Wrapping up

I found this class very engaging, especially our discussions of the changing ways in which we access information.  I'm very fascinated by the implications the internet is having on our society, and this class provided a good avenue for exploring this. As a side note, I enjoyed that there was room to discuss for some of the tangential topics that I found interesting during class.

In regards to the usefulness of the sources we explored, I think they were pretty hit or miss. I found all of them fascinating in their own way, and if I owned them at home I would certainly make use of them. It seems unlikely, however, that I would make a trip up to the library to explore some of the print resources when it's likely that I'll be able to find the information I want online in one way or another. Nevertheless, I appreciate learning about the way information has been kept and organized from a historical perspective.

The past five weeks feel like a blur right now, but I think I'm going to begin the new school year sufficiently inspired and refreshed. On one hand, I think I would prefer the slower pace that a full year program affords so that there would be more time for talking and reflecting with professors and colleagues. But then again, the intensity of the last five weeks promoted a special sort of social bonding between us all. It's felt a bit like a sleep-away summer camp, and it's admittedly been strange to return home in the evening and remember that I have a life away from this thing. I've found the coursework to be interesting for the most part, although I'm really missing some balance in my studies. How great it would be to talk about more than just music and music education each day. Perhaps this is why I appreciated the tangential discussions we had in our class so much.

Libraries, etc.

Watt's library lament echoed my thoughts about the internet age in general. Although modes of communication and sharing have been opened up, we are now finding ourselves no longer in close physical proximity with other people. What we lose in this way is difficult to define clearly, but certainly there is value in the informal, unexpected conversations we share with one another in person. Perhaps its the emotional information face-to-face communication contains, or the feeling of community and connection, or even the feeling that one is engaging in authentic human behavior.

Perhaps library spaces simply need to be restructured to reflect the evolving ways in which we are accessing information. If people are doing research at home and at cafes, maybe libraries need to start resembling these places. I think that people do like being around other people as they're doing their work, but the drab, depressing environment of many libraries might cause them to seek out other places.

The video about the Harry Potter video game music was interesting enough, but I've been trying to come up with something to say about it for the last 20 minutes and can't think of anything. Maybe the more interesting thing to talk about is why I haven't been able to get into Harry Potter despite having read and enjoyed a lot of other fantasy writing. What's wrong with me?!?!

Criticism

I had never really been bothered by bad criticism prior to reading these articles. I happily read my reviews in the New Yorker or Harper's or listened to them on NPR and didn't give much thought to what was going online or in newspapers. I suppose I thought that bad music was around because people liked bad music, regardless of what the critics had to say.

The story about Harry Connick Jr.'s comment about pentatonic scales becoming a joke changed my perspective. American Idol is a highly visible form of music criticism, and it's not really encouraging quality music making. In reality, critics, especially on a show like this, hold a lot of power of public opinion of music.

Regarding film, I feel that reviews from good critics are more visible but that people simply ignore them. I know many people who gleefully report that they never agree with the critics -- and these people have very bad taste in film. Sadly, I really can't envision a solution to this problem. Given how easy it is to spread information now, there will certainly always be a wealth of people who know nothing giving away their opinions to other unsuspecting people who will happily believe them.

Plagiarism

Kenneth Goldsmith's discussion of patch writing, or stringing together the works of others to create a vaguely new work, resonated with me. Most of the research-based writing I've done has felt plagiaristic in essence; i.e., lacking any sort of novelty or utility that the original sources didn't already possess.

How much more can there be to say? Certainly the context of our experience is in flux, but has the essence of being human really changed? Certainly there is still something left unimagined, but our age of information abundance is frightening: originality is elusive.

Goldsmith's new aesthetic makes sense in this new context. Creating is now secondary to pointing. His reading of a traffic report in the poetic voice was provocative -- captivating yet dispassionate and mechanical. A chilling depiction of a new reality, a world in which we say too much.

Bacon

As a self-described bacon trailblazer, I was a little surprised that those in the bacon community on Twitter were automatically assumed to be robots.

With this exception, I found the reading and podcast to be accurate. I was particularly moved by the comparison made between information on the internet and viral infections. Not that "going viral" is anything new, but the idea that information that spreads quickly is dangerous was profound. That said, I don't think we're ever going to slow things down now, so I wonder how our relationship with information will evolve. Perhaps society will grow to be more critical of information (and we've wanted that all along, right?). I think we can already see this new kind of information savvy in my generation (I'm thinking about how my mom clicks on spam links that I would never dare to click on!).

Social media presents another problem -- it leads us to equate popularity with value. Of course, this was (frustratingly) happening before social media, but it certainly seems worse now. Some people get upset over the number of facebook "likes" they get!

How far will it all go? My prediction: pretty far, but then I bet we'll see a repudiation of "internet behavior" and a return to more authentic (loaded word, I know) human interactions. At least I hope we do. Because as a self-described shy introvert, I'm increasingly finding myself the most "social" of my acquaintances and friends. Well, not social in the facebook sense.

 P.S. IMSLP is great! I use it all the time. I suppose some might have a problem with the particular editions uploaded on the site. Then again, as I wrote in my last post, I'm not a purist when it comes to editions.

Blog Post #5

Interestingly, I found more significance in the disputed period on the Declaration of Independence than in any of the discussions concerning historical music manuscripts. Perhaps it's because the period substantially changes the meaning of the Declaration, whereas a missing staccato in a performance has a somewhat lesser effect on a piece of music as a whole.

And this is why I find it so frivolous to attempt to follow a composer's intent so carefully. Great composers are truly inspired, but their work still carries the imperfections of any human work. If we stop viewing compositions by the "great" composers as without flaw, then what difference do small inconsistencies in the performance of these works really make? A look at Beethoven's manuscripts provides us with enough evidence that composers are themselves unsure of the best way to realize a musical idea.

I think an obsession with performing music exactly as the composer wrote it drains life out of music making. Music ceases to be a participatory experience and instead becomes a "work" to be admired at a distance. Do we really want our concert halls to become museums?

Then again, perhaps we do. Is it not important to preserve our canon of great Western classical music as we do with art and literature? On one hand, I'm inclined to think so, but then I find myself more inspired by a piece of community-produced public art than the Mona Lisa.

Minefields!

The readings today again highlighted the danger of trusting research simply because it was published by someone. Interestingly, these articles seem to encourage a close reading of the research methodology whereas our previous reading about research articles encouraged focusing on the conclusions. I suspect bogus research might be more of a problem in the pharmaceutical industry (where big pharmaceutical companies have a financial incentive to provide research heralding the successes of their new drugs) but I've certainly seem some research in music education that draws conclusions that seem tenuous. In particular, I've noticed studies often have sample sizes that seem too low, or seem to ignore factors that might distort results (and there are plenty of these when researching human behavior).

To avoid these pitfalls, I think we need to enter into research firmly accepting that we might not be able to prove what we intuitively believe to be true. We must consider every single way in which our conclusions might be disproved and point out the limitations of our research even when drawing conclusions. Until the research community gets its act together, it is probably wiser to place our greatest trust only in periodicals that are well-established and have a history of solid research. And on a more global scale, I think the incentives that exist to publish research need to be closely examined and reconsidered.