Before we came to class, we had to finish reading the book How Music Got Free by Stephen Witt. The book was a nice, long journey to see how the record industry changed, and how technology affected the sales of recorded music. It was even cool to me personally to see how Steve Jobs was mentioned, even if it took longer than I thought it would to see him. Though the thirty yearlong adventure that was described in the book was somewhat boring at times, it did make me consider the long road that changes so many industries in the world today.
We began class discussing how music circulated through Latin American and other parts in the world, particularly in the 20th century. Arsenio Rodriguez was the first artist that we listened to in order to guide us on this point. We also hear how it has influences in African and Cuban music, but not in Brazilian music, with an example in a Baden Powell song.
We then listened to El Choclo, a tango in Argentina, which is a lot like the United States in that it has a lot of diverse groups, with the tango originating from the Afro-Argentina community. The tango was quite interesting to watch, mainly in how catchy and soothing it is, which is funny considering that, according to Professor O’Malley, “Tangos have lyrics that mainly deals with killing unfaithful lovers”. Very efficient. Then we hear Latin influence in the Mission Impossible theme song, which is always nice to hear.
“Who knows how MP3’s work?” A question from Professor O’Malley to discuss Witt’s book. The answer is that they dramatically downsize music with compression, with acoustics that get rid of the things we don’t normally hear. It goes back to how sound was subjected to scientific study, like psycho acoustics that deals with how the ears aren’t like microphones. It’s crazy to hear how technology advances and leaves so many aspects that we take for granted behind.
We were then subjected to hertz, and shows how age can affect how we hear, and Professor O’Malley admitted he couldn’t hear it. It reminded me of a villain from an old show, where the creator admitted that the voice was at 30 kilohertz to make him sound intimidating. It was nice to discuss how the music industry, as Witt’s book goes into a bit, has never really recovered in terms of distribution because of all the ways people listen to music, to the point of listening to it on YouTube.
We then started to go through videos that show Professor O’Malley’s point on how sound can mask over each other and compress in order to get rid of what we can’t hear anyway. We then traveled to a discussion on how copyright has affected the distribution of music, with artists like Skrillex being brought up to illustrate a point for how the distribution of music has changed with technology. “One criticism of the music industry is that it was a cartel”. The growth of music and how similar it can still be has been argued to be subject to restricted by the industry, and it was broken through with the digital age.
We then discussed a “Sine Wave”, a pure tone at one frequency or “pitch”. Sine waves are weird, because any sound contains a series of overtones. It ties back into how many sounds such as hertz are quite discomforting because of how sound is altered to us.
It’s odd to discuss how music has been affected by the digital age. Distributing records has been affected by all the different ways people listen to music now, but I think at least part of it is that there is so much music to listen to. People just want to listen without spending money that they need to survive, and while it might be simple to say that they shouldn’t spend money, people need entertainment. To me, I think it’s important for people to enjoy music however they want, and to help the artists if they can.