Category: .

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAvmLDkAgAM">From this day&#8230;</a>

I just got a new book on web development: The Substance of Style, by Virginia Postrel. One of the cover blurbs describes it as an analysis of a major new phenemenon: that people care more about how stuff looks.

To me this a book about the role of looks in software development. What is the value of looks to a user? How do I manage the tradeoffs between usability and style?

In the back of mind what I’m thinking about is Apple’s natural instinct for graphics, and the way they pushed the state of the developers’ art beyond Jakob Neilsen. Given that nothing ever ever ever trumps usability, and that excessive design always always repels users, how does Apple manage the balance so much better than other developers?

I’m listening to a worthy mix MP3 titled A Deeper Groove, courtesy of a site called deepgoa. So far it’s a great list for getting me into the groove of work.

(MP3)

Key points about the state of the music publishing business, gleaned from an excellent blog entry by Eric Beall:

Mechanical royalties take 2-4 years to get paid, so the apparent health of the business is deceptive in that it doesn’t yet reflect reductions in CD sales over the past few years. Mechanical losses *are* kicking in, though: The mechanical income that a publisher earned in 2007 was largely based on CDs sold in 2004 or 2005. Because of this, the publishing industry will always have a delayed reaction. If a bomb drops on record company profits this year, the explosion will be heard in the publishing business two to three years later. It appears that this year, there is the rumble of something about to go boom.

What about areas of growth? The other streams of income that keep publishers and songwriters afloat are actually rising, in many cases, enough to keep the overall budget numbers looking pretty placid. Sure, Warner Chappell’s mechanical income dropped. But the same report shows that their performance revenue jumped 7.9 percent, synchronization revenues climbed 6.3% and digital revenues also gained. That same week, BMI announced that they collected a record –breaking payout of $786 million this year, an eight percent jump over the previous year.

The new revenue streams emphasize hits more than ever: “hit” songs matter more today than ever before. Popular singles are the songs that will get played on the radio, on television, and in restaurants, bars and wedding halls. Consequently, the bulk of the money paid out by BMI and ASCAP goes to chart-topping “hit” songs. Very quickly, the whole industry is beginning to reflect the country music market, in which having a radio hit is all-important when it comes to earning significant income.

Except with revenue streams for soundtrack-style uses: “sync”- ability is the other key to cashing in. Songs that will work for advertising, television, movies or video games are far more valuable than generic album cuts on pop records. This gives a high value to certain styles, like electronica or alternative rock, which might not correspond with the level of CD sales in that particular genre.

Embedded player for the new David Byrne + Briane Eno album:

Byrne’s comment on the site:

For the most part, Brian did the music and I wrote some tunes, words and sang.

I like this music.

When I first listened to this via the embedded player I had a hard time getting over my distrust of David Byrne’s post-peak output. Eno’s 70s releases are lifetime favorites for me, and I have a lot of respect for earlier Talking Heads, but Byrne’s stuff in the last 10-15 years is cringeworthy. I’ve gotten to like Byrne’s blogging, though, so this has redeemed him enough for me to be open to his new music.

So I gave this a long listen, going around the whole CD twice with headphone on. As you’d expect from Eno, it’s sonically delicious. It’s mainly warm and organic in the style of these guys’ later work, rather than cool and deliberately stiff in their early styles; IMO that’s a loss, but you can’t go back and doing what you really feel is always the right thing. Still, I’d have loved to hear Robert Fripp’s guitar. Eno’s vocals are strained in a bad way, Byrne’s are strained in a good way. The only spots that fall flat are when Eno is singing.

The packaging and presentation are user-friendly. For example there are FLAC files. I found myself rooting for them.

Lots of great stuff in this interview with gurdonark:

I do not see patents and copyrights per se as an unworkable situation. I do oppose artificial term extensions. Yet I am perfectly comfortable with reasonable protections for artists and innovators.

I favor the “velvet revolution” of voluntary contribution of works into the public domain and the Creative Commons. I believe that the easiest way to create a framework for the collaboration that digital culture will demand is not the eternal fight between silly DRM and needless kids-pirating-Britney. Instead, artists in music, software, literature, photography and science will create for public use a new “sharing culture” of ideas and expressions.

in my world, music and the arts will no longer tread this tiring bright line between artistic “haves” who are business “have nots” and business “haves” who are artistic “have nots”. This new world will involve people who work day jobs and play music at night. It will involve people who run their music as a business, and not as a way to get “a big record deal”. A new parlor music is arriving, and we’ll share songs in the way we read one another’s weblog posts.

I get bored with people who illegally download from the majors because it’s so unimaginative. There are worlds of truly creative people out there, on netlabels, on websites, and among us. Why give legitimacy to poorly-chosen music aimed at our lowest common denominator?

I prefer to use shareware and freeware [for making music]. Because I am so fond of the music of Marco Raaphorst, a Reason-master, I did buy Reason 3.0, but a year or two later, I finally gave it, unopened, to a pianist friend to use.

Whether I am a creator or a listener, a melody “fits” for me when it conveys a bit of an emotion or an idea — not with a direct “this is this and this is that” of a wonderful Motown song, but with the sense of ambiance or whimsy that fits my notions. I love the way I can listen to Jamendo artist Henri Petterson, for example, and be transported to a downtempo yet cheerful sophisticated Europe of my dreams, or the way that the netlabel artist Cagey House can envelope the listener with a quirky, upbeat bit of instrumental fun — a kind of new Americana world of familiar sounds, all strange and wonderful. I love the way that great jazz bands often come from Scandinavia or Japan, because people take these wonderful ideas and re-interpret them from an outsider place, to the delight of all.

Netlabel owners came to understand that once the whole “make me a star and make me rich” element is removed from the equation, incredible shared experiences between artists, label and listener can result.

But imagine if music were a weblog post — a thing one shares like one shares an essay or a poem or a personal note or a flickr image. Marco Raaphorst writes soundimages (klankbeelds) — simple free downloads which soundtrack still images. Vlog artists eschew video-as-movie-madness for video-as-weblog.We as music makers can begin to see our work as ways of achieving inter-connection, rather than as ways to get record deals.

Courtesy of the internet archive, here’s one of Marco Raaphorst’s klankbeelds:

And here’s a Short experimental voodle featuring a fine flock of ambiguous furniture with beautiful music by gurdonark:

There are now about ten third party recordings of “Offend Maggie” up on CASH Music, and most of them *aren’t electronic*. These are live bands which took the trouble to do a killer version of a brand new and fairly hard song.

I especially like Matthew Walker’s fast prog-rock version with a full band.

Jack Hasselbring’s Arrangement for 2nd or 3rd year band (Grade 1.5 – 2) is also way cool. From his page for the project:

My experience with younger bands has taught me to arrange sparsely, with little “clutter”, so the three parts of the arrangement translated nicely to a beginning band arrangement. My primary considerations were playability and fun. The more complex rhythms of the piece would be difficult for 5th or 6th graders to read, but they would do fine if taught them “by rote”. Some of the low brass parts are a bit difficult – trombone uses 7th position unless a trigger is used. The xylophone and bell parts are important, so substitutions would be needed if they aren’t available. Enjoy!

It’s really special and unique that this is net-native Creative Commons music played on live instruments.

Most net-native music is electronic, I think because of how easy and cheap it is to use computers to make music. As soon as you touch a mic the amount of trouble goes way up, and if you need a whole band recorded then it’s not even feasible for most people to find the players, much less do a studio session. So electronic music is becoming dominant in the current generation because of the favorable economics.

But with all of these Offend Maggie versions the situation is reversed. What happened? The difference is writing out the music, which enables skilled players to perform a new piece with a bare minimum of work. Not many people can read music, but the productivity of people who can read approaches the productivity of computer musicians. And it’s significant that the live versions, like aaron novik’s moody stack of bass clarinets are mainly solo multi-track recordings.