Not a sound on the pavement

Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs. Whence did it come? What did it signify? How could I seize upon and define it?

Marcel Proust
Swann’s Way, “Overture”

No, you have not stumbled into a Theory of Knowledge class. No, I am not less sane than usual. Yes, it will be another one of “those” columns. Climb aboard the ride and pull down the safety bar .

It is sometimes the smallest things that will have the greatest effect. As music teachers we build associations to many hundreds of pieces of music through performances throughout our careers. Not only do we remember the musical details, but we remember the entire scene of the performance and in some cases events around it.

Stop and think of a piece of music that you have performed. Pick any one. Get the sound of that piece going in your mental music player. Can you see the venue where the performance took place? What were you wearing? Who else was performing with you? Can you see it from your point of view as a performer or as an outside observer? Now the catch - what emotion are you feeling? Are you remembering the emotions of that performance, the emotions that surrounded that time in your life, a mixture of both, or some strange mixture you can’t quite determine?

Brain researchers have been exploring these phenomena, amongst others. Using MRI scans and prompts requiring the subject to remember events or perform tasks they are identifying areas of activity in the brain that correspond to a variety of activities. In one study they showed a silent movie that had a variety of sounds visually depicted - here’s the description by Ian Sample writing in The Guardian:

Volunteers clambered into an MRI scanner and watched silent movie clips. Each five second video included a scene that implied a sound. There were animals in action: a howling dog, a mooing cow, a crowing cock. There were musical instruments: a violin, a bass and a piano key being struck. Three final videos showed a chainsaw cutting down a tree, coins being tossed into a glass and a vase being dropped and smashed. All played out in silence, but even typing that I could hear the buzz of the saw, the sharp clink of coins, the crash of the vase. Like the author, I presume that as you were reading the descriptions of the scenes you created the sounds in your mind’s ear.

The study then goes on to raise what may be the answer to why we became involved in music education. According to the lead scientist in the study, Kaspar Meyer, the visual stimulus would not trigger the the mind’s ear to hear the sound if we had never made those sounds or seen and heard those sounds being simultaneously made.

It is our task to create the opportunities for our students to build those aural, physical and emotional associations. We tend to call them by the mundane names of practice, rehearsals and performances. By creating for them the best environment to build that framework of emotions and sensations we recalled in our earlier exercise, we do the most to influence their development as musicians, learners and citizens of the world.

And the best part is, we benefit as well.

Words, Words, Words

Because e-books were not explicitly mentioned in most author contracts until about 15 years ago, disputes have arisen about who has the right to publish digital versions of older books. But along with other publishers, Random House, which releases Styron’s works in print, has said that clauses like “in book form” give it exclusive rights to publish electronic editions. In a letter to literary agents in December, Markus Dohle, chief executive of Random House, the world’s largest publisher of trade books, said authors were “precluded from granting publishing rights to third parties” for electronic editions.

Motoko Rich

New York Times

25 April 2010

As we bring this year to an academic close with concerts and festivals and the first glimmers and glints of who will be where next year, let us pause and examine the turning point at which we find ourselves in the intellectual property world. “How does this affect me? ” I hear you cry. The short answer is, in many ways that you may not have thought, Grasshopper.

Intellectual property relies on contracts, and contracts are, despite the opinions of their authors, written by mortals. There is no such thing as an iron-clad contract as time has a way of making its intentions known. All of the music that you buy from your favourite supplier is licensed from the author/composer/librettist under a contract. Contracts are limited by their terms and conditions. If the person drawing up the contract is neither omniscient nor incredibly precise in the language they employ, the contract may be unenforceable or offer loopholes in the terms and conditions that may be exploited by either or both parties.

When choral and band arrangements are contracted, there are a wide variety of rights that are under negotiation. Distribution, performance, duplication, medium are some of the principal rights that are covered. As you can see from the quote above, the medium through which the material is published is becoming an issue. As an author, there is a separate negotiation for audio recording rights, film rights. screenplay adaptations and extensions to contracts. Most of us who use online services for purchasing music are waiting for the day that all work will be offered as “print on demand”. We may well be waiting for a long time. Many publishers would like to see this happen as it would mean a relatively inexpensive solution to keeping a publication in print and in stock. Many authors would like to see this as it means that more of their titles are available for performance (and for sale). Why hasn’t it already happened? Read the contract.

If a contract has not specified electronic means in its terms and conditions, the author has the right to enforce the contract and not allow electronic distribution. That means opening up a renegotiation for electronic publication rights with everyone involved in the publication in question. “Everyone?” I hear you ask? The composer, the arranger, the lyricist or poet if the choral work is taken from a pre-extant text all have a say in the publication or non-publication of the piece, depending on their original contract for the piece. If any one of them does not agree the terms, the contract cannot be completed and the piece cannot be published electronically.

This is one of the reasons why films of events such as “Woodstock” have featured artists and songs. Unless all the performers agreed, including the composer and lyricist, the pieces could not be legally transmitted. It could be argued, if there were any advocates, that the pieces filmed, but not used should not even have been filmed. However, since ownership of many rock and blues songs is cloudy at best they were at least filmed. If the film distributors could not find a clear title for a composer or lyricist, the song could not be included in the film. Also if a band did not agree to their performance being distributed, no film rights. If a songwriting partnership disagreed, no film rights. For film rights read any rights and you’ll see the state of the current publishing field.

The current publishing field also has to cope with the emergence of a global market where copyright has always been specified nation by nation and in global treaties. If a country didn’t sign the treaty, any copyrighted material that entered the country had only the rights granted by the country where the material was located. The Internet can be filtered by nation so there is some form of discrimination possible. However, the licenses for publication have historically been granted nation by nation, often with differing publishing groups in differing nations. A case in point are my own books from Novello. The first three books are not licensed for sale in the US and Canada. The next four are available world wide, so Novello and MusicSales negotiated a different agreement with the holders of the publication and distribution rights.

So bear a thought for the publishers as you search for new repertoire and materials. Everything so far has presumed that for the most part the people concerned with the title want the piece to remain in print. It may surprise you that there are authors and composers, such as the late J.D. Salinger, who do not wish works to remain available after the initial contract period expires or in any altered form from the original specification.

I leave you with the contract terms offered me from Novello. Their lawyers are pretty sharp and I think that you will appreciate both the brevity and impact of their work.

In consideration of the payment set out in this Order you hereby assign to us with full title guarantee the entire copyright and all like rights in and to the product of your services performed by you pursuant to and under the terms of this Order (the "Services") for the full period of copyright including any and all renewals, revivals, extensions and reversions therein throughout the World to hold to Music Sales Limited absolutely. You hereby confirm that the payment referred to above shall be the entire payment whatsoever due to you in respect of the Services (including for the avoidance of doubt any further payment that may otherwise arise in respect of any rental and lending rights under the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 1996) and, further, you give your consent to the Services being used in any form and in any media whether now known or hereinafter designed or invented without further payment of any kind whatsoever.

Enjoy your summer and re-create!

So You Want To Be A Rock And Roll Star?

"It encourages kids not to learn, that's the trouble. It makes less and less people dedicated to really get down and learn an instrument".

Bill Wyman, former bass player for the Rolling Stones

"It irritates me having watched my kids do it. If they spend as much time practising the guitar as learning how to press the buttons, they'd be damn good by now".

Nick Mason, Pink Floyd
both quoted in The Guardian, 8 September 2009

Two masters of their instruments air their views on the “Guitar Hero” phenomenon. From reports from my students, it appears the more real guitar or drums you can play, the more you have to “unlearn” to play the game. I have to admit, I’m sure like many of you, I played the beta version of “Guitar Hero”. That was the version where you actually learned to play the instruments then formed a band and played for tribal gatherings then known as sock-hops or dances.

Back in the dark ages in junior high I was in a band formed in the wake of the British Invasion that rehearsed in my basement. As I had been taking organ and tuba lessons for three years already, it was down to me to learn the songs in order to teach them to the rest of the band. I expanded my studies to include electric bass guitar and then transferred them to the upright bass to begin playing in the orchestra. So there I was from an early age listening to records, playing along, writing a variety of charts for my colleagues and co-conspirators. As at least three of us in the band, up to six in one incarnation, were also in the choir we were pretty good at vocal stylings and could cover not only songs by Chuck Berry and the Beatles, but also songs by such luminaries as the Beach Boys, the Cryan’ Shames and The Association.

So I suppose my innocent teen age pursuits shaped and fed my already fairly large interest in music. In our house music was something that happened the same way that you ate dinner in the evening. My father played trumpet and organ and my mother and her twin sister sang in a duet act, both performed at least semi-professionally in the Chicago area. As a result of my extra rock band training, neither ear training nor melodic dictation ever proved to be difficult in any of my courses. Similarly, class piano improvisation requirements where not as trying as they were to many. That early “Rock Band” game began as “do what they did” and turned eventually into “take the structures they used and develop a unique variation that is yours”.

I continued to play and sing in a variety of ensembles in High School. My band director needed a keyboard player for a lounge/club gig and asked if I could play a Hammond B3. As it turned out, I could and I then embarked on a career in the lounges and clubs of the south side playing standards, learning yet another style and set of performance theories and rules. This pattern continued through university and beyond.

With the growth of the Internet and the many tablature and lyrics sites that now exist, the technology has lifted some of the repetition out of transcribing songs and arrangements from contemporary popular music. Our students can now see their heroes performing on YouTube and concert videos. There are digital recorders built in to many hand held devices. Digital playback devices exist that allow songs to be slowed down without changing the pitch so students can play along with soloists. Students who have the music fire lit in them can find many avenues to stoke the flames. According to Alex Rigopulos, co-founder of the firm which created the Rock Band series, “We’re constantly hearing from fans who were inspired by Rock Band to start studying a real instrument.”

Mozart created his musical dice game to pass the time making music. Xenakis recorded burning charcoal to create a piece for the Brussels World’s Fair. The artists of musique concrète sliced reel-to-reel tapes into “samples” and distorted them and stitched them together or overdubbed them to create music. Today our students drag loops and beats to create songs, record and manipulate original sounds and source sounds in samplers. Algorithmic composition and “chance music” are now accepted compositional techniques. Our students make music in many ways, appreciate music in many ways and share their musical talents in a variety of ways.

Perhaps that is all the “Guitar Hero” is - another way that students socialise through, participate in, and express themselves with music. I am sure that we as teachers would hope that once the “Guitar Hero” game is conquered, all of our students would quickly resume the life-long game that they have undertaken; making music an essential part of their lives as intelligent consumers, enlightened critics and expressive performers and creators.

The nights get longer

Torrential rains and winter gloom seem to be the order of business for the UK as I write. Sunset is now around 4:00 pm and sunrise is around 7:30 am. Cold winds blow down the dark streets. Thirty one more days, each one with less light than the next.

In order to stave off some of the darkness, I turned to an old friend, Stan Getz, and his classic work with Astrud Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim, The Girl From Ipanema. I was listening to the full length version on The Very Best of Stan Getz-Sax Moods. There is an edited version that leaves off Jobim's Portugese verse. The track originally appeared on Getz/Gilberto.

It started to play and as the warmth of the sun began to fill the room, I was struck by the simplicity. In our modern era the instrumentation no doubt would be augmented to make "a statement." Acoustic guitar, hi-hat, ride cymbal, acoustic bass, tenor sax, piano and two vocalists. If the drummer had more kit than that, it was just to get paid porterage as I didn't hear it - no side stick or kick-in of a section or fill. Just time on the cymbals.

And it's not just the instrumentation, it's the taste and restraint. Accents on the closed straight eighth hi-hat and the syncopated guitar carry the rhythm. The bass sticks largely to repeated tonics and dominants on one and three. This sets the stage for the vocalists and soloists to have maximum room for their generally lyrical interpretations. The piano fills and dances around the guitar. The ride cymbal makes its appearance during the solos and disappears as the head returns. An aural interpretation of less is more.

Intro - Portuguese vocal - English vocal - Tenor - Piano/vocal from the bridge and out. Five minutes and twenty six seconds of style and atmosphere.

Apparently, it almost didn't happen. Getz's label didn't want him to issue anything to compete with Jazz Samba. The singer, Astrud Gilberto had never sung on a recording before. What was even worse, and everyone who has ever been in a group will understand this, she was the guitarist's wife. How fortuitous for us all that João Gilberto had a wife who could really sing!

Dust off your copy, have a listen and hear the waves lapping on the shore as the sun warms you up in this season of increasing darkness.

License To...?

Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, "memex" will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.

Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think”
Atlantic Monthly, July 1945

As we begin this year’s journey through the uncharted waters of academe, it is good to look back into the history of technology at a visionary thinker. Dr. Vannevar Bush was Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development. He supervised the progress of scientific research during the Second World War and was on the cutting edge of technological developments. In this article for the Atlantic Monthly, he looks to the future of technology and its wider application to more ordinary uses. He discusses the innovations of microfilm, dry printing, dry photography and their application to the invention of a desk system, “the memex” as described above.

As knowledge workers, we daily manipulate vast amounts of books, records and communications. We can look back sixty-five years and see the concepts behind our modern computing system appearing hazily in the distance. He does not predict the intercommunication of the desks and libraries into one enormous virtual desk. He still talks about buying information.

In our world, the “books, records, and communications” have expanded exponentially to include films and music. Not only do we now purchase films and music for our entertainment we also create and publish them for the use of others. Our creations are also managed from our memexes; we license the performance through third-party brokers like YouTube or Vimeo.

One of the major issues in the world of the performing arts today is the debate about compensating artists for their work. If you want a picture of the music market of today, ask your fourteen ear old students how they buy their music. You may be in for a surprise, as many don’t actually buy music. At least one mobile phone operator licenses its users to temporarily download as much music as they wish from the firm’s online library. That downloaded music will disappear when the contract ends. Others use services such as Spotify where licensed music is available for you to listen to online. You can organize and share playlists, but you don’t own the music and are restricted from storing any on your personal devices.

Those are some of the legal ways of obtaining music without purchasing it. The world of illegal file sharing, sometimes called ‘torrenting’ after the BitTorrent networking client, rears its head. You may recall the birth of file sharing with the service named Napster. Sean Fanning transformed the system where people on a network designate share points for posting files for visiting users into a centrally searchable database of the contents of al the subscribers to the service shared content. His network was not the local area network or wide area network of an office or university campus, it was the network of networks – the Internet. The music industry took action, and along with major film and television organizations still continues to take action against its successors. Distribution of copyright content is strictly controlled by the industry, sometimes through physical means such as region codes for DVDs, but always through contracts and licenses. What is available on eMusic in the UK differs from what is available on eMusic in the United States. Pandora, the online music service, had to curtail its operations outside of the United States because agreements on licensing could not be reached with the record industry. One of the newest forms of distributing music is through performance videos on YouTube. This has become a ‘hot button’ issue because of the potential for redistribution of copyrighted material.

When content is posted to YouTube, according to the YouTube terms, posters are to ensure:

9.2 You agree that you will not post or upload any User Submissions which contain content which it is unlawful for you to possess in the country in which you are resident, or which it would be unlawful for YouTube to use or possess in connection with the provision of the Services.

9.3 You agree that you will not upload or post any User Submissions that are subject to any third party proprietary rights (including rights of privacy or rights of publicity), unless you have a formal licence or permission from the rightful owner to post the material in question and to grant YouTube the licence referred to in paragraph 10.1 below.

Your students may not know that the video and audio rights for performances that they attend are licensed and that they do not implicitly have the permission of the copyright owners to transmit or rebroadcast personal recordings of copyright performances. When students are adding music to a film or media project, they must be explicitly be warned of copyright issues and further distribution outside of the classroom if they use any material copyrighted by others from their music libraries.

In that light, it is worth reminding your students that when they are posting their own original work on YouTube that, according to the Terms posted on YouTube, they are entering a contract with YouTube and granting a license to YouTube as follows:

10. Rights you licence

10.1 When you upload or post a User Submission to YouTube, you grant:

1. to YouTube, a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable licence (with right to sub-licence) to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform that User Submission in connection with the provision of the Services and otherwise in connection with the provision of the Website and YouTube's business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Website (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels;
2. to each user of the Website, a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, licence to access your User Submissions through the Website, and to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display and perform such User Submissions to the extent permitted by the functionality of the Website and under these Terms.

10.2 The above licenses granted by you in User Videos terminate when you remove or delete your User Videos from the Website. The above licenses granted by you in User Comments are perpetual and irrevocable, but are otherwise without prejudice to your ownerships rights, which are retained by you as set out in paragraph 8.2 above.

Every nation has its own copyright clearance body and procedures. The world of copyright has not yet found a global understanding. Rights are licensed and applied differently all around the world. What is “fair use” in the United States is “Prohibited Activity” elsewhere. Some countries have only a notional form of copyright protection and licensing that is largely ignored. All we can do as educators is make students and our colleagues aware of both their rights and their responsibilities and do our best to ensure that our practices are in line with the local laws.

Our personal memexes grow smaller and more powerful with every passing year. The material that we have access to grows every year. The association we can make between performer and composer and consumer of creative acts grows deeper and richer. We need to make sure that an attitude of respect for the works of creative artists is being established.

Special

"Where's the wacky quote, you know – the one that doesn't make sense until the end?"
A picture is worth a thousand words, friend.
"Well, guess that's better than reading three pages."
Ah, gentle reader. That is a good starting point.

Recently, whilst looking sideways at our topsy-turvy world of curricula, standards and rubrics, I found myself wandering in a HMV shop in sunny Staines. It could have been anywhere in the UK or possibly in the world. "How long will all of this last?", I thought to myself. I wandered the aisles through bins and racks labelled R & B, Urban, Metal, Classical, Feature Films, Televison Series, Box Sets and looking aimlessly at the row upon row of shiny and colourful compact discs and DVDs when my eye was caught by the bin labelled "Specialist Music".

I was struck by the irony. Each of the genres listed above could easily be thought of as specialist music. As soon as we divide music we create a speciality category don't we? Think of some of the the grand divisions; vocal-instrumental, orchestra-band, brass-woodwind. Each has its own sets of standards, techniques and qualities that are create the unique sound and appeal of that music. Compositional techniques differ. Ranges and articulations differ. As a composer and arranger I always try to look for tips from the music I perform - how did that composer or arranger solve their problems? I also get some great chuckles from editors (I hope) who persist in putting a crescendo over a whole note chord in a piano staff. I dutifully press harder as I hold the keys down, but it never gets any louder.

It was the Ps that got to me. The juxtaposition of Charlie Parker and Dolly Parton piqued my notoriously quirky sense of humour. It comes from the same place as the chuckle over the crescendo. In a world that categorises and subdivides music into ever smaller niches, who would have ever thought to look for Dolly and Bird in the same grouping? I didn't take the photo, but the sight in the Ds was also amusing - Miles Davis Kind of Blue next to John Denver's Greatest Hits - if only it had been his Christmas With The Muppets it would have been the perfect picture.

But as I sit writing, something troubles me about this. It could be argued that there was a more subtle grouping going on that would be worthy of a Dan Brown book. In the words of the immortal Rolf Harris, "Can you tell what it is yet?"

Of course you can. Our specialists were all masters of their art who found a way to express through vibrating air, feelings and emotions that were otherwise inexpressible. The common thread that they as well as every other artist in the shop possess is that whatever the style or genre, their music connects to peoples lives and touches them in some ineffable way. The sounds that they make accompany the lives of the listeners and make moments special. We celebrate life at every stage with music. Whether it is a baptism hymn, the music playing during that first kiss or the hymn sung at graveside, music shapes and colours our lives.

As we edge closer to the end of this school year, relish the special moments that will be marking mileposts in the lives of you, your students and their families.