Dearest 108 -
I hope you all are enjoying your vacation, and I'd like to give thanks to you, especially Professor Naddaff, Fallenttinme Be Mice Elf. Enjoy the video, and have a funky thanksgiving y'all.
paige
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Friday, November 18, 2011
Group 4 - Expansion Pack
In the NY Times article, "To Tug the Heartstrings Music Must First Tickle the Neurons", Levitin describes the research that he conducted using a Disklavier to record the piano strokes of a Chopin piece. Once the piece was recorded it was played back in its original recorded form and then the notes were manipulated to express the exact musical notation, without any expressive elements added by the musician playing it. The subjects who listened to the different versions of the music reported being less moved by the pieces which were manipulated and more so by the pieces played with artistic nuances. We can draw parallels to Benjamin's Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, in which he claims that the presence of the original piece of art is necessary for any art to be authentic. This speaks to the idea of the hand of the creator being present. Now you may say that this idea of the presence of the original speaks only to live music but in the recorded music of Levitin's experiment there is a presence...a human presence. For a person to play a piece of music exactly as it is written may prove quite difficult but also undesirable because it takes out any artistic interpretation.
In "This is Your Brain on Music" Levitin writes about the tricks that recording artists and engineers use to tickle our brains. We are able to hear the human element even in this type of recorded music.
In section III of Benjamin's Work of Art, he speaks to our changing human perception over time. Levitin also mentions our changing perceptions as being due to evolutionary pressures. The ways in which we see, taste, and hear have to adapt to new technologies, cultural elements, and politics. This is especially true with listening to music. The ways that we play, record, and listen to music changes and so we adapt with the times.
In "This is Your Brain on Music" Levitin writes about the tricks that recording artists and engineers use to tickle our brains. We are able to hear the human element even in this type of recorded music.
In section III of Benjamin's Work of Art, he speaks to our changing human perception over time. Levitin also mentions our changing perceptions as being due to evolutionary pressures. The ways in which we see, taste, and hear have to adapt to new technologies, cultural elements, and politics. This is especially true with listening to music. The ways that we play, record, and listen to music changes and so we adapt with the times.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Earworms and Hallucinations
Group One Presentation
ajskdlf
"Many people are set off by the theme music of a film or television show or an advertisement. This is not coincidental, for such music industry, to 'hook' the listener, to be 'catchy' or 'sticky,'to bore its way, like an earwig, into the ear or mind, hence the term, 'earworms' - though one might be inclined to call them 'brainworms' instead."
-Oliver Sacks, "Brainworms, Sticky Music, and Catchy Tunes" (p. 450)
Advertisers and movie producers systematically create tunes that linger in the minds of the audience so that the thought of their product remains long after the experience. The music is so effective that despite never having had first hand experience with the product one can still recall it because of the simple and catchy design of the jingle.
We are all prone to and plagued by these detestably irresistible jingles. We all know what it's like for them to creep up on us out of nowhere and to play over and over in our heads regardless of how badly we wish them away. This is thanks to the overwhelming proliferation of music in our lives. We are constantly saturated in auditory stimulation. This makes getting songs stuck in our heads inevitable and it also increases the likeliness of musical hallucinations.
If a tree falls in the middle of a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? No. Sound is an experience. Sound waves will emit when the tree hits the ground, but until those waves meet ears, they are just waves. Experiences in any of the five senses occur when stimuli from the surrounding environment meet our receptors, but these experiences are particular to us and because of our particular receptors. We are the storehouse, the birthplace, of the experience we call sound. It happens in our brains. The external wave is something else entirely before it meets our ears.
It is much more likely to think of a catchy tune when we are not already listening to music because our ears are preoccupied. Following this line, Sacks points out that musical hallucinations are far more common in people with hearing impairments. The lack of stimulation brought about by the failing sense organ does not mean the parts of the brain active while listening become impaired themselves. During musical hallucination, these neurons fire in the same way that they do when actual music is heard. We are so identified with our five senses that when the brain operates without them, it feels like it is an autonomous happening, outside of ourselves. The people suffering the hallucinations know that there is no actual stimuli, so describe the experience like a radio or ipod playing by itself.
"Half of us are plugged into iPods, immersed in daylong concerts of our own choosing, virtually oblivious to the environment -- and for those who are not plugged in, there is nonstop music, unavoidable and often of deafening intensity, in restaurants, bars, shops, and gyms. This barrage of music puts a certain strain on our exquisitely sensitive auditory systems, which cannot be overloaded without dire consequences" (Sacks, 53).
Whether we are surrounded by music is not a matter of our choice. With recent developments in technology one has constant access via file sharing websites, on-line radio, iPods, etc. However, music surrounds us in the form of ambient music as well - notably in elevators, advertisements, stores, etc. This pervasive and constant flood of music that we experience eventually leads to music hallucinations once the overstimulated subject is deprived of music. Sacks points to many cases where such auditory sense deprivation results from old age and hearing loss.
"The crucial factor, Konorski suggested, is the sensory input from eyes, ears, and other sense organs, which normally inhibits any backflow of activity from the highest parts of the cortex to the periphery. But if there is a critical deficiency of input from the sense organs, this will facilitate a backflow, producing hallucinations physiologically and subjectively indistinguishable from perceptions" (Sacks, 83).
Music hallucinations are the result of sensory deprivation - but this deprivation is relative to the over-saturated minds of our society. The number of cases of music hallucinations has risen, indicating that our current overstimulation may cause the hallucinations as it normalizes an otherwise exorbitant amount of audio-data that is received throughout our life times.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Group Awesome (nee 4) Presents: What Is Music For (In a Destitute Time)
First and foremost - totally our title. Totally did not take it from any dead Germans of any sort.
I think an interesting point of discussion from the Levitin readings we can elaborate upon is the relationship between this scientific, neurocognitive reading of music in the physiological structures of the human mind and its implications on a more philosophical way of reading. Is this neurological and evolutionary way of thinking about music reductive to the point of diminishing music, or art and the humanities in general, to the language of utility? This might be contrasted with neuroscience itself as a field that studies an emergent phenomenon, where the whole of human activity on an individual scale as well as in a form of life greater than the sum of its parts? (the atomism of neurological structures, individuals, single notes) Or does this reading in some way enhance our philosophical understanding of music? Certainly there are many points in the Levitin readings that recall the writings of the philosophical works we have discussed in class. For instance:
-Levitin talks about how music played an evolutionary role in the survival of early humans, and music as an organizing social force. Compare this idea with how Nietzsche sees music as within the sphere of the Dionysiac, the force that combines individuals into oneness, and also as a diagnostic indicator for the health of a society. Another connection to Nietzsche can be found in the way Levitin describes the systems of the human brain as generating something illusory in our everyday perceptions. A similar idea can be found in Nietzsche’s On Truth and Lying in the Extra-Moral Sense. Does Levitin’s analyses point to a domination of the Apolline drive which subsumes art and music under the Baconian need to explain everything that can be known? Levitin continues in a somewhat Nietzsche direction when we writes about the social utility of music as an example of an emergent phenomenon, capable of directing masses of people:
“Up until this point, I’ve been considering songs as they are recalled and sung by one individual at a time. But knowledge songs -- from Huron’s yellow school bus songs to Torah cantillation-- are more typically sung by groups of people. In this context their position as a foundation of culture and their durability become even more apparent. I’ve already described the social bonding that comes from synchronous music making, and the neurochemical effects of singing, but there are manifest cognitive benefits that are conferred to the group-as-whole, apart from any benefits to the individual when people sing together.”(World 180)
libel! slander! infamy! And a counter to music as a tool. Tools are given their essential toolness by the user, not the receiver. It is not the nail which makes the hammer a bludgeon, but the action of swinging and making it such. Indeed, having a bunch of nails everywhere won’t make a pancake a hammer but having a hammer in hand might make all your problems look like nails. If it is up to the nail what effect the hammer has on it, than the hammer is not a tool. This clumsy analogy, hopefully, will come across better in class. For instance, at occupy Cal, after Reich’s speech, there was a dance party on the steps of Sproul. In the mix was this classic piece about the power of dance to stop violence by MJ, or is that what it is about. . . (if stupid Vevo let's me embed it)
Yet where to begin? But, of course, the demand for an origin point is a part of this whole problematic process. The cleverness of harmoniously uniting musicians and scientists (science, as I will never grow tired of saying, comes from the Latin root scindere meaning to cut, divide, separate) has a goal and a purpose other than itself. It is to understand music completely. And to do that it must make things particular and understand them particularly. This leads to an infinite abundance of new horizons to conquer, and an illusion, if you will, of progress. But the thing about horizons is that as you approach them a new one appears. The neuroscience of music as Levitin explains it is embarked on a crusade that will make lots of progress and never get anywhere. Like trying to count to infinity.
Secondly - Levitin prepares a highly informative and interesting account of the brain and its/our relationship to music. Doing so though, he constantly puts music in the position of having to have a use, a purpose, an end towards which it can be put.
http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3550zu/
I think an interesting point of discussion from the Levitin readings we can elaborate upon is the relationship between this scientific, neurocognitive reading of music in the physiological structures of the human mind and its implications on a more philosophical way of reading. Is this neurological and evolutionary way of thinking about music reductive to the point of diminishing music, or art and the humanities in general, to the language of utility? This might be contrasted with neuroscience itself as a field that studies an emergent phenomenon, where the whole of human activity on an individual scale as well as in a form of life greater than the sum of its parts? (the atomism of neurological structures, individuals, single notes) Or does this reading in some way enhance our philosophical understanding of music? Certainly there are many points in the Levitin readings that recall the writings of the philosophical works we have discussed in class. For instance:
“Across all these examples, a common thread emerges: Knowledge songs tell stories, recount an ordeal, a saga, a particularly noteworthy hunt -- something to immortalize. The demonstrated power of songs-as-memory-aid has been known to humans for some thousands and thousands of years. We write songs to remind ourselves of things (as in Johnny Cash’s ‘I Walk the Line”) or to remind others of things (as in Jim Croce’s ‘You Don’t Mess Around with Jim’ or Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Don’t Stop’). We write songs to teach our young, as in alphabet songs and counting songs. We write them to encode lessons that we’ve learned and don’t want to forget, often using metaphor or devices to raise the message up to the level at which art meets science, making it at once more memorable and more inspiring. . .”(The World in Six Songs 177)
-Levitin talks about how music played an evolutionary role in the survival of early humans, and music as an organizing social force. Compare this idea with how Nietzsche sees music as within the sphere of the Dionysiac, the force that combines individuals into oneness, and also as a diagnostic indicator for the health of a society. Another connection to Nietzsche can be found in the way Levitin describes the systems of the human brain as generating something illusory in our everyday perceptions. A similar idea can be found in Nietzsche’s On Truth and Lying in the Extra-Moral Sense. Does Levitin’s analyses point to a domination of the Apolline drive which subsumes art and music under the Baconian need to explain everything that can be known? Levitin continues in a somewhat Nietzsche direction when we writes about the social utility of music as an example of an emergent phenomenon, capable of directing masses of people:
“Up until this point, I’ve been considering songs as they are recalled and sung by one individual at a time. But knowledge songs -- from Huron’s yellow school bus songs to Torah cantillation-- are more typically sung by groups of people. In this context their position as a foundation of culture and their durability become even more apparent. I’ve already described the social bonding that comes from synchronous music making, and the neurochemical effects of singing, but there are manifest cognitive benefits that are conferred to the group-as-whole, apart from any benefits to the individual when people sing together.”(World 180)
The most, if you'll pardon the pun, elementary example of music as a tool happens when Levitin is talking about children sining songs to learn facts, “The children’s television show of the 1990s Animaniacs featured songs that a generation of kids used to learn such things as the states of the United States and their capitals . . . and the nations of the world” (The World in Six Songs p. 150). So, for your viewing, listening, and informational pleasure, we present to you the Warner Brothers, and their sister Dot!
Levitin ties music to the brain, but his interest is in the mind so he shies away from a one to one correlation and brings up the brain's plasticity and parallel processing abilities, “There is no single language center, nor is there a single music center. Rather, there are regions that perform component operations, and other regions that coordinate the bringing together of this information.” (Brain on Music p. 85). He mentions speech aphasia but, somehow, neglects to mention one of the most fascinating treatments for it. The clip should skip to the relevant section. The man speaking had a stroke and for several years could not talk at all until he could sing and, in fact, still cannot speak today. Listen to him explain what he's doing. This is the utility for music to convey information carried into the extreme.
But just because music CAN be used in ways that make it seem like a utilizeable tool does not make it such. The key difference between music and other things we think of as tools is that most tools are not open to interpretation on the recieving end. Music, however, for Levitin is, “My reading of this verse is that Cash is not in fact singing the song to her, but to himself. The ironic underpinning is that in fact he doesn’t find it very, very easy to be true. He wants to be, but it is a struggle” (The World in Six Songs p. 155).
libel! slander! infamy! And a counter to music as a tool. Tools are given their essential toolness by the user, not the receiver. It is not the nail which makes the hammer a bludgeon, but the action of swinging and making it such. Indeed, having a bunch of nails everywhere won’t make a pancake a hammer but having a hammer in hand might make all your problems look like nails. If it is up to the nail what effect the hammer has on it, than the hammer is not a tool. This clumsy analogy, hopefully, will come across better in class. For instance, at occupy Cal, after Reich’s speech, there was a dance party on the steps of Sproul. In the mix was this classic piece about the power of dance to stop violence by MJ, or is that what it is about. . . (if stupid Vevo let's me embed it)
The power of music, when usable as a tool, to inspire emotion is not in dispute. However, whether that translates into more than simply the experience itself seems to be taken for granted. As amazing as this commercial is to me, I do not own a pair of addidas shoes.
All these underlying assumptions and understandings taken as givens result from, well, what our boy Nietschze would call knowledge lusting. We want to know what things ARE. That means we need to know where they come from, what they do, and every step in between. But as Xeno pointed out, there is no end to intermediate steps. So when Levitin ends with “The topic of musical expressions is perhaps the area in the cognitive neuroscience of music that most harmoniously unites music theory and neural theory, musicians and scientists, and to understand it completely, we have to study how particular patterns of music give rise to the particular patterns of neural activations in the brain.” (This Is Your Brain on Music p. 108). He has concisely encapsulated the problem, because he does not view it as one.
Yet where to begin? But, of course, the demand for an origin point is a part of this whole problematic process. The cleverness of harmoniously uniting musicians and scientists (science, as I will never grow tired of saying, comes from the Latin root scindere meaning to cut, divide, separate) has a goal and a purpose other than itself. It is to understand music completely. And to do that it must make things particular and understand them particularly. This leads to an infinite abundance of new horizons to conquer, and an illusion, if you will, of progress. But the thing about horizons is that as you approach them a new one appears. The neuroscience of music as Levitin explains it is embarked on a crusade that will make lots of progress and never get anywhere. Like trying to count to infinity.
And, finally, this goes out to a very special someone in the audience here today (Paige, you better be here damn it!).
"If you forgot the name of the song and whatever that thing is you've been workin' on all the live-long day, and the lyric brought you to the dead end of 'I've been workin' on the blank-blank,' it is relatively clear from the rhythm that a two syllable word is what's missing. If you sing 'I've been workin' on the tra-acks,' it sounds funny because the two-tone melody there doesn't really support an elongated one-syllable word. A phrase longer than two syllables, such as 'the Union Pacific Rail Line,' seems too crowded.
The rhythm interacts with melody and accent structure during the word 'railroad.' The higher note sounds like it is accented by virtue of its position in the rhythm, falling on a strong beat...while the lower note falls on a weaker beat...In this way the rhythmic structure implies a word whose accent is on the first syllable, like 'rail-road,' as opposed to say, 'gui-tar,' whose accent is on the second syllable" (Levitin 160-61).
"This barrage of music puts a certain strain on our exquisitely sensitive auditory systems, which cannot be overloaded without dire consequences...the omnipresence of annoyingly catchy tunes, the brainworms that arrive unbidden and leave only in their own time--catchy tunes that may, in fact, be nothing more than advertisements for toothpaste but are, neurologically, completely irresistible" (Sacks 53).
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Group 2 Presentation
“Such a commingling of utopia and hedonism would pervade the sensibilities of rave culture, along with the effects of ecstasy and the corresponding need for unregulated spaces where this new world could be invented- an invention that extended beyond club hours. ‘The whole period just felt so special because no one had a clue what we were doing,’ recalled Mike Pickering, one of Hot’s DJs” (Clover, 55-56).
In Clover’s article 1989, he introduces the concept of year zero- “a shared experience of the subcultures shared participants” (54.) This was a time of musical flux, where people were doing all sorts of interesting new things. Here, it becomes obvious that all these seemingly different categories of music: house/electro, punk, grunge, folk, indie, Britpop, riotgrrrl, industrial, hip-hop, disco, ambient, etc., are inextricably bound together. Does this support or derail Adorno’s critique of mass culture’s vapidity? Is this a lapse into regressive listening or creativity functioning within the system, drawing on a wealth of resources from the past? Where is this culture coming from anyway?
Year zero marks the melding together of many different genres of music, and the melding of this music with drugs. Both grunge and rave are self-loathing genres in their own right: where grunge hates the self and wants to violently destroy it, the rave scene embraces unity: the sameness of everyone. These self-destructive elements of the human condition are only amplified by the alienation resulting from capitalism (which is why people get into a ‘scene’ in the first place). In an ironically vicious cycle, this “unity” and desire for self-destruction is bottled up and sold back to us. In the beginning, when rave was still underground and gaining popularity, it retained the integrity of its ideals. “The blossoming scene, the music’s mutating inventiveness, the rush of e- all of these supplied a sense of abundance, of excess in the experience that hadn’t yet been ordered, managed, made doctrinal” (Clover, 60). However, it was only a matter of time before this beautiful, mindless unity became capitalized upon. By summer 1989, the scene was working its way towards a corporate death. “This was unity as sheer domination” (Clover, 64). What are capitalists supposed to do when drugs go mainstream?
“If the moments of sensual pleasure in the idea, the voice, the instrument are made into fetishes and torn away from any functions which could give them meaning, they meet a response equally isolated, equally far from the meaning of the whole, and equally determined by success in the blind and irrational emotions which form the relationship to music into which those with no relationship enter” (Adorno, 37).
An example of mass produced acid house:
In Clover’s article 1989, he introduces the concept of year zero- “a shared experience of the subcultures shared participants” (54.) This was a time of musical flux, where people were doing all sorts of interesting new things. Here, it becomes obvious that all these seemingly different categories of music: house/electro, punk, grunge, folk, indie, Britpop, riotgrrrl, industrial, hip-hop, disco, ambient, etc., are inextricably bound together. Does this support or derail Adorno’s critique of mass culture’s vapidity? Is this a lapse into regressive listening or creativity functioning within the system, drawing on a wealth of resources from the past? Where is this culture coming from anyway?
Year zero marks the melding together of many different genres of music, and the melding of this music with drugs. Both grunge and rave are self-loathing genres in their own right: where grunge hates the self and wants to violently destroy it, the rave scene embraces unity: the sameness of everyone. These self-destructive elements of the human condition are only amplified by the alienation resulting from capitalism (which is why people get into a ‘scene’ in the first place). In an ironically vicious cycle, this “unity” and desire for self-destruction is bottled up and sold back to us. In the beginning, when rave was still underground and gaining popularity, it retained the integrity of its ideals. “The blossoming scene, the music’s mutating inventiveness, the rush of e- all of these supplied a sense of abundance, of excess in the experience that hadn’t yet been ordered, managed, made doctrinal” (Clover, 60). However, it was only a matter of time before this beautiful, mindless unity became capitalized upon. By summer 1989, the scene was working its way towards a corporate death. “This was unity as sheer domination” (Clover, 64). What are capitalists supposed to do when drugs go mainstream?
“If the moments of sensual pleasure in the idea, the voice, the instrument are made into fetishes and torn away from any functions which could give them meaning, they meet a response equally isolated, equally far from the meaning of the whole, and equally determined by success in the blind and irrational emotions which form the relationship to music into which those with no relationship enter” (Adorno, 37).
An example of mass produced acid house:
In the chapters provided from Joshua Clover's 1989 we see a historical account of the musical styles and scenes in and surrounding 1989. In the second chapter of his book Clover discusses the life of the acid house rave movements, specifically in England. The third chapter of his works considers a concurrent musical style, grunge, an off shot of the earlier punk era. Clover's historical approach to the discussion of music leaves little room for critique of music and as such we see a marked lack of concern in the valuation of music, but rather simply their relation to the historical and musical contexts in which they were produced. While his accounts of both acid house and grunge offer historical arguments the implications Clover draws from each vary. From acid house he constructs an argument regarding the social structures and effects that were produced or fueled by the rave music and culture. The discussion of grunge examines the psychological elements of the music.
1989 enters into conversation with Adorno in several ways. The connections one can form between Clover and Adorno are commonly problematic in that Clover's points vary between validation and negation Adorno's theories. Some of the aspects of 1989 which map well onto Adorno's theory include the concepts of unity, temporality, recognition or “pseudo-activity” which Clover characterizes in one way as “the inward turn”. By examining the following passages and questions we will explore some of these connections.Grunge, the inward turn, break from the fetish or relazation of it?
Is grunge/punk's call to action enough of a turn from the fetishes demand for perfection?
“The new fetish is the flawlessly functioning, metallically brilliant apparatus as such, in which all the cogwheels mesh so perfectly that not the slightest hole remains open for the meaning of the whole. Perfect, immaculate performance in the latest style preserves the work at the price of its definitive reification” (Adorno, 44).
The Imperative logic is straightforward enough: Anyone can do it. Don't bow down before the band; be the band. Don't wait. Don't get stuck at home practicing scales. Raw power is enough. Urgency is enough. Anything more might just make things worse.(Clover, 76).
Do we see a similarity between the unity of mass listeners and ravers as well as one between the solitary listener and the inward turn of grunge?
The opposite type appears to be the eager person who leaves the factory and ‘occupies’ himself with the music in the quiet of his bedroom. He is shy and inhibited, perhaps has no luck with girls, and wants in any case to preserve his own special sphere. He seeks this as a radio ham. At twenty, he is still at the stage of a boy scout working on complicated knots just to please his parents. This type is held in high esteem in radio matters. He patiently builds sets whose most important
parts he must buy ready-made, and scans the air for shortwave secrets, though there are none.(Adorno, 53)
“This then is Bleach's position: at the corner of creep and shame. The coordination of these two is the first brute truth of grunge as an achieved structure of feeling: the unceasing and unstable encounter with one's own undesirability, one's own failing, one's unsuccessfully hidden or managed aberrations. This may be grunge's last truth as well – that which, once lost, leaves nothing behind”(Clover, 82).
Temporality, “Year Zero”, Vengeance
“They would like to ridicule and destroy what yesterday they were intoxicated with, as if in retrospect to revenge themselves for the fact that the ecstasy was not actually such”(Adorno, 56).
How is the temporality of the passage above fulfilled and negated by both grunge and acid house. How does Clover's formation of temporality differ from Adorno?
Nirvana- Lithium
The Timelords - Doctrin the Tardis
In “Self Portrait No. 25,” Greil Marcus presents us with a peculiar review of Bob Dylan's album “Self Portrait.” Structurally, the review is broken up into two voices: a Chorus (a plurality of voices acting as one) and a Soloist. These two voices offer an alternating exposition of “Self Portrait” in twenty-four sections that correspond to the twenty-four of tracks on the album and each voice has its own focus; the Soloist voice examines the album through each track in turn, content and composition of each song, while the chorus examines more broadly the album as a whole but from a variety of voices. The review begins and ends with an exposition from the Chorus, the ending being an additional section (twenty-fifth) not corresponding to a track on the album. But what are we to make of the review, its structure, its format, its content?
In the chorus' twenty-fourth section, the hermeneutical strategy of the “Auteur” is introduced. The auteur interpretation is one that identifies the work of art a development of the artist, that is how well the artist “has developed his personality in relation to previous [works]” (24). It is suggested that the auteur has been the predominant method for interpreting Dylan to date, citing the work of Dylan writer and critic Alan Weberman as an example. In the twenty-fifth and last section—not corresponding to any track on the album—the voice of the chorus continues with the theme of twenty-fourth section, suggesting the that auteurist interpretation, however, is not always useful. No doubt, the auteur can be fun and entertaining, but for those who want “great music” (25) such interpretations do not handle disappointing or non-great music and is in fact limiting both to the artist and listener. The auteur approach is “vapid, and if our own untaught perception of the auteur allows us to be satisfied with it, we degrade our own sensibilities and Dylan's capabilities as an American artist as well” (27).
In the chorus' twenty-fourth section, the hermeneutical strategy of the “Auteur” is introduced. The auteur interpretation is one that identifies the work of art a development of the artist, that is how well the artist “has developed his personality in relation to previous [works]” (24). It is suggested that the auteur has been the predominant method for interpreting Dylan to date, citing the work of Dylan writer and critic Alan Weberman as an example. In the twenty-fifth and last section—not corresponding to any track on the album—the voice of the chorus continues with the theme of twenty-fourth section, suggesting the that auteurist interpretation, however, is not always useful. No doubt, the auteur can be fun and entertaining, but for those who want “great music” (25) such interpretations do not handle disappointing or non-great music and is in fact limiting both to the artist and listener. The auteur approach is “vapid, and if our own untaught perception of the auteur allows us to be satisfied with it, we degrade our own sensibilities and Dylan's capabilities as an American artist as well” (27).
- The Chorus and the Soloist voices both approach the album differently, what are their capabilities and what are their limitations in the review?
- What do the two different approaches of the Chorus and Soloist voices say about the Auteur?
- What's at stake in choosing the Auteur over another method of interpreting when approaching works of art and music?
- What is the significance of “No. 25” in the title and how does it relate to the album?
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Group 3 Debate: More to Consider
In addition to the post below (please read the post below first), consider the following:
In Perfect From Now On, Sellars speaks about how music has effected his dad and his life. Sellar’s father was overly obsessed with Bob Dylan, to the point that he drove his family away and lived a life solely devoted to Dylan. Sellar’s describes his dad’s condition as being similar to “Gollum, sitting happily in his cave, singing to his Precious.” (14)
In Sellar’s case, he realizes that his obsession with the group Guided by Voices and other boyish music may have lead to the problems he experiences in relationships and in his career. Of this he says: “My obscene musical devotion, and the life style it espoused, didn’t have everything to do with my stagnant reality. But it certainly had something to do with it.” (14-15)
We present this to you so you can think about our second question: What is the effect of popular music on the listener (in regards to Adorno’s theory and/or the other texts’ examples of the effect of music on the listener)? How does this effect his creativity as a listener and his life outside of music? How much power does music have over the listener?
Example of music talked about in the text:
By: Jessica Adams, Elaine, James, and Karina
In Perfect From Now On, Sellars speaks about how music has effected his dad and his life. Sellar’s father was overly obsessed with Bob Dylan, to the point that he drove his family away and lived a life solely devoted to Dylan. Sellar’s describes his dad’s condition as being similar to “Gollum, sitting happily in his cave, singing to his Precious.” (14)
In Sellar’s case, he realizes that his obsession with the group Guided by Voices and other boyish music may have lead to the problems he experiences in relationships and in his career. Of this he says: “My obscene musical devotion, and the life style it espoused, didn’t have everything to do with my stagnant reality. But it certainly had something to do with it.” (14-15)
We present this to you so you can think about our second question: What is the effect of popular music on the listener (in regards to Adorno’s theory and/or the other texts’ examples of the effect of music on the listener)? How does this effect his creativity as a listener and his life outside of music? How much power does music have over the listener?
Example of music talked about in the text:
By: Jessica Adams, Elaine, James, and Karina
Group 3 Debate Questions: On Adorno's "Popular Music"
In preparation for our class tomorrow, these our the questions our group hopes to raise in tomorrow's discussion. We will be discussing the assigned excerpts from Love is a Mixtape--Schefield; Perfect from Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life--Sellers; and I Hate Myself and Want to Die: The 52 Most Depressing Songs You've Ever Heard--Reynolds, under the lens of Adorno's critique of popular music and its production in his essay On Popular Music. How do these two sets [Schefield et. al and Adorno (Popular Music)] of readings differ in their understanding of the production process and effect of popular music?
Adorno makes a distinction between serious music and popular music. According to Adorno, popular music is standardized both in its production and in its consumption (the listener's reaction to the music).
"It would not affect the musical sense if any detail were taken out of the context; the listener can supply the "framework" automatically, since it is a mere musical automatism itself. The beginning of the chorus is replaceable by the beginning of innumerable other choruses. The interrelationship among the elements or the relationship of the elements to the whole would be unaffected. In popular music, position is absolute. Every detail is substitutable; it serves its function only as a cog in a machine."
The Axis of Awesome, a comedy rock band from Australia recognizes Adorno’s sentiment. In this performance, they show that in the past 40 years, many if not most pop songs rely on a standardized four chord structure. This mash-up demonstrates 40 “different” songs from “different” genres within popular music that flow into each other almost seamlessly because they are based on the standard four chord structure.
A more subtle example of this "sameness" and interchangeability between popular music is seen when comparing the the theme, instrumentation, and structure of a song written by Taylor Swift as a reaction against scorned lover, John Mayer and a song by John Mayer himself. The songs prove in fact to be very similar, and therefore even if a listener chooses to take sides in this break-up by listening to one artist's music over the other--there really is no difference between the artists.
Adorno seems to pose the question: Is real creativity and self-expression possible in popular music’s system of standardization?
The supplemental readings by Schefield, Sellers, and Reynolds demonstrate that this question of creativity and self-expression does not apply only to the producers (artists, producers, record label etc.) of music. It also applies to the creativity and self-expression of the listener.
Take for example this selection from Schefield, “Maria was a door-slammer, big on stomping out and expecting me to follow. I was new at this boyfriend stuff, so I didn’t question her way of doing things. [...] But things started to wobble around the time R.E.M. put out a truly wretched album called Document, the one that made her reconsider whether she could continue to worship Michael Stipe. I blamed R.E.M. for not saving us by making a better record. That, I realize now, was unfair.” (Love is Mix Tape, p. 53-54)
Regarding the effect of popular music on the lives of people, in this particular case, the author has put personal blame on a band for ruining his relationship with his girlfriend–a relationship primarily based upon mutual love of music. Music becomes the basis upon which their entire relationship is established; therefore, the music industry seems to have taken a direct hand in manipulating his life.
What is the effect of popular music on how a listener expresses his/herself? Under the influence of popular music, how do we create new thoughts or solutions? Do emotions and behaviors also become standardized?
We will be puzzling out these questions using musical selections from the supplemental reading and comparing them to the Adorno.
From the Reynold's--"Maggie's Dream" by Don Williams
Reynold's identifies songs that are exhaustively depressing because they play on and reify coded/commodified emotional triggers and tropes. Consider this song alongside this passage from Adorno: "The hits not only appeal to a "lonely crowd" of the atomized; they reckon with the immature, with those who cannot express their emotions and experiences, who either never had the power of expression or were crippled by cultural taboos…What makes a hit a hit, aside from the manipulative energy of the moment, is its power either to absorb or to feign widespread stirrings" (Adorno 26-27).
From the Sheffield--"Love (Makes Me Do Foolish Things)" by Martha and the Vandellas
Sheffield recalls his past through the framework of mix tape playlists. Sheffield used this song to help grieve a break-up. Consider how Sheffield uses and is used by the song in terms of this passage from Adorno: "The emotional listener listens to everything in terms of late romanticism and of the musical commodities derived from it which are already fashioned to fit the needs of emotional listening. They consume music in order to be allowed to weep" (Adorno 43).
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UNpopular Music
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