On April 11, 2018, our HIST 390 class talked more about the aspects of sound and the music industry.  Looking back at my notes, it seems like another seemingly clumsy lecture, though compared to the previous one, I feel that there is a bit more of a connection between the two subjects here than meets the eye.  First, there were the aspects about sound.  For starters, amplitude is how loud a certain sound is, though if a victim of auditory masking, then one may not even be able to identify even that.  Auditory masking is the process or natural state of having other sounds cover one’s ability to hear the target signal (the target signal being whatever sound one is supposed to be engaging with at the moment).  In other words, attempting to hear your friend talk while their voice is being drowned out by all of the background noise around you is an example of target signal and the background noise being the example for auditory masking.  It can sometimes get so good that two different sounds could play at the same time, and most people probably wouldn’t even know it!  There can be times when there are definitely two signals, but most people would not even be able to hear two in the first place!  Listening to an orchestra is the perfect example of this as you realize that you cannot honestly hear all of the instruments, but it certainly sounds like you are.  Sound can even be masked before sound even happens due to there being a buffer in your brain that needs at least a second to process what it is hearing and forwarding that information for you to react.

That being said, just how much does the music industry know that the general public does not know?  As most people would not be able to hear the mixture of different sounds and signals, and if we assume that all music producers and writers spend who knows how many hours trying to get their songs just right, then just how do the music industry distribute their plethora of songs?  Well, surprisingly enough, they do it by masking their singer with predictable notes and beats, possibly to draw more attention to the song that they had produced (after all, it is common practice for the song to be made first and the lyrics second, so perhaps that is something that they want to emphasize and show off the most).  That being said, that won’t exactly automatically get people to appreciate or understand all of the intricacies of a song.  In fact, it appears that the general music-listening public has a habit of guiltily loving songs that are objectively horrible, whether these songs are only guilty of having a repetitive and boring beat or if the lyrics themselves are horrifying once you actually take the time to listen to them.  That is where musical pirates and DJs come in.  In a certain point of view, their cutting up and rearranging different sounds of preexisting music can make them out to be bold rebels, spitting in the face of the supposed law in order to emphasize the small and subtle parts of certain songs and put them into the foreground, where their listeners could gain a larger appreciation for.  They could arguably make a popular song more popular, though was that particular argument as truly sound as some would make it out to be?  One could argue that what makes a song popular isn’t how objectively good it is but how it is marketed and managed from behind the scenes.  It has nothing to do with DJs and music samplers helping the general public see just how good and underappreciated a song truly is, it is the people behind the band who know how to sell them and, in turn, their songs, which could just as easily be objectively bad.  As Stephen Witt writes in his book, “How Music Got Free”, “Morris had once been a gatekeeper, the guy you needed to get past to get into the professional music studio, and the pressing plant, and the distribution network.  But you didn’t need any of that stuff anymore.  The studio was Pro Tools, the pressing plant was an mp3 coder, and the distribution network was a torrent tracker.  The entire industry could be run off a laptop” (228).  As this quote shows, there used to be people behind the men and women who most people would rather flock to and take photos of (and to be honest, there still is).  It was these people who decided who would be famous and who wouldn’t.  It was their strategies and, most of the time, their songs that would be implemented and played to the crowds of adoring fans all around the world.  They didn’t necessarily have to be good, they just had to play their cards right and probably only have to make it halfway decent, at best.  The music industry is simply that, an industry that knows just what to do to make their products sell, nothing more.  Cranking out a song that actually ends up revolutionizing music is just a bonus and an afterthought.

That being said, if songs can theoretically be bad and can still be made into hits around the world, then what does that say about us?  Are humans just mindless puppets that truly devious people can easily control if they simply put the time and effort to learn?  Are people just so dumb or just have such bad taste that they cannot notice the absolute junk that they are being exposed to?  Do we just not know what we like to begin with?  It was at this point in the class where the professor posed the question, “What makes people like the songs that we do?”  It had been suggested that it was due to everyone pursuing a certain ideal when it came to music, though considering the fact that people ended up liking one song and disliking another, and with people liking a particular song while others could just as easily hate on that exact same song, it’s obvious that what exactly is the “ideal” music is up for debate.  That being said, I will promptly give my two cents on what the “ideal” music is.  Throughout the class, our professor repeatedly noted and used as an example the song, “Havana” by artist Camila Cabello, and each time he did, he admitted that he rather like it and could understand why other people wouldn’t.  While I myself find the song low-energy, repetitive, and boring, I can understand why some people would like it.  It’s a generic pop song, but the beat can be soothing if you allow it to be and while it does follow generic pop rules, the fact that there is also somewhat of a tango or flamenco sound to it broadens its appeal and sets it apart from other songs currently on the radio.  Granted, that does not automatically make it a good song, but its hook is admittedly a pretty good one.  Now look at the song, “Love Story”, by Taylor Swift, which is also another slow song, but it can also be seen as soothing while also being simple and pure due to the innocent nature of it.  It also helps that it is a mix of both the country and pop genres.  Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” is another pop song, but it utilizes sounds that would normally be found during Halloween.  Lastly, “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen is a rock song that actually takes cues from actually bohemian rhapsodies.  The point I’m trying to get at here is that these songs aren’t just generic pop or rock, they utilize aspects of other genres and cultures of music and find a way to use them and make something new and unique out of them, and I think that people take notice of that.  Now, I personally don’t hate popular music in the U.S. today, but I will admit that I do get bored easily by how radio stations keep playing the same songs over and over again.  It’s gotten to the point where I have actively used the internet and Spotify app on my phone to find music from outside of the country (foreign tracks, if you will) and I can safely say that I enjoy those better than popular music in the U.S. currently.  That’s not to say that I listen to traditional music (though those are indeed available), but the U.S., for better or for worse, has influenced music a great deal around the world, with many countries playing catch-up, but while also bringing their own unique cultural and traditional flair to it, producing tracks that are unique to even the multicultural U.S.  It’s Western Pop music through the lenses of outsiders, and I honestly feel that they are unique and pleasant to listen to because of that, and while the U.S. is definitely dipping its feet into this, its songs still feel generic American for the most part.  There is “Chotokkyu”, a Japanese boy band whose songs can be described as Eurobeat dance tracks with Japanese zaniness; “Cro” who is a rapper from Germany who fuses rap with pop to make something unique and different than the pop and rap collaborations the U.S. normally do; there is “CNBlue” a Korean band that seems to take more from Western rock and pop bands while also once and a while combining it with ballads that are more commonplace in the East; there is “Denver” a disco-pop-tech duo from Chile; “Elissa” a Lebanese solo artist who fuses basic dance beats with traditional Lebanese and Arabian music tunes; Khalil Fong, who is a resident of Hong Kong who specializes in soul-pop music; “Higher Brothers” a Chinese gangster rap group; “Man With a Mission” another Japanese band, but one that sounds like something that would fit right in with the pop-punk scene in the U.S.; “Stromae” a Belgian singer and songwriter who creates dance tracks that also incorporates serious subject matters into his lyrics and possibly ques from traditional French music; the list is endless! I believe that the ideal music is a music that can connect so many different cultures and aspects of music together to make something wholly original.  To put it simply, sometimes people like fast songs, sometimes people like slow songs.  Why not have a song that can be breathtakingly fast one moment, but then simple and slow the next?  A song that can get loud one moment but then quiet the next?  A song that utilizes traditional Asian drums at the beginning, African chants in the middle, and close out with a simple American country music tune in the end?  The ideal music could be something that encapsulates a little bit of everything, something that has universal appeal and intrigue and doesn’t limit itself to just one thing, perhaps?

On April 9, 2018, our HIST 390 class talked about sound, pitch, and various other sound-based and music industry terminology and trivia.  For starters, sound is pressure waves traveling through the air, and, when one can visibly see them, resemble ripples in water.  The pitch of a note is determined by “frequency” and how frequently it vibrates.  Overtones are harmonic sequences and are the reason why instruments sound different from one another.  Harmonic intervals are so important that they are actually built into the strings of a guitar, having physical proportions embedded into the very string.  Different combinations of notes determine different chords (chords being comprised of three notes, a root note and notes a third and a fifth away from said root note).  Vinyls were made by recording songs into wax, though by the 1950s, music was quickly switching to recording to tape.  Despite advancements into musical technology and hardware, however, there was ultimately a limit to all of it that those behind the scenes had to be careful of for one reason or another.  For one thing, producers had to account for the physical and amount of energy that their physical music products could handle.  And even then, they had to constantly remember that people, on average, could only her up to 20,000 hertz and nothing higher.  The switch to digital and analogue made things a bit easier, however, to fit these limitations.

While I could understand why our HIST 390 class would at least take a moment to talk about these concepts, when placed side by side, one after another like this, it really ended up feeling like a bit of a disjointed lecture.  It felt like we were going from one fact to another, as if following a checklist, and while the professor can actually do a pretty good job at making everything seem connected and intertwined with one another (which, to be honest, they probably were), when looking back at my notes about this particular lecture, I immediately became confused as to what the main idea of the entire thing was.  There’s nothing particularly wrong with sound, hearing, and music industry trivia, but as far as I can recall, and as far as I can tell from my own notes, it just seemed like a lecture with a very hard to pinpoint focus.  While I may certainly concede that this may be my own fault (and it probably is), having a lecture all about aspects of sound and then another part of the lecture being about the way the music industry and its physical products ultimately felt like two different lectures jammed into one.  Then again, we did lose a day in class due to the professor attending some personal matters, so maybe it was.

On April 2, 2018, our HIST 390 class discussed the concept of “data sampling” and discussed the history, ideas, and debate surrounding it.  To sum it all up, data sampling began to truly develop somewhere between the 1970s and the 1980s, especially with the rise of turntable technology and sound editing software, hardware, and systems.  This was especially true in the late 1980’s, where digital sampling had become more affordable.  Data sampling was the practice of people (usually men) taking bits and pieces of other people’s music, taking it out of context, and repurposing it, mixing it around with bits and pieces of other music and hopefully creating something new with it.  This process and practice aligned somewhat perfectly with Claude Shannon’s “information theory”, a theory where one of the main ideas was the fact that, in the future, information will be taken, handled, and transmitted into bits and pieces, which is exactly what DJs do with music.  While this type of information may seem inconsequential at first (especially with the generally low opinion the profession of DJ seems to carry around with it), the work of DJs, or at the very least, the practice of taking apart music and using bits and pieces of it to create something new, is more prevalent than one would originally think.  For example, one may have grown up with or at least have some sort of idea, knowledge, or recognition of the popular cartoon and kid’s show, “The Powerpuff Girls”.   Its theme song sets the mood and arguably encapsulates everything great about the show, something that any decent theme song should do.  That being said, however, the show’s theme song actually uses the beat from famous musician, James Brown.  Mind you, the theme song isn’t completely copying a song from James Brown, just the basic drum beat and arguably just making it faster.   While some would accuse this of being an example of very blatant stealing, another side of this would be that “The Powerpuff Girls” is acknowledging and respecting a part of musical history by using a beat from a relatively old artist at the time and introducing a great drum beat back for an entirely new generation.  It is in this way that sampling can easily be considered a practice that isn’t really about stealing from other, more successful artists, but as repurposing history.  That hasn’t stopped people from treating the practice like it was stealing however, and examples of the repercussions of such actions are just as many as examples of nothing truly bad happening at all.  Marvin Gaye’s family apparently sued Robin Thicke’s use of sampling one of Gaye’s songs (it was apparently used in Robin Thicke’s (in)famous song, “Blurred Lines”) and as a result, whenever the song plays on the radio, Marvin Gaye’s family monetarily benefit from it.  Copyright truly is a terrifying and complicated issue.

Personally, sampling seems like a fun, though complicated and hair pulling practice.  It definitely doesn’t sound like something that I would want to get into professionally, because if I ever did attempt to pursue being a DJ or music sampling and producing as my intended career choice, it seems like I would spend just as much time in a court room as I would in the music studio.  Again, in what should be an artistic profession, why is there so much scrutiny put into milking as much money as one possibly can from their work as possible?  All this seems to do is discourage creativity.  Yes, money is important, I’m not arguing against capitalism and people getting the money they deserve from their own hard work, but the human mind can be so limited!  Sure, theoretically speaking, the number of beats could potentially be infinite, but with how limited the human brain can be, why wouldn’t two different artists organically come up with the same beat?  Apparently assuming innocence until proven guilty does not truly exist in the music world, which is sad, because sampling does seem like a legitimately fun thing to do.  Taking bits and pieces of music and altering them bit by bit so that something new can be created, the possibilities are potentially just as endless as making original music, maybe even more so!  It’s just a shame that copyright laws hinder such potential creativity.

On March 28, 2018, our HIST 390 class discussed the complexities, intricacies, absurdities, and arguments concerning copyright and how it ultimately changed how the world works intellectually and creatively.  To start off, back in the olden days, property was usually acquired through the mere act of conquering those who previously had it or proclaiming that a divine being such as God granted you ownership of said property and that it must be handed over or the wrath of God would rain down upon them.  The only other way besides these that anyone could possibly see the logic of was the Labor Theory of Value, which basically meant that if you spent blood, sweat, tears, and time into something then that said “something” was no doubt supposed to be yours.  That being said, even the Labor Theory of Value was met with its own fair share of problems, which brought in the demand for a full-proof system in an attempt to dictate ownership, which led to the conception of the first Copyright Act of 1790… which, in turn, caused its own fair share of problems and absurdities.  For starters, one of these said problems was that dead people could legally stay existing as a disembodied immortal being, as copyright claims can stay active long after the said person dies, and if the conditions have been violated, the legal consequences could still be put into effect.  Also, when one actually takes a moment to look into the specifics of the copyright laws, if one were to implement them seriously, a lot of activities that people casually and nonchalantly do today can actually be met with serious legal repercussions.  DJs, whenever they are playing one of their remixes in the club, can technically be arrested for stealing the numerous songs needed to make the remix that he spent so long and hard to make.  The famous song, “Happy Birthday”, is one of the most protected songs today.  After all, when was the last time anyone on T.V. ever sang “Happy Birthday” on the birthday being portrayed behind the screen?  The song is apparently so protected by Copyright claims that almost no one ever dares to sing it, instead opting for other, more obtainable and problem-free, hit songs to sing.  As ridiculous as all of this may sound, however, there is a real debate around this issue.  After all, shouldn’t the artist who took the time, effort, and energy to bring forth what he or she made be given the due credit that they deserve, free to enjoy the fruits of their labors without having to worry too much about someone else stealing their work, claiming it as their own, and somehow finding a way to become even more well-known than them because of it?  Shouldn’t intellectual property be considered equal to physical property?  This was what we took time to discuss in class.

In my personal opinion, I find all of this fairly ridiculous.  While I can certainly understand not wanting to lose one of your creations to someone who saw your idea, did the exact same thing, and somehow got off better than you for it, in the end, if they were better at it than you, shouldn’t you be allowing them to share their improvements to your own work to the world?  It’s like how certain movie studios have the rights to certain properties and other movie studios, unless they strike a favorable deal with that studio, cannot and will not be allowed to make a movie about that property.  Think about how many good movies of the same superhero or character we could’ve had by now.  Think about how many enjoyably bad movies of the same superhero or character we could’ve had by this point.  And while, yes, that may be too many movies concerning the same superhero or character, those that are good or strike a chord with the audience (or multiple different types of audiences) will be remembered and thought fondly of.  We could have writers and studios making any movies that they want, but instead are forced to stay away from characters and ideas that they are passionate about simply because there could be a possible lawsuit because of it.  What if one studio produces a “Superman” movie that sucks?  Are we really supposed to just, as an audience, wait patiently until the rights to Superman change hands again for another writer or studio to try their hand at the character?  Wouldn’t it be better if writers were just allowed to write whatever movie they wanted and were passionate about instead of having studios forcing them to take turns whether they want to or not?  How would movies like these be fun to make?  How would movies like these be fun to watch?  Sure, you would end up having people a bit confused over what studios produced the third “Superman” movie this week, but maybe that particular movie will be the better of the three.  Yes, there will be an insane amount of competition between studios and writers if this were to happen, but in a way, if they play their cards right, they could come out all the better by the end of all of this.  Whether they produce movie after movie in quick succession with average or lukewarm responses, or if they choose to take their time to create quality content, they will build up a reputation for themselves and gain fans loyal to them because of it.  And yes, while there is still the issue of what happens if someone were to make something and someone else ends up stealing it and claiming it as their own, I would argue that worrying about money and fame isn’t what makes art true art.  For an artist, or anyone who works in any artistic activity, the hopes of getting paid and making money shouldn’t be the main priority.  When art focuses more on money and how to become more famous, I would argue that that would be no room left in a work for true art to truly shine.  Art is about self-expression, and if all you think about such trivial things such as money, the art will most likely reflect that, and who would want to look at that?