Cultivate Music Appreciation Among Children

Music appreciation is a universal language, one that crosses barriers of race, age, gender, and social class. Cultivating an appreciation of music among children is especially important, as making and listening to music can enhance and promote language development, coordination, creativity, and social skills, as well as cultivate a better understanding of one's history and culture. Indeed, much of a culture's ideals and heritage are embodied and preserved in its songs and music.
Yet despite the important role music can play in children's development and education, it is often afforded little or no place in the curriculum, especially in areas of the world where funds, facilities, and personnel to teach even basic subjects, such as mathematics, reading, and writing, may be lacking, or where budget cutbacks have eliminated music appreciation programs. In many such cases, it is up to dedicated volunteers to help bring music appreciation and the magic of music making to children.
Young people are naturally drawn to music, and this attraction can also help them learn other subjects. Music has been proven to help develop parts of the brain that are used for academic work, for example, such as math and reading. Exposure to music can also significantly enhance children's spatial reasoning, logic, and sensory motor skills. And it rarely takes long for children to move and dance with the music they hear or make themselves. Such a response heights their appreciation of music and provides them with physical exercise as well.
Music appreciation does not have to be a costly endeavor. In fact, with a little imagination – and children are often masters at imagination – musical "instruments" can be created from everyday materials: dried gourds and seeds can become rattles, empty boxes and hollow logs can become drums, and metal lids are transformed into cymbals. The voice is a natural instrument, and children can be taught music appreciation through singing traditional songs as well as making up their own melodies.

Works Cited:

Mitchell, Deborah. "Cultivate Music Appreciation Among Children." http://www.charityguide.org/. 29 July 2009

Why Should Anyone Study Music?

Why do we study music in schools? Isn’t it enough to know what you like? Why is it important to know anything about Bach, Beethoven, or Dizzy Gillespie? Who cares what a fugue is? They never play a fugue on my radio station, do they? And why can’t they make up their minds about who wrote which symphony? If Haydn wrote more than a hundred of them and Mozart wrote more than forty, how did Beethoven write the Ninth Symphony after they were both dead? Why teach someone to be a musician? If someone wants to be a musician, all he or she really needs to do is learn a couple of chords and swear a lot. Good looks and a choreographer wouldn’t hurt, but music schools don’t teach those things. Speaking of music schools, why would anyone choose music as a college major? Hardly anyone makes a living playing piano or trumpet anymore. What else can you do with a music degree, other than teach? The answer to that final question is probably the easiest to provide. Music majors at UAH earn a Liberal Arts degree, which qualifies them for numerous music and non-music careers. Specifically, UAH music graduates are currently pursuing careers in performance, education, retail music, arts administration, music therapy, software engineering, recording engineering, church music, radio, banking, insurance, etc.

Works Cited: Bowyer, Don. "Why Study Music?." www.uah.edu 27 July 2009http://www.uah.edu/music.whymusic.html>

Music Quotes

The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, “Is there a meaning to music?” My answer would be “Yes.” And “Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?” My answer to that would be, “No.” ~Aaron Copland

Here are some quotes stating what music is. The idea about what music is to one person has already been discussed but the importance of how and what the meaning of music is to a person cannot be stressed enough. Some people may not know how to say what they feel the meaning of music is so they can speak through what others have said in relation to how they feel.

If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music. ~Gustav Mahler

It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature and everlasting beauty of monotony. ~Benjamin Britten

Music can change the world because it can change people. ~Bono

Music happens to be an art form that transcends language. ~Herbie Hancock

Music is higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. ~Ludwig van Beethoven

Music should be your escape. ~Missy Elliot

One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain. ~Bob Marley

Works Cited: Music Quotes @ www.brainyquote.com

Mixing Techniques

What is mixing anyway? If you're in a recording studio mixing an album, or feeding the sound to a video tape or to an audio cassette for example, then you are performing a sound reproduction task. If you are mixing the sound for a P.A. system, then you are performing a sound reinforcement task.

Sherman Keene suggests in his book, Practical Techniques for the Recording Engineer, that there are eight properties to a good mix which are as follows:
1. Powerful and solid lows2. Proper use of the very powerful mid range areas3. Clear and clean highs4. Proper but not overburdening effects5. Dimension - some sense of depth6. Motion - movement of the instruments using pans to heighten the music7. At least one true stereo track (e.g., strings, piano, hopefully something used "up front" in the mix)8. Some acoustic information - not just delays and reverb
Although his comments are directed at doing an album mix, they are true for a sound reinforcement mix as well. Only six and seven are slightly irrelevant for our typically mono sounds systems. If you sit down with this list in front of you and listen to a few of your favorite albums, what he is trying to say will begin to sink in. Then the concept can be applied to your own approach to your mix.

The best mixing engineer is often a musician. This is primarily because a musician knows what to listen for. He has spent years developing this sense. One way to look at it is that you are constantly shaping the overall dynamics of the music.

So is mixed music original, if so in what way?

Taipale, Curt. “Music Techniques.” www.churchsoundcheck.com. 1988. 27 July 2009

Music, Mind & Meaning

Why do we like music? Our culture immerses us in it for hours each day, and everyone knows how it touches our emotions, but few think of how music touches other kinds of thought. It is astonishing how little curiosity we have about so pervasive an "environmental" influence. What might we discover if we were to study musical thinking?

Have we the tools for such work? Years ago, when science still feared meaning, the new field of research called 'Artificial Intelligence' started to supply new ideas about "representation of knowledge" that I'll use here. Are such ideas too alien for anything so subjective and irrational, aesthetic, and emotional as music? Not at all. I think the problems are the same and those distinctions wrongly drawn: only the surface of reason is rational. I don't mean that understanding emotion is easy, only that understanding reason is probably harder. Our culture has a universal myth in which we see emotion as more complex and obscure than intellect. Indeed, emotion might be "deeper" in some sense of prior evolution, but this need not make it harder to understand; in fact, I think today we actually know much more about emotion than about reason.

It has become taboo for music theorists to ask why we like what we like: our seekers have forgotten what they are searching for. To be sure, we can't account for tastes, in general, because people have various preferences. But this means only that we have to find the causes of this diversity of tastes, and this in turn means we must see that music theory is not only about music, but about how people process it. To understand any art, we must look below its surface into the psychological details of its creation and absorption.

Works Cited:

Minsky, Marvin. "Music, Mind, and Meaning."web.media.mit.edu. 1981. 27 July 2009

Musical Recording at Sweetcreek Studios

Music is a ubiquitous omnipresent force coursing throughout the world. Collectively the world composes the grandest and most diverse symphony, but within are small and unique songs, gifted musicians and extraordinary instruments, all of which are precious gems we have the honor to record and later hear again. Last week I had the opportunity to spend an afternoon at my friend’s recording studio, Sweetcreek Studios in Ottsville, Pa. In 1997 they began mixing analog tapes, reel to reel time. In 2005, they’ve become a Digital recording studio where all sound is managed in computer based files. The next few posts will hopefully shed light and bring awareness on present audio recording!
Sweetcreekstudios.com

Recording Environment

They have created a superb recording environment at Sweetcreek, also a very chill place to hang out and listen to music! It’s size, not warehouse where sound gets lost, but high ceilings and a large open room to provide natural acoustics. The high ceiling captures sound height and depth and the wooden floor gives off a notably warmer tone. Cushions and foam pieces are placed throughout the rooms to either absorb or reflect specific sounds. Instruments are scattered throughout the studio: organ, piano, drums, but “the best bands bring their own.”

Basic Tracking of Record

The recording process would differ depending on the type of music being played. A singer and acoustic guitarist would simply come, play and record. A 2 or 3 piece jazz, folk or bluegrass band would come and jam with sporadic microphones to pick up the live experience of their music. We are going to follow the more complicated recording process of the Rock Band.
The band recording process would begin by the band bringing and setting up their instruments: drum kit, bass, guitars, amplifiers, etc… The guitar’s amplifiers get put in and recorded from an “iso booth” to isolate the sound so it doesn’t bleed.


Next you’d set necessary microphones up to every instrument, even every different kick drum and snare. Here’s where you’d say “testing… (tap tap) 1, 2, 1, 2,” you must get the microphones levels checked. All musicians would now be playing with headphones on, adjusted to musicians needs, only what they care to be hearing. The drummer hears a metronome, a steady tapping to keep time. To the computer goes the drum, bass and guitar sounds as separate components to later fix any mistakes. Most of the time it takes about 6 or 7 takes of a song, once the band is satisfied they’d move on to the next until all tracks are laid.

The Final Tracking, Mixing and Mastering of a Record

Once the basic tracking has been laid, you move onto final tracking, Mixing, and finally the Mastering. Final tracking is where you add dub guitars, audio clips, tambourines or shakers and then finally vocals are recorded and integrated. Mixing is when the mixer adjusts what the listener will actually hear from their stereo, bringing it to record quality. They are adjusting levels here and EQing (equalizing). All tracks are added onto one stereo track: Left and Right. Compressing is the last task, you’re regulating volumes so you can hear everything, softer sounds just as well as the loud.



Here are levels, notice all are in the green...

For Mixing and Mastering it is best to have separate people, fresh sets of ears. Some bands even go to entirely different recording studios. Mastering is tedious; here you mess with song order, gaps between fades, song fades and take a final EQ.

If everything is a go, the record is written.

Other Audio Recording

Audio recording is more than simply records for artists. At Sweetcreek Studios they do audio restoration of old records. Work for lawyers, for example bring a taped harassing phone call to court room quality. The more boring medium of commercial voice overs. They do sound and live recording at shows or festivals, recently were at Tinicum Arts Festival. They set up speakers, amplifiers, microphones, cords and sound boards. “Their playing, we’re mixing, audience is hearing… all kind of happens on the fly.”

Sweetcreek Studios

Here is a short clip from Sweetcreek Studios that day, they are drum dubbing. Notice the software is ProTools, which is current editing software used in most digital recording studios.
Sorry about my amateur video capture!

Music in Video Games

Guitar Hero hit creating a cultural phenomenon. The video game sensationally has people who once wouldn’t think to pick up an instrument, now through their video games simulating just that. To a wide array of popular music, the player simulates the playing of guitar with a hand held device. It takes coordination matching notes from screen to the color coded frets of the guitar. Meanwhile you must keep rhythm and strum. Rock Band takes this a step further adding also drums and vocals. “The series has sold more than 25 million units worldwide, earning US$2 billion at retail, claimed by Activision to be the 3rd largest game franchise after the Mario and Madden NFL franchises”- wikipedia

Another musically influenced video game is Dance Dance Revolution. The player stands on a dance platform and while watching sequences of arrows, tries to dance and hit the corresponding arrows on the mat under the feet.
http://www.seriousgamessource.com/features/DDR.jpg

Turntable

The turntable is a fascinating instrument. It is often used in hip hop and other music, sometimes sampling or mixing works of other musicians. This could be paying homage or criticizing.



Here’s a comparison between an Analog and a Digital turntable. In listening to this I was like… hmm. They sound exactly the same?! I was expecting the vinyl to sound more authentic and the digital to sound clearer. Here is an interesting thing in technology when instead of improving sound; they are trying to keep it the same as the original.

I was having fun with this old school scratch interaction...
http://www.turntables.de/turntables99/enter.htm

Music Today vs. the Past

"Also known as the Age of Technology, 20th Century Music took full advantage of new technologies as they became available. Not constricted by rules of the classical period, composers had the stylistic freedom to write however they pleased." Music in the past had a distinct and unique sound specific to that time period. For example, the use of the piano dominated classical music which gave the name to the Classical era. The same applies to other eras of music history. The new advancements that were discovered at that time is what was popular. However, things are quite different today. We have had an enormous amount of technological advancements in the 20th century and so as a result we have many different categories of music; pop, rap, hip-hop, jazz, rock and many more. Never before in history was there such a wide selection of music. We have come a long way since medieval times and with all the choices we have today, we begin to wonder: what more could the future possibly bring?

Evolution of Portable Music Players

Music has been around almost as long as humans have been. But perhaps the most quickly advancing aspect of music is that of portable music. From the Walkman to the cassette player to the CD player, which have only been around since the 70's and 80's, we have had many advancements in only 30 years to get to where we are today. The first i-pods were mind blowing and they continue to get smaller and hold more music. "The original iPod, released in 2001 combined a 5GB hard drive with a rechargeable battery pack and a paradigm breaking user interface. Marketed by Steve Jobs as “1000 songs in your pocket,” the iPod didn’t necessarily do that much differently under the hood from other MP3 players, but it had a sleek design (by 2001 standards), a unique and simple navigational system, and the Apple brand name to back it all up...With their one-two punch of form and function, Apple continues to dominates the portable music player market today. Over the years Apple has continued to release a plethora of new iPod models, including the recent addition of video playback, and the forthcoming iPhone.Only time will tell how portable media players will evolve. With innovations like touchscreens, high definition video playback, wireless streaming, low cost solid state memory and more on the horizon, the first 50 years was just the beginning."

The First Portable Music Player

In our generation, when we think back to the first portable music players, we more often than not think of CD players or Walkmans. In fact, there were more before that in earlier generations, the first portable came out in the 1950's. "Back in 1954, I.D.E.A. released the very first portable transistor radio. The Regency TR-1 radio measured 3″ x 5″ x 1.25″ and featured an analog AM tuner...The TR-1 tuned stations by a simple gold dial and played through a low-fidelity monophonic speaker. It retailed for $49.95 back in the day, which would make it cost around $325 in today’s dollars." After this, came the Walkman. "Back in the 1970’s and 1980’s Sony was the king of miniaturization, and in 1979, they released the first truly self-contained portable music system, the TPS-L2 Walkman cassette player.The Walkman’s real innovation was its size, measuring only slightly larger than a cassette tape itself. Featuring a pair of portable, lightweight headphones and operating on AA batteries, it ushered in a new era of portability. The original Walkman retailed for 33,000 Japanese Yen, which would be around $274 US dollars today. The Walkman went on to sell millions of units and spawned numerous variations and imitators for many years after its initial release."

The Positive Influence of Music

Music can have a positive impact on learning, health, and wellness.

We know that for most children and many adults, music is a "right-brain" dominant activity. Based upon that, music may be a powerful and perhaps dominant means of facilitating positive and expressive feelings that can be experienced individu­ally and in groups to take them outside themselves.

In other words, music provides a symbolic means of objectifying feelings and emotions, which then can be dealt with. Music-making can be an emotionally cathartic experience, as feelings which are often "bottled-up", sometimes due to lack of words to identify and describe them, are released through music. After music-making, we often hear musicians, young and old, com­menting that they feel better, energized, and renewed.

UP: Music has the wonderful ability to lift UP spirits. Parades, pep rallies, school socials, church services, concerts, radio and television, and recordings are examples of situations and pro­cesses through which most of us have experience our moods, emotions, and feelings being lifted. There are both psychological and physiological explanations for why and how music can and should be used for this purpose during a stressful time.

As music stimulates creative and imaginative thinking linked with positive emotional feelings, individuals experience a transformation or transition of being lifted UP from mundane concerns. When these are the result of music experiences that produce what psychologist Abraham Maslow termed "peak experiences", there is a temporary sense of being lifted UP beyond the limitations of normal time-space constraints, often resulting in a sense of non-linear time and feeling of being "one with the music".

Music can have a positive influence on many aspects of our lives. In a recent release from the American Music Conference, the following 10 Fast Facts were included concerning the impact music can have on learning, health, and wellness.
(1) Music has an obvious impact on the brain and should be supported and encouraged, especially in early childhood education and through­out all stages and ages of learning.
(2) Playing an instrument strength­ens eye-hand coordination and fine motor skills, as well as concentra­tion, memory, and attitude.
(3) Research shows that music training improves spatial-temporal reasoning in preschool children. which is necessary for learning math and science, as well as other subjects.
(4) A recent study showed that a curriculum combining piano lessons, educational math software, and fun math problems, helped second graders achieve scores on advanced math concepts and Stanford 9 math scores comparable to those of fourth graders.
(5) Students who make music have been shown to get along better with classmates and have fewer disci­pline problems.
(6) Young people who are involved in making music in their teenage years score 100 points higher on the SAT's than those who don't play music.
(7) Senior citizens who are actively involved in music-making enjoy significant health benefits. For example, studies show that music activates the cerebellum and therefore may aid stroke victims in regaining language capabilities.
(8) Many of the challenges that plague older Americans appear to respond positively to active music­ making. For example, scientific studies show improvements in the brain chemistry of people suffering from Alzheimer's Disease.
(9) Studies show that older Ameri­cans who are actively involved in music-making show improvements in anxiety, loneliness, and depres­sion-three factors that are critical in coping with stress, stimulating the immune system, and improving health.
(10) A breakthrough study demon­strated that group keyboard lessons given to older Americans had a significant effect on increasing levels of human growth hormone (HGH), which is implicated in such aging phenomena as osteoporosis, energy levels, wrinkling, sexual function, muscle mass, and aches and pains.

Harvey, Arthur Dr. "Musical Inspirations: The Positive Influence of Music." musicalinspirations.com. 10 July 2009 <http://musicalinspirations.com/data/html/music-for-health-services/85.cgi>.

Pop Music Today

Today, pop music is identified by teen artists such as Britney Spears and `NSync, yet it encompasses an enormous variety of different styles of music.

Lee Austin, a disc jockey at radio station 93.7 in Houston, said today's music contains a healthy mix of many different genres.

"Pop today is an amalgam of many different formats," Austin said. "A radio station can play an artist like Staind and go right into Britney Spears. You have rap, R&B, hip-hop and rock all occupying pop music, resulting in more diversity on the charts than there has ever been."

While pop music today is diverse, some people argue that it lacks depth and sincerity.
"Pop music is very generic," said Jeff Cassidy, a sophomore business major. "You just take a catchy base rhythm and add some uncreative country lyrics and there is your next million-dollar single."

Recent studies suggest that the average American youth spends four to five hours per day listening to music. Music is believed to influence anything from a person's grades to a teenager's perception of sex and violence.

Many music critics seem to feel the current teeny-bopper trend is ending. Lagging concert attendance and an older, more sophisticated fanbase seems to indicate that a new type of pop may be emerging.

Ross Huchinson, a junior biological systems major, said it is about time for a change in pop.
"I think the pop music of today is catchy for the time being, but as the teenagers grow up, they don't want to listen to the same stuff," Hutchinson said. "There is a constant recycling of popular tastes, and I think the Backstreet Boys have just about run their course."

Travis Lyons, a writer and TV producer, said the attitude surrounding the recent tragedy of Sept. 11 of self realization and peace will dominate the music scene for the next few years.

"The recent world events will cause artists to reflect on themselves and our day-to-day existential concerns resulting in a more heartfelt and individualistic sound, reminiscent of the rock and folk music of the late '60s and early '70s," Lyons said.

Proesch, Micala. "Music Style Has Evolved Through the Tears and is Still Changing Today." media.www.thebatt.com. 5 Oct. 2001. 10 July 2009<http://media.www.thebatt.com/media/storage/paper657/news/2001/10/05/AggieLife/The-Music.Style.Has.Evolved.Through.The.Years.And.Is.Still.Changing.Today-515927.shtml>

Zune Launched by Microsoft

20th century bore witness to a music revolution. Zune is the new music and entertainment project from Microsoft. It was created with the spirit of communication in mind. Microsoft feels that entertainment should be based on shared, connected experience. A social experience.

Wireless Technology=Spontaneous Sharing

Unlike other digital music players on the market today, Zune features wireless technology that enables friends to spontaneously share full-length sample tracks of select songs, homemade recordings, playlists or pictures among their Zune devices. The full tracks of these songs can be listened to up to three times over three days, and, if the recipient enjoys the song she hears and wishes to buy it, she can flag it on her device and easily purchase it from the Zune Marketplace, which features over 2 million songs. A consumer has the choice between downloading individual songs and "Zune Pass" subscription plans. This is especially attractive for the MySpace generation, who frequently use the power of community to share common interests and promote social networking.

“Music comes from social places,” Matt Jubelirer, Zune product manager, explained at today's preview event. “But over the years, it started to become an isolated experience – people would listen with their headphones but not talk to the people around them. We wanted to add the social back into entertainment.”

Microsoft & Newsboard."Microsoft Launches Zune this Week."www.musreview.com.13 Nov. 2006. 10 July 2009.