“Just make music that you like, and think back to what you did.” Professor O’Malley opened up the class with this piece of advice, a guiding statement for us that are still nervous about this project. We then went over GarageBand once again, going through instructions that will help us use the program. The slides are a useful step-by-step instruction, so I tried to take pictures of every slide and pay attention to what Professor O’Malley was doing as he demonstrated certain steps so that they become clearer.

I appreciated that he clarified that the “Audio files are blue”, because I wanted to have a quick visual on what was what in his demonstrations. I also breathed a sigh in relief when he said that he would be placing this online so we can use it as an example. For all of his explanations and general advice, I’m still worried that I will do something wrong in this process, so I’m glad that some of this will be available for us to refer to during our work on this project.

Professor O’Malley reminded us that there is a “Promise of the internet”, in that there is a lot of information and sources that we can use for this project, compounded with the MIDI files that he uses as a demonstration, before going more in depth with the mixing that we can do with the files of music that we utilize in this project.

After his review, Professor O’Malley ended with one final piece of advice for us if we’re lost on how to start “Always start with the drums.” Maybe I’ll use that when I start working on this in detail, but regardless it seems that I will need to properly manage my time for all of my final assignments and exams within the next week. Better to start sooner rather than later.

The class opened with Professor O’Malley going over, once again, what is required for the final project. We need to quote the readings, use what we learned in class, and if we can use DAW software critically and synthetically. Then we went into the discussion of whether or not digital technology affects our attention.

We discussed how we have a displacement of space and time because we can talk to people that aren’t even here. We tied it with the displacement of culture and music. “How can an instrument that came from Hawaii become the symbol of white music?” Professor O’Malley asked. It was an interesting question, but then we moved on to the history of radical openness and how a lot of technology that we used today find their origin in the Cold War.

The broad themes that we went over this course such as attention, displacement, racial categories, enclosure vs openness, and individualism vs social was briefly discussed, along with the other themes that we went into as we talked about the subjects more deeply, such as the generational gap and the issue of authority and their structure. “Find a theme that goes across the text,” Professor O’Malley advised.

Professor O’Malley then went over what we can ask him over the themes that we can possibly use for the final project. We can use any of the books and readings, and go more in depth with any of the topics that we talked about during classes. I’m starting to wonder what I should be discussing more in depth, because I suck at music in general, so I hope that I can do something simplistic so that I don’t humiliate myself with how pitiful my music taste is.

The class was then dedicated to helping us go through the major topics that was previously discussed, giving a starting point for each one so that we can have an easier time in finding out which theme we want to use for the final project. It’s a problem that I am going to think over, mainly by searching through every topic and see what I enjoy going over.

We started this class with the mass market. We discussed the transition from broadcasting to the modern television that has over one hundred channels today. “They had to provide television that appealed to everybody,” Professor O’Malley reminded. We were shown the married couple in different beds again, following the guidelines (but not laws) of public broadcasting in the past.

Professor O’Malley called the 1990’s “The Age of the Mass Market”. He actually used food in this instance to give an example, and how it really became diverse during the 1990’s due to development of markets at the time. It’s pretty cool to hear how an aspect of our current life had a journey to become what it is today. We also had food brands in the 1960’s that “appealed to everyone”. National brands, as Professor O’Malley said.

I have to say, it’s interesting to see the United States’ “Most Wanted Painting”, and how it’s a mass market product that assess what people like. Nothing great, but nothing offense. It looks boring to me, like a painting in the corner of a museum that everybody glances at before moving on.

It’s interesting to see what people do to merely be good enough, to not offend anyone. Digital media pretty much breaks that, since they can track people more closely. “The Mass Market has been fractured”, Professor O’Malley stated, “They can track you much more precisely.”

It’s weird to hear how Google managed to use crowd sourcing to rank things. Collaborative filtering is apparently what it is called, but I can’t really wrap my head around how they manage to do this. I do think it’s interesting that they use different methods to differ what is mass market and what is used for specialists. The methods that Google used is why it managed to blow all the competition out of the water.

Professor O’Malley then used many different examples of how many people use data that they keep on us to push us towards things that we already enjoy. Professor O’Malley told us about the store that he goes to in order to buy groceries, and how they have data on him, on what his family enjoys eating. Granted, it’s something that I already know, the ways they keep tabs on data, but it’s somewhat unnerving to hear it said out loud like that. It’s something like how YouTube keeps tracks on all the videos that I watch, and take into account what I enjoy and recommends videos for me to watch. To me, it’s just another part of a website that I frequent, but I wonder how other people tend to see these practices, especially older people.

We were then show Claritas, and how they used zip codes to tell others about the population. That feels like 1984 levels of information keeping, but I guess it’s perfectly fine in the eyes of the government (which makes it even more uncomfortable to me). This lead to a discussion how zip codes and other aspects of our lives like music reinforce our preferences, because so many organizations keep us on the same tracks regardless of what part of our lives we’re talking about.

It was an interesting class to listen to, but I have so many other things on my mind that it’s hard for me to properly sum up my thoughts. I think it’s an important discussion, but I don’t really know if we’ll find an answer to it at any point.

Coming into this class, I was interested to see if we were going to be given more examples of what we have been learning throughout the year. Professor O’Malley began by saying that we don’t need to have a definitive conclusion for out final project, but that we should be able to create something on the level expected of college students. Then, he said that he was going to give us another example of music that crosses the boundaries. He illustrates this with “Watermelon Man” by Duke Ellington. It’s full of minstrel stereotypes, mainly of the fondness of watermelons. Ellington, who was born in 1899 in Washington DC, was a very educated man, making it quite strange for him to make this song. Herbie Hancock, another educated man, wrote his own variation of “Watermelon Man”. Mongo Santamaria, a Conga Player, made a national hit in his own “Watermelon Man”. They were all quite similar, but it’s interesting to see how they adapted the song through their own means.

We then listened to more examples of music that went across the boundaries, even some more interesting songs like “1-900-LLCOOLJ”, which was a bit old-school. All of these song involved “Crossing political and racial lines”, and discusses cultural heritage and who owns it. The re-use of styles is inevitably political and historical, and as Professor O’Malley notes that knowing the history of things makes it more interesting, and makes you more engaged.

We touched on the question of how society should handle the digital age and its history. The digital age makes more information free, but it also allows garbage to swarm unchecked. An example we are given is radio, which works like a recording as we speak into a microphone, where vibration of a diaphragm is transformed in voltage. In the 1920’s, radio was the tool of enthusiasts and technicians, usually veterans of the Navy Signal Corps in WW1. The radio would grow in influence throughout the United States, forming radio stations. Radio stations broadcast at a specific frequency within a range of possible frequencies. AM Radio goes from 535 kHz to 1.6 MHz, and human hearing range is 20 Hz to 20 kHz. Theses frequencies are limited, so the government forms Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to regulate all of the radios. Broadcast channels are “scarce”, and the broadcast spectrum is considered a public resource.

Broadcast bandwidth is held to be a scarce public good, like land. It belongs to the public, therefore the government has a right and a duty to regulate it use. Because of this, you have to apply for the right make use of it, to have rights to a broadcast bandwidth. You have an obligation to serve the needs of the public, and the way to do so is left to the licensee’s discretion.

TV follows a similar pattern to radio, which began to appear in homes in the late 40s. It’s fascinating to hear how the regulation of radio and television is handled by the FCC. In most large cities, there were probably only six-ten TV channels available. ABC, NBC and CBS had four local stations to spread their channels and influence. Everyone is watching the same thing since there are only three choices for family viewing. People who got licenses to broadcast under the FCC had to comply with the “fairness doctrine”, much like with radio. These were never laws, they were FCC licensing requirements. It’s funny to hear what was considered obscene in the past, particularly with married couples having to sleep in separate beds in television. Television has to be restrained so that it could speak to everybody.

To avoid censorship, another doctrine was formed to give guidelines for television. They can’t show crimes or give bad guys sympathetic portrayals. It’s honestly amazing to see how television has advanced in terms of vulgarity and diversity in programs. Honestly, hearing all of this has made me pity how monotone the entertainment of the past was. We have so many different programs to enjoy that it makes the past seem dogmatic.

All of this is shifted in the 1970’s, where Cable TV has much fewer bandwidth restrictions, and Digital Cable TV in the 1990’s has virtually no bandwidth restrictions, so the reason for regulating is gone. Now there is no limit to the number of digital channels. This would eventually lead to a discussion about the regulation of the internet like YouTube. Honestly, I think that freedom of speech makes this a difficult subject, though some of the stupider people on the internet that we watched makes a compelling argument for regulation, though hopefully not on the level of the past.

All of this showed an interesting discussion that I don’t think we can answer at this time, but I don’t think it’s an issue we should ignore, considering that all of this can have dangerous consequences. There should be a regulation of content, but we need to be careful before it spirals out of control.

The class opened with a more somber atmosphere, at least to me. There wasn’t a lot of noise form pre-class discussions, and the screens showed the Final Project that we need to accomplish by Monday December 17^th. “It doesn’t need to be perfect, it needs to have a purpose”, Professor O’Malley said. We went over what the expectations are for the Final Project, including some prompts on how we can being an analysis.

As somebody that struggles with thinking of music as something beyond entertainment, I don’t know if I will be able to do well on this assignment. The part of this class that deals with the history of these genres was something that has always interested me, so I hope that I can make a project based on what I can do. “There are some parts of this course that are more interesting to you than other parts.” It was something Professor O’Malley noted, and nobody really had questions, but it was probably because nobody really knew what to ask. I certainly didn’t, but I hope Professor O’Malley will be open in the coming weeks for giving advice about the final project.

Thankfully, Professor O’Malley started to guide us on ways we could use GarageBand, teaching us how to change the length, volume, and velocity of a note. It is interesting go over, since I haven’t use GarageBand for at least five years. I’m glad he went more in depth on MIDI files, since I had no real idea what those were, including how to map sounds to them. Thankfully he also went over how we can do our essay as an annotation, taking notes while making the song.

We also have a lot of option that we can go through, which is a freedom that I enjoy. These different music styles, the history we can discuss, the songs we can use, even the programs we can take advantage of all ties into what we discussed in class. It makes for a nice retrospective on all that we’ve learned in class. It was also nice to see all of the work that Professor O’Malley has done to provide us with examples, as it really helped me understand GarageBand and what we needed to do better.

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 20^th 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.

“Twentieth century American music was originally built on the swing beat.”

It’s nice to just get into the topic for class. Professor O’Malley proceeded to give some examples of this statement starting with Jumpin’ Jive, along with how the rock beat replaced the swing beat sometime in the 1960’s, which he explained in the beginning of class. He compounded the topic of the swing beat with a gospel song, called “Bedside of a Neighbor”. We can even hear the swing beat in early rock and roll music, such as Chuck Berry music. Amusingly, Chuck Berry’s early music sounded very country. We heard more music that shows the slow transition from the swing beat to the rock beat, a transformation that is complete with the arrival of the Beatles.

One of the characteristics of American music in the 20^th century was a lot of chords. The trend of American music in the last decade was to have less chords. It’s harmonically moving around a lot. A general trend is to have one or two chords. To my surprise, Professor O’Malley didn’t really have an argument against it like he did in earlier classes against current music trends such as compression.

Professor O’Malley noted that there are theories that the reason for this is another result of the Great Migration, with music from islands and such seeping into American mainstream music. This actually led to a discussion of racial politics in Cuba and Puerto Rico, which showed the differences that these countries had to the United States.

We then discussed the “mambo craze” of the 1950’s and 1960’s, based on religious ceremonies in Cuba, where artists used drums in their music, even though it was not really a mambo. “They were trying to Latin it up,” Professor O’Malley explained. It’s another example I’ve seen of America trying to adapt other culture’s music into their own. I can’t help but wonder how this went in Cuba, considering Mambo was looked down upon in the Upper-Class. It’s interesting to see how different people see music.

Because Mambo is harmonically static, it is easy to sample. Hispanic influences on American music also come from the West coast, and are central to early rock and roll music, but often rendered invisible. “Louie Louie” is famous in history of rock music, since anyone can play it. It’s fascinating to hear all of the different versions of one song, especially considering how simple it is compared to a lot of other music that I listen to.

It was also interesting to hear how the 1963 version was widely claimed to have obscene lyrics that were difficult to hear, which actually lead to an FBI investigation. I have to wonder how those people would react to music now, considering how explicit music can be.

Continuing the conversation to see how the melody of old songs can be heard in modern music, such as Pitbull, was a nice reference to how music tends to be similar in some way. Granted, I’m not really the kind of guy to notice these things, so if it’s pointed out to me, I just find it amusing. We then hear about how the adaptation of songs have an interesting road in history.

“Any music you hear has a very thick displacement of history in it.” Professor O’Malley said. It’s weird to hear, mainly because I am not really focusing on music, but this is a different way to listen to music that I’ll keep in mind in the future.

“Displaced persons are the story of the USA. Displacement is a major engine of cultural innovation and creativity.” As a History student, I’ve heard this before, but the new aspects of the world such as music is nice to see.

One thing you notice when you read enough books or watch enough movies is that there are many similarities in stories, even if they are of different genres of fiction. I’ve never seen it as a bad thing, considering how human civilization has been going on for thousands of years. Stories are bound to be similar, and it really only matters how well you tell that story, even if you have to take inspiration from other works.

I suppose all of this is quite similar to how sampling works. Professor O’Malley put up a lot of examples of songs that had similar beats and tunes, pointing out how many of them came from a familiar source. Even if we are unaware of what song the sample is from, we probably heard the sample from another song that used it. The most prominent example of this was the drum from a 1970’s “Funky Drummer” song. We heard a few songs that used a sample of the drums like Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power”, or even how the PowerPuff Girls theme song used a sped up version of it, much to my surprise.

The part of this class that I found most interesting was how it tied into copyright. I was curious to see how sampling managed to avoid lawsuits considering how it affects other forms of art, but I was pleasantly surprised when we learned about the history of sampling and lawsuits. Sampling was started sometime in the 1980’s when records would be played at the same time to have a part of a song used for a new song. This was primarily used by people who lacked money, even in the late 1980’s when digital samplers became affordable. We also learned quite a bit about a lawsuit involving a sample based on the work of Andy Summers, and how it mostly benefited Sting even though Andy Summers was the one who played that specific part that the sample used.

Professor O’Malley said that “The Heritage of the Past belongs to us.” I agree with that. I think that we should be able to use the past so that we can see old entertainment in a new light. Music has been around for centuries, and it would be naïve to think that there would be no overlap. It all just depends on the overall package, not a specific part of it.

“How do we acquire property without violence?”

It’s cool to see historic events tied into concepts that I’ve never really thought about before. Professor O’Malley opened up the class today with a question about the colonialism of the New World. How could the settlers claim land that was already owned by the Native Americans without using violence? Obviously this is hypothetical, considering the horrifying atrocities that the settlers committed, but Professor O’Malley actually brought up something said by John Locke. If a man mixes his labor with the land, than that land belongs to him. If you place water in a pitcher, than that water is yours. All of this was done under the misconception that the Native Americans did not labor on their own land, an indication of the racism of the settlers.

We were then lead into the topic of copyright. We were taught about patents, trademarks, and copyrights, but it was the copyrights that Professor O’Malley focused on, telling us about how copyright works. You have to constantly re-claim a copyright as the years go on to extend it. Your descendants do not automatically get it, and if you do not claim the copyright, then it will enter public domain, where it is owned by everyone and no one. It was an interesting topic, mainly because Professor O’Malley actually brought up his own battles with copyright in the songs that he shows us for class, since Youtube would hit his videos with copyright strikes after a week or two. We also had to read about the topic of copyrighting the Happy Birthday son, which I’ll admit made me chuckle and roll my eyes in equal measure, if only because

The most interesting topic of this class was the discussion on Corporations. Corporations are in many ways considered people in the eyes of the law, in that they can have property and use lawyers to represent them in legal disputes. It’s an interesting philosophical debate, since Corporations are larger than the people that founded them. The Corporations are immortal in a sense. They will continue to live on past the deaths of their founders, their workers, and even their audience, finding more and more people to fulfill the roles needed to keep it going. It’s almost humbling in a way, to think over the parts of the world that are much bigger than a single person.

It’s nice to get a reminder of the subjects we discussed earlier in the semester, even if those subjects are hard for me to grasp. Then again, repetition can be good for remembering and understanding something if you didn’t get it the first time.

Speaking of which, we started today’s class with a reminder of beats. We listened to some James Brown music. “He hit it on the one,” Professor O’Malley said. It was something I didn’t really notice until he pointed out. Along with that, he showed us a Bob Marley song to illustrate the reverse, where the music hit every beat except the first one.

“Africa is a big place,” Professor O’Malley said, “It has a large and beautiful musical heritage.”

We then discussed the issue that was the focal point of Carr’s book, mainly how the digital media grabs our attention. Professor O’Malley explained that this class was meant to teach us the digital tools that are available to us, to help us understand the origin of music that inspired these digital tools in the first place.

With the topic on digital tools, the class moved on to the digital scavenger hunt and what we managed to find about our terms. Turns out that most of the terms could be discovered as early as the 19^th century, but they didn’t really become focused until the 20^th century. It also lead to an interesting topic in terms of disco and punk rock

Actually, I think the disco discussion interested me more. I’ve never really given disco much thought, as I believe that it was a genre that fell out of style by the 1980’s, but Professor O’Malley gave more insight in how disco was viewed. It was actually associated with homosexuals and African-Americans, and was disliked by white people. I’ve never really taken time to consider the impact disco had, but as Professor O’Malley reminded us, politics tend to become involved in all genres of music, which I’ve definitely seen in a lot of songs that I have listened to.

We spent the rest of the class talking about echoes, and how echoes had an effect in the reality vs ideal argument. Echoes were used in churches by priests to give their sermons a magical feeling to their listeners. Having never been to a church before I didn’t really relate to that, but I can understand where Professor O’Malley was going with this. After explaining how a Harvard physics Professor named Wallace Sabine had discovered ways to manipulate the sound and echoes of a room, we learned that this rationalized echoes. There wasn’t really a magical explanation for it anymore.

I’ve never really given the magical quality of echoes much thought before, but that is an interesting concept. To have something that you take for granted be considered deeply important in the lives of other people is something of a way to realize how many factors make up the world around us.

We ended with a discussion of how the microphone impacted the media, mainly movies and recordings, and we were told that we would discuss copyright next class, which I am looking forward to.