Music Info Sources and Services – LIS5937

Week 14 – on The Cognition of Basic Musical Structures by David Temperly

I have to admit to finding it simultaneously alienating and comforting to read of mathematical mappings of music, (which seems to be the stuff of Temperly’s work – though of course that’s a gross oversimplification to his efforts).  The ambiguity of response is [...]

Week 13 – on Simon’s “Jamming in the Stacks,” Hakanen’s “Counting Down to Number One,” and Oliver’s “Music, History, Democracy”

One particular nugget I took away from Oliver’s rather scathing critique of the 1989 IASPM conference was his note that “meanings associated with music (by academics, at any rate) are not intrinsic to it, but are [...]

Week 12 – On Music Is Your Business, chapter 1 and chapter 6

The value of this work as a primer to the music business is obvious – even the initial charts showing the variety of faces of the ‘fronts’ of music marketing are of value in acquainting musicians with the landscape, as well as providing [...]

Week 11 – on Soundtracks: Popular Music, Identity and Place, chapters 1 and 11

The exploration within the first chapter of Soundtracks of popular music as “providing a platform for the expression of marginalised [sic] voices,” was compelling, especially the notion that popular music might even capture some type of “resistance to the homogenizing forces of [...]

Week 10 – on The Future of the Music Business, chapters 19-20

The final chapters of Gordon’s book finally catch up to the present, with both the likely demise of the traditional music industry (revealed in an interview with the former president of Grokster, Wayne Rosso – at least as regards a substantial drop in revenue [...]

Week 9 – on The Future of the Music Business, chapters 14 – 16

Following on the practical applicability of the preceding few chapters, Gordon’s book shifts back to considerations of legal practicality and licensing for music distribution and copying through chapters 14 and 15, (especially 15 with the exploration of Creative Commons licensing).  One of the [...]

Week 8 – on Steve Gordon’s The Future of the Music Business, chapters 11 – 13

Last semester’s course, Information Architecture, was a true eye-opener in the midst of a program that has otherwise been useful but predictable; to put it simply, academic libraries have been my life for the past six years (and continue to [...]

Week 7 – on Musicophilia, chapters 15 and 23; Manual for the Performance Library, chapters 6 and 7

As much as I would like to find hope in the apparent palliative effects of music on Clive in the case written about in chapter 15, I cannot help finding Clive’s story tremendously sad.  Yes, of [...]

Week 6 – on Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, ch. 7 & 11

These two chapters followed an interesting trajectory, first in stripping away some of the mystery of musical performance and appreciation by rooting it in biological factors, then in reinflating the mystery through reflection on mechanisms for compensation [...]

Week 5 – on Russ Girsberger’s A Manual for the Performance Library, chapters 2 and 3 – 2/07/2011

Girsberger’s intention across the second and third chapters of his book seems to be to support his assertion from the first chapter, that traditional training and even experience as a librarian is not necessary to work [...]