy. He's a good fiddler, but
doesn't have that big of a sound live. This is an expertly produced album. I
don't mean that to be a slight to Driessen's artistry, just a comparison to what
I heard on the album to the time I heard him at the Birchmere.

4) Alberta: Wild Roses, Northern Lights
Various artists from Alberta: Corb Lund Band, k.d. lang, Ian Tyson, etc.
Smithsonian Folkways, 2006 (SFW CD 40538)
Favorite songs: None yet, but I like the whole album. There's some real dyed-
in-the-wool cowboys singing on this one. But who doesn't love Ian Tyson! I'm
finally catching up on the Smithsonian festival which I missed.

5) Due South: The Original Television Soundtrack
Various Canadian artists including Jay Semko, Spirit of the West, Sarah
McLachlan, Figgy Duff, Blue Rodeo, and the Holly Cole Trio.
Unforscene Music, 1996 (40004)
Favorite songs: Possession (McLachlan), Horses (w/ Ashley MacIsaac), Henry
Martin (Figgy Duff), and Victoria's Secret (Semko). If you've watched the show,
you probably have heard some very haunting music. Well, I couldn't resist; and
as a portrait of Canadian pop, it's a good representation of the best from the
mid 1990s.

6) Barenaked for the Holidays
Barenaked Ladies
Desperation Records, 2004 (2-40015)
Favorite songs: Deck the Stills, Hanukkah Blessings, I Have a Little Dreidel.
An album which I was prompted to pick up after listening to a number of tracks
at the Erie B&N. I love BNL and it's nice to hear some alternative holiday (both
Christmas and Hanukkah) songs.

That's all for this edition. Stay tuned for more Audio Artifacts.

Is music listening for enjoyment or discovery?

2006-12-02T13:28:00.000-05:00

Yes it's been awhile...

With my busy schedule and preoccupation with folk music this last year, I have been somewhat ignoring my classical music listening. Now by that I don't mean that I haven't been listening to radio stations (over the air or online), but I really haven't been actively seeking out new recordings or keeping up with the latest recordings. (Which was a lot easier when I worked at a classical radio station and had to catalog all of the latest). Well, a chance purchase of Gramophone has sort of revitalized my interest. I have been going through a debate in my mind over how I am going to consume music, in addition to making it actively. Either by recordings or radio. I have been satisfied by the latter, esp. in ther performance aspect; but very few stations give the variety I seek. Sometimes I want plain folk music, sometimes Celtic, sometimes orchestral, sometimes choral, sometimes barbershop, band, etc...you get the picture.

There is also my classical CD collection which has been largely ignored, since I've been working again. It is a good reference source, but there are some major holes which I don't really have the time to plug in. As good as it is, it's not a source for discovery for new or unheard compositions. So, I bit the bullet yesterday and subscribed to Naxos. I could have gone for Web Radio, with all of its many channels, but I went for the on-demand service for $19.95/yr. Do I get downloads? No, but I get streaming on-demand for any of their recordings (and their subsidiary labels).
That should suffice for work. Plus I think it'll help at work, when I need to identify works which I think I have an idea what it is, but I don't have easy access to a recording. On the broadband connection at work, it sounds really good.

Which brings up the issue of compression. Yes, it uses it. iTunes uses it. Everyone does--some better than others. In my everyday life, it doesn't bother me (except when I notice). But I can live with it. I don't regularly strive for aural perfection, because it's a moving target. But I don't like walking around with personal music devices. I don't think one should be in public and walk around with them. I like to engage (or ignore) at will, and earbuds are a barrier. I'm also addicted to high quality, comfortable headphones which cushion the ear, rather than buds which stick right into the ear (not comfortable to me). So, I have many issues with Eyedevices of all ilk. But I want access to music when I'm doing other things. If I'm at home that can be my stereo system, but again I'm not home that much these days and it's a pain to schlep CDs to multiple computers. So now, if I want to listen to Brahms' 3rd violin sonata, I can punch it up on Naxos, and listen to it whenever and wherever I want (if a web connection is available). For other times, I can download a copy on iTunes or track down a cheap CD copy. In the car, radio and CDs work best, and I don't tend to listen to classical music CDs in the car. That's what works best for me right now. Okay, enough random thoughts for the day...time for other tasks.

Here's an article from the Christian Science Monitor on whether compressed music is good enough, for further thought:

"Thousands of songs in your pocket: An audiophile's nightmare?
Will consumers who demand portable music always have to compromise on sound quality?"

Copyright comic books: it's a time for heroes

2006-08-24T23:48:00.000-04:00

Duke University's Center for the Public Domain has a brilliant graphic illustration (i.e. comic book) of the arcane, confusing and often contradictory labryinth that is the U.S. Copyright Code. It's a dark tale of hoarders, evil corporations who wish to extend copyright into perpituity. Their enemies: Fair use and her guardians. The subject of this first installment the realistic unreal world of the documentary film world.

It's called "Tales of the Public Domain: Bound by Law" by Keith Aoki, James Boyle, and Jennifer Jenkins. Digital copies are available and this creation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license (as is Audio Artifacts).

Bound By Law ©2006 Keith Aoki, James Boyle, Jennifer Jenkins

A documentary is being filmed. A cell phone rings, playing the “Rocky” theme song. The filmmaker is told she must pay $10,000 to clear the rights to the song. Can this be true? “Eyes on the Prize,” the great civil rights documentary, was pulled from circulation because the filmmakers’ rights to music and footage had expired. What’s going on here? It’s the collision of documentary filmmaking and intellectual property law, and it’s the inspiration for this new comic book. Follow its heroine Akiko as she films her documentary, and navigates the twists and turns of intellectual property. Why do we have copyrights? What’s “fair use”? Bound By Law reaches beyond documentary film to provide a commentary on the most pressing issues facing law, art, property and an increasingly digital world of remixed culture.

UPDATE:
Some older posts on the subject from the archive:
1) Eyes on the Prize: Performance and Copyright (2/1/2005)

2) Film and Copyright...Taking it into the Festivals (1/29/2005)

3) Chinese Film: Reflecting on Cultural Production (1/28/2005)

I also want to welcome of the newest members of the blogosphere, my long-time friend Jessisca [sic.] and her new virutal home, Brandy Hall, IL--yes, she's a LOTR fan. Welcome Jessica!

Current Listening: Great Big Sea, The Hard and the Easy (Zoe, 2006)

More radio reports

2006-08-24T15:26:00.000-04:00

From FMQB: Bridge Ratings Studies MP3 Players, Satellite Radio:

According to their study, the amount of songs on a person's portable MP3 player varies by the amount of weekly radio listening done. Those who are below-average listeners to radio have more songs on their MP3 players.

Bridge Ratings was also doing listener studies of satellite radio listeners. According to Bridge, XM will end the year "with 8.1 million subscribers and Sirius with 6.5 million."

I've been thinking that these satellite music operations represent an incredibly rich area for academic study. The music librarian in me worries that their logs and playlists will be dumped after a certain amount of time (6 months to a year), but I just don't know. I don't even know if you can call them and find out what was playing. Because they show the song/artist/album on the radios, they must have metadata somewhere.

Unlike classical stations (or even many Web radio stations), they don't post their playlists online. And what sort of cultural treasures in the form of live concert recordings and studio sessions are going on in XM and Sirius studios that aren't being released for sale?! The only way I'll know is to buy one and try it out for myself. Oh well, it's for science. ;-)

In so many words...musicians aren't just talented, they're committed

2006-08-18T15:52:00.000-04:00

This article from Business Week explains better than I ever could why classical musicians are the way they are.

Expect the lemmings to follow

2006-08-18T15:43:00.000-04:00

The Current editors Mike Janssen and Steve Behrens recently interviewed public radio researchers George Bailey and David Giovannoni "who are wrapping up their Audience 2010 inquiry commissioned by pubradio’s Radio Research Consortium." The study was done to probe for a recent decline in public radio listening (more specifically AQH share) during the last two years.

There's a lot to digest here, so I'll respond later. I just wanted to leave these quotes for all to ponder:

"Nearly half of listening to pubradio stations last year was to stations that lost loyalty over the previous year."

"Being so highly invested [in it], many broadcasters resist the fact that listeners tend to value local programming less than they value national programming."

Bailey: "The fact that some of the NPR news stations are doing well and some are not, and the same with the other formats, indicates that public radio really can support a variety of formats and maybe even serve a variety of audiences with those different formats, but that within any one of those formats there’s a variety of right and wrong ways to do it. So I think it’s positive that there’s a lot of opportunity for a range of formats in public radio."

Little heard American opera

2006-08-16T23:12:00.000-04:00

I am really enjoying the tapes I have been working with in the last couple of days from the VOA collection. These include close to two dozen 30-minute programs called "American Opera", which featured excerpts and extended scenes from operas by American composers. There are some dogs in the lot, but overall I was quite impressed by the lyricism, integrity, and genuine beauty of some the operas I was able to hear.

Portrait of Virgil Thomson (1896-1989)

"I've never known a musician who regretted being one. Whatever deceptions life may have in store for you, music itself is not going to let you down"--Virgil Thomson

Frankly I was surprised to hear such inspiration from opera by American composers, even knowing what I do. (I did a junior independent study thesis on Virgil Thomson and American opera before 1947). It was nice to be reminded of that. The themes (on which these operas are based) can be touching and relevant with a solid librettist and the lyrics unstilted.

Listening to Four Saints again reminded me of the experience of hearing Italian opera. The music fits the text logically, and the syllables fall where they are supposed to. Does that mean Thomson's (and Gertrude Stein's) libretto is not a literary experiment that challenges meaning, rhetoric, and comprehension? No, but the text is not really the point me thinks. I have to step back and look at the tapestry they are trying to weave within the episodes, rather than blindly being led along on a narrative (especially in the Floyd).

The crime is that several of these have never been released on CD--some have never been commercially released. Some of the obvious favorites include Aaron Copland's The Tender Land, Virgil Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts, Gian Carlo Menotti's The Medium and Carlisle Floyd's Susannah. It was nice to finally hear works by Robert Ward (The Crucible) and Deems Taylor (The King's Henchman) which are considered important, but who has heard them let alone seen them?! Leonard Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti is a witty and entertaining set piece, which cooks with all the energy and rhythmic vitality that is Lenny. All of my soprano friends love doing "What a Movie!"

My new favorite? An operatic re-telling of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew by Italian-American composer Vittorio Giannini.

This is a good job.

More radio news from Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and high above the Earth

2006-08-13T13:22:00.000-04:00

Classical music on radio-try it, it just might work!

Four pieces on radio...two classical, two public, one private, one satellite (they overlap)

1) Changes at WQED-FM affirm its classical music commitment (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

More music, less talk--that's the premise of the changes in store for Pittsburgh's classical music station. The station's veteran hosts Jim Cunningham, Anna Singer and Ted Sohier will continue their programming. WQED will pick-up one of the overnight classical music services which many public broadcasting stations run during overnight shifts. The weekend request program will move from Saturday morning to Saturday evening, after Prairie Home Companion.

WQED has always been one of my favorite classical stations. As I'm driving home to my parents, I usually catch an interesting piece, or interview with an important person in the arts which catches my ear. The trend among many all-classical stations has been away from broadcasting concerts. As long as the quality and variety of repertoire continues on WQED, I'm all for this expansion.

2) New owner wants to take WCRB-FM national (Boston Globe).

For months there has been speculation that Nassau Broadcasting (who bought WCRB)would drop classical music. That wasn't the case. In this news item, Nasssau's president and CEO, Louis F. Mercatanti proposes syndicating WCRB's programming and taking it national. He calls classical music a "niche format with wide appeal" with listeners who are "extremely loyal" and have longer periods of TSL (Time Spent Listening) than "fans of rock or talk radio." While I'm all for more classical programming in all markets, the effect of this move could provoke more dual-format public radio stations that carry classical music to drop it altogether, so as not to compete for listeners.

3) Making waves
The people at Chicago Public Radio want to put you on the air. Their radical plan to reinvent radio could fail—or it just might revolutionize broadcast media. (Time Out Chicago)

I think this could be a great experiment as I love what this station has done with This American Life, but I worry about the reality-TV-ization of all media. It does give people an important to "play" radio though, and that could be a good thing. Chicago Public Radio will still serve as a gatekeeper to select audio that is good. Now if only someone would do that for music.

4) Marc Fischer has an article comparing programming on XM and Sirius (Washington Post).

The winners:
CLASSICAL- Sirius (Performance Today and other NPR shows, edgier selections; but XM has Martin Goldsmith, Millennium of Music, and programs from PRI)
BASEBALL- XM (every Major League Baseball game all season long)
NEWS- Sirius (but neither have their own news operations, mostly audio from TV)
PUBLIC RADIO- Sirius (but XM has Bob Edwards)
TALK- The new home of raunch radio (Sirius has Howard Stern and OutQ, the all-gay channel; but XM has Jerry Springer, Al Franken, Bill Bennett, Dr. Laura, etc.) The Post picks XM.

New Future of Music report on effects of radio consolidation

2006-08-11T17:13:00.000-04:00

On August 9, 2006 the Future of Music Coalition published a study by Peter DiCola which finds "that the vast majority of major U.S. cities has experienced both layoffs and lower wage growth within the radio profession, associated with the unprecedented consolidation of radio station ownership over the last decade. The study also shows that the job losses in radio impede federal policy mandates to promote localism and diversity in media."

Some findings include:

* The combined market share of the top four radio companies in each local market increased by an average of 14.3 percent between 1993 and 2004 across 265 markets.

* Cities with higher degrees of radio consolidation had greater job losses among news reporters and broadcast technicians from 1996 to 2003.

* Cities with higher degrees of radio consolidation experienced smaller wage growth for DJs and news reporters from 1996 to 2003.

The full study is available for download as a PDF (30 pages).

Relaxing in Bloomington

2006-05-28T16:30:00.000-04:00

Yes, I'm still alive.

After an exhausting and exhilirating month of rehearsals and performances of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem and a discographic essay for the Music Library Association's quarterly journal Notes, I took a couple of days off and headed to Bloomington, Indiana to 1) get away from DC, 2) relax, 3) do a little bit of research, 4) catch up with old friends, and 5) relax. All goals were pretty much met, save for #3, but that's what vacations are for. Got my hairs cut too.

Being a relatively late adopter when it comes to games, I learned how to play Sudoku. With a beverage in hand and some good music playing, it is truly an excellent way to spend a relaxing Memorial Day weekend.

Here's a shout out to Adam, Em, Mo, Randy, Eve, Tahira, and Bradley for some great times back in B-town. It's like I never left. (Seriously, I walk around campus and it's pretty much the same, including many of the people). For all of the complaints about living in Indiana, IU and Bloomington remain an academic oasis of trees and knowledge removed from the fast-paced hubbub of East Coast life. I met some wonderful people from all across the country, and I try to keep in touch to extent I can.

Oh yeah, and according to Pete and Sarah my nickname is now "T-Rock." Heh.

We don't need no stinkin' music

2006-04-07T15:08:00.000-04:00

Insider Radio reports that WBEZ in Chicago will "drop all its music and non-information programming" by early 2007. This will include jazz, blues, and world music programs. How will this affect This American Life?

They're not hard news, but they're more than just entertainment. Well, the shows is moving to New York City while they're filming a television version for Showtime. When TAL made the announcement, the Chicago Reader reported that they would still be a production of WBEZ. So, where does that leave them?

There's a meatier article on the format shift in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Dancing to the sound of the earth

2006-04-07T14:37:00.000-04:00

Here's something interesting from the dance world.

Wired reports on a new eight-minute ballet called Ballet Mori with the San Francisco Ballet in which dancers perform to a score by composer Randall Packer which samples the sounds of landslides and volcanic explosions against the backdrop of sesimic data projected against a backdrop. UC Berkeley engineer Ken Goldberg says that dancers will interact with the sounds, but since the score will be indeterminate every performance will be different.

Packer continues to say:

"For the installation," Packer recalls, "there was an algorithm that used Earth's activity to modulate sounds of landslides and volcanic eruptions. While the sounds are preprogrammed, their order is totally indeterminate." Yet a ballet isn't like an installation, where people are constantly walking in and out. "You have a beginning and an end," he says. "The piece needed to evolve." His solution was to change the library of sounds minute by minute, controlling the overall structure while leaving the details to chance.

Now this is a creative use of datasets. It was performed by the San Francisco Ballet on Tuesday, April 4, 2006 to commemorate the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. Tempting fate, perhaps?

Resources for hip hop scholarship

2006-04-05T10:27:00.000-04:00

A new resource has just been brought to my attention, namely the Hip Hop Research Portal, which is a "communication mechanism for people collecting, researching, and preserving Hip Hop culture." The site includes a citation database of books, periodicals, dissertations, and sound and audiovisual materials. The scope notes for the collection being collected and documented can be found here.

Librarian Tiffeni Fontno states that the objectives of this site are:

1) To build a community which fosters support & collaboration of Hip Hop Research & Scholarship.
2) To work together to create a network to promote,preserve, facilitate, and disseminate information about Hip Hop Research & Scholarship.
3) To support the research, study, and preservation of Hip Hop culture in schools, colleges, libraries, museums, and organizations.

There is an accompanying Yahoo Group. Those interested can subscribe at hiphop_rands-subscribe AT yahoogroups.com.

What classical music services need

2006-04-04T17:21:00.000-04:00

Amanda Holloway hits the nail on the head with what classical music listeners want from digital downloading services in her piece for the Times Online (U.K.). Personally, I want a site that apes the experience I got from going into the old Tower Classical store down on South St. in Philadelphia. That was heaven!

She made lots of good points, some of the best include:

1) Meaningful metadata for name, name-title searching/browsing. Roles are so important. A composer is not a performer is not an orchestra.

2) The track's not the thing, it's the whole work. The track-oriented structure of the whole market really does a number on classical. Think how many arias, recitatives, and choruses make up an opera! They need to be linked hierarchially: movements, scenes, parts, acts, etc.

3) We care about audio quality. At least CD-quality sound (44/16), esp. for live recordings.

4) Back catalog material is just as important as the newest recordings. Keep on re-releasing all those forgotten 78s and vinyl LPs!

And this shall be for music

2006-04-03T14:14:00.000-04:00

I have more to write this week about singing, but let's start with this quote by Abraham Joshua Henschel from his 1973 work A Passion for Truth. This weekend's highlights included participating in an all-day singing convention of Sacred Harp singers in Great Falls, and attending the Washington Concert Opera's production of Tancredi.

Answers to the ultimate perplexity can not be expressed in words. Response is facilitated by song. Singing is not the mere repetition of notes or even the expression of joy or sorrow. Singing means uplifting all of existence to the level of perfection. Singing means raising oneself above all words and all ideas to the realm of pure thought. One cannot truly sing by repeating an old melody. God loves novelty...one must sing a new song each time.

n.b.: The title of today's post comes from a short choral work by American composer Ron Nelson which I sang in high school.

College radio or shall I say, pure student radio

2006-03-30T10:51:00.000-05:00

News story from today's issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Turning Campus Radio on Its Head
Podcasts and Web streaming widen college radio's reach, but some stations worry about becoming too mainstream

Brock Read profiles the world of college student radio, where independent music still lives and wackiness usually ensues. He writes about the new technological developments of podcasting and streaming which have help spread its programming far away from the campus from which it originated. Interaction now happens at a scary pace, especially with our AOL Instant Messenger window. Imagine a window popping up on the computer screen saying, "You guys suck" five seconds before you have to go on-air. I developed a pretty tough skin very quickly. And no, I'm not going to play Nick Drake for you again. LOL.

Student radio...ah, good times. I remember the two years I had on air at WIUS with my roots show, The Kitchen Party.
I found volunteering at the station to be a good overall experience. We were required to be on one committee, which only took up an hour or two a week in addition to prepping and hosting my show. Most of the time I spent on the Production Committee where we wrote, voiced, recorded, and edited public service announcements, imaginary commercials, and some underwriting credits. It was fun, because I got to use my creativity and write what a college student might find entertaining. Sometimes it was long-form, sometimes pithy. These announcements were usually written for particular voices on the committee in mind. People wrote for me when they had a public radio voice in mind--it's close and untrained, but that's the cadences and tone I've picked up most. We had some funny people writing and voicing those announcements: some natural comedians and others that needed to come out of their shell a bit more.

One semester I volunteered for the Engineering Committee. It was a valuable experience. I learned a lot about gear: mixing boards, cables, microphones, and fixing stuff. I had nightmares about industrial arts class when I was told we'd be soldering cable at one of our meetings (cable to RCA connectors). Most of the volunteers were in the Audio program at IU, but our committee head was gracious and helpful enough to teach me about radio and equipment.

Being on-air gave me experience about being "natural" on-air. You learn how to think on your feet (or on your seat, in most cases). You also learn about the pressures of time and the clock. We were required to play announcements and give a weather reading at certain points of an hour. According to Wikipedia, a format clock is "a diagram produced by a programme director or a producer to illustrate where each programming element appears in a typical hour." Our clock was pretty loose. We were required to play one promo around 20 minutes, one underwriting credit about 30 minutes, and weather on the 40. This was not absolute, but I tried to stick to the requirements as much as I could. You had to remember to play these from another computer which was tied into the board.

The first year I broadcast I structured my shows very tight. Since I was only one of two folk DJs, I had to make sure that product was coming into the station for me to play. I had to review CDs, do cold-call e-mails to artists and labels, and report back what I played (or at least put my playlists on the FOLK-DJ listserve).

Volunteering for WIUS was quite different from my work at WETA and WFIU. At the public radio stations I was a staff member, and it was almost all behind-the-scenes. I had assigned duties and I stuck to them, while being occassionally asked to voice something special. I like being behind-the-scenes: whether it's cataloging, acquiring new CDs, or researching for producers or announcers; but it really drove home to me that these tasks have to be for the benefit of the people who are on-air. Radio stations are not libraries. Yes, they should be paying attention to their historical archival material, but often they are no-frills operations.

Filed under: radio

Public radio websites: One site to rule them all?

2006-03-29T10:35:00.000-05:00

A not-so-recent commentary (Feb. 21, 2005) by Mark Fuerst in the public broadcasting newsletter, Current talks about the failings of public stations to create appealing websites in an economic manner. If a goal of the system was to create a website for each one of the 500 public stations, they've very nearly succeeded: only a few rural stations lack one, he states. What is being wasted is the opportunity for true collaboration between public radio stations and their major content provider, NPR. His answer is to look at people who are doing this well. His model is Major League Baseball's website. They provide a portal/co-branding solution through their common interface and integrated back-end system. He outlined what is needed to be considered in creation of a multi-station integrated platform:

1) A clear articulated vision of online service.
2) Consistent traffic metrics
3) A "unified back-end solution"
4) CPB's leadership.

This will not be easy. NPR is not the only game in town. There are independent producers, stations which syndicate independently of NPR, other distributors like PRI and American Public Media, as well as international ones. There are also many stations that are not part of the traditional public broadcasting community--i.e. NPR affiliates--that are essentially community broadcasters. Many of these take some network programming, but serve their communities in a non-profit function. Many questions: Will they be invited to the table? How will all these parties play together?

If NPR won't (or isn't allowed to) produce for all stations, who will do it? (I was going to say "step up to the plate" to further the baseball metaphor, but I'll refrain). What system will they use? Probably something which incorporates Content Depot which is gaining more traction as a content management system for the public broadcasting community. How will PubCore and other digital asset management systems fit into all of this? And what about music with its rich and complex relationships between contents, carriers, participants (with many roles), mediums, forms and genres. Stay tuned, more to come.

Tags: public radio metadata

New CLIR report on digitization of analog material

2006-03-28T15:56:00.000-05:00

Capturing Analog Sound for Digital Preservation: Report of a Roundtable Discussion of Best Practices for Transferring Analog Discs and Tapes

Abstract (http://www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/pub137abst.html):

"This report investigates procedures to reformat sound on analog carriers to digital media or files. It summarizes discussions and recommendations emerging from a meeting of leading audio preservation engineers held January 29–30, 2004, to assess the present state of standards and best practices for capturing sound from analog discs and tapes.

This report is one of several studies that CLIR is undertaking on behalf of the Library of Congress and the National Recording Preservation Board."

There is an online executive summary.

It is available for download as a PDF or can be purchased through CLIR

The next report (the engineers' second meeting) on how to preserve files in the digital domain will be coming out shortly.

Great quote

2006-03-28T12:12:00.000-05:00

I was amused and delighted to hear a comment by conductor Antal Dorati in a panel discussion from the early 1970s he did with three American composers. The question asked was: "How do you feel about the ever changing reproduction system" [for audio recordings]?

He replied:

I think as the systems of reproduction constantly get better, maybe we’ll arrive at the point where real people will make real music.

The Poetry is in the Pity

2006-03-28T11:59:00.000-05:00

Last night my choir started rehearsal on Benjamin Britten’s opus magnum, his War Requiem. It is a work of grand scope utilizing a full-size symphonic chorus and orchestra, a chamber orchestra, organ, children’s chorus, soprano, tenor and bass soloists. We sightread the piece last night, woodshedding as we went along. I know from listening to it (and writing about it in a term paper in college) that it is a profound work; indeed, a meditation on the nature of war itself. English poet and World War I soldier Wilfred Owen wrote, “My subject is War, and the pity of War…the Poetry is in the Pity.” Britten interposes the traditional Latin text of the Mass for the Dead with the war poems of Owen.

Here are the first lines of the poems which Britten brought into the Requiem, followed by the title of the poems:

What passing bells for those who die as cattle? (Anthem for Doomed Youth)
Bugles sang, sadd’ning the evening air (Voices, The Next War, Sonnet On Seeing a Piece of Our Artillery Brought Into Action, and Futility)
So Abram rose, and clave the wood (The Parable of the Old Man and the Young)
After the blast of lightning from the East (The End)
One ever hangs where shilled roads part (At a Calvary Near the Ancre)
It seemed that out of battle I escaped (Strange Meeting)

Here’s a website I found which talks about the War Requiem.

It takes a space as large as a Cathedral to enter into the mysticism of the work. One of the reasons I sing with the Cathedral Choral Society, instead of Choral Arts or any one of the other fine symphonic choirs in town, is the chance to make music in this grand space. It’s not only that the space is grand, it’s that the Cathedral itself is a place to escape the noise of everyday life and enter into one’s thoughts. Maybe that’s a little too philosophical. The Cathedral itself acts as a musical instrument: its architecture resonates with certain types of music, especially that of choir, and organ (and surprisingly, bagpipes).

In the coming months, I’ll talk each Tuesday about our rehearsal process and the music that Britten wrote. I think that talking about the process of making music will underscore the value of the artifacts that audio archivists and music librarians aim to preserve and give access to.

Relaxing to a transistor radio

2006-03-25T21:16:00.000-05:00

It's always nice to get away from the city on the weekend. Today a friend and I went to Front Royal. There are some wonderful antique shops in that town, as well as a great vintage store.

I was particularly impressed with this one which had all sorts of kitchenware, clothes, period telephones, and other curiosities. They had a lot of old photograph equipment, including old Polaroid cameras, an 8-mm film camera and projector. I indulged in a bit of nostalgia by picking up some old Great Muppet Caper glasses from the 80s. I also picked up a radio. Not a stereo system, not a satellite radio system, not a boom box...a portable GE AM/FM 15 transistor radio receiver from the 1970s.

Here's a picture:

It's got a strap on the top of it, so I can carry it into the garden and enjoy a good baseball game this summer. :-)

If you open the back, there's a mess of wires and transistors plus space for 4 double-A batteries. If you think hacking is a recent phenomenon, think again. Ham radio enthusiasts have been doing since the early part of the 20th century with their crystal sets, and then later with vacuum tubes. My next goal is to procure a shortwave set.

Current listening: "Traditions with Mary Cliff," WETA-FM 90.9 (broadcast)

The values of librarianship

2006-03-25T01:31:00.000-05:00

Recently I made a comment about a Zits comic strip to a listserve that dealt with libraries:

What's even more frightening is the cartoon from 3/17 in which Jeremy said that he was busy doing research for a history paper due the next day. His mother muses "Ah, research! When I think of the hours I spent at the library when I was your age..." Jeremy then says "Done!," turns around and asks "Wait...you went to a library?"

X number of messages go by on this listserve...some about how they don't use the library anymore, about how everything should be digitized and accessible over the Internet, others defending books and the printed word, etc. I didn't really have a point when I posted my comment, but it did get me thinking about why libraries are important and why I am annoyed by the idea that all you ever need to learn is on the Internet.

Tonight I replied to my colleagues:

My unwritten point was that libraries remain temples of information not necessarily because of the resources they offer, but the services they provide to a world in critical need of information navigators through the noise of the Internet. Why is the library still important? Consider these values of librarianship as taken from Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan's Five Laws of Library Science:

1) Books are for use.
2) Every reader his or her book.
3) Every book its reader.
4) Save the time of the reader.
5) The Library is a growing organism.

Substitute recordings or databases or Internet resources if you want for book, but these principles still hold up as valid goals for information providers. In 1995, future ALA president Michael Gorman articulated five new laws for the 21st century.
One of those was to "respect all forms by which knowledge was communicated," and another was to "honor the past and create the future."

To these ends those of us who are librarians (and I don't claim there is consensus) try to provide the most useful resource for a patron's information needs. Sometimes that will be a book, sometimes a video, sometimes a microfilm, sometimes an Internet database. All research builds on that which has been done in the past; and there is no evidence (save Google's testbed of five libraries) that it will economically viable to provide a world of digitized primary documents in the next decade (or two) to allow professional researchers to only use the Web for their research.

While I was in library school at Indiana, I met many students that were on fire from the idea of working with primary materials like rare books and manuscripts (as well as cylinders and 78s, photographs and nitrate film). I think that there will be those in every generation who value artifacts from the past and will want to preserve them. Part of preservation is keeping the memory of that object alive, along with its context, in the form of access through surrogate copies (microfilm, digitization, reprinting). Two of the greatest gifts scholars and librarians have given humanity are the bibliography and the catalog which document the existence of materials that would otherwise be forgotten. We are all in the business of preserving memory for ourselves, our children, our students, as well as future generations.

Ultimately I believe the two most valuable commodities a library can offer any community is its librarians and its buildings (some of the last free, public spaces where community members can gather without the pressure to consume.) I don't think the library is going anywhere. While some of the services it offers and the internal processes we practice must change, our goals remain and the backlog continues.
...Yadda yadda, these views are my own...

Happy weekend to all!

CCS review online

2006-03-23T10:04:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post review by Grace Jean for the Bach Consort/CCS concert is now online.

She begins by stating the obvious: "Rarely will you find a program that pairs Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" with three of J.S. Bach's most popular cantatas." She goes on to say:

But on Tuesday evening, the Washington Bach Consort and the Cathedral Choral Society gave such riveting performances of the composers' works at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall that it was difficult to imagine any better combination.

This is what she said about the chorus:

The Cathedral Choral Society's 230 energetic voices, with the Children's Chorus of Washington, followed Lewis's every command in an exhilarating and cinematic "Carmina Burana." The driving rhythms, alternately earthy and clangorous, held steady at impressive expanses of volumes and relented only for a few key solos.

Not a lot of newspaper space for a review, but all of it was complimentary. I'm not sure other reviewers would have been so overly laudatory, but what came across (at least to me) from the performance is the incredible emotional energy that the orchestra, soloists, and choruses brought to the performance. It was a sell-out crowd--indeed, Carmina sells. We had both organizations' subscriber bases to draw upon, and performing outside of our main venue gets ourselves in more of a public eye.

And if you thought Carmina is a good piece, wait until you hear Benjamin Britten's War Requiem. The Cathedral Choral Society will be performing next on Sunday, May 21, 2006 at 4:00 p.m. at the Washington National Cathedral. I hope folks in the area can make it. You can order your tickets here. Our soloists include soprano Marina Shaguch, tenor Robin Leggate, and baritone Jochen Schmeckenbecher.

Recent NPR ombudsman piece

2006-03-22T11:10:00.000-05:00

A recent piece by NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin reminded me of how the big East Coast media outlets patronize smaller markets and their news outlets. In this piece he criticizes NPR for "slamming the yokels." This is one of the worst aspects of the "East Coast mentality" that life solely revolves around Washington and New York (and to a lesser extent, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston). After returning to DC from library school, people were imminently curious about what life is like in the "great flyover." I may be from Pennsylvania, but I'm from western PA which is a lot closer in values with the Midwest than the East Coast. I'm glad Dvorkin wrote this piece. Hopefully it'll help remind NPR that they provide content for local stations, and are not the end-all-be-all of non-commercial media. He concludes by writing:

NPR does very solid reporting on national issues. But it doesn't have a monopoly on good journalism and David Greene's report seemed to imply that it does.

This plays out on a larger scale when you think of NPR and the bigger media conglomerates's efforts to disenfranchise low power FM stations. Along that line I recommend a local blog on Washington independent media, called DCIndymedia. Dave Hughes' DCRTV aggregated news on the local broadcasting scene is good too.

Tempus pro Carmina

2006-03-22T10:33:00.000-05:00

Last night I performed Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana with the Cathedral Choral Society at the Kennedy Center. Overall I think we did a very good job. We had some interesting moments—you know, those sort of moments that only happen in live performance. Like where you are keeping one eye on your music and the other on the conductor, when suddenly the conductor wants to do something he’s never tried before. It does keep you on your toes, but after so many years of performing you learn to compensate. As I often say, no performance with Reilly is ever dull. We really did acquit ourselves admirably, as evidenced by a real standing ovation (not just the ordinary Washington variety).

Our group usually performs at the National Cathedral where we are the resident symphonic chorus. We were presented (along with the Washington Bach Consort) by the Washington Performing Arts Society. Our amazing soloists were soprano Elizabeth Futral, tenor/swan Robert Baker, and bass-baritone Stephen Powell. We had really good interaction with Baker, who has sung the tenor solo in Carmina with us many times over the last decade. (CCS performed Carmina twice with the Washington Ballet). The movement “In taberna” allowed the tenors and basses to do what they do best: ham it up! The swan was roasted, and the abbot was appropriately imbibed. More than that—and I think this is why it’s quickly becoming our signature piece—is that we own the music. After singing this piece three times with this group in the last decade, I definitely think this is the case

How can 200 singers do more than sing notes on a page? How can they tell a story and convey emotions, musical beauty and drama, and still sing in-tune, in-time, and in-style? Rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal. The older I get the more I admire volunteer musicians who give of their time and energies to artistic endeavors. We could be sitting on our couches watching reality shows or reading books, etc. But we choose to belong to a community of artists, and I can’t think of a better way to spend an evening. The late conductor Robert Shaw said that any time you make music is extra time God gives you to your life. It’s a good lesson to internalize as I learn music, because there is no greater gift than being able to give of yourself through art.

Folk music tonight

2006-03-19T00:19:00.000-05:00

After finally going to see Transamerica tonight [EXCELLENT movie, Brokeback * 3, IMO], I retired home for an evening of folk music streams from my old standby, Jim Blum and his weekend folk show on WKSU (Kent, OH). The reason I call it my standby is that it is always consistently good. I've been listening since I was an undergraduate at the College of Wooster. Jim Blum has an engaging personality style, which is on the one hand, very professional; and on the other, very community-oriented and sounds very in-the-moment. His show features music, interviews, reports about the environment, and mentions of pets that need homes. He defines folk music very broadly, which I appreciate. It's also the philosophy I took when I hosted the Kitchen Party for two years on WIUS.

WKSU also produces Folk Alley, which is very good. Folk Alley is always on, so I like to listen to it at other times. The live show is really good for a weekend night, like this one. It's no secret that public radio listening played a major role in my music tastes or my dedication to broadcasting. I cannot imagine not having the soundscapes that public radio provides: Prairie Home Companion, This American Life, Performance Today, Thistle and Shamrock, and all the local programming from the places I've lived: Erie, Interlochen, Wooster, Bloomington, and D.C. There's something about driving around and having my favorite drive-time companion on. There are too many wonderful announcers to attempt a list of my favorites. But tonight's post is a tribute to one who has been in my life since 1993. Keep up the good work Jim!

Blum played a couple of excerpts from an exceptional Canadian bluegrass band, named The Bills (formerly known as the Bill Hilly Band). I played them on The Kitchen Party back in 2004. I found them while I was researching Canadian artists by surfing the Net.

On a recordings note, I recently purchased the most recent album "The Hard and the Easy" by the Newfoundland band, Great Big Sea. The cover art speaks for itself:

There are some great songs on this album, including The River Driver, the Mermaid, Captain Kidd, and Cod Liver Oil. It's nice to see redeem themselves after their last two albums which were basically folk-lite, "soft-rock" efforts. I hope they play the Birchmere soon.

Music librarians featured in the NYT

2006-03-14T13:46:00.000-05:00

More on the Juilliard gift in the New York Times. (See previous post). Lots of familiar names and a great media showing for some of this country's top music librarians, including:

- Jane Gottlieb, Juilliard Conservatory ("a diminutive Upper West Sider with a serious demeanor.")
- Don Krummel, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign ("Juilliard got in there ahead of time," he added. "Whoopee! Good for Jane.")
- J. Rigbie Turner, Morgan Library
- Jon Newsom, Library of Congress, Music Division (retired)

Juilliard does plan to hire a curator for the collection in 2009, after items have been processed and a special room has been built. Both scholars and librarians will be watching.

Meetings on archiving and access to media

2006-03-14T11:41:00.000-05:00

There are lots of meetings about media, licensing, archiving of digital video content coming up. Thanks to archival.tv for the heads-up.

1) Beyond Broadcast: Reinventing Public Media in a Participatory Culture in Boston at the Berkman Center on May 12 & 13.

2) USC is hosting the Licensing Research Project on April 14, with National Video Resources (NVR). NVR is a group about which I need to learn more. They have been working with documentarians and the Center for Social Media on statements about fair use and have done a report on how DVDs are impacting independent media.

3) AlwaysOn is having its OnHollywood conference May 2-4 in L.A.

I'm sure there'll be more to come on the "long-tail" of content.

Washington group for bloggers

2006-03-12T22:18:00.000-05:00

I just found a Meetup Group for DC bloggers. It seems like another neat tool for online social interaction, paired with real-time events. There are monthly meetings at Pharaoh's Rock and Blues in Columbia Heights. I hope this will be a fun way to network and meet new people in town.

The next event is Wednesday, March 15, 2006 at 7:00 p.m. It is United Weblogger Meetup Day. I can't go because of a previous commitment, but I hope to go soon.

Media thoughts: Runway, podcasts, and process

2006-03-12T15:14:00.000-05:00

I like to think that I have a good balance in my life between watching and listening to popular media (movies, recordings, television, radio, webcasts) and more historical cultural artforms. By day I'm working with historic recordings primarily of classical music, and at other times I'm consuming some popular stuff, in addition to performing with a chorus, going to concerts and plays, and writing program notes for various arts organizations around town. One of my recent favorites has been Project Runway, a reality show on Bravo. It's become one of my favorite television shows, in fact it has been appointment viewing for me on Wednesday evenings--at least until last week which was the season finale.

Regular viewers often feel a void when a season or a series ends. I've felt it with some of the best shows: L.A. Law, The Cosby Show, Cheers, Family Ties, Seinfeld, and soon The West Wing. I'm sure television executives have wondered at the end of each season how they are going to sustain interest until the next season. Well, Bravo is using various tricks to sustain interest, such as blogs (more of Tim Gunn), and other weekly content. Why would they bother to do this? Primarily to keep interest high in these properties, I suspect. Why can't orchestras or theaters do this though? If the supply of concerts or shows is limited, then people will move on to something else after the season is done. Alex Ross, Drew McManus and Greg Sandow's blogs about how the way arts are presented need to change. I think so too.

One of the reasons that I think reality shows are so successful are that they are perceived to have more interactivity with the public than sitcoms or dramas. Letting viewers get involved through blogs, comments, and other activities encourages greater buy-in to your product. They want to "make it work" for you. In fact, the R&D for the new show Viral Videos (Bravo) is almost all user-driven. People can contribute their favorite clips, which are then edited to make a modern day America's Funniest Home Videos. The result comes out more like I Love the 80s than People Say the Darndest Things. Make no mistake though, these shows still reflect a producer's viewpoint.

Back to Runway...I love watching process. I enjoy watching and learning about how people do things I would never have thought of doing, be it fashion, hairstyling (Blowout), or directing a movie (Project Greenlight). And thanks to some of the programs on other networks, like the Food Network or the Learning Channel, I think the improvement shows in how I present myself or live my life. It was from watching the extra commentaries and behind-the-scenes features on the Lord of the Rings discs that probably inspired me to learn more about technology and how productions are created. And to be honest, it's made me more critical as a consumer of media. Much like a historian, I'm now constantly asking what aren't we seeing? Tim Gunn's podcasts have been a particular education on how fashion is made, marketed, and merchandised. I am particularly happy about how well Chloe and Daniel V. did this season in showing a remarkable maturity and professionalism that I like to think I bring to my own work.

Here's a book that I recommend anyone who is interested in media studies or popular culture read. It is by Fresh Air television commentator David Bianculli (pronounced Bee-in-Cooly).

Bianculli, David. Teleliteracy: Taking Television Seriously. New York: Touchstone Books, c1992. ISBN: 0671882384. 304 pp. Includes extensive bibliography.

Obsolete music in the news

2006-03-11T14:20:00.000-05:00

There's a new piece in the Naples News about Dick Spottswood, the host of WAMU's Dick Spottswood Show. Subtitled the Obsolete Music Hour, Spottswood has been spinning discs since 1967. Though retired he continues to produce his show from Naples, Florida, and it airs on WAMU in Washington, DC and online at their website and at Bluegrass Country. I've met Mr. Spottswood a few times at folk festivals when he was still living in Washington, and he's a regular at ARSC conferences. Best of all, he's a librarian, as well as a radio host and closet ethnomusicologist. (Kip Lornell refers to him as a "reformed librarian." He's written or co-authored some of the field's most valuable discographies on country and ethnic music, including:

* Meade, Douglas S., with Dick Spottswood and Guthrie T. Meade, Jr. Country Music Sources: A Biblio-Discography of Commercially Recorded Traditional Music. Chapel Hill, NC: Southern Folklife Collection, University of North Carolina Press, c2002. 1002 pp. ISBN: 0807827231 (alk. paper). Includes foreword by Joseph C. Hickerson.

* Brooks, Tim. Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890-1919. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, c2004. 634 pp. ISBN: 0252028503. Includes appendix of Caribbean and South American recordings by Dick Spottswood.

* Spottswood, Richard K. Ethnic music on records: a discography of ethnic recordings produced in the United States, 1893 to 1942. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, c1990. 7 vol. ISBN: 0252017188 (set: alk. paper).

Here he is in his home in Naples:

You can hear his show on the air at WAMU-FM on Sunday afternoons from 1 to 3 pm (EST). (Yes, I am suggesting you listen by turning on your radio, if you're in the area; others can listen online). Also Bluegrass Country has some really cool premiums, including CDs of the blues and train songs; and a genre called "plum-pitiful songs." Great old stuff.

There's also an audio slideshow at the Naples site.

On another note, I've decided that I'll try to listen to baseball this year through the radio or by webcast (with the exception of the World Series) instead of watching on TV. There's something about listening to baseball and imagining what's going on, instead of being forced to watch the pictures. The teams I try to keep up with are the Nationals, the O's, and the Indians.

Community arts blogging & more radio history

2006-03-10T16:50:00.000-05:00

Well, my proposal to give a presentation at the Performing Arts Roundtable at next year's Music Library Association conference was accepted. Huzzah! I'm going to be talking about how (and whether) performing arts organizations in the DC area are using blogs and other RSS technologies to market and interact with their audiences. If that sounds a little vague, have no fear...I'll be tailoring it down, but it's hard enough to pin a blog down to one subject--let alone one that only talks about dance or theatre or medieval basket-weaving. If any of my regular readers know of any DC-centered blogs, LiveJournals, or sites that have RSS feeds (that are centered primarily on arts-related topics), please let me know. Thanks! :-)

I'm continuing to read about the history of radio. I've just started Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination. I've admired the writing of the author, Susan J. Douglas for years ever since I read her book on women and the mass media, Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media. I think it's going to be a great read. Stay tuned for more quotes and musings on the subject.

Off topic:
There's a really cool version of the Washington Metro (WMATA) map where if you hover a metro stop, it'll list the bloggers who are close by.

Just travelin' thru / Oscars

2006-03-07T00:43:00.000-05:00

I don't usually shill for Apple, but if you enjoyed Dolly Parton's performance of "Travelin' Thru" (from the Transamerica soundtrack) at the Oscars Sunday night, you can get your free download on iTunes.

King Kong got several technical awards. It was nominated in the categories of Art Direction, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, and Visual Effects. (They won the latter three). Being a sound guy, I'm especially proud of them winning the sound awards.

Congratulations to Peter Jackson, Joe Letteri, Brian Van't Hul, Christian Rivers and Richard Taylor, Christopher Boyes, Michael Semanick, Michael Hedges and Hammond Peek, Mike Hopkins and Ethan Van der Ryn, and all of WETA Workshop! Let's hope this is just a warm-up to a screen version of the Hobbit.

They've got a touch of the Gaelic in them

2006-03-05T22:37:00.000-05:00

As I was surfing today for music from Cape Breton, I came upon this archive of recordings of live music sessions held on the Island from a site called Cape Breton Live. Their most recent show is a square dance held in West Mabou, Nova Scotia with fiddler Troy MacGillivray, pianist Mac Morin, and guitarists Jason Murdock and Pius MacIssac. (hmmmm, not sure of the relationship with Ashley or Dave). You can listen in MP3 or WMA formats on either high speed or dial-up. You can even hear the stepdancers, buy CDs from the artists, and view photos of the dances. What a cool way to promote grass roots music.

Cape Breton Island...what a beautiful and haunting place:

On that note, you might want to pull the news feed from the Community Arts Network site. It promotes "information exchange, research, and critical dialogue within the field of community-based art."

All the great music on the Cape Breton site reminded me of this awesome station of the BBC's called, Radio nan Gaidheal which I mentioned on my Kitchen Party blog last year. You can hear more Scottish artists and Gaelic speakers there.

It could be Franky...It could be fresh and clean

2006-03-05T21:31:00.000-05:00

For any music folks in New York, here's two exciting programs about minimalist composer Philip Glass's seminal work Einstein on the Beach at the New York Public Library. Opera meets video preservation.

n.b.: For more on why video preservation is such a problem, check out what's left of my video preservation blog, A Study in Preserving Moving Images. (clue: It's magnetic tape)

Thursday, March 9, 2006, 6:00 PM
Light, Movement, Design, Duration: Preserving Robert Wilson at the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive

HAVE YOU BEEN HERE BEFORE NO THIS IS THE FIRST TIME
Selections from the Robert Wilson Audio/Visual Collection, Theatre on Film and Tape Archive, with commentary by Archivist Sarah Ziebell Mann [a big name in video preservation]

Saturday, March 11, 2006, 3:00 PM
Light, Movement, Design, Duration: Preserving Robert Wilson at the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive

RECONSTRUCTING EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH
Excerpts from Einstein on the Beach, the 1976 opera by Robert Wilson and Philip Glass. Commentary by Archivist Sarah Ziebell Mann

Cataloging gone awry (or what you can do in MARC)

2006-03-02T22:17:00.000-05:00

UPDATE: Ok, while this was fun, it's a little too personal to keep up this long.
I'm taking it down. I had great fun cataloging myself using relator codes (for myself and my parents (who I considered added entries), geographic area fields, subject analysis, links, and other descriptive information.

Study of iMixes/playlists gone mainstream

2006-03-02T11:39:00.000-05:00

Some of you MIS/PhD folks might find the Post's recognition of ICTs and other social networking uses encouraging for the field.

From today's Washington Post
Downloading Empathy to Your iPod: Online Playlist Creators Search for Catharsis, Discover a Marketplace

IMixes -- as well as playlists on other services such as Rhapsody, Musicstrands and Soundflavor -- are the online cousins of amateur cassette-tape and CD mixes created over the years by countless music collectors as soundtracks for parties and road trips. Many of the playlists focus on a theme -- and many of those on a personal one, whether the subject is a lost love, a class reunion, a nasty breakup, duty in Iraq or a new romance.

Great gifts to an amazing music school

2006-03-02T10:26:00.000-05:00

The Juilliard School's received an extraordinary gift of music scores and manuscripts from its chairman, Bruce Kovner recently.

From the New York Times:

The gift consists of 139 items: autograph scores, sketches, composer-emended proofs and first editions of major works by Brahms, Schumann, Schubert, Beethoven, Chopin, Stravinsky, Bach, Liszt, Ravel, Copland, Mozart and other masters of the classical music canon. Many of the manuscripts have been unavailable for generations and could be a significant source of new insight for scholars and performers.

You can read Juilliard's press release here.

New Yorker Music Critic Alex Ross (The Rest is Noise, blog) talks about the autographs, gives a full inventory of the manuscripts, and discusses the working draft of the four-hand piano arrangement Beethoven's Grosse Fuge (seen above) given to Juilliard. (There's also materials related to Samuel Barber's opera Antony and Cleopatra.

Let the streamcasting wars begin (errr...continue?)

2006-03-01T17:25:00.000-05:00

Here's an interesting article from the International Herald Tribune about how public broadcasters around the world are adopting new technologies sooner than their commerical counterparts and increasing their market shares. National Public Radio is increasing their efforts to podcast and is building a National Podcasting Directory. This is worrying local public stations who need more local support, not more users going to NPR's site for programming. Add to this the fact that National Public Radio is now operating its first terrestial station. [It's not in the United States. They bought the lease of a former VOA station in Berlin].

Please support your local station, because they pay fees to NPR to support this programming, and they are the voice of your local community!

Some more highlights of the article:

Car Talk for big boys:

In September, Radio Netherlands started a radio program aimed entirely at truck drivers, who can pick up the two-hour "On the Road" show throughout Europe in a variety of forms, from traditional radio to online streaming.

Finally--the convergence talk we've heard for years:

"Historically, the commercial stations were focused on essentially music stations and a limited number of genres and songs and artists, because that was the way to get the advertising dollar," said Ed Shedd, a media partner with Deloitte in London. "The converging world really suits talk and chat and discussion, and that really plays into the hand of the public-service broadcasters that are more invested in talk services."

Also, NPR can't blame satellite radio competition for its audience slump, according to the Current magazine.

Form and genre terms for music

2006-02-28T10:43:00.000-05:00

Genre Terms: Definition, Use, Application
Friday, February 24, 2006 (3:30-5:00 PM)

Participants: Becky Dean (OCLC); Harriette Hemmasi (Brown University); Robert L. Maxwell (Brighahm Young University); Geraldine Ostgrove (Library of Congress)

I'm just going to give the few notes I took for this session since they were out of handouts by the time I got there.

Notes:
1) Questions of aboutness vs. isness (subject vs. carrier), and the special case in music of "for-ness" (where you have music for a group, the form of the inherent work is a type or medium of performance).
2) The 655 is already being used by other constituency groups, including literature, art, and cinema. It should be fully implemented for music.
3) Other controlled vocabularies being loaded by OCLC for use in cataloging: MESH, GSAFD, AAT, VLAND, TGM I and II.
4) Talked about the FAST project.
5) Creating cataloging procedures for subject analysis which are easier to learn and implement than LCSH.
6) LCSH is a standard used world-wide.
7) The need for library catalogs to accept user vocabularies and tagging to organize data (like Amazon, Flickr and other systems already allow). Language of and from the user.
8) Creating SH for every medium of performance for the national authority file instead of just for local systems.

Sound Directions update

2006-02-27T20:30:00.000-05:00

On Thursday afternoon, I attended the session on "Sound Preservation Practices" presented by the Preservation Committee. This year's invited guest was Michael T. Casey, Associate Director for Recording Services at the Archives of Traditional Music (Indiana University). Mike was my internship supervisor at the ATM, and continues to be a valued friend and mentor. He updated the MLA on the NEH-supported Sound Directions Project between Indiana and Harvard Universities.

He began with a brief outline of audio preservation since 1989, when Dietrich Schuller voiced the statement that the content of a recording was more important than its carrier. Why does this make in sense, in light of all the good conservation work done to that point with books and paper? Readers of this blog know that there are two inherent problems in audio preservation:

1) the irreparable loss of audio data due to deterioration of discs and tapes because of physical/chemical instability, storage, handling, or playback.
2) the obsolescence of recording and playback equipment with each new generation of carrier.

The goal is to move from the "eternal carrier" towards the "eternal file." This is a process which demands a digital solution in order to keep bits "alive and understandable." There must be a system in place to monitor data integrity, to refresh that data, and to migrate it when needed to new carriers. The most difficult (and critical) part of this process is the analog to digital conversion. The Harvard/IU project aims to create an interoperable system for preservation of audio objects so that different institutions can use different methods, but still arrive at solutions that can be shared. Casey mentioned following the international standards (TC03, TC04) promulgated by IASA (International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives). They would be used as a point of departure upon which to create better (and more realistic) standards for archives large and small.

I won't go too deep into what Mike said about technical metadata, the workflow, or equipment used. It was impressive on all accounts. He recounted the FACET tool he created last year to select and rank materials based on preservation need (along with research value). The Sound Directions project is using the program WaveLab to save materials in the Broadcast Wave format (BWAV or BWF), a format developed and utilized by the European Broadcasting Corporation since 1996. Saving this data with the sound file is not the only method used to record metadata. In fact, he refers to this information as "catastrophic metadata," which would serve engineers in the future if all other context was lost. He hopes to add an additional Broadcast Wave editor in the future to capture this information more efficiently. The technical metadata schema used is known as AES SC-03-06, which allows for the "documentation of sound recording derivatives" and the "digitization process."

He outlined the various tasks of the project staff, which includes two workers hired by Indiana for the project: project engineer and project assistant. The project uses an NAS (Networked Attached Storage) device to run a RAID server (Redundant Array of Independent Discs). He described the signal chain, which includes the use of a program called Spectrafoo which monitors the output through the signal chain.

As I've learned, some of the biggest challenges associated with projects of this type include: a) having the right equipment for the size of the job; b) having the right people with the relevant training and experience working for you; and c) having the time and resources to do the job (and continue it in some fashion after the grant money runs out).

There are only so many engineers that can perform preservation-quality work on this level, and there needs to be more training and outreach to the engineering community to bring them in.

I was pleased with Mike's report to the MLA meeting and am glad to hear the project is progressing well thus far. He also gave a presentation on Wednesday afternoon at the pre-conference workshop on digitizing music.

Ten years of IU's VARIATIONS

2006-02-24T10:19:00.000-05:00

After the opening session, we had a coffee break. It is nice to be surrounded by my colleagues in this grand hotel, the Peabody Memphis. The number of past and present students, graduates, and staff from Indiana is astounding. (Although we have a sizable contingent from the Library of Congress).

I attended the Information Sharing Subcommittee business meeting where we talked about next year's programs and ways to collaborate with other groups.

Phil Ponella's talk on the development of VARIATIONS was also illuminating. While a student at Indiana, I was privvy to using the system and reading much of the associated literature. Now that I understand metadata and networked audio better, I have a much greater appreciation of what Indiana has accomplished over the last ten years. Ponella began his talk with a video showing an Italian man talking about how he gained his music degree on the Internet from Indiana, and that he did it from his home in Italy because they had digitized all of their scores and recordings. While far from true, it was a funny and prescient look at what is hoped to be accomplished. Phil brought us our reality check of how far VARIATIONS has actually come--which is still quite considerable.

I was most impressed to learn to the extent to which pedagogical tools have been developed for the VARIATIONS (currently VARIATIONS 3) system.

Some of these include:
1) Bookmarks (within audio)
2) Visual Analysis
3) Playlists
4) Score Annotations
5) "Drop the needle" tests
6) Synchronization of audio with scrolling score pages
7) Access control (by means of authentication)
8) Compatibility with Macs.

He talked about the history of the project, a little bit about the technology used, and where the third version of VARIATIONS is going. They are going to be developed a system that can be adopted by other educational institutions. Some of their current test bed partners include New England Conservatory, Ohio State University, and the Tri-College Consortium. They are also partnering with content providers, such as the record label New World Records (who has the Database of Recorded American Music). I think this is a wise move, because projects of this scale need partners of various sizes to create systems that work beyond the developing institution.

More past, present, future of music librarianship

2006-02-24T10:11:00.000-05:00

More on yesterday morning's opening session...

More memories of music librarianship's past:
1) Using the red book and green book for cataloging (this is pre-AACR2 cataloging)
2) Having various typewriters--Cyrillic, Hebrew/Yiddish, etc. And these were in use by public libraries!
3) Joseph Boonin's quote about spending a life "living with technology without using it."

Note to self: read Ned Quist's article "Tomorrow's music libraries."

The session was a good reminder that many issues in information seeking and retrieval have been contemplated and addressed (to some degree), long before libraries began using computers. The challenge is in the A/D conversion as libraries become more automated, and more geared towards service to constitutents (sometimes at the expense of collections).

The past, present, and future of music librarianship

2006-02-23T18:12:00.000-05:00

This morning's plenary session was entitled MLA'ers: Past, Present and Into Our Future. It featured Dena Epstein (MLA pioneer and former MLA president), Joseph Boonin (music publisher and librarian), Amanda Maple (Pennsylvania State University), and Michael Duffy (Northern Illinois University). It was sponsored by the Joint Committee for the MLA Archives and its Oral History Subcommittee.

The opening remarks by Jane Penner mentioned the MLA Archives (University of Maryland-College Park) and their new website. I couldn't find a link by Googling it but I'll post it once it becomes available. The session was videotaped for the Archives.

Much of the talk amongst the interviewees related as much of the strength of librarians more than the collections they oversee. There was indeed a vast wealth of knowledge and institutional memory in the room. Everyone seemed cognizant of those who have departed, including Richard Hill. Dena Epstein noted that there wree not many academic research collections in music at the start of her career. Joe Boonin noted the importance of knowing librarians of every ilk, and Epstein backed that up by saying how importance it was for scholars of American music to use resources that were seemingly not musically-related.

Michael Duffy, the junior panelist of the session, talked about coming up of age in music librarianship in the electronic age. Though he was well-versed in the conventional tools of microfilm, RILM, and Music Index, he also was well-versed in networks, web site design, and electronic reference sources. One panelist noted that a music librarian position is one that is very integrated in functions: one must understand reference, cataloging, bibliographic instruction, technology, preservation, and more to do one's job effectively.

Amanda Maple talked about some of the challenges of access vs. ownership in the contemporayr library. In the old days, collections were built one title at a time, and this sort of care is what is the mark of excellence in music librarians.

More to blog later about other sessions, but you get the idea.

Into the House of the Ducks

2006-02-22T23:13:00.000-05:00

After escaping the rain and the snow of DC this morning, I landed in Memphis and headed to the "house of the ducks." Even at 2:00 this afternoon, the lobby was full of eager conference attendees mingling with their compatriots. After a light supper (see below), I checked in and browsed the exhibits. The auction table was hopping, and the MLA t-shirts were going quickly. (Note: Get yours while supplies last). It was nice to see the variety of attendees this year, both in country of origin and age/experience. Things are dying down in the room now at 10:11, but I can feel the anticipation of a great conference ahead.

RECOMMENDATION: Both the mixed greens salad and the calamari at Capriccio Grill were wonderful!

Choral discophiles--rejoice!

2006-02-22T00:00:00.000-05:00

As I was searching for a relevant online resource today, I happened upon this painstakingly detailed discography of the late choral conductor Robert Shaw (1916-1999).

One of the benefits of going to the College of Wooster was that music majors were able to buy reduced-price tickets to Cleveland Orchestra concerts. I remember during my first year I put in my name to get tickets for the Fauré Requiem, conducted by Shaw. I was so excited when I found that I was going. I saw him conduct the Cleveland Orchestra three or four more times when I was at Wooster, including Mahler's 3rd and 8th symphonies, and Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms. It was a special treat when the Wooster Chorus was invited to attend a rehearsal in which he was preparing a special tribute concert to the late Oberlin conductor Robert Fountain. After his death, NPR's Performance Today broadcast a touching rememberance of Robert Shaw's life. He said something to the effect of:

Every time we perform a work, we are cognizant of the fact that someone is singing (or hearing) it for the first time...and someone is singing (or hearing) it for the last time.

I have another story to share about Robert Shaw, but I think I need to listen to Brahms's German Requiem right now.

Leaving on a jet plane

2006-02-21T17:13:00.000-05:00

Soon...Tomorrow morning in fact.

I'm heading to Memphis for the Music Library Association's 75th annual conference.

This is a test post. There's so much I'm looking forward to attending: the Memphis Symphony Orchestra concert, the update on AACR3/RDA, the Preservation Committee's session on sound preservation by IU's Mike Casey, all of the Archives Roundtable's presentations, the open forum with members of MOLA (Major Orchestra Librarian Association), and other ones dealing with technology, preservation, and cataloging. But most of all, a dinner reservation at the Peabody Memphis's very own 4-star restaurant, Chez Philippe.

I'm wearing a couple of hats at the conference...double blogging for Audio Artifacts and Infoshare (MLA's Information Sharing Subcommittee blog), and giving a report back to the OLI (Orchestra Library Information) Yahoo Group I run on the MOLA session and the talk with Augusta Read Thomas, composer of Shakin' (an MLA commissioned work, which is being premiered on Friday). If you're at the conference, and want to give me your reactions to the conference, I'll be happy to submit them. Likewise, feel free to comment on my posts.

See you in the South!

RIAA says copying CDs to iPods not fair use

2006-02-17T14:41:00.000-05:00

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

As part of the on-going DMCA rule-making proceedings, the RIAA and other copyright industry associations submitted a filing that included this gem as part of their argument that space-shifting and format-shifting do not count as noninfringing uses, even when you are talking about making copies of your own CDs:

"Nor does the fact that permission to make a copy in particular circumstances is often or even routinely granted, necessarily establish that the copying is a fair use when the copyright owner withholds that authorization. In this regard, the statement attributed to counsel for copyright owners in the MGM v. Grokster case is simply a statement about authorization, not about fair use."

For those who may not remember, here's what Don Verrilli said to the Supreme Court last year:

"The record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it's been on their website for some time now, that it's perfectly lawful to take a CD that you've purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod."

Click this link to read the full post. And remember though patents may expire, copyright is (virtually) forever.

Okay, sometimes we take ourselves too seriously

2006-02-15T10:04:00.000-05:00

Here's a funny post from The Onion about Denny's archives mentioned on the Archives listserve today.

My favorite:

"Prior to this, we could only speculate about the initial public reaction to Moons Over My Hammy."

Also...

The comment-card archive charts not only the quality of Denny's service over time, but also patrons' responses to select menu items. Of particular interest to scholars is the nation's initial reaction to what would become Denny's most popular menu item, the Grand Slam Breakfast.

Finally....

"By examining these comment cards, we have unique insight into not just Denny's, but the tapestry of food service heritage itself," Brayton said. "Here is a history writ large, with little yellow golf pencils."

Puh-lease. Do we REALLY need to preserve EVERYTHING?

Pay for play (still alive and well)

2006-02-14T14:21:00.000-05:00

ABC News is reporting that hundreds of radio stations are being investigated by the FCC for payola. ("The illegal practice of record companies paying money for the broadcast of records on music radio is called payola, if the song is presented as being part of the normal day's broadcast.")

"We have people in suits coming in with documents rather than cash payments under the table to a DJ," [New York Attorney General Eliot] Spitzer told ABC News Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross.

And who are the artists being plugged?

The usual suspects: Jennifer Lopez, John Mayer, Jessica Simpson, Celine Dion, R.E.M., Maroon 5, Good Charlotte, Switchfoot, and Michelle Branch.
[Okay, I admit to only knowing the first five.]

Wireless- kind of a shaky investment back in 1908

2006-02-08T09:41:00.000-05:00

Just a quick morning post. Here's a song from the early 1900s that touted the success of radio (i.e. wireless):

Then "Hello! Hello!" on the wireless phone.
The good old radio.
It is working fine all along the line
From Chicago to Buffalo.
Oh! you cannot guess what a great success
Is the wonderful radio wireless telephone.

One of Tom Lewis's comments from Empire of the Air about radio's legacy:

"Researchers will leave each of these collections [which Lewis used for his research] wondering why Americans seem so antihistorical, so willfully amnesic, about this rich chapter of the past" (364).

Back to more radio and recordings...Signing off.

Musical archaeology of the day

2006-02-07T17:08:00.000-05:00

Ok, weird music archaeology over the last few days.

So, I have this recording of the Zagreb Philharmonic "7-4-69" it says on the box. For Yogoslav Svc. (Probably VOA's propaganda station that they beamed to Yugoslavia).

Date is stamped July 9, 1969 (oked) and 7-4-69 (typed).

The program as I heard it was:

1) Tchaikovsky, Violin Concerto (easy enough to identify)

2) Barber, Adagio for Strings (very easy)

3) Commentary and award ceremony onstage involving Millard Gladfelter,the chancellor of Temple University; Senator Mark Hatfield (Republican from Oregon), John Propolec (sp?), the chairman of the Croatian Fine Arts Committee, and Congressman Gerald R. Ford!

4) Three songs in Croatian, Russian? with a baritone and orchestral accompaniment.

5) Unidentified dance like piece. (Actually after knowing this was a Croatian orchestra, I kinda guessed it might be the Symphonic kolo by Jakov Gotovac--which is probably the most famous work by a Croatian composer, and my favorite. I ordered a copy for WETA when I was their music librarian so they could play it as much as they could.

So from auditioning the tape, I found that this performance took place at the Temple University Music Festival in the summer of 1969. I did an online search of historical newspapers, but they didn't have the Philadelphia Inquirer (might try the print version later today), but the NYT does give some listings for the festival, but not this concert. So, I did a WorldCat search for the orchestra, Zagreb Philharmonic both in English and its authorized name in Croatian, Zagrebacka Filharmonija. There's a history published by the orchestra and the LC has it (and it's in Croatian). I get it and there's a listing of concerts by season--Wonderful. Now I have the book in my hands, I can figure out the other concerts at the festival. I thought that the soloist in the Tchaikovsky was good. Who does it turn out to be? Itzhak Perlman.

Today...I have the "Spanish American Music Festival." Ok...interesting. The boxes are labeled with the pieces that were played. That usually helps. But not always. You can't always trust what the engineers type/write. One box says "Suite de Otoño" para arpa y orq. de cuerda (Autumn suite for harp and orchestra) by Walter Piston. Only Piston never wrote a piece with the word autumn in it. Virgil Thomson did, and it's moments like this that makes me glad I was a music history major.

LESSON LEARNED: Always trust your nose, or at least your ear.

My work with obscure, but lyrical musical compositions which public radio programs play all the time helps too. I am becoming exposed to many Latin American composers on this job, as well as reinforcing my knowledge of the basic orchestral repertoire. My basic reference tools: Grove Music Online, Allmusic.com, David Daniels' Orchestral Music (4th ed.), ProQuest Historical Newspapers database, and access to some of the greatest music librarians in the country. (Being able to check out obscure music scores helps too.)

About Empire of the Air: I've gotten past where Lee DeForest invented the audion, and on to a young Edwin Armstrong tinkering with radio sets at this home in Yonkers. Lest we forget the race for wireless was the goal of the turn of the 20th century, not just the 21st.

Hello world!

2006-02-04T23:05:00.000-05:00

Yes, this blog has been dark for a long time now.

It will re-awaken shortly as I will be one of the bloggers for the upcoming Music Library Association conference in Memphis, Tennessee. I'll post some of the insights and behind-the-scenes news of this large gathering of over 500 music librarians. Luckily, there are a large bank of computers in the vendor area, where I'll post from. You can also read the posts on the MLA Infoshare blog, where others from the conference will post.

So, what's up with me?

My job continues to be interesting. I'm listening to a lot of unique performances that were recorded for the Voice of America network back in 50s, 60s, and 70s. Really cool stuff: jazz, folk, classical. Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Judy Collins, Doc Watson, Bill Monroe, and even Bob Dylan from the 1963 Newport Folk Festival. (Jean Ritchie seemed to have to emcee hundreds of concert stages, and perform lots--busy lady.) Quality orchestra concerts from the Inter-American Music Festival, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and other groups. I've gotten to consult lots of scores and reference materials to do my work, and lots of Internet databases as well. (Thank goodness the library has Grove Music Online along with ProQuest Historical Newspapers).

And the result of all this good work?

I just got a promotion and an extension on my contract until the end of July! :-) I am now officially a "Librarian." That's my title. There should be a / title there, but there's not. My job is no longer considered to be a recording engineer though. I'm a now a cataloger. :-) I'm still doing the same work I was before, but it's a nice recognition for a job done thus far. I couldn't be happier about that.

I've been busy writing notes for the Bach Consort, and for CCS we're working on Carmina Burana right now. (I love singing the high baritone parts--there's nothing more satisfying that belting a high F# and sliding down an octave). After that, we have the Britten War Requiem and Mahler 8 to conclude our season. Not bad. I had to take a bit of a break from the chorus, and not do the Christmas concerts or the run-out with Dmitri Hvorostovsky to sing at the Kennedy Center and up in New York. I'm really focusing on the personal, and not trying to schedule every minute of my time these days. Work is all well and good, but my other time is mine to give and should be doled out thoughtfully.

Movies I've seen since Christmas: King Kong, Memoirs of a Geisha, Brokeback Mountain, The Producers, and Good Night & Good Luck. All excellent films. I'm looking forward to seeing the new documentary about the musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Music from the Inside Out.

I've been following Greg Sandow's blog, and reading his book-in-progress which he is performing on Artsjournal.com.

Books I've been reading: Currently...Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio by Tom Lewis about Marconi (who had the first patents for wireless telegraphy), Lee DeForest, David Sarnoff (RCA), and Major Edwin Armstrong (FM). Before that I read a history about codemaking and codebreaking called The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography by Simon Singh. Two books I read in the late fall were: Setting the Record Straight: A Material History of Classical Recording by Colin Symes ; and Patience and Fortitude: Wherein a Colorful Cast of Determined Collectors, Dealers and Librarians Go About the Quixotic Task of Preserving a Legacy by Nicholas A. Basbanes (author of A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books, and who I saw speak at the Library of Congress last week talking about his new book, Every Book Its Reader: The Power of the Printed Word to Stir the World).

Oh yeah, and I joined a gym today. It's a little late for a New Year's resolution. So, if you are one of those who I talk to regularly, please ask me how it's going. Good night...I am outta here.

Washington Concert Opera Review

2005-11-03T22:16:00.000-05:00

The review as promised of last Sunday's concert opera performance can be found here.

Anooshah Golesorkhi sang in Cavalleria Rusticana and Il Tabarro.

The art and craft of program note writing

2005-10-31T12:54:00.000-05:00

On Sunday I attended a performance of the one-act operas Il Tabarro (Giacomo Puccini) and Cavalleria Rusticana (Pietro Mascagni) performed by the Washington Concert Opera, conducted by Antony Walker. Concert opera is an odd duck, because you get half of the action (luckily for half the price). You get the orchestra, the chorus, the soloists, even the supertitles; but you don't get the costumes, staging, backdrops, or any substantial non-vocal dramatization. That said, the performance was spectacular. The soloists, the orchestra, and the chorus all sounded great.

Il Tabarro is a wonderfully blood-curdling story--perfect for Halloween! The story moves along at a clip and it's easy to get a sense of what's happening. Cavalleria Rusticana is set in an Italian piazza. It relies more on the tension of the scene, which was difficult to convey with just the music. There were some wonderful performances by the soloists--my favorites were the mezzo-soprano(Frugola/Tabarro and Mamma Lucia/Cavalleria), the tenor Stephen O'Mara who played Turiddu (in Cavalleria) and Luigi (in Tabarro and got offed twice) and Elizabeth Bishop (Santuzza/Cavalleria) who has such a sumptous voice. Baritone Annooshah Golesorkhi performed his paternal roles in a stentorial fashion; singing with a solid and inspiring voice. O'Mara had more material though, and listening to him sing was a delight.

My favorite moment of the night? The Easter hymn "Regina Coeli...Innegiamo Signor" from Cavalleria Rusticana. It's got to be one of the grandest moments in all of Italian grand opera.

I'll post a link to the Washingotn Post review of the production tomorrow.

I wrote the program notes for the show. Throughout the performance I was constantly asking myself if the synopsis I had provided was giving the audience enough background. Tabarro especially was such a hard story to summarize. Some people go to operas without any preparation or knowledge of the book, while others (like myself) think it's helpful to at least know the story. As a program annotator, I think of it as my duty to give audience members a sense of what they can expect (in the synopsis), and to give a brief background about the history of the piece and its prior reception. I think program notes are always a snapshot of any research that's been done on the operas, and should be easily digestable by an audience. Moreover, program notes should prepare an audience for the show, ask meaningful questions, and inspire a greater curiosity about the artform. Now...onto writing notes for a Christmas choral concert.

Hip-Hop for Dummies (Part 1)

2005-10-30T16:14:00.000-05:00

Every day more and more of my ignorance is revealed.

In Chapter Six "The Turntable as Weapon: Understanding the DJ Battle" of Katz's book Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music, he talks about hip-hop culture of which I am fundamentally ignorant about. (Ok, not that uninformed, but what I know comes from watching a little bit of MTV, gleaning somethings from NPR (even Terry Gross's Fresh Air), and from some of my black friends.

He talks about various phenomena such as turntablism, DJing, MCing, breakdancing, and graffiti writing. "This is art?!," would have been a reaction I might have had ten years ago. Well, strictly speaking it's examples of culture; just like back in the 19th century when folks went to the opera (which was more like going to the movies then), read the trashiest literature (which later became part of the literary canon), and enjoyed the arts & crafts (think flea market). It's what the "experts" think of as "great art" (and often what sells really well) that endures and is exploited for commercial gain over and over.

Sorry to make this sound so academic, but I am one of the whitest dudes around. My experience has been studying Western classical music, enjoying folk music and show tunes, and pondering the similarities between musical traditions. So my interest right now is sociomusical. At least I'm not dismissing it out of hand as I once did. Perhaps it's being in my fourth decade. Back when I worked at a classical music station, I was talking to a folk music DJ on my last day at the station. Now, I hadn't always liked folk music (or any world music), but my experience in listening and going to concerts and dances had changed my attitudes. I still saw the musical world through the eyes of a classical musician, but I knew that not everyone perceived music that way anymore. She appreciated the fact that I was so open-minded and willing to ask questions when I didn't know something. I think I said something like: "You know, I might not always get something about your world, but at least I'm trying to get there."

More on the subject of hip-hop later, with some definitions for these terms. An intriguing and fast read. Other chapters I've read so far include:

1) Capturing Jazz (about how jazz music and musicians relied on technology for distribution and education)
2) Aesthetics out of Exigency: Viiolin Vibrato and the Phonograph (how that quivering sound called vibrato you hear wasn't always there, as much)
3) The Rise and Fall of Grammophonmusik (about how grammophones were used as instruments in musical compositions, and later electronic music developments)

Stay tuned!

When the noises that you hear aren't in your head

2005-10-27T11:54:00.000-04:00

From today's Wired:

Attention, Electronic Gadgets: Shut Up! The modern world is too damn noisy. Car alarms, beeping microwaves, chirping beepers, cell phones that play that hideous 50 Cent hook... it's all just a bit much, isn't it? "The people who make all these things obviously think we're idiots. That without their constant, irritating reminders, we'd go wandering off, our minds blank, to drool down our shirts or spend 30 minutes tying our shoes. The world is noisy enough without adding completely useless aural pollution to the mix." Wired 10/27/05

Amen.

Feeling particularly curmudgeonly today.

First thoughts on Katz

2005-10-26T01:26:00.000-04:00

Just one little post tonight.

Here's a quote from Mark Katz's book Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004):

Performances and works are no longer clearly distinct, for recordings can take on the function and meaning of both. Just as recordings can be heard as spontaneous interpretive acts, their repetition can transform them into compositions, works that can be analyzed, historicized, canonized, politicized, and problematized. Nor are production and reproduction so easily separated when preexisting sounds can be manipulated in real time. With recording, listeners need not simply receive music, for they have an unprecedented control over the sounds they hear. While there have always been composer-performers--artists who interpret their own works--with recording we can conceive of listener-performers and listener-composers. Recording thus not only affects the practice of music, it shapes the very way in which we think about music: what it is, can, and should be (47).

Somehow I don't think traditional cataloging practices can keep up with this new thinking. You can also read broadcasts and shows in place of performances and works; and radio or media in place of recordings. Boggles the mind, huh? This may be a new era, but as Katz points out, the change has been in the works for over a century now.

Books, music, videogames, and other media to consume

2005-10-22T19:40:00.000-04:00

I have a LONG commute on workdays--I take the Alexandria DASH bus and two Metro lines (Blue and Yellow) to and from work.

The upshot of this is that I've gotten to read a lot more books than before--esp. since I'm not reading for class anymore. Today my subscription of Wired started to get forwarded to the new address, so I'll have to read also. (I'm a slow reader and it takes at least 3-4 days to really go through Wired).

Since moving back here in September, I've read two books so far:

1) Hawkins, Jeff with Sandra Blakeslee. On intelligence : how a new understanding of the brain will lead to the creation of truly intelligent machines. 1st Owl Books ed. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2005, c2004.

2) Basbanes, Nicholas. The splendor of letters : The permanence of books in an impermanent world. 1st Perennial ed. New York: HarperCollins, 2004, c2003.

Now on my reading list:

1) Katz, Mark. Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music. University of California Press, 2004. [Whose talk I saw at the Atlantic Chapter meeting of MLA, but Amazon still hasn't shipped it to me yet. Grrrr.]

2) Sedaris, David. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. Little & Brown, 2004. I just heard him on This American Life on WAMU this afternoon.

3) Nicholas Basbanes: Well, all of his books that I haven't read yet. These include: Patience and Fortitude: Wherein a Colorful Cast of Determined Book Collectors, Dealers, and Librarians Go About the Quixotic Task of Preserving a Legacy ; A Gentle Madness : Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books ; and his new book Every Book Its Reader : The Power of the Printed Word to Stir the World. Thanks for telling me about this last one Hannah--it's coming out in December. I'll be reserving my copy soon. I also hope to attend a class at Rare Book School some year.

4) Beck, John. Got Game: How the Gamer Generation Is Reshaping Business Forever. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2004. ISBN: 1578519497

I picked this last one because I was fascinated by the talk I attended given by the author earlier this month on the subject of gaming and how people who have played video games their whole life perceive and interact with the world around them.

Here's a description of the book from a Publisher's Weekly review:

While many parents fret about their children's minds turning to goo as they squander hour after hour absorbed in electronic diversion, the authors argue that gamers glean valuable knowledge from their pastime and that they're poised to use that knowledge to transform the workplace.

Also to read:

ACRL Guidelines for Media Resources in Academic Libraries Review Task Force. Guidelines for Media Resources in Academic Libraries (DRAFT). Revised draft. Available at ALA-ACRL website.

And with the coming of my first paycheck, I've taken the plunge into videogame land again, and bought a copy of The Sims: Deluxe Edition. (Because I have so much time). My eyes were also getting very buggy playing an old copy of Lode Runner. (Lode Runner being like the Red Bull of Fortran).

My choral singing is still going strong. We're getting our November concert repertoire in good shape. And in an educational use of iTunes, I've even bought a copy of Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, which we're singing. 3 tracks * $0.99 each = a lot better than buying a $16.00 CD just to learn a new piece. The Hebrew's been coming along. I'm definitely not used to singing in that language. Definitely a fun piece, though. Not as spectacular as Belshazzar's Feast, but close.

There's a talk about maps I want to go to next week at the LC about an exhibition being held in the Jefferson Building. I love maps.

October 26, 2005, 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Southwest Gallery Second floor Thomas Jefferson building
Ed Redmond of the Geography and Maps Division discusses the Revolutionary War-era and British Atlantic Neptune Map Collection in the "American Treasures" exhibition.

And I have been getting quite a few lessons about some of the more advanced features of Excel in the last few weeks. One thing I should learn for work is regular expressions. Hmmm...maybe getting an MIS would have been helpful after all. I've mentioned to people that the class which I have used the most in the last month and a half was my 1.5 credit networking class in June. (Which was only 3 days!!!)

I haven't seen a movie in over a month. I really want to see the Wallace and Grommit feature: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

Current listening of late:
1) Forbidden Broadway- Special Victims Unit (iTunes)
2) Bernstein, Chichester Psalms. Bournemouth Sym./Marin Alsop (iTunes, Naxos)
3) Bach, J.S. Christ lag in Todesbanden, BWV 4, Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists/Sir John Eliot Gardiner (CD, Erato)

Preservation of the audio artifact

2005-10-10T00:56:00.000-04:00

Today I've been mulling the objects we consume, aural, physical and digital.

In the digital world, we often settle for a copy or representation of an analog original. With physical objects, we mostly know that a copy is a copy, but not always in the digital world. The trouble is that often the digital copy is inferior to the analog, because of compression or encoding. While we might not always want to read from a manuscript of a Charles Dickens novel, someone should preserve it and make it available for researchers. I'm not so certain we shouldn't be doing the same thing with sound recordings. (Of course archives have been, but that's changing).

Yes, we can get the story from a Penguin edition of Oliver Twist, but we'll lose the marginalia, the history of the drafts as they were sent back and forth from Dickens to his publisher, or a coffee stain that could indicate where Dickens got really excited about a new plot he just thought up. [NOTE: This is just an imagined example, and doesn't reflect any personal knowledge about Dickens' working stule or relationship with his publisher].

The fight here: Intellectual content vs. artifactual value. (Read Nicholson Baker's Double Fold for extreme arguments in the second camp). It was also one of the recurring themes in preservation class, as well as doing what you can with the time, money, and staff you have.

Of course another layer to add to all this is that a sound recording is only an instantiation of a live event or a studio session. It is impossible to literally capture what happened there, from the smell of the cigarettes in the sound booth to the tensions between performer and producer on a given day. It's all just representation really. We can record slices of reality, but not the gestalt. But thank goodness we have lots of what we have.

At the ARSC meeting in March was a Maryland native named Charles Richardson. He was developing a "New Magnetic Tape Restoration Process to Eliminate the Sticky Shed Problem from Magnetic Tapes" (U.S. Patent 6,797,072). His presentation was met by much skepticism amongst the audio engineers in the room--and rightfully so. He wasn't very forthright with the evidence he gave on why the process would work.

The sad fact is that our physical sound recordings will deteriorate eventually. They will not last as long as paper, and there will not be the equipment to play them back. I can see why the audio archives community is dedicated to digital preservation of the intellectual content. (As am I). But I think the conservation of the original artifacts is also important for our society and our history. If Mr. Richardson or someone else can find a way to reverse deterioration in the physical media of this material, I would definitely celebrate.

It's late, and I'm also procrastinating some program notes I'm supposed to write for this local musical organization. I'm including a link to my paper on Sticky Shed Syndrome that I did for preservation class last fall.

It was called Problems in Audio Preservation: Binder Hydrolysis (“Sticky Shed Syndrome”) in Open Reel Magnetic Tape." (Word document, 11 pages).

New URL for Audio Artifacts

2005-10-09T00:36:00.000-04:00

Hello Audio Artifacts readers,

This blog has been live for almost ten months now. I wanted to thank
those of you who read it through the site, an aggregator (like SLIS
Blogs), or a blog reader.

It is a webspace where audio is celebrated, in all forms analog and
digital. It combines my interests in promoting and preserving sound
recordings, both music and spoken word, with meditations on the live
musical performance and the art of recorded sound. If it can be
perceived by the ear, it's fair game.

This is a note to tell you that I'm changing the URL for the blog to
http://audioartifacts.blogspot.com/ . It's been called "Audio
Artifacts," for a little over a month now, and I'm finally changing
the last remnant of my old blog "Interning with Sound Recordings" to
reflect the nature of this blog.

Enjoy the archives which are still intact.

Changes to look for in the coming months:
1) An associated Live365 radio channel
2) More reviews of recordings and shows and concerts around D.C.
3) More postings on the "musical process"

Have a great Columbus Day weekend!

Thom

Current listening: Boogaloo / dtownpaolo / Remote Access L.P.

Good Morning Baltimore!

2005-10-08T14:36:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I attended the Music Library Association, Atlantic Chapter meeting (ATMLA) at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. I'm very glad my employer allowed me to go during my first week of work. I was a member of this chapter when I worked at WETA, and went to their meetings in Charlottesville and College Park. The weather wasn't great--it rained most of the time. But there were some very interesting sessions (which I'll talk about), a detailed tour, and a big dinner afterwards at a great upscale place called The Brewer's Art.

I think it's important that I keep going to MLA conferences, even though the job I'm in right now isn't directly related to the field. I have been trained as a music librarian, and it's important to keep up the contacts and my knowledge. One of the things I like about regional chapter meetings is that the sessions are often extremely music-focused, and intensely personal to their presenters. There were three presentations yesterday.

First off was a talk by Peabody archivist Elizabeth Schaff and graduate assistant Brad Saylor on the great jazz/Latin guitarist Charlie Byrd (1925-1999). Byrd's collection is located at the Peabody Archives. Byrd gave it to Peabody because they had "a guitar program that he wished would have been there for him when he was looking for a [graduate] program," according to Saylor. During this presentation a short performance was given by Peabody guitar student Jorge Amareo. He played two pieces by Agustin Barrios-Mangore, and a "Joropo," which mixes double and triple meter to create some nice spicy rhythms. One of Byrd's most famous accomplishments was in bringing bossa nova back to the United States and popularizing it in the early 1960s. He also enjoyed playing classical style and studied with Segovia in several masterclasses. Kudos to Schaff and Saylor for an excellent presentation of this excellent collection.

The second presenter was Peabody musicologist and faculty member Mark Katz who talked about "file sharing as a tool for living." He mentioned driving listening to the radio and hearing a Violent Femmes song. He used his cell phone to leave myself a voice message with a couple of lyrics. Later, he "Googled" the lyrics and confirmed what the song was. He used file sharing tools to listen to the song, and in doing so, came to appreciate and experience the song on a new level. He did all this without the mediation of calling a radio station, asking a librarian or a record store employee, or a printed catalog. And he listened to it without buying any other song from the album he didn't want.

Katz skillfully skirted all talk about DMCA, copyright, or the legality of file sharing. He talked about how the dissemination and cognition of music was changing. I've been wanted to read his Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music, and now I think will do that sooner than later. He gave a list of references, which if anyone wants I could send them. He also talked about the profileration of MP3 blogs, which I'm embarrased to say that I don't know a lot about. He referred to four ones in particular:

1) Music for Robots (Alternative pop music)
2) Sabadabada (Brazilian bossa-nova)
3) Soul Sides: Music for Rhythm Addicts (Little-known urban, rhythm & blues, soul)
4) Wakingear (Eclectic)

Katz made an interesting point that the shuffle function and indeterminancy allowed by iPods to pick music from various genres could radically change the way users appreciate music. By freeing themselves from the physical artifact, listeners are able to experiment with genres they normally wouldn't experience. It could even affect genre formation and create new roles for tastemaking and music criticism much as political blogs have restructured political communications between candidates, media, and the public. Of course these things are already happening, and I'm probably just slow to acknowledging them.

The final presenter of the day was Lisa Woznicki (Library Liaison for Art, Music and Theatre Arts, Towson University), whose presentation was titled "Overcoming Performance Anxiety: A Bibliotherapeutic Approach." Woznicki, who has suffered herself from performance anxiety, gave the ATMLA librarians in session a background into this social phobia, and suggested that the music library in particular was a comfort zone in which performers could seek answers on overcoming these problems. She handed out an extensive 2-page bibliography, in four areas (clinical/scientific description of the problem ; psychological self help/self-esteem assessments and action plans ; New Age/holistic self examination and goal setting ; and introspective/meditative explorations on performing (often from mature musicians) in which patrons might be seeking answers. Performance anxiety is one of those topics that performers wouldn't feel comfortable about talking with their teachers. The librarian can be a neutral, non-threatening, even sympathetic ear who could help the student find their away around their performance anxiety by recommending relevant and helpful books and articles. Woznicki was very thorough and convincing in her presentation, as well as being an inspiration. Bibliotherapy, I like that.

After a very thorough tour of Peabody (including a look at their humongous Holtkamp organ), there was a smashing-good wine and cheese party where I smooshed, ate and drank good wine and hors d'ouevres, enjoyed a brief performance by four Peabody vocal students (doing a motet in which the bass "bzzzzed" like a bee for a lot of it), and talked shop and brought many of my colleagues up to speed on what I've been doing since I left the Chapter in 2003. (I've been in the Midwest Chapter of MLA for the last two years--both are great).

We walked up Charles St. to The Brewer's Art, a swanky up-scale brewpub, which serves great food and even better beer. I enjoyed two glasses of a honey ale--which made my night. It's so nice to be able to sit at a table of librarians now and feel like a professional. I might not know or have experienced everything they have in their long careers, but at least there's a basis of common experience from which we can talk. And these people enjoy good music, good food, and good drink. My trip to Baltimore was a very rewarding experience.

Current audio: The whir of my computer and the pitter-patter of rain drops outside.

Nice warm autumn weekend

2005-10-02T16:57:00.000-04:00

It's been awhile...

I guess I haven't really posted lately because of the uncertainty of when I was starting my new job. It was kind of depressing being in limbo. But luckily this week, they called and I report to my new job bright and early TOMORROW morning.

I've been busy these last four weeks working at Washington Concert Opera, getting their high-speed internet access, e-mail, and other technology in order, and installing a new workstation (along with a host of other jobs that came up). It was about 20 hours of work a week, but I kept myself quite busy while I was there. Three days of auditions too--signing in singers for their times. These aren't your average choral singers, they're professional and unionized (AGMA). (Read the story in this week's Washington City Paper on what it's like to eek out a living as a choral singer in DC).

I'm back singing with the Cathedral Choral Society as a baritone. [I sang with them for 3 years before I moved to Indiana.] It feels very good to be performing again. I enjoyed being a DJ, but there's nothing like actually making music. Our first concert is pretty exciting. It's an all-Jewish program called "A Haven in America." And Leonard Slatkin's going to guest-conduct the Bernstein and the Barber.

Our repertoire includes the following:

Leonard Bernstein..............Chichester Psalms
Samuel Barber...................Toccata Festiva for Organ and Orchestra
Arnold Schoenberg.............Kol Nidre for Chorus, Narrator, and Orchestra
Erich Zeisl..........................Requiem Ebraico

Ok, so the Barber isn't particularly related to the theme, but it's a great opportunity to hear our director, J. Reilly Lewis play organ. I'm really glad I'm getting a chance to sing the Chichester, it's such a fun piece. I never really "got it" when I've listened to it on recordings. I find that the best way for me to enjoy music (esp. classical) is to actually perform it. When I was a low brass player, this was true also. It definitely helps me appreciate 20th century music.

The Schoenberg is a surprisingly tonal work, with lots of sensible cues for the chorus to follow when making their entrances. I'm not totally sold on the Zeisl yet. It's a lot of muddling around for notes so far, and I fear that a lot of the harmonic complexity doesn't serve the text very well. Of course, I feel the same way about Brahms' minor choral music (mostly motets). Both the Zeisl and Bernstein will be sung in Hebrew, which is a real challenge for me (since I've never sung in that language). Anyways...if you're in the area on Sunday, November 13, come to the Washington National Cathedral at 4:00 pm, to hear the sounds of a 150+ symphonic choir in a highly reverberant setting.

The Cathedral Choral Society

Yesterday I visited with a friend in Takoma Park over lunch, walked around and shopped, and came home. The day couldn't have been more beautiful. We lingered at House of Musical Traditions, which is one of my favorite music stores in the area. I found out they sell practice bagpipe chanters--hmmm. They also have a very good concert series.

I have been playing around on iTunes a bit. Downloaded some NPR music podcasts, and purchased my first music download: Forbidden Broadway: Special Victims Unit (the show I saw in NYC a couple of weeks ago). I'm going over some of my internship notes (along with some of my earlier blog postings) today before I start tomorrow.

Current listening this afternoon: WAMU-FM (Dick Spottswood's Obsolete Music Show, The Eddie Stubbs Show, and Thistle and Shamrock). Favorite song of the afternoon: "If you want his love PDQ, divorce me C.O.D."

More time wasting options

2005-09-22T10:33:00.000-04:00

So, in the course of installing Windows XP on my machine, I needed to download Quick Time, which now comes bundled with ITunes. Wow, now I can see the excitement.

Current listening: "Just Because" / Ashley MacIssac / Pride (new)

Nate Harrison on the Amen Break

2005-09-20T16:07:00.000-04:00

I know Pete's already posted on this, but I wanted to second his excitement about Nate Harrison's audio installation (Winter 2004, Quick Time .MOV file) of the "Amen Break." It's really quite an interesting piece on recent music history, specifically on how technology can influence new genres of music. In this case, sampling + turntables = hip-hop. Or in the case of this "break beat," the Amen break + sampling (in the UK) would be seminal in the development of hardcore techno, jungle, and Drum & Bass (also known as D&B).

Harrison talked about the Winstons' "Amen Brother" (1969), and its subsequent sampling by DJs in the United States and Great Britain. Some examples he gave were:
1) the New York Duo "Third Base"
2) NWA "Straight out of Compton"
3) Mantronics "King of the Beats"

On the rights side of Harrison's exposition, he revealed that Richard Spencer, a founding member of the Winstons (and a Ph.D. in political science), holds the copyright for "Amen Brother." Has he asserted his rights? A whole musical subculture has seemed to be built on the virtual abandonment of copyright of one song. Who knows what other sort of art could be developed if copyright holders were more lax?!

Harrison says it best:

Perhaps like many during hip-hop's early years, didn't see or sample-based music as having any potential beyond a limited underground appeal. During the 80s when DJs plundered old jazz and R&B records looking for samples, hip hop in particular and electronic music in general were not the pop phenomena and money makers we know them as today. There seemed to be a brief few sort of glory years back then when the novelty of sampling and the rate at which it was being employed as a new technique grew faster than the rate at which any sort of copyright bureaucracy could maintain the law. Older bits of sampling were appropriated perhaps under the assumption of their being able to be freely used in the spirit of a pledge to new forms. In other words, sampling was not seen as merely rehashing past sounds, but as an attempt to make new more something old--an artistic strategy as time-honored as creative expression itself.

Harrison even brought up a preservation issue. "Dub plates"--instananeous vinyl recordings (acetate test pressings or "one-offs")--were created quickly to be played by DJs. These acoustic recordings would last up to 50 plays, much less than a commercially-pressed disc would take. Hopefully some libraries and archives realize the value of these releases and will begin to acquire and preserve these unique cultural documents.

All in all, not a bad ride for 6 seconds of music.

While I wouldn't call hip-hop (or jungle) a musical genre I enjoy for recreation, it remains a significant cultural force influencing art, media, and culture. One of the projects I wish to pursue in the future is documenting and analyzing NPR's reporting on rap and hip-hop music and how they define these genres through reporting, interviews, and selective music samples.

We be celebratin' Talk Like a Pirate Day (ARRRR)

2005-09-19T12:16:00.000-04:00

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day! ARRRRRR....

To be seein' this blog in Pirate Talk, click here. If ye dare.

Radio on the Internet

2005-09-18T00:04:00.000-04:00

I began to listen to public radio in high school, when I began to become serious about my musical training. I appreciated Erie's local public radio station (WQLN-FM), and its classical music programming. I never saw the programming as simply entertainment; radio was also for discovery, contemplation, and examination. Listening led me to classical works and composers that I had never heard of before. It even guided my choice of interpretations of certain works that I played or sang. In college I began to appreciate traditional musical forms and the performers who brought them to life. And this was because of a local public radio station (WKSU-FM) and Jim Blum's weekend folk music program). I have always sought out my local public radio station as the first place to look for this kind of programming. When I came to work for a public radio station, I became an advocate for the voices on the air. I had many "driveway moments" right at my desk at work.

Now the station that I worked for no longer features the music that birthed my radio listening habits. (Thankfully Mary Cliff still has her Saturday evening folk show, Traditions.) That is how I came to be pulled into the modern world of Internet radio, along with specific program streams. It's not just them--I have developed many musical interests, and I like to explore new music in various genres. And it's not fair to expect one radio station to be all things to all people--and the ones that try are not satisfying anybody, in my opinion.

I think one of the values of mediated programming (at least outside of commerical radio) is that you are often pulled out of your comfort zone and have the opportunity to experience sounds, music, and stories that you might never have discovered on your own. And I believe there is value in professionals crafting these experiences believe.

The downside: No Internet radio in cars yet. Until then I'll just have to take a selection of CDs when I go out. (I don't have an I-Pod or satellite radio, maybe someday).

I've started a section for Online Audio Streams. It's small, because it's only the ones I regularly listen to. I'm not including specific programs or stations of which I only listen to a small percentage of their programming. If you want to suggest a stream, I'll take a listen and let you know. I'll talk about why I've selected the ones that are listed on the right another day.

Current listening: "Wade in the Water" sung by Sweet Honey in the Rock (on Traditions with Mary Cliff, WETA-FM)

Poem for the weekend

2005-09-17T22:40:00.000-04:00

Here's a poem I wrote when I was a graduate student at American University. I was experimenting with verse-chorus form. It's also my tribute to the letter F. Try to hear it as a tribal chant.

FUNDAMENTAL IS FAR FROM FAIR (1999)

Fundamental is far from fair
Frequently fundamental frays at the fringe
Freudian forgers follow frothy flowers

Full-mouthed fullbacks running out of sight
Fundamental fungi freaky with delight
Frown on the noise of the distant night

Fantastic voyages forge county fairs
Frappucinos and fagoli are often fundamental
To forage them frequently is infractible

Full-mouthed fullbacks running out of night
Fundamental fungi freaking from insight
Frown on the noise with no delight

Can feeding feeble frogs be fundamental?
Felonious fellows entertain false fancies
of feeding falcons when frogs are fasting

Full-mouthed fullbacks running in delight
Fundamental fungi cannot see the light and
Frown on the fur of the gopher trite

Families finger and flitter
At film festivals their attention is flighty
Fondly folk are forewarned

Full-mouthed fullbacks leaping in a rite
Fundamental fungi ready to indict
Frown from the glare of the halogen light

Funeral directors fracture furniture
Frosty beverages freeze and flake
Fundamental is far from fair

Full-blooded fullbacks running with a kite
Stand and stare at the stars so bright
And frolic in the music of the distant night

Current listening: "Traditions with Mary Cliff," WETA-FM 90.9, Washington DC, 8-1 Saturday evenings.

New York, New York--a hell of a town!

2005-09-15T23:38:00.000-04:00

I got back late last night from a short trip up to New York. It's been about eight years since I visited New York City, which is very sad considering I lived in the DC area for five of those years. Sometimes I feel I'm getting more adventurous as I get older.

Tuesday night, some friends and I went to CBGB, the punk club I blogged about which faces eviction. It's where acts like the Ramones and Blondie got their start. We actually got there to late to see the show. D'OH! At least I got this spiffy t-shirt, and I can say that I've been there. Hopefully I'll get a second chance--sign the petition!

Here's the front and back of the shirt I got (note: I am obviously not the young man pictured in this photo.

I had some awesome pizza at Grimaldi's in Brooklyn Heights. It was originally called Patsy's and is located under the Brooklyn Bridge. Delicious pie--I highly recommend it! (And so does ZAGAT)

On Wednesday my friends and I headed into Manhattan to see something on Broadway. Because I had a 5:30 bus, we caught a revue instead of a full show. It's one that I've been wanting to see for years. It's called Forbidden Broadway--and I just about busted a gut laughing. For those of you not familiar with it, FB is a revue which skewers current and historic Broadway shows. Four singers and a pianist lambasted all the current shows very adeptly. Their current show is called "Special Victims Unit" and details the assassination of good theatre in New York, including parodies of Wicked ("Defying Chenoweth"), Hairspray, Doubt, Sweet Charity (zinged Christina Applegate but good!), Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang, Lennon, Avenue Q (and all the puppet shows), among others. One of the funniest acts was an actor impersonating Harvey Fierstein (who is starring as Tevye in the current revival of Fiddler on the Roof), but dressed up in his Hairspray drag as Edna. [NOTE: real drag. Look here for a review of the album in the coming months].

Here's a good analogy, as I see it: what Capitol Steps is to Washington, Forbidden Broadway is to New York.

I caught my bus at Penn Station on time, and made it back to DC at about quarter to 10. All and all a nice diversion, while I wait for my job to start. New York is a city that generally overwhelms me, but there's so much stuff there I want to do. IU was a great experience, but it's really good to be back on the East Coast again.

Poetry on an blog about audio?

2005-09-15T23:09:00.000-04:00

Yes, I used to write poetry. I started in high school, and completed two volumes by the time I was a senior at Wooster. I'm not saying it's great. But I've come across it while cleaning up my computer files, so I thought I might add one of these from time to time to show that I'm not all about MARC fields and ISO standards. Someday I'll get around to writing more, perhaps in all my free time. (yuck, yuck, yuck)

Here's a poem that I submitted to Poetry.com a couple of years ago. [You can still find it there by searching for my name]. It's one of my favorites, because of the sounds your mouth has to make in order to speak it properly (at a pretty good clip for effect). Enjoy...

Thoughts of Bowers Harbor, Michigan (1997)

Mandible audibly is the right noise
It rhymes exquisitely with all boys and toys
Froth-flowing cups of peppermint tea
Does wonders for many; its taste sweetly.
A wall walking round
Will not touch the rough
Of cables and coils
And left-handed slugs
Its bitters and batters
Blow mightily on course
To and fro, starboard and bow
To port and stern, we go.
A Bear bearing all
A wool-wearing Lamb
A face with no Nose
And a scale-covered Snake.
These are my Friends
The twittlings and twattlings
Of a Man to whom time gives no thought
And Rhyme has no end.

NOTE: If anyone has an audio blog, and wants to record this I'd really like to hear it. Send me a link, and make sure you attribute me, and then we're all good.

Friends, CBGB, and more copyright

2005-09-11T22:28:00.000-04:00

1) I've added some links to the blogs of some of my IU friends, namely Pete, Sarah, and Bill; and also Jen, a Wooster friend who has a food blog called Rolling in the Dough.

2) The great New York City club CBGB recently got an eviction notice. There's a section on the history of the club. Originally a venue for country, bluegrass, and blues acts, punk became its featured genre.

The legendary punk landmark CBGB has been served with an eviction notice, which was delivered one week after their lease expired. Owner Hilly Kristal, who opened the club in December of 1973, has been ordered to vacate the building by the Bowery Residents’ Committee.

In a statement issued to MTV News, Kristal and the Save CBGB Coalition said: “There is no valid reason why CBGB should leave our present historic location. All we want is the same thing (New York Governor George Pataki, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg) and 43 City Council members want — that is to sit down with the BRC and negotiate in good faith a new lease that is fair to all parties."

Even after the Save CBGB Coalition offered to accept a significant rent increase, the BRC still plans on finding a new tenant for the space.

UPDATED: There's an online petition to convince the BRC to "urge support of a renewal of CBGBs lease," as well as special benefit shows, and an online Ebay auction to support the club. [See CBGB site for that link].

3) Still slogging through the CLIR/LC report on record label reissues. It surveyed CD reissues of recordings made between 1890 and 1964, analyzing reissues related to genres and time periods. Pretty shocking stuff, more details later.

Here's something from the report you might not have known:

"Federal copyright law states that pre-1972 recordings will be protected by state and common law copyright until the year 2067." 50 states, all different laws, good luck figuring them out!

Why isn't the drummer wearing any shoes?

2005-09-10T00:44:00.000-04:00

I finally got the chance to listen to the episode of This American Life [Image Makers 8/5 Episode 294] which profiled a rock band from Michigan called The High Strung. The High Strung played a summer of rock concerts in libraries throughout the state. Why is a rock band playing in a library, one might ask. It was the brainstorm of a "maverick teen librarian." This was an indy band and they got to play in conference rooms, outdoor pavilions, and once at the reference desk.

This episode, interesting for many reasons for me, was particularly engrossing because of what it said about the value of library as place, and the sociological norms we often impose on what's supposed to go on there. I value libraries as one of the last public places that silent and reflective individual thought can still occur, outside of the constant din of Muzak, vehicles, construction, and advertisements. But I also see the value of using the library as a place to promote and share cultural heritage--in music and spoken word, as well as text and images.

The performance of the band created a fine example of cognitive dissonance in the audience. I've probably been conditioned to accept only certain sounds in the library, which now includes the sound of printers, computers, and even cell phones (unfortunately). (Does anyone know if libraries used to have typewriter rooms?). Talking is common in the Information Commons at IU, but not so much in the Main Reference room. Very clearly there are degrees of sound which are acceptable in certain places. So, if a library flauts convention and books a rock band to make very loud noise in their normally-quiet space, what is the library's primary patrons to make of this? Should we build new (potential) audiences at the expense of established ones?

Overall, I saw the band's touring as an intriguing sociology experiment. I think one positive message that can come from these concerts is that people of intellect and critical thinking can come in many different forms. We all have our preferences for how we study and the company that we keep. We might never admit (out loud) that a rock musician doesn't belong in a library, but tacitly that's why it's so shocking not to just hear them play there, but also to see them in a library.

A public library is supposed to serve all sectors of society, from the very young to the elderly. It should also serve a broad strata of ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic groups. Maybe it is time for rock musicians to take back the library.

I think silence should be the norm; but if we're going to allow music in our libraries, we could do worse than reflecting our patrons' tastes--even challenging them at times. We as librarians have access to information on the best of what's out there, even out of the way, indy acts. Libraries could inspire and promote new talent, many of whom are often alternative voices of the community who might remain unheard without such a venue. The public library (in many communities) often serves many other roles besides book warehouse; it can also be the local coffeehouse, indy film theatre, community center, cybercafe, and even a place for young musicians of all genres to get their start.

At the end of the concert, a four-year old said of the music, "I like the way it vibrated on me."

New report on sound recordings

2005-09-09T21:11:00.000-04:00

Here's something I just found that I'll be reading soon...

There's a new report by Tim Brooks put out by the Library of Congress and the Council of Library and Information Resources called Survey of Reissues of U.S. Recordings.

"The purpose of this study was to determine the legal accessibility of sound recordings published in the United States. The survey was designed to quantify the degree to which rights holders of historical sound recordings have made available, either directly or through licensees, past recordings that they control."

Procedure Redux

2005-09-08T00:40:00.000-04:00

I went to Local 16, a very cool lounge with a Mediterreanean menu (which I'm dying to try some time), last night to hear the audio stylings of "technicians" Richard Chartier, Mark Williams and Kyle Storm, collectively known as Procedure. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, they describe their sounds as:

Lost and forgotten music, low brow tunes, electronic ambiance, dark covers, b-sides, bloopy unusual-ness, general pretty noise, blatant obviousness, avant garde obscurities, bubblegum oddities, punky this and that, unintentional hits and very intentional misses...and other seemingly unrelated genre crossing nonchalantly sequenced.

I'm not sure their PR does the experience justice. Many of the sounds I heard were quite interesting; the combination of musics at various tempi and timbres to be thought-provoking; and the effect of the low acoustical sound wave forms to be soothing. But it felt very background to me. It was not an evening of music to be heard, but to be drunk to. (btw, the drinks I had were very good). Our technicians provided a very nice background environment for the intermittent conversations my friend and I shared. There were moments when I did pick up on what they were sculpting, as I think it is sometimes known. My friend, Tyler, a very sophisticated listener of alternative popular and rock genres, pointed out to me throughout the evening several musicians and DJs that I should also hear. (Note to Tyler: send a list, as I can't remember many of them now).

I think it is quite a talent to find the right blend of various types of music (controlled by Procedure's Macintosh computer). Perhaps it was the setup at Local 16, or maybe it was the nature of the experience, but I noticed that I have a hard time paying attention to music when there's not a live act playing or I'm in a studio concentrating (with or without headphones). Perhaps I just don't get the point of the experience--I know that many DJs and remix artists craft their own sonic compositions through the experience, but is it the totality of the evening set that is the point, or should we just chill and get into the mood and drink our martinis and veg? Maybe I just have too much German blood in me (along with classical training) to not look at what the music is about. I had a good time, and I thought the DJs provided a eclectic and hypnotic soundscape, in a minimalist type of way. Tuesday's audio event along with the good company left me quite happy for the Metro ride back.

Procedure gives their set lists on their website here. I want to explore more of this music, but more in an environment where the music is more of the point. Or did I just miss it? ;-)

Back in DC and Procedure

2005-09-05T23:49:00.000-04:00

OK, it's been a long time while I've posted. I'm settling into being back in the big city. In the last three weeks, I've traveled from Washington to Bloomington to Erie to Bloomington to Erie to Philadelphia to Erie and then back to DC. I have some news about a couple of Louisiana audio archives from other listservs, but there's nothing that probably hasn't already been seen by the people who need to see it. Anyways, be on the lookout for that in the next day or two.

Tomorrow I'm going to an evening of post-punk, experimental, new-wave, obscurities called PROCEDURE. (How's that for
my broadening my musical tastes?) ;-) More on that soon.

PROCEDURE
"something for everyone... and nothing for some"
TECHNICIANS: Richard Chartier / Mark Williams / Kyle Storm

same old info: a quite laid back evening of lost and forgotten music, low brow tunes, electronic ambiance, dark covers, b-sides, bloopy unusual-ness, general pretty noise, blatant obviousness, avant garde obscurities, bubblegum oddities, punky this and that, unintentional hits and very intentional misses...and other seemingly unrelated genre crossing nonchalantly sequenced.

View the procedure with the avant-somethings and the often unexpecting patients who too have come for their PROCEDURE...

Philadelphia Inquirer article about SACDs

2005-08-29T13:10:00.000-04:00

There was an article in this weekend's Philadelphia Inquirer about SACDs. Some interesting points and statistics about recent production trends are brought up in the article:

* "SACD sales declined from 1.3 million discs in 2003 to 790,000 in 2004, according to the Recording Industry Association of America."

* "Three complete SACD Beethoven symphony sets are out; two more are in the making. Complete sets of Mozart and Shostakovich symphonies have also appeared."

* "San Francisco Symphony's SACD recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 2 was a turning point. "We thought it would sell 1,000 or 2,000. But it sold 5,000 in three months," says John Newton, an industry veteran who now remasters discs for RCA."

* There isn't logic as to what to sells best yet. The Anonymous 4's American Angels CD, a disc noted for its atmospheric sound of a small vocal ensemble, sold only 2% of its releases as SACD. Meanwhile, 30% of a recent Telarc release of Haydn's Seasons were SACD-format.

SACD stands for "Super Audio Compact Disc"--which is a compact disc that records at a higher sampling rate (96kHZ) and a higher word length (24kHZ). It's a proprietary format that has been masterminded by Sony and Philips, but the technology is starting to be licensed by record labels, especially classical labels whose content particularly appeals to audiophiles. The format supports 5 channels (or tracks) of listening, as opposed to the normal 2 for stereo. They weren't too successful in selling these a few years ago, because it was only supported by special surround-sound players. Now, it's much more common for a record label to issue a hybrid-SACD, which allows for playing on most commercial stereo systems.

But does SACD matter to a larger public anymore? Will record companies really re-master and re-release their entire catalogs as SACD? How long would that take? Maybe 20 years, like CDs (roughly a good percentage of the pre-digital run)--but what new technologies will be in place then? Isn't all this getting a little silly?

Another big constituency for buying classical discs are libraries, who usually don't have the facilities or equipment to incorporate surround-sound listening. Then there is the audio preservationist who in digitizing one of these discs would need to preserve 5 tracks of audio, instead of the normal 2. Imagine the size and the structural complexity of that item.

Furthermore, how would cataloging requirements change to allow for documentation of these system requirements. I'm sure Jay Weitz has already thought and posted about this, but it will be awhile before the majority of catalogers will be able to do this masterfully. I need to look more at the SACD specifications to know if we are really dealing with a music recording or a series of data files. Some of the cataloging fields that might come into play include: 538, 007, 006, 300, and just some 500 fields related to description of what this recording format is and requires.

How a hybrid Super Audio CD works.

It seems that high-quality (SACD and DVD-A) audio will be around in some form in the future, especially for select constituencies (classical and jazz); but for most other genres, the rule will be Internet distribution (streaming and MP3 downloads). This might not change even if size and bandwidth matters are resolved, because of the value that classical (and jazz) listeners place on the physical album and its constituent parts.

Tommy Lee in Marching Band?!?!?!

2005-08-26T22:12:00.000-04:00

WARNING: NON-AUDIO-RELATED POST AHEAD!

Ok, I admit it, in the brief time I have been out of school, I have been watching the VH1 Celebreality show Tommy Lee Goes to College. In the show, Tommy Lee (of Motley Crue) attends the University of Nebraska attends classes, participates in various extracurricular activities, and various downtime antics. I admit most of the show is banal, overedited, and misrepresents most of the college experience. That said, I think it is funny, well-scripted, and entertaining, if you just let yourself enjoy it.

One of the favorite parts I've seen is where Tommy joins the marching band. Tommy Lee plays the quad-toms (or the "quads"), a holster of four drums of various sizes that are worn by the drummer.

[GEEK NOTE: The drums that the drum line were playing were probably "quints," because there were 1-2 extra tiny drums inside the frame.]

Multi-toms are probably the hardest of all the battery percussion instruments to play. Why? Because you're not just striking one drum with your drumsticks, you have to hit four drums on beat, and in tempo. There is no rubato, there is no interpretation, and you have to do it exactly at the same time as the rest of your squadron.

I'm glad VH1 included this subplot. It's really important for people to understand, especially young people, that music is made through sweat, practice, and training. While I acknowledge there is innate musical talent in some people, it is the manner in which it is harnessed that matters most to me. Although my experience in marching band was grueling, often-overly repetitive, and often-uninspired, I'm glad I did it in high school and college. I'd like to think that any sort of group activity like this ultimately makes one a better contributor. Why? By working out your own talents in a group context, you can actually see how your efforts make a large-scale difference. You know where you screw up, and so can everybody else. But it's not all about you, it's about the team.

In this week's episode, Tommy has to pass an audition to march with the rest of the band on Saturday during the football game. He has to know all of the music, and be able to play it. Drummers have to memorize their music, and play it in tempo while executing complicated drill patterns on (often very muddy) football fields. Well, Tommy, to his credit, stepped up to the challenge and practiced. He practiced the cadences, the half-time show, and all the other licks that get played during the game. He performed "up-to-snuff" at Friday's band rehearsal and marched during the game. I'm glad he got to experience the exhiliration that goes into preparing and pulling off a half-time show performance, particularly in a competitive band. My college band was disciplined, but a lot more laid-back than my high school band (which competed). I have to admit that I was one of those band kids that got carried away sometimes because of all the competition. It was one of the most important things in my life back then. And I think it taught me an important lesson, that passion and practice often make you better--whether it's as a musician, a teacher, a manager, a coach, or a librarian.

Anyways, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has their own web page about the experience, check it out. Hopefully this will help the campaign for music education nationwide. I'll be back to link some more to this post later.

Onto blue highways

2005-08-23T07:40:00.000-04:00

As I will be traveling today, I invite you to take a look at this road less traveled:

The Trans-Labrador Highway (Quebec, Labrador)

New recording of original Sondheim demos

2005-08-21T21:12:00.000-04:00

Because this blog deals with sound recordings, I'm going to be doing some selective reviews when I encounter albums that *pop* out at me. Besides, I'm in this business for the music and the chance to listen to recordings, not just catalog and preserve them. While I was perusing a local book and music superchain store today, I listened to a good bit of this record:

Sondheim, Stephen. Sondheim Sings Vol. 1, 1962-72. Stephen Sondheim, piano and vocals. P.S. Classics PS9529, p2005. Compact disc.

Contents:
Love Is In The Air
Pretty Little Picture
Truly Content
Multitudes Of Amys
Miracle Song
The Lame, The Halt And The Blind
The Glamorous Life
Everybody Ought To Have A Maid
Invocation
Don't Look At Me
Pleasant Little Kingdom
Everybody Says Don't
Losing My Mind
Broadway Baby
Anyone Can Whistle
A Hero Is Coming
No, Mary Ann
Marry Me A Little
Send In The Clowns

Sondheim Sings is a compilation of previously unreleased demos of Stephen Sondheim singing and playing songs from his many shows, some popular and some obscure. Although Sondheim's voice is not the main artistic attraction here, this album is a living testament to what this composer does for his livelihood. On many tracks he half-sings, half-directs the characters and their actions. This is most effective in his performance of "The Glamorous Life" from A Little Night Music. There are also some songs that never made it onto a cast album before (to my knowledge), including "A Multitude of Amys" from Company. I also found his rendition of "Love is in the Air" quite charming, and am very sorry I've never heard the Invocation (from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) before.

No, his voice may not be great, but he can sing well enough to convey what his songs are supposed to sound like. It's always a pleasure when this sort of raw audio hits the commercial market, because you get to see the process a lot clearer. Or should I say, "art isn't easy." If you enjoy unrehearsed, unproduced archival recordings [i.e. the real thing], you'll find this album a real treat.

Why preservation is important

2005-08-21T00:22:00.000-04:00

During my downtime, I'm reading two books which I think tie in very well to the world of librarianship and information science. The first one, which I'll talk about tomorrow, is by Jeff Hawkins (with Sandra Blakeslee), and is titled On Intelligence (New York: Owl Books, c2004).

The second one, which I've just started to thumb through, is Nicholas A. Brisbanes' A Splendor of Letters: The Permanence of Books in an Impermanent World (New York: Harper Collins, 2003).

In the preface (xiii-xviii), Brisbanes uses some striking examples and references to the power of the written word, from the film Annie Hall to the runes of Pompeii to a granite slab unearthed in the discovery of the sunken Egyptian city of Herakoleion (Thonis) and Caonpus, to a message in a bottle which had traveled from the Azores to Cape Cod over the period of 31 years.

Brisbanes notes that in human achivement there is an "innate desire we all have to pass on a record of what we have accomplished to the next posterity." I've always thought of writing, performing, composing, or creating (in a more general sense) as a giving of oneself away. This sharing might be ephemeral, but in a more universal sense it is the giving and receiving of creative endeavors is what makes us human. Or as Glinda (from the current hit musical Wicked) sings: "Because I knew you, I have been changed for good."

He further states that of all the forms of cultural heritage (jewelry, pottery, art) which were found in the salvage of the city of Thonis, that the discovery of a granite slab inscribed with text relating to Greek-Egyptian trade practices is the most illuminating of all. French maritime archaeologist Franck Goddio felt that this exploratory group "had made direct contact with the ancient world." This has been my experience as well, even with recordings of the last century. I remember listening in my American Music class in college listening to Folkways recordings of Native American, Sacred Harp, and other styles of music that I would have never encountered, save for that listening assignment. While I was only generations removed, because I was listening to these old songs and ancient voices, I bore witness to them.

The message-in-a-bottle tale somehow struck me the most though, as it did Brisbanes. He found great contemporary relevancy in this "fragile carrier of information making its way across a vast ocean." How like the current state of our electronic online documents, which sit on servers doomed to obsolescence and neglect. The written word has survived for thousands of years because of its carrier--paper. If only the spoken word and the musical documents of the late 19th-early 21st centuries would fare as long! If Egyptian tariff documents can bear witness to a lost culture, how can we as preservationists, archivists, and librarians ensure that a sample of our audio heritage will speak to those who unearth our remains. That is the challenge and the crux of our work.

New name for blog

2005-08-19T20:19:00.000-04:00

You've probably noticed that I've changed the name of my blog to reflect my graduated status! (M.L.S., August 2005). It's now got the name: "Audio Librarian : From Analog to Digital and Back." You can tell I've been in academia for awhile, because of the subtitle. I have a few weeks to go before I start my new job, so I will probably tinker around with this forum, so expect some changes.

The URL will not change for the forseeable future, until I can find a way to move everything and let people know.

FYI: I still have content from my film and video preservation class available at my recently defunct Preserving Video blog.

Thanks to Pete (Sampo) for his mention of this blog recently. It's given me inspiration to keep it running.

For all you Slizzards (God, I hate that term) out there, be sure to check out IU's Digital Library Brownbag Series. I learned a lot at them last year.

Another Audio Preservation Blog

2005-08-19T20:01:00.000-04:00

I'm happy to see another audio preservation blog out there--and by a professional no less! Run by Gilad Radner, Systems Integrator of Media Matters, LLC in New York, here's...

DAVA : Digital Audiovisual Archiving

A blog focused on the digital transformation and preservation of audiovisual material.

If you're on the ARSC or AMIA lists you probably know about this already, if not...sign up now.

Got a job!

2005-08-10T14:58:00.000-04:00

Just a note that all my interning has paid off. I was offered a temporary position at the Library of Congress in the Recorded Sound Section of MBRS (which stands for Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound). I'll be working in the preservation lab working with digital audio files. I'll have the very sexy title of "Processing Technician." Oh well, it's a job--and one that could lead to a permanent one here next year.

YAY! A government job!

All the best,
Thom

Art, sound, and media

2005-06-02T14:24:00.000-04:00

Terry Teachout (who writes the blog, About Last Night) writes in an article called "Culture in the Age of Blogging":

Clement Greenberg, the great art critic, believed “that in the long run there are only two kinds of art: the good and the bad. This difference cuts across all other differences in art. At the same time, it makes all art one. . . .” We feel the same way, which is why we write about so many different things. We think many people—maybe most—approach art with a similarly wide-ranging appreciation.

Teachout's blog is not just about music or theatre, or any other one type of art form. In music, Duke Ellington (as regularly quoted by Peter Schickele) said that "if it sounds good, it is good." I wouldn't go that far, but I've come a long way in the last couple of years in believing that all musics and representation of culture is inherently good or bad because of the genre in which they perform. Originality comes in surprising packages, and often in unfamiliar places.

Likewise, the task of choosing what recordings we are going to preserve for the long-term matters tremendously. All genres have their support groups, but they're not represented by an appropriate archive. One of my challenges as someone in interested in the preservation and access of audio heritage is in recognizing those unique materials which document the sights, sounds, and details of our past. It's one part curatorship, one part archivist, and one part artist. Now, if we could just get more artists to recognize that sound archives can have an important role to play in their art--whether it's for storage or for inspiring them to create from the music of the past.

Girl Scouts and the new sound of silence

2005-05-20T09:36:00.000-04:00

As if it wasn't hard to enough to get kids hooked on making music, the performing rights organization ASCAP goes after the Girl Scouts and orders them to start collecting fees or face penalties and jail times. Check out this article.

UPDATE: As my friend Mona points out, this article is from 1996. She said they settled for a $1.00 per camp or something like that. But still...

It's official!

2005-05-17T17:26:00.000-04:00

I can finally announce that I'll be spending the summer working for the Library of Congress as a Junior Fellow Summer Intern in the Division of Recorded Sound doing cataloging. And I have a place to live too!