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?