The loudness war is such a conflicting issue for me as a music listener.  The elitist, hipster inside believes the loudness war is detrimental to music, but the average modern listener inside believes the loudness war is perfectly fine.  On one hand, the loudness war takes all dynamics out of music.  When a song starts off with a slow, quiet piano and progresses into this large, loud piece of music, on a modern record, the quiet piano will actually be just about as loud as the large body of music that was the product at the end of the song.  Years ago, a piece that started off quiet would actually be quieter than the loudest parts of the song.  Dynamics were much more involved and necessary to create music back in the early and mid 1900’s than they are now.  Today, people want loud, in your face, bumping music.  Music is much more dedicated to the casual listener who wants to party or have some kind of noise on in the background of doing homework or chores around the house.  Music of today has no dynamics and because of that people are able to casually listen to music rather than focus intently on it.  Music from the 1900’s needed intent listening to hear all the instruments being played and the intricacies of each song.  Overall I do not think this is something that is bad for music.  Each style, dynamics or no dynamics, fit the time of that era.  Years ago, dynamics in music was necessary and expected.  Today, people do not want that and we have moved on from dynamics to casual listening.  Casual listening fits the times and it seems that it is the best thing for society today.

The position on paying for music is a conflicting one for society.  Maybe not for the average person as some pay for music and some do not and there are some who are a mix of both.  Seems similar to white hats and black hats within the hacking community and then there being gray hats who are a mix of white and black hats.  Those who torrent music may do so because they do not view spending money on music as useless.  There are multiple reasons for this mindset, though.  Some people find torrenting so convenient that they do not feel the need to drive to the store to buy a CD or they find it inconvenient to plug in credit card information to pay for the album on iTunes or to do the same for Spotify.  Some people see that the record industry takes most of the money any artist would make off an album sale and they do not feel it is right to support that kind of business model.  The only issue with this is that record labels in the future will be able to charge people for each play of a song because of an inaudible signal in every music file, such as what was discussed in class.  Labels have always been greedy, thieving companies and now they are trying to charge listeners for every listen of a song even after the initial purchase.  This business model is so similar to rentals rather than actual music owning.  People will no longer own their music, they will always be streaming and always paying for each stream.  This will absolutely be detrimental to the music industry as people will not be willing to pay for music and will download illegal music files instead of the legal ones that they will be charged for with each listen.  In this sense, artists will only gain money from their concerts and merchandise, which many of them do that already but without funding record labels, tour promotions and recording funding will all go downhill.  This may actually turn out to be something beneficial to the music industry after all.  This will put the weight of tour promoting and recording costs on the artists themselves.  It will put more stress on these bands and artists but hopefully it will make artists more free to do what they please with who they tour with and what kind of music they make and how that music is released.

Music has always been saturated in politics and it continues to be that way.  It seems today music politics surround the idea of corruption within politicians and the government.  It feels like this ideal has been spilled over from Rock and Punk because those genres were very vocal during their times about rebelling against society and the government.  Further in the past feels more like music was saturated with politics but in an unaware way.  Unaware in the sense that music was pushing political corruption instead of rebelling against it.  Cultural appropriation being the political agenda of the times.  Minstrelsy was appropriating by saying that black art forms are okay to enjoy, even though those art forms were twisted and demented to push the agenda that it is okay to enjoy those art forms but not be too closely associated with them.  I mean this as in America found those art forms to be enjoyable but could not be seen to truly enjoy them and say those art forms are okay to enjoy without taking it a bit satirically.  This can be seen in how white people took the music portion but dressed up in ridiculous outfits and face paint to exaggerate black people in how they look and act.  To add to this, Elvis Presley can definitely be seen as appropriating.  It is so absurd to me that he can be seen as one of the greatest musicians of all time when he took black music to use for himself as profit.  This does not seem like too much of a reach to me as he was quoted to say black people are only good for shining his shoes.  That feels very obvious to me that he heard early Blues music and created it to make money off of it.  America was right along with him in this agenda.  Once Elvis started to put out music, Blues blew up as a huge genre with Elvis being the person to make the genre become huge.  America could not enjoy Blues when it was a black art form but when Elvis started releasing music, it was suddenly okay to enjoy and people acted as if he was the first to do such a thing.  Elvis truly exploited the music for personal gain and he was the puppet master of all those who fell into this trap.  All of this may be a blatant assumption but I believe the evidence is there and I think it is plain wrong that he is seen as one of the greatest musicians of all time because of what he has done.  This would be a totally different story if he had adapted the music for his style because he enjoyed the sound and truly wanted to be a part of the genre.  The line between appropriation and enjoyment is a thin one but you have to look at people’s mannerisms and mindsets to determine if that person is appropriating or truly trying to be a piece of a movement, idea or genre.

I do believe that vinyl is the best way to listen to music.  It seems the warmth that comes from vinyl records cannot be replicated through digitally compressed music.  Even music that is uncompressed like FLAC files cannot seem to contain the same warmth that vinyl does.  I do not have much experience with vinyl to be honest but I have heard enough to make a preliminary opinion on the issue.  It is truly amazing what technology can do but at times it seems to make human connection sterile.  From interactions in person to interactions over Snapchat or Twitter, society has changed.  Just like in class it used to be that singers had massive dynamic range in their live shows because they had no microphone to sing into but with the birth of the microphone, singers could sing at a flat volume and the variation in pitch could only be modified by distance from the microphone.  The variation in tone can still be found over a microphone but it is not the same.  This feels so similar to me as music quality because you can listen to a song on vinyl and then listen to the same song on a FLAC file and the vinyl will simply sound better, subjectively.  More work had to be done in the recording process to create certain sounds that can now be done digitally.  Prior to digital music, artists had to work with rooms physically as in placing sound proofing on the walls, creating buildings that have perfect acoustics for recording.  These things can still be useful today but much more can be done with digital editing to create certain effects like reverb or echo whereas in the past a room would have to be designed to create that effect and much more physical effort had to be used to get the same sound.  Is this something that is bad for society?  I do not think so.  I think it is a very visible sign of the times and I do not think society would benefit from returning to that style of music recording because it was something that fit the time years ago.  I believe what society has working now is what needs to be done but there is still something to say about losing that raw, natural warmth from music.

The minstrelsy era is definitely not an era to ignore and it always surprises me when I think about how I never learned of this time in school.  During high school we of course covered slavery and the like but we never covered minstrelsy and I only knew of it because of a class I took in my first year at George Mason.  The politics behind minstrelsy are strange to me in the sense that just within 100 years, society could change so much.  Racism is still alive today but it may not be as in your face as minstrelsy was.  Minstrelsy was blatantly racist and took from African music forms, appropriating the music and exaggerating stereotypes of black people.  It seems that as society progresses, we become much more in tune with the rights of others.  Similar to how we find it atrocious to hit animals such as pets like our dogs or horses.  Years ago this was accepted but that is no longer the case today.  As society progresses it seems we speak up as a people to what is right and what is wrong.  The norms of society change and while I cannot say why exactly, I believe there is a small faction of people in opposition of the way things are done and as time progresses, that faction grows until the majority of society believes what is being said is correct.  It could be that the idea of black face was wrong to some people but no progress was made until those people started talking to others and explaining why black face was wrong.  After talking with others and communicating we begin to become exposed to new ideas and new information.  As we learn more we start to realize what may be acceptable in society and start changing what is acceptable, moving towards a society where we can all enjoy each other without abuse.

Music is something that I have been such a huge fan of my entire life, so when courses such as this one focus on music, it makes the class that much more enjoyable for me. As such, discussing rhythm and displacement of a beat between the one and three counts to the two and four counts is not a new topic for me but always an intriguing one.  I still am fascinated by how much the feel of a song can change when moving the stress of the beat to different counts of the song.  It’s also interesting to me how similar in rhythm jazz and hip hop can be.  I’ve always known the genres share some aspects or influences but never realized, until watching the video of the drummer transforming a jazz beat into a hip hop beat, how similar the rhythm could be between the two genres.  It peaks my curiosity to find out how the two genres came to share such similarities.  Were the original hip hop artists from the early 80’s big jazz fans? Was the rhythmic structure of jazz just something that peaked the interest of those starting hip hop? I’m curious as to why the genres share those similarities.

Moving on we discussed the minstrel shows which were truly disturbing carnival-esque shows depicting and over-exaggerating stereotypes of African Americans.  I really do think there is something true about the theory that whites putting on black face and doing these shows was a way of saying they enjoy the traditional African American music but don’t want to take it too seriously and outright say that the music is acceptable.  So to keep with putting down African Americans but also wanting to perform a certain style of music, people turned the music into a racist and disturbing parody of an entire culture.  Now while these shows were blatantly racist and created offensive caricatures of these people, I’m not sure how it applies to a history of the digital past.  I feel like I’m missing something here, but I’m wondering if the connection will be made soon enough and tie together the pieces for me.  I’m curious to see if the politics behind how minstrelsy came to be and then die off has anything to do with digital progression and a push towards more modern technology.

It’s interesting to me that we discussed the beginnings of the internet in class this week, as it is something I have never put any thought into.  This is probably because myself, and I’m sure many in my generation, take for granted modern technology.  It’s something we use on such a regular basis that we become desensitized to the amazing things we can do with our computers, phones, recording software, etc.  I have never tried to learn anything about how the internet came to be until this class, so you can imagine it was very interesting to find that the first purpose was for scientists doing defense work to be able to communicate with one another.  I never would have expected military reasons to be why the internet started but all in all, it makes perfect sense since communication turned to be much faster.

Another part from this week I find interesting is how countries can make such technological strides when it comes to war.  From analog machines pinpointing targets to bomb, to the United States’ citizens banding together to work directly or indirectly for the war, it seems interesting and strange how war creates such a push for more modern or better technology.  Something about political tension and countries fighting each other bringing about world change is a very curious topic, yet it’s also a point that is to be expected.  Just as was discussed about the Cold War during class, the competition between two countries drove major advancements in society.  Soldiers were no longer expected to just be soldiers.  The GI bill came into effect and pushed soldiers to fight in the war and then return home to get an education and beat Russia on the intellectual front.  Again, I find it very curious and interesting how competitive countries can be when there is political tension, which ends up pushing countries to strive to be better than each other in all aspects.

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