The Loose Filter Project

Music pictures

Visual representation of Aphex Twin's Equation. Crazy stuff past the 5 minute mark.

  

The future of TV?

Average TV viewer is 50 years old.

Young news consumers get their news online.

TV ad sales down.

Glasslanta

Friday evening, with Philip Glass’ 1984 minimalist masterpiece “Akhnaten,” the Atlanta Opera proved its supposedly conservative audience is willing to enter the late 20th century.  It was the hottest ticket of the season, with sold out performances and great acclaim at evening’s end.

Somebody must have forgot to tell the audience that they weren't supposed to like it.

Child labor

Does it really come as a surprise that an industry whose leaders think this is a good idea is having a rough time?

Topps, the candy and collectibles company that Mr. Eisner bought in 2007, has signed the Clique Girlz as commercial spokeswomen for Baby Bottle Pop, one of the Top 10 nonchocolate candy brands. The candy has two parts, a nipple-shaped lollipop top and a bottle-shaped container filled with fruit-flavored powder. Consumers are meant to lick the top and dip it into the powder.

That's pretty revolting on a couple of levels, but don't you worry, it gets better.

Prepubescent children, media executives say, are among the few remaining reliable buyers of music. Last year, 10- to 14-year-olds spent about $1.2 billion on CDs and song downloads, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

Let's end with a bang!

“The teen market used to look down on blatant marketing partnerships like this,” said Matt Britton, a managing partner at Mr. Youth, a New York marketing firm. “Now, because the music industry is in such bad shape, overt efforts to manufacture buzz are expected. But it still has to ring true.”

It doesn't.

Performance practice

What constitutes a more authentic performance of Gounod's Ave Maria?

Bobby McFerrin et. al.

Alessandro Moreschi

Fair use

A little-discussed issue with huge implications - Fair Use.  Can copyrighted material be used for educational or nonprofit purposes?  In many instances the answer appears to be yes.

From the US Copyright Act:

[T]he fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Idle ears

Have some time to kill?  These podcasts range from tech to travel and will help get you through the day (via How To Split an Atom).

Great career advice from Ira Glass

Radical new L.A. Phil strategic plan - be awesome

It's a good time to be a music lover in L.A.

Dudamel's - or, if you like, The Dude's - first season with the L.A. Phil.

In a released statement, Adams said he is "thrilled" to be a part of Dudamel's plans for the orchestra's future. "Over the past 25 years, the Philharmonic has consistently demonstrated how a major American symphony orchestra can integrate the music of our own time in all aspects of its life. That enthusiasm for the new is part of this unique orchestra's DNA."

And the L.A. Phil waves at orchestras in Philly, Cleveland, and New York as it roars past with the top down. Isn't it time we retire the term Big 5?

Geometrical music theory

Fascinating stuff from Science Daily.

Three music professors -- Clifton Callender at Florida State University, Ian Quinn at Yale University and Dmitri Tymoczko at Princeton University -- have devised a new way of analyzing and categorizing music that takes advantage of the deep, complex mathematics they see enmeshed in its very fabric.

The practical applications of this discovery are pretty exciting.  

"You could create new kinds of musical instruments or new kinds of toys," Tymoczko said. "You could create new kinds of visualization tools -- imagine going to a classical music concert where the music was being translated visually. We could change the way we educate musicians. There are lots of practical consequences that could follow from these ideas.  But to me," he added, "the most satisfying aspect of this research is that we can now see that there is a logical structure linking many, many different musical concepts. To some extent, we can represent the history of music as a long process of exploring different symmetries and different geometries."

Pythagoras would be impressed, but probably not surprised.

It's so bad it's good...maybe.

I don't think Strauss ever thought this would happen to his music, but since train wrecks are impossible to ignore I just had to share this.  

Making a career from scratch

A captivating interview with Amber Rubarth, a Reno singer/songwriter who created her own international touring career from the ground up using ideas so simple they're brilliant.

DIY or die!

In honor of today's inauguration of President Barack Obama

Some inspiring--and unfortunately still unrealized--vision from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.”  This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.  A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values.  There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war.  There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

More evidence we're living in the future: a mechanical gamelan

An unexpected fusion of East and West: the gamelatron, the "world's first and only fully robotic Gamelan Orchestra."  I leave it to you to decide if that's a good or bad thing.  I think it's pretty sweet.  More.

(via)

Ringing remote

This groovy app turns your iPhone into a wireless remote for any iTunes library on your network (thanks LifeHacker).  That's cool and all, but where's my flying car?

The Magical Magic Flute

Bruno Walter said that in The Magic Flute "we may come close to Mozart himself and perceive his first personal avowal, if not indeed the only one that allows us fully to look into the depth of his heart."

If you happen to live in Northern California you can see Townsend Opera Players' outstanding production of Mozart's last opera, with sets and costumes by the amazing Corey Strauss, conducted by yours truly.

Performance dates here.

Ticket info here.

The collective musical experience

An interesting perspective from Daniel Hall at The Economist.

Our cultural consumption exists on a spectrum from "individual" to "collective". Technology has shifted the balance for both books and music. Digital distrbitution and the iPod have made music consumption much more individualistic, while the internet and global branding have made book consumption increasingly collective.

Certainly large performing arts organizations - symphony orchestras and opera companies - have realized that music consumption is becoming more individualistic. But at the same time I feel that many arts administrators fail to realize that the collective element is still a major part of the concert-going experience.

Opera shakedown

It comes as no surprise that our nation's financial clusterf*@k is affecting the opera world. How will it respond? I think the exploration of chamber operas is a great idea, and long overdue. Will George Steele generate some excitement at City Opera? And while the Met cuts back, the LA Opera surges forward - which strategy will pay off? Claudio Abbado offers his help in exchange for trees (via Opera Chic).

Happy New Year!

Happy new year, and more posts coming soon (along with a couple of new podcasts), promise!  In the meantime, I just wanted to say that the London Symphony Orchestra logo is one of my favorite logos of any kind, anywhere.  Not only are the initials rendered beautifully in a single, flowing line, but you get the abstract conductor graphic if you ignore the letter shapes.  Well done: