Last December I recorded a solo chamber work for bassoon and piano in my office/studio with one of my former students as a personal favor for composer Carl Paul Vollrath.  The acoustic piano I have there needed a tune, so I played the digital keyboard instead.  The track was shipped off to MMC Records and I was very honored when they decided to include it on a sampler of new music by classical composers.  The track is available via:

http://www.emusic.com/album/Various-Artists-Musicscapes-Vol-1-MP3-Download/11206480.html or

http://www.mtraks.com/artist/various_artists/release/84202-musicscapes_vol_1

I’m also finishing up the liner notes for Dr. Vollrath’s upcoming release featuring Richard Stoltzman on clarinet.  Scheduled for release next month, the project consists of 2 CDs of clarinet music (recorded by Bob Lord at MMC).  If you’ve ever written liner notes for your own music, you can imagine how tough it is to summarize someone else’s music.  What I ended up doing was writing a layman’s analysis of the character and form of the pieces.  It’s descriptive enough to encourage folks to listen (and hopefully buy the printed music). 

It’s really tough being a classical composer in this age;  ensembles generally are very conservative with their programming choices and if you noticed the program the New York Philharmonic took to North Korea, you’ll see what I mean.  Dr. Vollrath retired from teaching recently and is devoting all the time and resources he has to these recording  projects. 

Think about this for a moment.  Would you pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to see some of your life’s work recorded?  This situation is absolutely amazing to me!  Carl gives away many of his compositions to performers in hopes of having them performed;  unfortunately, few are.   It’s not a quality issue, it’s a glass ceiling that classical composers have to find a way to break through.

It works out great for the labels;  think of them as the audio equivalent of a “vanity press”  (those publishers who will publish a certain number of copies of your book for a fee).  But for Dr. Vollrath, these compositions are his “children” and no price is too great in order to see them come of age.   He has already released a 2 cd album of piano music and one cd of chamber music for trumpet and horn.  I won’t begin to speculate how much these projects cost.  

I’ve known many musicians who would play anywhere simply for the joy of sharing their music (gratis).  Classical composers are ’up the creek without a paddle’ because they cannot realize their works without the cooperation of other like-minded performers.  Either you get really good at writing grants for arts enrichment, playing political games and courting rich patrons or you do what Carl is doing;  –focus on the music and do the best that he can.  You’ve got to admire someone who has spent a lifetime of disciplined composition for the sheer love of the art, perhaps never knowing when or if the notes on the page will ever be heard.  Putting your soul down on manuscript paper because this music that no one else hears is welling up inside you and has to be released.  That’s creating art for art’s sake. 

 Here’s Carl’s bio, in case you’ve made it this far:

Born and attended Newton High School in New York City of German parents.  Received a BA from Stetson University, MA from Columbia University, and  the ED.D from Florida State University.  Studied composition with Ernst von Dohnanyi, Carlisle Floyd and John Boda.  Military service with the West Point Military Band at West Point, N. Y. from 1953 to 1956 and music consultant at Miami Florida from 1956 to 1958. Joined the Troy University faculty in 1965.  Major works include six symphonies for band, an opera (”The Quest”), and chamber music which is published with Tap music (tapmusic@tapmusic .com). In the last five years MMC recordings (mmcrecordings.com) has released three CD albums of the composer’s works.  A future MMC 2 disc album of clarinet works recording by Richard Stoltzman scheduled to be released in 2008.

Piracy Czar?   Are you kidding me?  I thought we already had one of those…

According to the 2008 press release archive on the RIAA.org site, the following universities have been targeted for pre-litigation settlement letters. 

January 10th:  (18 universities)

 Arizona State University (33 pre-litigation settlement letters), Bowdoin College (11), California State University, Monterey Bay (25), College of William and Mary (15), Duke University (16), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (19), Mount Holyoke College (15), Rhode Island College (22), Saint Mary’s College of Minnesota (13), Stanford University (15), Texas Christian University (14), University of California, Berkeley (26), University of California, Los Angeles (26), University of Connecticut (25), University of Iowa (24), University of Nebraska-Lincoln (22), University of Texas at Austin (50), and Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University (36).

February 21st: (12 universities)

Boston University (35 pre-litigation settlement letters), Columbia University (50), Drexel University (33), Indiana University (40), North Carolina State University (35), Ohio State University (30), Purdue University (28), Tufts University (20), University of Maine System (32), University of New Hampshire (32), University of Southern California (50), and the University of Virginia (16).

On May 6th, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the PRO-IP Act which strengthens laws against illegal downloading, allows for seizure of property involved in the commission of said crime and gives new enforcement measures to investigators.  Billboard.biz quoted David Israelite of the Nat’l Music Publishers Assn:

“This bill will go a long way towards making sure law enforcement agencies have what they need to get the job done,”  

According to Mark Hefflinger of DMW Daily, the bill also-

The bill, which passed unanimously in the House Judiciary Committee last week, would also establish a White House-level piracy czar — dubbed the Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative — to coordinate law enforcement activities.   (emphasis mine)

 David Utter at Webpronews succinctly summed up the situation last year when the act was first getting off the ground:

More bureaucracy, another well-connected insider getting a sweet gig to graze at the taxpayer trough (we’re betting whoever gets the new IP Enforcement Representative job will have a big media background), and absolutely no impact on foreign counterfeiting whatsoever appear to be the salient points of PRO IP.

But Heaven help the first college kid busted under PRO IP for MP3 trading. It’s going to be brutal.  

Folks, this is a strong piece of legislation that kicks the Intellectual Property Rights game up a notch;  –it’s not just national in scope, it defines an international effort to set up rights and enforcement measures.  I predict that given the success the music industry has seen so far, within a year we’ll see an astronomical increase in pre-litigation settlement letter mail-outs.   And those won’t just be going to college campuses.

ASCAP’s Bill of Rights
for Songwriters and Composers:

1. We have the right to be compensated for the use of our creative works, and share in the revenues that they generate.
   
2. We have the right to license our works and control the ways in which they are used.
   
3. We have the right to withhold permission for uses of our works on artistic, economic or philosophical grounds.
   
4. We have the right to protect our creative works to the fullest extent of the law from all forms of piracy, theft, and unauthorized use, which deprive us of our right to earn a living based on our creativity.
   
5. We have the right to choose when and where our creative works may be used for free.
   
6. We have the right to develop, document, and distribute our works through new media channels while retaining the right to a share in all associated profits.
   
7. We have the right to choose the organizations we want to represent us and to join our voices together to protect our rights and negotiate for the value of our music.
   
8. We have the right to earn compensation from all types of “performances,” including direct, live renditions as well as indirect recordings, broadcasts, digital streams, and more.
   
9. We have the right to decline participation in business models that require us to relinquish all or part of our creative rights—or which do not respect our right to be compensated for our work.
   
10. We have the right to advocate for strong laws protecting our creative works, and demand that our government vigorously uphold and protect our rights.

Add your name to a piece of music industry history!  You can electronically “sign” the actual ASCAP petition here:

Slate Magazine’s William Weir made some good points with Tuesday’s Music Box column:

1.  From 1975 to 1990, there were only 30 instrumental songs that made the Top 20.  Since 1990 there have been only 5.   Compare this to the era from 1960-1974 when 128 instrumentals reached the top 20.   Get the picture?

2.  Lyric word count has increased over the years.  As Weir puts it:

The year-end top 10 songs from 1960 to 1969 have an average word count of 176. For the 1970s, the figure jumps to 244. In 2007, the average climbed to 436. The top 10 for the week of Feb. 2, 2008, features six songs over the 500-word mark. Chris Brown and T-Pain use 742 words in their “Kiss Kiss.” 

So what’s the point?   Well, it could be that people favor the words more than the pure musical content.  Citing 2 studies, Weir concludes:

Neuroscientists believe that the brain uses a different system to store and process music than it does words. Not much research has been done on which affects us more, but an American University study published in the Psychology of Music in 2006 gives a slight edge to melody.

But he concludes that the instrumental is a dying breed.  The reason?

Marketability. A band is practically faceless with no crooning front man.

/. . . /No singer means no airplay.

So 2 questions emerge: 

“What’s more important;  the words or the music?” and

“Why are there fewer instrumental hits?”

While it would be easy to argue that you can’t divide a song into its seperate parts (the work is a whole and should be judged as a whole), just for kicks I’ll weigh in on the side of music being more important.  Sometimes music may be created as a vehicle to carry the meaning/message of the text, but lyrics are not the music.  At the university, the music faculty teach students to critique the music and the humanities/literature faculty tackle the lyric analysis.  But which is better;  the music or the words?  Here I’ll defer to the music psychologists to argue and test their way to some scientifically defensible position. 

My point is basically that the music polls may favor some political speech set to music one week but it is the universal appeal of well-crafted music that makes it survive for centuries.  What other songs graced the Top 20 list when Beethoven’s 9th (or 5th) symphony was released?  Maybe I’m just an idealist, but I believe that quality pure music wins over time.  And good text will endure, too.  Just dig up a dead poet laureate (Dante or Ovid);  they’ll tell you. 

Why are there fewer instrumental hits?   Mr. Weir may have a good point, here.   If the airplay oligopolies create the demand based on market strategies, then maybe the public never has a chance to hear good instrumental music anymore. 

Many of the composers that are really good at crafting music are lured into the film scoring field.  The trouble is, their work is often so watered down by cuts and producer changes, it becomes a “work for hire” composition rather than truly a part of the composer’s voice.  Or maybe we’re just waiting for the next Beethoven to be born…

Anyway, it’s time for me to stop rambling and ask for your comments.  Comments?

The other movie is a documentary tribute to one of the most amazing recording engineers ever to have walked the planet;  Tom Dowd.   Not only was he one of the atomic scientists that worked on the Manhattan Project, but he pioneered stereo recording and built one of the first eight-track recording consoles. The synoposis of Tom Dowd and the Language of music reads:

A long-time engineer and producer for Atlantic Record, Tom Dowd was responsible for some of the most important R&B, rock, and jazz records ever made. In his own words, Tom Dowd relates how he went from working on the Manhattan Project, while still high school age, to recording some of the greatest music ever made over the last half of the 20th Century.

This guy produced some of the greatest recordings of all time and I learned so much from just watching him interact with the musicians.  His discography reads like the Who’s Who of 20th Century Popular Music.  It reminds me just how important it is to get the right team behind the musicians.  Tom was the best.  He passed away on Oct. 27th, 2002.  He was one of the most important pioneers of our industry and we owe a huge debt of gratitude for showing us how recording should be done. 

Youtube clip follows the break…

Tom Dowd Documentary Trailer (sorry,  I can’t get the movie to embed…)

http://www.thelanguageofmusic.com/flv/td_flv_pop.htm

First Tracks is having a songwriting competition and I think you should enter something.

You have to hurry;  the contest closes on Feb. 27th, 2008.  Here are the basic rules:

1.  Must be U.S. Resident. 

2.  May be individual or band (up to 4 members).

3.  All songs must be entirely original and the recording less than 1 year old.

<more rules here>

What do I win?  Well…you get a choice of $20,000 cash or an EP commercially recorded, produced and distributed by Decca Records.

Who are the judges?   You are!  Just like American Idol…sort of.   There are 3 rounds of online public voting, then a 4th round where the Decca brass and A&R folks get a vote (they’re actually voting in round #3;  the public has the final vote!).

Interested?   Go here.

Anyway, enough of my whining.   You can view the awards list here, with the winners highlighted in RED.

John Mellencamp demands John McCain stop using his songs for campaign events. (WTOP via future of music blog).

Gerd Leonhard (MediaFuturist Blog) recommends a book predicting what the future holds for the music industry.

Hometracked shares some Vocal EQ Tips.

Protooler shares a link where you can get PDF files to make your own ProTools shortcut stickers.

Guitarflame asks “where do you find your music?”.

Listenerd shares a link to a company that has used pitch to MIDI conversion to create a version of Guitar Hero that is usable with real guitars  Plus, it also offers a teaching mode to help you learn new songs.  Cool!

Music Row reports that Warner Music Group’s head is under investigation by French authorities for insider trading.  Bad, Edgar, Bad!

Musicthing has posted the strangest accordian equipment review ever. (I’ve never seen an accordian do anything like that!).

Seth Godin’s post on deciding what to make could speak to musicians.  Rewrite it yourself only with a focus on making music. 

Good Musician shares tips on how to get young children interested in playing an instrument.

I’m not originally an Erykah Badu fan, but after seeing her on Before the Music Dies (a great video!!), I had to catch this review of her new music video on Killed by the Video Star’s site.  As I watched it, my grins turned to guffaws…she’s probably one of the most intelligent artists out there today!  I won’t give away the cool stuff, but it’s a real trip down memory lane in the spirit of RHCP’s Dani California vid.

 Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) may soon have to police your downloading habits.  This is due to increased pressure from content owners to control illegal downloading.  If only the RIAA had thought of this sooner… (Thanks, Future of Music Blog).  In the meantime,  the European Courts say that ISPs don’t have to disclose file sharers (via Hypebot);  so if you can’t catch the birds, chop down the tree?

Marc Cohen’s Ad-supported Music Central reacts to the Qtrax fiasco.  Good one, Marc!

Andrew Dubber discusses the boundaries of the new music industry (or lack thereof).  (New Music Strategies).

Guitar Flame shares a video from what has to be the world’s youngest fingerstyle guitar player.  Nice one.

ProMedia reminds us how to use the Xpand! plug-in as a metronome in Pro Tools.

Protooler reviews a free online sound source (did someone say “Free?”) for film, radio and tv sfx.

Wire-to-the-Ear makes me feel 100 years old as he shows y’all how we used to do things.

Didn’t find anything interesting, yet?   Then check out my wife’s latest zombie video review…