47 posts tagged “unheard”

Bumping this back up to the top in Jan. 2009 for Chinese New Year's. It's that good.

After a long search for available music from remote tribes in South China such as the Wa Tribe and Miao People, I was rewarded with the discovery of a CD available from Wind Records in Taiwan.

BLACK PEARLS Product ID：TCD-5232

• Producer：LIU Jian & WANG Xu-dong
• Composer：LIU Jian
• Performers：CHOU Ke-chi & HU Zhi-ping
• Vocal Leaders：CHIANG Deng & LIU Jian

Other Peoples call them the Eastern Indians, but they call themselves Black Pearls. Where the south of China, Burma and Thailand meet, there is this legendary living Wa Tribe that is physically strong, emotionally pure and peculiarly talented in music.

Touched by the myth, Liu Jian blends Wa music with modern ideas to create a mystical, gallant and innovative masterpiece. Tribal vocals, Chinese male and female vocals, various ethnic, Chinese and western instruments all interweave to bring forth a grandeur harmony, a magical charm, and a loving connection of various peoples of the world.

Zenph Studios Site

TED Talk - John Q. Walker

In his TED presentation, you will see John Q. Walker demonstrate his "performance re-creation" technology to an uncritical, naïve audience.

This is not about the music or the musicians. It is about a fetish for dead, perfect things reproduced with ultimate fidelity for your greedy, selfish pleasure.  Making music is a thing of the past, and your music needs are fulfilled by corporations who pander to this fetish for profit. You faithfully purchase the regurgitated masterworks, and listen to them on your hi-fidelity entertainment system.

Meanwhile, Glenn Gould and Art Tatum haven't given their permission for this use. That is to say, owning the rights means one doesn't need,  their permission.

You pay a premium to the rights holders and they can continue to hold the monopoly forever. Pay close attention to what John Q Walker says during the TED talk. 

Not many people are going to fork over $50,000 to buy a Yamaha Disklavier to listen to piano music.

Copyright is forever. Public Domain be damned. Lock the vaults, add minor value to the works, and presto you have another monopoly for another century.

This is from the site, where they address "Labels and Studios" (emphasis mine)

The Diversity of Copyright Laws

The USA has strong copyright laws; sound recordings essentially don't go into the public domain until well into the 21st century. But, in the European Union (EU), for example, recordings go into the public domain 50 years after their first release. Small recording companies in the EU already re-issue CDs of historical mono recordings in volume. That's been a small concern to the labels, but in 2006 the situation gets troubling. 1956 was the start of early stereo, which is how we still listen nowadays. Starting in 2006, the "good stuff" from 1956 forward starts going into the public domain. Year by year, labels will lose European rights to the most prized, profitable recordings in their archives. With global retailing, CDs made in the EU are readily available anywhere.

The way around this is to create new, highly-desirable music recordings, which establish a new copyright. A modern re-recording can be a premium product, protected with the latest Digital Rights Management (DRM). For a modern re-recording to be acceptable to discerning jazz, classical, and pop listeners, it must be faithful, note-perfect, and identical to the original performance. That’s our business.

Where to begin? The fact that copyright isn't forever is troubling to these people. These people are not musicians as much as they are businessmen, audio and software engineers and technologists.

"Faithful, note-perfect and identical" doesn't describe most live performances. Perhaps he is referring to re-recording of studio performances.  Either way, he's uniquely positioned to make sure that the "public domain" of mid-century works never happens, those who resist are turned into "pirates."
 
Musicians not needed. Live performance not needed. Perfection is the standard, and very few humans make the grade. iPod. iGod. Don't you feel special "owning" all this music? Yes, it's yours! At least until the device breaks, the DRM expires, or the format is no longer supported. Then you can look forward to the next trendy offerings from the corporations. Perhaps smell-o-vision and 3d moving imagery to accompany the music.

 

Jack Boulware wrote this about his piece on his blog:

Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, I wrote down everything I saw or heard in the media, and fashioned a sort of poem. A month later, I read it at San Francisco’s Edinburgh Castle pub, and then recorded an audio version for Salon.com. It’s now been published as part of the Public House anthology.

I liked the essay quite a bit, and later I was making recordings of piano noise and effects, so it was an obvious choice. The audio fidelity here isn't great partly due to limits imposed by Vox. Now for our feature presentation:

Warning: explicit language

Let's give the imagery a rest, shall we?
Can we give poor Mr. Barber and his Adagio for Strings a breather as well?

 

Running Time: 6 Episodes of 30 minutes Each

Related Post: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (BBC, Douglas Adams)

See also: Above the Title Productions Ltd page on Dirk Gently
 

 

 

Stephen Fry's just-launched "Podgrams" feature is here

Stephen Fry discloses his work for the past two years including his performances for ITV's series "Kingdom", script writing for director Peter Jackson's forthcoming film "The Dam Busters" and the pitfalls of filming in the Amazon jungle and breaking his arm whilst preventing his not inconsiderable weight from plunging into the murky depths of the Amazon River.

UPDATE: Episode four includes a speech Stephen gave at the BBC about television, public funding and privatisation. Informative and amusing, and highly recommended. Episode three was a Wildean take on wallpaper. He has settled on an even-odd scripted vs. conversational schedule.

He explains the rocky start in Episode one in Episode two.
This will be on the test.

Podcast Episode Link (July 15, 2008)
GillmorGang Link

I twittered:

Doc Searls on (no) future of traditional broadcasting - last GillmorGang podcast. Technical and encyclopedic. TV is dead. Long live TV.

In this episode Doc Searls goes into detail on the digital transition and implications for local, public and commercial broadcasting, television and radio, and has some very interesting things to say about "live" broadcasting in the future.

A must-listen for anyone interested in staying ahead of the curve on the future of broadcasting.

GillmorGang Header

Science Friday Archives: The Happening

This is one of only two NPR programs I listen to regularly, and while I occasionally find it a little "soft on science" it is generally well produced and presented.

That's why the recent segment allowing Mr. Shyamalan to flog his new movie "The Happening" was surprisingly bad. Evidently Mr. Shyamalan believes we must stop expecting Science to save the day, embrace our ignorance, and find God in all his many and multifarious disasters.

From bees to storms, Mr. Shyamalan blithely rattled off some failings of modern Science (as he sees them) and then reminded Mr. Flatow that Einstein started out life as a non-believer, but was a wholly religious man toward the end of his life.

Unfortunately, Mr. Flatow only corrected his most baldly false assertion, but was unable or unwilling to engage him on his larger agenda. The anti-science pro-Jeebus lobbies are indeed poisoning the well, infiltrating public schools, and, of course, getting prime airtime to flog unreleased films on NPR's Science Friday. 

I pray for America's brain.

Flight of the Conchords is a musical comedy duo from Wellington, New Zealand. Official Site.
Flight of the Conchords: HBO Series.
Flight of the Conchords: on Wikipedia.
Flight of the Conchords: Google Video search.