Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 27, 2024
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Spiderlegs' Advances to the Next Round in the MASSPIRE Battle of the Bands Beta contest
Round Two!
Posted on July 2, 2012
Round One is at an end. The Beta Season did wonders for our faith that small artists are
capable of creating awesome things.
Here’s a List of All the Songs that Qualified:
Round Two ends on July 7th. Round Three will go from July 8th – 31st. The prize for 1st is $500.
If you wouldn't mind, folks out there, click the song link and upvote it, if you like it. I'd appreciate it.--jef
Here’s a List of All the Songs that Qualified:
- Perfectly Broken
- lyric
- hussy
- Where Are You
- Into the Fray
- Cross Walk
- The Willies
- Like Rain Like Rust
- Funkyness
- Insanity
- Mintberry Slush
- Heavy Groove
- Olive Juice
- Note From Her
- Everything
- Kristy Ray
- Already Home
- A Wavering Line
- Jackass
- Space Journey
- Grey Wool
- The Boy Left Behind
- A Piss Before Dying by Spiderlegs
- Go to Hell
- Superman
- Peyote Coyote
- Under an Atom Bonding
Round Two ends on July 7th. Round Three will go from July 8th – 31st. The prize for 1st is $500.
++++
If you wouldn't mind, folks out there, click the song link and upvote it, if you like it. I'd appreciate it.--jef
Monday, February 20, 2012
Bruce Springsteen: 'What was done to my country was un-American'
The Boss explains why there is a critical, questioning and angry patriotism at the heart of his new album Wrecking Ball
Fiachra Gibbons
guardian.co.uk, Friday 17 February 2012
At a Paris press conference on Thursday night, Bruce Springsteen was asked whether he was advocating an armed uprising in America. He laughed at the idea, but that the question was even posed at all gives you some idea of the fury of his new album Wrecking Ball.
Indeed, it is as angry a cry from the belly of a wounded America as has been heard since the dustbowl and Woody Guthrie, a thundering blow of New Jersey pig iron down on the heads of Wall Street and all who have sold his country down the swanny. Springsteen has gone to the great American canon for ammunition, borrowing from folk, civil war anthems, Irish rebel songs and gospel. The result is a howl of pain and disbelief as visceral as anything he has ever produced, that segues into a search for redemption:
"What was done to our country was wrong and unpatriotic and un-American and nobody has been held to account," he later told the Guardian. "There is a real patriotism underneath the best of my music but it is a critical, questioning and often angry patriotism."
The tone is set from the start with the big, bombastic We Take Care of Our Own – a Born in the USA for our times – where the most sacred shibboleth of Ordinary Joe America is sung with mocking irony through clenched teeth by a heart that still wants it to be true.
Like Born in the USA, which got pressed into service as the anthem of the first Gulf war, he's aware it has the potential to be hijacked by the angry right. But Springsteen says that to anyone who cares to listen to the lyrics, the message is clear.
But it is also an ode to hard work, to the dignity it brings, and the blue-collar values he claims made America:
Having previously backed Obama, Springsteen says he would prefer to stay on the sidelines this time.
The album is the last on which Clarence Clemons, the legendary saxophonist from the E Street Band, played on before he died last year. "When the sax comes up on Land of Hope and Dreams," Springsteen says, "it's a lovely moment for me."
Fiachra Gibbons
guardian.co.uk, Friday 17 February 2012
At a Paris press conference on Thursday night, Bruce Springsteen was asked whether he was advocating an armed uprising in America. He laughed at the idea, but that the question was even posed at all gives you some idea of the fury of his new album Wrecking Ball.
Indeed, it is as angry a cry from the belly of a wounded America as has been heard since the dustbowl and Woody Guthrie, a thundering blow of New Jersey pig iron down on the heads of Wall Street and all who have sold his country down the swanny. Springsteen has gone to the great American canon for ammunition, borrowing from folk, civil war anthems, Irish rebel songs and gospel. The result is a howl of pain and disbelief as visceral as anything he has ever produced, that segues into a search for redemption:
"Hold tight to your anger"I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American dream," Springsteen told the conference, where the album was aired for the first time. It was written, he claimed, not just out of fury but out of patriotism, a patriotism traduced.
And don't fall to your fears
Bring on your wrecking ball."
"What was done to our country was wrong and unpatriotic and un-American and nobody has been held to account," he later told the Guardian. "There is a real patriotism underneath the best of my music but it is a critical, questioning and often angry patriotism."
The tone is set from the start with the big, bombastic We Take Care of Our Own – a Born in the USA for our times – where the most sacred shibboleth of Ordinary Joe America is sung with mocking irony through clenched teeth by a heart that still wants it to be true.
"From the shotgun shack to the SuperdomeIt is a typical Springsteen appeal to a common decency beyond the civil war he sees sapping America.
There ain't no help, the cavalry stayed home."
Like Born in the USA, which got pressed into service as the anthem of the first Gulf war, he's aware it has the potential to be hijacked by the angry right. But Springsteen says that to anyone who cares to listen to the lyrics, the message is clear.
"A big promise has been broken. You can't have a United States if you are telling some folks that they can't get on the train. There is a cracking point where a society collapses. You can't have a civilization where something is factionalised like this."Springsteen plunges into darker, richer musical landscapes in a sequence of breath-taking protest songs – Easy Money, Shackled and Drawn, Jack of All Trades, the scarily bellicose Death to My Hometown and This Depression with Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine – before the album turns on Wrecking Ball in search of some spiritual path out of the mess the US is in.
But it is also an ode to hard work, to the dignity it brings, and the blue-collar values he claims made America:
"Freedom son's a dirty shirtAsked where the fury of this lyric had come from, he talks movingly of his father who had been "emasculated by losing his job" in the 70s and never recovered from the damage to his pride.
The sun on my face and my shovel in the dirt
A shovel in the dirt keeps the devil gone
I woke up this morning shackled and drawn"
"Unemployment is a really devastating thing. I know the damage it does to families. Growing up in that house there were things you couldn't say. It was a minefield. My mother was the breadwinner. She was steadfast and relentless and I took that from her.
"Pessimism and optimism are slammed up against each other in my records, the tension between them is where it's all at, it's what lights the fire."Hope is there. But it is a tempered hope. Land of Hope and Dreams is a plea for America's newest immigrants, those risking their lives to ride the trains up from central America.
"This train carries saints and sinnersSpringsteen, 62, says he is not afraid of how the album will be received in election-year America: "The temper has changed. And people on the streets did it. Occupy Wall Street changed the national conversation – the Tea Party had set it for a while. The first three years of Obama were under them.
losers and winners
whores and gamblers
Dreams will not be thwarted
Faith will be rewarded."
"Previous to Occupy Wall Street, there was no push back at all saying this was outrageous – a basic theft that struck at the heart of what America was about, a complete disregard for the American sense of history and community … In Easy Money the guy is going out to kill and rob, just like the robbery spree that has occurred at the top of the pyramid – he's imitating the guys on Wall Street. An enormous fault line cracked the American system right open whose repercussion we are only starting to be feel.
"Nobody had talked about income inequality in America for decades – apart from John Edwards – but no one was listening. But now you have Newt Gingrich talking about 'vulture capitalism' – Newt Gingrich! – that would not have happened without Occupy Wall Street."
Having previously backed Obama, Springsteen says he would prefer to stay on the sidelines this time.
"I don't write for one side of the street … But the Bush years were so horrific you could not just sit around. It was such a blatant disaster. I campaigned for Kerry and Obama, and I am glad I did. But normally I would prefer to stay on the sidelines. The artist is supposed to be the canary in the cage."Obama hasn't done bad, Springsteen says.
"He kept General Motors alive, he got through healthcare – though not the public system I would have wanted – he killed Osama Bin Laden, and he brought sanity to the top level of government. But big business still has too much say in government and there has not been as many middle- or working-class voices in the administration as I expected. I thought Guantanamo would have been closed but now, but he got us out of Iraq and I guess we will soon be out of Afghanistan."
The album is the last on which Clarence Clemons, the legendary saxophonist from the E Street Band, played on before he died last year. "When the sax comes up on Land of Hope and Dreams," Springsteen says, "it's a lovely moment for me."
Thursday, December 29, 2011
SPIDERLEGS Ringtones Available Now at the Spiderlegs Store
Now featuring ringtones, one of which is a track that has been previously unreleased...
Friday, December 23, 2011
Mind-Reading Machines Are Here
Source: Washington's Blog - December 22, 2011
There are now prototypes of machines which can read your mind for a wide variety of purposes.
Driving:
Computers:
Music:
Other uses (and potentials for abuse):
Monday, August 8, 2011
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Dead at 27 Club Gets Bigger
Welcome Amy Winehouse to the club (14th Sept 1983 - 23rd July 2011) dead at 27.
Hall of Fame
Robert Johnson - blues man
Jimi Hendrix - Jimi Hendrix Experience
Janis Joplin - Big Brother and the Holding Co.
Brian Jones - Rolling Stones
Jim Morrison - Doors
Janis Joplin - Big Brother and the Holding Co.
Brian Jones - Rolling Stones
Jim Morrison - Doors
D Boon - Minutemen
Kurt Cobain - Nirvana
Kristen Pfaff - Hole
Pete de Freitas - Echo & the Bunnymen
Richey James - Manic Street Preachers
Ron "Pigpen" McKernan - Grateful Dead
Dave Alexander - Stooges
Chris Bell - Big Star
Mia Zapata - Gits
Jeremy Michael Ward - Mars Volta
Alan "Blind Owl" Wilson - Canned Heat
Gary Thain - Uriah Heep
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Music really can be intoxicating, after all
By Matthew Lasar | Ars Technica
An "outburst of the soul," the composer Frederick Delius called music. The sounds associated with the form produce "a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without," observed Confucius. It is the art "which is most nigh to tears and memory," noted the writer Oscar Wilde.
It turns out that these guys were more on target than we thought. Our experience of the music we love stimulates the pleasure chemical dopamine in our brain, concludes a new study produced by a slew of scholars at McGill University. The researchers followed the brain patterns of test subjects with MRI imaging, and identified dopamine streaming into the striatum region of their forebrains "at peak emotional arousal during music listening."
Not only that, but the scientists noticed that various parts of the striatum responded to the dopamine rush differently. The caudate was more involved during the expectation of some really nice musical excerpt, and the nucleus accumbens took the lead during "the experience of peak emotional responses to music."
In other words, just the anticipation our favorite passage stimulates the production of dopamine. "Our results help to explain why music is of such high value across all human societies," the writers conclude.
Chills and thrills
To learn more about the music/brain/stimulation process, the McGill researchers followed subjects through the 'chills' or 'musical frisson' response moment. You may have thought that chills were just a subjective concept, but that isn't the case. They involve a "clear and discrete pattern of autonomic nervous system (ANS) arousal," the experimenters say, which facilitate "objective verification through psychophysiological measurements."
Bottom line: the chills moment "can be used to objectively index pleasure." So these scientists rounded up a cohort of people who had a proven record of getting the "verifiable chills" when listening to their favorite songs.
It took a while to find these folks. 217 people responded to an advertisement looking for chill-susceptible music lovers. Each candidate provided ten pieces of instrumental music that set them off in some way. The genres included tango, techno, punk, rock, electronica, jazz, folk, and classical. They then filled out a questionnaire designed to make sure their chills were authentic, and went through a mental illness screening session.
Degrees of pleasure
The process produced a cohort of 10 subjects for the actual experiment, who were scanned over two sessions. The participants listened to music that they experienced as pleasurable or to which they felt neutral. They also kept track of their chills themselves, including the "number of chills, intensity of chills and degree of pleasure experienced from each excerpt."
Nature neuroscience
Meanwhile these frisson seekers were MRI scanned during the listening experience, and images that correlated with chill laden moments were examined.
"We found that hemodynamic activity in the regions showing dopamine release was not constant throughout the [musical] excerpt, but was restricted to moments before and during chills and, critically, was anatomically distinct," the researchers note.
The McGill group says that this experiment is "the first direct evidence that the intense pleasure experienced when listening to music is associated with dopamine activity in the mesolimbic reward system, including both dorsal and ventral striatum."
Thus dopamine "is pivotal for establishing and maintaining behavior," the researchers conclude:
An "outburst of the soul," the composer Frederick Delius called music. The sounds associated with the form produce "a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without," observed Confucius. It is the art "which is most nigh to tears and memory," noted the writer Oscar Wilde.
It turns out that these guys were more on target than we thought. Our experience of the music we love stimulates the pleasure chemical dopamine in our brain, concludes a new study produced by a slew of scholars at McGill University. The researchers followed the brain patterns of test subjects with MRI imaging, and identified dopamine streaming into the striatum region of their forebrains "at peak emotional arousal during music listening."
Not only that, but the scientists noticed that various parts of the striatum responded to the dopamine rush differently. The caudate was more involved during the expectation of some really nice musical excerpt, and the nucleus accumbens took the lead during "the experience of peak emotional responses to music."
In other words, just the anticipation our favorite passage stimulates the production of dopamine. "Our results help to explain why music is of such high value across all human societies," the writers conclude.
Chills and thrills
To learn more about the music/brain/stimulation process, the McGill researchers followed subjects through the 'chills' or 'musical frisson' response moment. You may have thought that chills were just a subjective concept, but that isn't the case. They involve a "clear and discrete pattern of autonomic nervous system (ANS) arousal," the experimenters say, which facilitate "objective verification through psychophysiological measurements."
Bottom line: the chills moment "can be used to objectively index pleasure." So these scientists rounded up a cohort of people who had a proven record of getting the "verifiable chills" when listening to their favorite songs.
It took a while to find these folks. 217 people responded to an advertisement looking for chill-susceptible music lovers. Each candidate provided ten pieces of instrumental music that set them off in some way. The genres included tango, techno, punk, rock, electronica, jazz, folk, and classical. They then filled out a questionnaire designed to make sure their chills were authentic, and went through a mental illness screening session.
Degrees of pleasure
The process produced a cohort of 10 subjects for the actual experiment, who were scanned over two sessions. The participants listened to music that they experienced as pleasurable or to which they felt neutral. They also kept track of their chills themselves, including the "number of chills, intensity of chills and degree of pleasure experienced from each excerpt."
Nature neuroscience
Meanwhile these frisson seekers were MRI scanned during the listening experience, and images that correlated with chill laden moments were examined.
"We found that hemodynamic activity in the regions showing dopamine release was not constant throughout the [musical] excerpt, but was restricted to moments before and during chills and, critically, was anatomically distinct," the researchers note.
The McGill group says that this experiment is "the first direct evidence that the intense pleasure experienced when listening to music is associated with dopamine activity in the mesolimbic reward system, including both dorsal and ventral striatum."
Thus dopamine "is pivotal for establishing and maintaining behavior," the researchers conclude:
If music-induced emotional states can lead to dopamine release, as our findings indicate, it may begin to explain why musical experiences are so valued. These results further speak to why music can be effectively used in rituals, marketing or film to manipulate hedonic states. Our findings provide neurochemical evidence that intense emotional responses to music involve ancient reward circuitry and serve as a starting point for more detailed investigations of the biological substrates that underlie abstract forms of pleasure.It also may explain why, as Oscar Wilde suggested, we experience bursts of pleasant recollection while listening to the music that we enjoy. As studies of nicotine use show, the cigarette induced release of dopamine stimulates the remembrance of things past.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Why Listening to Music Makes You Smarter
By Sharon Burch, AlterNet
Posted on December 21, 2010
In past generations, singing and playing instruments was an integral part of family life. A great way to express and entertain yourself and others. We did not realize it, but we were also exercising our brain while we played, causing us to be creative, more vibrant, smarter, etc. In our current generation, we tend to be passive listeners and consumers as a society, and as a result, shorting our mental development and our children the opportunity to reach their mental potential.
Humans are "wired" for music. Until recently, scientists did not know how music affected the brain. The advancement in technology allows scientists to actually "see" brain activity via PET scans and MRI imaging scanning the blood flow in the brain. Our brains are "wired" with neural pathways. Most activities only cause a portion of the brain to "light up" with activity; thus, the saying, right brain/left brain, etc. But there are actually four parts to the brain and music makes ALL of the areas "light up" and create new neural pathways as a person is learning and playing an instrument. Those neural pathways remain in tact and can be used for other things besides music.
Norman Doidge, in his book, The Brain That Changes Itself, shares case after case of people forcing their brain to change and adapt either voluntarily with discipline, or involuntarily due to odd incidences. Studies confirm that our brain has plasticity. "You can't teach an old dog new tricks" is proven to be a case of "can't want to," rather than too old to change.
Daniel Levitin passionately explores the connection between Music and the Brain in his book of the same name. Google his name, watch video clips on YouTube, or go to his website. It's an exciting time of discovering how little we know and how much there is to learn. There is definitely enough evidence to recognize it is not in a music teacher's imagination. Music has a huge impact on activity in the brain. You can physically/visually see the growth and changes that happen inside the brain. The possibilities are endless. The implications for music therapy and music education are profound. Just check out PBS video "The Music Instinct." Neurologist and author, Oliver Sacks relays a true story from his book, Musicophilia, where a man was indirectly struck by lightning through a telephone and three weeks later composing and playing the piano for the first time. Sacks believes the man was "re-wired" through that experience. The list goes on and on.
But even if you are still skeptical about music making kids smarter, let's look at the other benefits. Socially, music is an ageless hobby creating interaction with great people. Take a look at any school band or orchestra or top-ranking choir and you will find a huge percentage of the members are in the top 10 percent of their class and college bound. Striving for excellence is a given in a musical group. Everyone has to perfect their part for the group to perform at their best--NObody "sits on the bench." Everyone has to pull their weight or the whole group suffers. Creativity, especially in jazz groups is developed, honed and embraced. Who couldn't use more creativity in their workforce? Creativity is what makes the difference and gives any company the cutting edge.
There are many benefits of being involved in making music, but the neural pathways drives home the point and gets our attention. Scientists are reluctant to state that playing a musical instrument makes you smarter, but all the indicators are there, so let's look at it from the opposite angle. Instead of trying to prove that music makes you smarter or good for you and your child, try to prove that it is not. I can't think of a single reason how learning a musical instrument is detrimental, can you?
Give your child every opportunity and advantage you can. Enroll them in music lessons and watch them grow and mentally develop as they play, create, express, and struggle through the rigors of the discipline mastering an instrument. You will discover a more creative, brighter and mature person in the making.
Posted on December 21, 2010
In past generations, singing and playing instruments was an integral part of family life. A great way to express and entertain yourself and others. We did not realize it, but we were also exercising our brain while we played, causing us to be creative, more vibrant, smarter, etc. In our current generation, we tend to be passive listeners and consumers as a society, and as a result, shorting our mental development and our children the opportunity to reach their mental potential.
Humans are "wired" for music. Until recently, scientists did not know how music affected the brain. The advancement in technology allows scientists to actually "see" brain activity via PET scans and MRI imaging scanning the blood flow in the brain. Our brains are "wired" with neural pathways. Most activities only cause a portion of the brain to "light up" with activity; thus, the saying, right brain/left brain, etc. But there are actually four parts to the brain and music makes ALL of the areas "light up" and create new neural pathways as a person is learning and playing an instrument. Those neural pathways remain in tact and can be used for other things besides music.
Norman Doidge, in his book, The Brain That Changes Itself, shares case after case of people forcing their brain to change and adapt either voluntarily with discipline, or involuntarily due to odd incidences. Studies confirm that our brain has plasticity. "You can't teach an old dog new tricks" is proven to be a case of "can't want to," rather than too old to change.
Daniel Levitin passionately explores the connection between Music and the Brain in his book of the same name. Google his name, watch video clips on YouTube, or go to his website. It's an exciting time of discovering how little we know and how much there is to learn. There is definitely enough evidence to recognize it is not in a music teacher's imagination. Music has a huge impact on activity in the brain. You can physically/visually see the growth and changes that happen inside the brain. The possibilities are endless. The implications for music therapy and music education are profound. Just check out PBS video "The Music Instinct." Neurologist and author, Oliver Sacks relays a true story from his book, Musicophilia, where a man was indirectly struck by lightning through a telephone and three weeks later composing and playing the piano for the first time. Sacks believes the man was "re-wired" through that experience. The list goes on and on.
But even if you are still skeptical about music making kids smarter, let's look at the other benefits. Socially, music is an ageless hobby creating interaction with great people. Take a look at any school band or orchestra or top-ranking choir and you will find a huge percentage of the members are in the top 10 percent of their class and college bound. Striving for excellence is a given in a musical group. Everyone has to perfect their part for the group to perform at their best--NObody "sits on the bench." Everyone has to pull their weight or the whole group suffers. Creativity, especially in jazz groups is developed, honed and embraced. Who couldn't use more creativity in their workforce? Creativity is what makes the difference and gives any company the cutting edge.
There are many benefits of being involved in making music, but the neural pathways drives home the point and gets our attention. Scientists are reluctant to state that playing a musical instrument makes you smarter, but all the indicators are there, so let's look at it from the opposite angle. Instead of trying to prove that music makes you smarter or good for you and your child, try to prove that it is not. I can't think of a single reason how learning a musical instrument is detrimental, can you?
Give your child every opportunity and advantage you can. Enroll them in music lessons and watch them grow and mentally develop as they play, create, express, and struggle through the rigors of the discipline mastering an instrument. You will discover a more creative, brighter and mature person in the making.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Music Ecosystem - SEAquence
SEAquence
(click the link)
"...is an experimental musical petri-dish. Adopting a biological metaphor, Seaquence allows you to create and combine musical lifeforms into unique, dynamic compositions."
(click the link)
"...is an experimental musical petri-dish. Adopting a biological metaphor, Seaquence allows you to create and combine musical lifeforms into unique, dynamic compositions."
Monday, September 20, 2010
US lawmakers seek power to ‘shut down’ Web sites in other countries
By Agence France-Presse - Monday, September 20th, 2010
A bill introduced in the US Senate on Monday would give US law enforcement authorities more tools to crack down on websites engaged in piracy of movies, television shows and music.
The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act has received support from both parties and was introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, and Senator Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah.
The bill will give the Justice Department the "tools to track and shut down websites devoted to providing access to unauthorized downloads, streaming or sale of copyrighted content and counterfeit goods," Leahy's office said.
The illegal products offered by websites, many of which are based outside of the United States, range from movies, television shows and music to pharmaceuticals and consumer products, it said in a statement.
"Each year, online piracy and the sale of counterfeit goods cost American businesses billions of dollars, and result in hundreds of thousands of lost jobs," Leahy said.
"In today's global economy the Internet has become the glue of international commerce -- connecting consumers with a wide-array of products and services worldwide," Hatch said. "But it's also become a tool for online thieves to sell counterfeit and pirated goods, making hundreds of millions of dollars off of stolen American intellectual property.
"This legislation is critical to our continued fight against online piracy and counterfeiting," Hatch said.
The bill gives the Justice Department an expedited process for cracking down on websites engaged in piracy including having a court issue an order against a domain name that makes pirated goods available.
In May, the Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus condemned Canada, China, Mexico, Russia and Spain for failing to crack down on Web piracy and said theft of intellectual property in those countries was at "alarming levels."
The bipartisan caucus also released what it called a "list of notorious offenders" -- websites involved in making available unauthorized copies of the works of US creators.
The websites singled out by the caucus, made up of 70 members of the Senate and House of Representatives, were China's Baidu, Canada's isoHunt, Ukraine's MP3fiesta, Sweden's Pirate Bay, Germany's Rapidshare and Luxembourg's RMX4U.
A bill introduced in the US Senate on Monday would give US law enforcement authorities more tools to crack down on websites engaged in piracy of movies, television shows and music.
The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act has received support from both parties and was introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, and Senator Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah.
The bill will give the Justice Department the "tools to track and shut down websites devoted to providing access to unauthorized downloads, streaming or sale of copyrighted content and counterfeit goods," Leahy's office said.
The illegal products offered by websites, many of which are based outside of the United States, range from movies, television shows and music to pharmaceuticals and consumer products, it said in a statement.
"Each year, online piracy and the sale of counterfeit goods cost American businesses billions of dollars, and result in hundreds of thousands of lost jobs," Leahy said.
"In today's global economy the Internet has become the glue of international commerce -- connecting consumers with a wide-array of products and services worldwide," Hatch said. "But it's also become a tool for online thieves to sell counterfeit and pirated goods, making hundreds of millions of dollars off of stolen American intellectual property.
"This legislation is critical to our continued fight against online piracy and counterfeiting," Hatch said.
The bill gives the Justice Department an expedited process for cracking down on websites engaged in piracy including having a court issue an order against a domain name that makes pirated goods available.
In May, the Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus condemned Canada, China, Mexico, Russia and Spain for failing to crack down on Web piracy and said theft of intellectual property in those countries was at "alarming levels."
The bipartisan caucus also released what it called a "list of notorious offenders" -- websites involved in making available unauthorized copies of the works of US creators.
The websites singled out by the caucus, made up of 70 members of the Senate and House of Representatives, were China's Baidu, Canada's isoHunt, Ukraine's MP3fiesta, Sweden's Pirate Bay, Germany's Rapidshare and Luxembourg's RMX4U.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
THE SIGHT OF MUSIC
by Sally Law
A musical score without any measures or clefs sounds confusing—until you see it. That’s the idea behind the Music Animation Machine, which sets the work of Bach, Satie, Chopin, and other composers to an animated, Atari-like series of colored bars and dots, to visually explain pitch and timing to those who can’t understand conventional music notation. The result is a sort of meditative “Guitar Hero” experience, with each note lighting up as it’s played across a scrolling screen. MAM’s most recent video, created in June, is Beethoven’s “Great Fugue,” the last movement of his String Quartet No. 13. When the quartet premiered, the audience called for encores only of the middle movements. “And why didn’t they encore the Fugue?” Beethoven reportedly demanded. “That alone should have been repeated! Cattle! Asses!”
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Online Music Creation Sites
Monday, April 5, 2010
Radio to pay for its music?
Obama admin: time to make radio pay for its music
By Nate Anderson
The recording industry scored a significant victory today with news that the Obama administration will provide its "strong support" for the Performance Rights Act. The bill would force over-the-air radio stations to start coughing up cash for the music they play; right now, the stations pay songwriters, but not the actual recording artists.
This has been a dream of the recording industry for decades, but it has taken on new importance as the revenues from recorded music have plummeted over the last decade. The broadcasters refer to the idea as a new "tax" that will largely benefit foreign record companies such as Universal (France), Sony (Japan), and EMI (UK).
Taking sides
Today, a letter from the Commerce Department's general counsel, Cameron Kerry, makes clear which side has the administration's support: the recording industry. (We double-checked with Kerry's office; this is no April Fools' joke.)
"The Department has long endorsed amending the US copyright law to provide for an exclusive right of public performance of sound recordings," says the letter. It pledges "strong support" for the current bill and approves the idea that radio's payment exemption is nothing more than "an historical anomaly that does not have a strong policy justification."
A copy of the letter was sent to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In the letter, Kerry says that making radio pay for music is really a matter of fairness—not just to artists, but to Internet webcasters and satellite radio, too.
That's because both webcasters and the satellite radio folks currently do have to pay a public performance right on the music they play; the exclusion granted to over-the-air broadcasters thus distorts the market and makes it difficult for new technologies to gain traction. "It would also provide a level playing field for all broadcasters to compete in the current environment of rapid technological change, including the Internet, satellite, and terrestrial broadcasters," says the letter.
In addition to rationalizing the performance rights scheme in the US, Commerce points out that the US is the only major industrialized country to have such an exemption for over-the-air radio. Making a change isn't just a case of bowing to peer pressure; real money is at stake, since many artists are unable to collect the public performance money due them in other countries because of "the lack of reciprocal protection under US copyright law."
The National Association of Broadcasters, which represents radio, hasn't yet responded to the letter—but its position is clear. "This new performance tax could financially cripple local radio stations, stifle new artists trying to break into the recording business, and harm the listening public who rely on local radio," it says, and the NAB has managed to round up 260 House members in support of a resolution called "The Local Radio Freedom Act."
In addition, the NAB (correctly) points out that it has been the broadcasters who repeatedly engaged in "payola" over the years; not only has radio paid nothing to the recording industry, but the industry has gone to the trouble of paying extra to radio, just for the privilege of promoting particular songs.
However the issue is decided, some major corporations are going to benefit. If radio keeps its exemption, it's a win for big broadcasters like Clear Channel. If radio's exemption gets the axe, much of the money being paid will flow into recording industry coffers. But, as the Commerce filing points out, the current system is ridiculous; it needs to be decided in one way or another. Requiring some broadcasters to pay for music while others get a free ride, based simply on a difference in delivery mechanism, is no way to run a system, and it's no way to encourage innovation.
Congress has already tried locking both sides in a room to solve the issue; at some point soon, it will just have to vote.
Update: NAB has issued a statement. "NAB was aware this letter was coming, which is a position taken previously by the Bush Commerce Department. We're disappointed the Commerce Department would embrace legislation that would kill jobs in the US and send hundreds of millions of dollars to foreign record labels that have historically exploited artists whose careers were nurtured by American radio stations. The good news is that 260 members of the House of Representatives and 27 US Senators are standing with hometown radio stations and against the RIAA."
By Nate Anderson
The recording industry scored a significant victory today with news that the Obama administration will provide its "strong support" for the Performance Rights Act. The bill would force over-the-air radio stations to start coughing up cash for the music they play; right now, the stations pay songwriters, but not the actual recording artists.
This has been a dream of the recording industry for decades, but it has taken on new importance as the revenues from recorded music have plummeted over the last decade. The broadcasters refer to the idea as a new "tax" that will largely benefit foreign record companies such as Universal (France), Sony (Japan), and EMI (UK).
Taking sides
Today, a letter from the Commerce Department's general counsel, Cameron Kerry, makes clear which side has the administration's support: the recording industry. (We double-checked with Kerry's office; this is no April Fools' joke.)
"The Department has long endorsed amending the US copyright law to provide for an exclusive right of public performance of sound recordings," says the letter. It pledges "strong support" for the current bill and approves the idea that radio's payment exemption is nothing more than "an historical anomaly that does not have a strong policy justification."
A copy of the letter was sent to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In the letter, Kerry says that making radio pay for music is really a matter of fairness—not just to artists, but to Internet webcasters and satellite radio, too.
That's because both webcasters and the satellite radio folks currently do have to pay a public performance right on the music they play; the exclusion granted to over-the-air broadcasters thus distorts the market and makes it difficult for new technologies to gain traction. "It would also provide a level playing field for all broadcasters to compete in the current environment of rapid technological change, including the Internet, satellite, and terrestrial broadcasters," says the letter.
In addition to rationalizing the performance rights scheme in the US, Commerce points out that the US is the only major industrialized country to have such an exemption for over-the-air radio. Making a change isn't just a case of bowing to peer pressure; real money is at stake, since many artists are unable to collect the public performance money due them in other countries because of "the lack of reciprocal protection under US copyright law."
The National Association of Broadcasters, which represents radio, hasn't yet responded to the letter—but its position is clear. "This new performance tax could financially cripple local radio stations, stifle new artists trying to break into the recording business, and harm the listening public who rely on local radio," it says, and the NAB has managed to round up 260 House members in support of a resolution called "The Local Radio Freedom Act."
In addition, the NAB (correctly) points out that it has been the broadcasters who repeatedly engaged in "payola" over the years; not only has radio paid nothing to the recording industry, but the industry has gone to the trouble of paying extra to radio, just for the privilege of promoting particular songs.
However the issue is decided, some major corporations are going to benefit. If radio keeps its exemption, it's a win for big broadcasters like Clear Channel. If radio's exemption gets the axe, much of the money being paid will flow into recording industry coffers. But, as the Commerce filing points out, the current system is ridiculous; it needs to be decided in one way or another. Requiring some broadcasters to pay for music while others get a free ride, based simply on a difference in delivery mechanism, is no way to run a system, and it's no way to encourage innovation.
Congress has already tried locking both sides in a room to solve the issue; at some point soon, it will just have to vote.
Update: NAB has issued a statement. "NAB was aware this letter was coming, which is a position taken previously by the Bush Commerce Department. We're disappointed the Commerce Department would embrace legislation that would kill jobs in the US and send hundreds of millions of dollars to foreign record labels that have historically exploited artists whose careers were nurtured by American radio stations. The good news is that 260 members of the House of Representatives and 27 US Senators are standing with hometown radio stations and against the RIAA."
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