History
of Technology of Music - everything here is designed to pique
your curiosity about music, musical instruments and history. So
delve, delight, explore and enjoy! [Previous page - The 1990s - Timelines ] [You are now on a HoTM page filed as: The 2000s to 2010 - Timeline [Next page c13.htm - The 13th Century (beginning of this Timeline series]
History
of Technology of Music - everything here is designed to pique
your curiosity about music, musical instruments and history. So
delve, delight, explore and enjoy!
Please note: This website is in its early phases and will be continually updated and improved and therefore should be regarded as always "under construction".
Contact via the convenient (and virus-free): e-mail form
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| www.danbyrnes.com.au |
More to come
More to come
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More music info for today's Australians interested in music in early 2005: A message from Vlad Gilbourd: HoTM, I'd enjoy introducing my website "CorporateNews + more especially here, Jazz'n'Blues" (at: http://www.corporatenews.com.au) It features very comprehensive J'n'B gig guide, huge artists' profiles list, transcripts of interviews, CD reviews, etc. Also, in the business section, it provides business media monitoring information. It would be great if you add link to my site to your list. Thank you, Vlad Gilbourd (0412-199-818 at IP Addr: 140.168.69.166) |
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29 April 2003: EMI in UK now plans to make more than 140,000 music tracks available on the Net in Europe's biggest such initiative so far, reports say. Tracks can be burned to CD, copies to MP3 players and bought, through music retailers.
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| Photo by Brian Robson |
2003-2004: Amount of money the world movie industry reportedly loses from sales of bootleg DVDs and videos, excluding net piracy: About $4.6 billion (Reliable source -Ed).
Item 2004 - Get a Conversion Guide for LPs and cassettes by Jack Daniel, for putting your old-format music onto computer at: pages.prodigy.net/jdjd/vinyl/
2004: Beastie Boys issue To the 5 Boroughs, on Capitol, with more a political agenda.
Bob Dylan: US folk/rock legend Bob Dylan, albeit ultra-deadpan, receives honorary Doctorate of Music from St. Andrew's University, Scotland. He apparently left without speaking a word. (Reported 25 June 2004)
2004: Freedom of speech on air suffered in London recently when a long-experienced DJ has been suspended from his morning show for defying a ban on playing Cliff Richards tracks. (Reported 25 June 2004)
20 July 2004: Glowing publicity for his Australian tour for Britain's biggest selling jazz musician, Jamie Cullum; and his modern versions of jazz classics. Looks like an artist to watch - and enjoy - Ed.
According to a recent UK report, about 600,000 pirate movies are downloaded each day in the US alone. (Reported in Australia 24 July 2004)
Been touring in Australia - musicians to watch out for -
14 February 2005: Rod Stewart performs in Sydney.
15 March 2005: Neil Diamond performs in Sydney.
John Lennon, the prickly Beatle defined a generation, yet now many young people cannot identify a picture of him. Sean O'Hagan reassesses the legacy of the first modern pop star. (From an article in Spectrum, Sydney Morning Herald, 10-11 September, 2005.)
John Lennon, the prickly Beatle defined a generation, yet now many young people cannot identify a picture of him. Sean O'Hagan reassesses the legacy of the first modern pop star. (From an article in Spectrum, Sydney Morning Herald, 10-11 September, 2005.)
The Beatles legends: By now begins bursts of publicity in Australia media re new book, simply called John, by today's rather sad-faced Cynthia Lennon (nee Powell), now aged 66, on her marriage to Beatle, John Lennon... “a violent, cheating and jealous Lennon” read headlines. She says” “The more I got to know him, the more I realised what a hard time he had had as a child...” (Reported by 26 September 2005)
Elvis obsession costly: In Britain a woman has stolen more than £500,000 from her employers “to fund her Elvis Presley obsession”. She has now been jailed for three years. She spent the stolen cash on “rare recordings by her idol”. (Reported 22 October 2005, and, Elvis records can be that expensive?)
1 July, 2006, Sydney Opera House, Opera singer Dame Kiri Te Kanawa in a piano recital with Jonathan Papp. Check: www.sydneyoperahouse.com/
July 18-26, 2006: Sydney, Porgy and Bess, the American musical masterpiece from the Gershwins. Lyric Theatre, Star City.
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Queen Elizabeth II calmly performs showbiz quality control work on acts appearing at the Tamworth Country Music Festival, 2007, at venue Southgate Inn. Is she perhaps wondering about inadvertent republican influences creeping into grassroots Australian life due to so much enthusiastic singing of such heavily-Americanized music? (Digital photo by Brian Robson, January 2007). |
Get into the music of 2006
Recent good discovery:
UK Music - latest in
Rock and
Pop
UKMusic
The
UK Music
website is dedicated to the UK music scene. UKMusic.com is updated
daily with the UK Music Top Ten and from UK music charts. They have
music news, features, interviews and reviews from and of ALL the fave
UK artists.
All scenes covered: rock, indie, grime, pop, hip
hop,
R&B, dance, soul, jazz, UK charts, video, audio streams,
forums,
events listings, games, gigs, and competitions.
(If you have
a
quality website on related music matters, drop them an e-mail about a
cross-link. - Ed)
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If you value the information
posted here, |
Follows a little bit of music what's on in HoTM's home region:
3 March 2006: Armidale: Jazz: The Sandy Evans Trio per Armidale Jazz Club Inc. At Cattleman's Motel, Marsh Street. Phone: George Westbrook on 6775 0167.
You can find an excellent music-and-recording history timeline at [Last found as error 500 can't connect: http://history.acusd.edu/gen/recording/notes.html
5/6 April 2006: Vale Gene Pitney, US singer, died April 2006 in Cardiff, Wales, just after a performance.
You can find an excellent music-and-recording history timeline at (Error 500 - can't connect): http://history.acusd.edu/gen/recording/notes.html
Get into the music of 2006
Recent good discovery:
UK Music - latest in
Rock and
Pop
UKMusic
The
UK Music
website is dedicated to the UK music scene. UKMusic.com is updated
daily with the UK Music Top Ten and from UK music charts. They have
music news, features, interviews and reviews from and of ALL the fave
UK artists.
All scenes covered: rock, indie, grime, pop, hip
hop,
R&B, dance, soul, jazz, UK charts, video, audio streams,
forums,
events listings, games, gigs, and competitions.
(If you have
a
quality website on related music matters, drop them an e-mail about a
cross-link. - Ed)
In Australia soon in 2006 - musicians to watch out for -
22 April, Sydney Superdome, Anzac Military Tattoo, from 1.30pm, and other times.
29 April, Sydney, Revesby Workers Club, Alex Lloyd with his national album tour.
26-27 May, Sydney Opera house, presented by Phil Bathos and Sydney Opera House, Let it Be, the Beatles songs of Lennon and Mcartney, with Leo Sayer, John Waters, Christine Anu and Rick Price, plus the 9-piece Day Tripper Band.
Advertisement
It will come as no surprise to anyone with an ear for music, but Abba's Eurovision-winning song, Waterloo, has all the characteristics of a surefire hit, while this year's winner, Hard Rock Hallelujah, outlandish Finnish band, Lordi, doesn't.
The verdict was delivered by a computer running software developed for record companies to help them predict which songs will be hits and which will flop. And it seems to work. Last week, Hard Rock Hallelujah was at number 25 on the British charts; Waterloo went to number one in 1974.
The developers claim the software can identify a potential Top 30 hit within 20 seconds and has an accuracy rate of at least 80 per cent.
Critics argue that the technology could stifle creativity and promote dull uniformity. But backers of the software say that record labels may be encouraged to take more risks because the likely appeal of unusual songs can be judged in advance.
The program analyses 30 criteria including melody, beat, tempo, chord progression and cadence, and cross-refers them to a database of three million songs. It also spots mathematical similarities, even though songs might not sound the same or even be from the same genre.
It gives each piece of music a "hit grading" from zero to 1000. A score of 700 or more indicates that the song falls into a cluster of existing hits on the database and, theoretically, has got what it takes to succeed. The software is also capable of scoring a new song on its longevity - using its "classic grade".
The catchy Waterloo generated a hit rating of 722 and a classic grade of 764, justifying its enduring popularity. The software placed it in the same hit cluster as Keane's Is It Any Wonder? and Elton John's I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues. Lordi's song received a hit rating of just 368, way below the threshold for big-sellers.
The technology has already generated at least one hit single for Sony BMG and been used by a string of other major labels, including EMI, Capitol Records, Universal Music Group and Disney's Hollywood Records.
It has also thrown up a number of surprising connections: it showed that U2's Where The Streets Have No Name shares mathematical properties with Ode To Joy, the final movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
"A beautiful melody to Beethoven still sounds beautiful to us today," said Mike McCready, chief executive of Platinum Blue Music Intelligence, one of two companies that developed the software.
(Item originally from The Sunday Times – then The Australian, 19 June, 2006)
More to come
More to come
On Islamic hip hop from BBC news headlines RSS of 23-4-2009
'Islamic music TV' launches in Egypt
By Rebecca Fordham, BBC News, Cairo
A satellite channel has launched in Egypt claiming to be the first Islamic MTV.
The studio presenter takes viewers' phone calls and interviews artists in baggy jeans, while music videos are played. But the similarities to the global music channel stop there.
4Shbab aims to promote traditional Islamic values through hip hop, rap and pop music, using new and established artists whose lyrics and visuals address Islamic themes.
The arrival of the channel has been described as a novel idea by some parts of the western press, seeing it as yet another example of contemporary Muslim culture becoming more conservative. But is it really so unusual and is it sustainable?
Ahmed Abu Heiba, 4Shbab's Executive Director, came up with the idea because of what he saw as as a contradiction between the videos young Muslims watch - often featuring scantily clad female dancers - and their desires to practise Islam in their day-to-day to lives.
"The main thing is how to think about God when you are working and playing," Mr Abu Heiba explains.
"The singer himself can go and make his recordings and speak about God and then go outside to any bar and drink. My singers are not like that. I make sure they feel it in on the inside."
Satellite TV has become a mass medium in the Middle East and it is now a crowded market.
There are approximately 800 satellite channels and more than 55 of these are music channels. As access costs have reduced, viewership has jumped into the tens of millions.
But with so much competition, 4Shbab may find itself going against the tide of viewer expectations.
Egyptian girls Habiba and Nouran watching 4Shbab Young Egyptians appeared less than impressed by 4Shbab's internet offering
And although the channel's founder has embarked upon a heavy marketing campaign among the western media, few people in Cairo have heard of it.
The channel is difficult to access as its narrow band width means reception is jagged and it only broadcasts for two hours at a time. Its website is not live although clips are available on video sharing websites.
In a popular cafe in central Cairo, most of the young people had never heard of it.
But some thought it would only appeal to a gap in the market if it offered high quality production values and original programming. "We only watch western music. Arabic music is the same, it just copies it. They are wannabee Britney Spears and Pussycat Dolls. I would rather just watch the real Britney Spears," said Nouran, 16.
"For Islamic pop music to appeal the singers should look like us," said Habiba, 16.
"They shouldn't (just) be kneeling and praying. That is not realistic. We are diverse."
Some dismiss the channel, which is funded by Saudi businessmen, as nothing more than a clever bit of marketing.
But Said Sadek, Professor of Sociology at the American University of Cairo, worries that the arrival of 4Shbab shows the increasing conservatism of parts of the media and believes it causes an internal conflict amongst its young audience.
The operation and output of 4Shbab seems to be an entirely male preserve.
"The heavy dosage of religion through the media and the spread of intolerant views is not helping the youth," he said.
"Mixing modern music genres with Islamic content confuses young Muslim's identity and creates a schizophrenia inside them."
The day we visited 4Shbab at its basic rented studio, its entire production staff were male, as were the presenter and his interviewee.
All the video clips had male lead singers. A viewer rang in to complain after a woman appeared in a video and the channel ended its broadcast with a tease for an upcoming future programme which would discuss conservative female dress.
Ahmed Abu Haiba says the visible lack of women reflects a society where women do not put themselves forward in the entertainment business and he believes his audience is not ready to see a woman presenter.
Dr Sadek argues that not involving women in the production is as worrying and detrimental to society as seeing them barely clothed.
"Exposing and hiding women are the same thing. It is not acceptable to expose or hide them. There should be a balance," he said.
There are some recent examples of creative and interesting new ways of presenting current issues in the media in the Middle East.
An independent TV channel recently broadcast a live show to raise awareness about the situation in Gaza, which caused a great deal of debate, not just on blogs and among media watchers but across the Middle East.
This suggests that original programming rather than tried and tested formats will be more sustainable.
By July 2009, Google has been distributing new software called Google Radio Automation, supposed to be more reliable and user-friendly. It is being used at Tunefm, which is a student-run station at University of New England, Armidale, Australia, which by mid-2009 is moving into a new purpose-built building. This website thinks that Google has distributed a boon for mankind, a better way to manage small radio stations. We look forward to hearing more about it.
Page last updated at 10:09 GMT, Thursday, 30 July 2009 11:09 UK
Men At Work face plagiarism case
A music publisher that says Australian band Men At Work stole a melody from a children's song in their hit Down Under has won the first stage of a court battle.
Larrikin claims the flute riff from the 1981 hit is stolen from Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree, written by Marion Sinclair for the Girl Guides in 1934.
The band disputed Larrikin's claim that it bought the song's copyright in 1990.
But a judge in Sydney has ruled that the publisher does own the song, clearing the way for a plagiarism case.
Larrikin Music is suing Sony BMG and EMI for breach of copyright and is seeking royalties from the hit 80s song.
The publisher began the action after the alleged similarities were pointed out in a music quiz programme shown in Australia in 2007.
I said do you speak my language, he just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich
Lawyers for the record companies have denied the plagiarism claim.
They had also argued that the Kookaburra copyright was never properly signed over by Sinclair - who died in 1988 - and still belonged to the Girl Guides movement.
No date has been set for the next hearing.
Down Under, a number one in Australia, the US and the UK, tells the story of an Australian backpacker touring the world.
It pays tribute to "a land down under where beer does flow and men chunder".
The song also references popular Australian food spread Vegemite.
"I said 'do you speak my language?', he just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich," it says.
(Ends)ScienceDaily (Sep. 2, 2009) — Music is one of the surest ways to influence human emotions; most people unconsciously recognize and respond to music that is happy, sad, fearful or mellow. But psychologists who have tried to trace the evolutionary roots of these responses usually hit a dead end. Nonhuman primates scarcely respond to human music, and instead prefer silence.
A new report by Charles Snowdon, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and musician David Teie of the University of Maryland shows that a monkey called the cotton-top tamarin indeed responds to music. The catch? These South American monkeys are essentially immune to human music, but they respond appropriately to "monkey music," 30-second clips composed by Teie on the basis of actual monkey calls.
The music was inspired by sounds the tamarins make to convey two opposite emotions: threats and/or fear, and affiliation, a friendly, safe and happy condition.
The study, published this week (Sept. 1) in the journal Biology Letters, reported that the monkeys could tell the difference: For five minutes after hearing fear music, the monkeys displayed more symptoms of anxiety and increased their movement. In contrast, monkeys that heard "affiliative" music reduced their movements and increased their feeding behavior -- both signs of a calming effect.
Snowdon, a longtime researcher into primate behavior, says the project began with an inquiry from Teie, who plays cello in the National Symphony Orchestra: Had Snowdon ever tested the effects of music on monkeys? When Teie listened to recordings made in Snowdon's monkey colony at the psychology department at UW-Madison, he readily discerned the animal's affective state, Snowdon says. "He said, 'This is a call from an animal that is very upset; this is from an animal that is more relaxed.' He was able to read the emotional state just by the musical analysis."
Teie composed the music using specific features he noticed in the monkeys' calls, such as rising or falling pitches, and the duration of various sounds, says Snowdon, who notes that monkeys are not the only ones who use musical elements to convey emotional content in speech. Studies show that babies that are too young to understand words can still interpret a long tone and a descending pitch as soothing, and a short tone as inhibiting.
"We use legato (long tones) with babies to calm them," Snowdon says. "We use staccato to order them to stop. Approval has a rising tone, and soothing has a decreasing tone. We add musical features to speech so it will influence the affective state of a baby. If you bark out, 'PLAY WITH IT,' a baby will freeze. The voice, the intonation pattern, the musicality can matter more than the words."
Snowdon, who has sung in choirs for most of his life, adds, "My talking does not necessarily tell you about my emotional state. When I add extra elements, change the tone of voice, the rhythm, pitch or speed, that is where the emotional content is contained."
Monkeys interpret rising and falling tones differently than humans. Oddly, their only response to several samples of human music was a calming response to the heavy-metal band Metallica.
The study opens a new window into animal communication, Snowdon says. "People have looked at animal communication in terms of conveying information – 'I am hungry,' or 'I am afraid.' But it's much more than that. These musical elements are inducing a relatively long-term change in behavior of listeners. The affiliative music is making them calmer; they move less, eat and drink at a higher rate, and show less anxiety behavior."
This change in behavior suggests that for cotton-top tamarins, communication is about much more than just information. "I am not calling just to let you know how I am feeling, but my call can also stimulate a similar state in you," Snowdon says. "That would be valuable if a group was threatened; in that situation, you don't want everybody being calm, you want them alert. We do the same thing when we try to calm a baby. I am not just communicating about how I am feeling. I am using the way I communicate to induce a similar state in the baby."
The similarities in communications between monkeys and people suggest deep evolutionary roots for the musical elements of speech, Snowdon says. "The emotional components of music and animal calls might be very similar, and from an evolutionary perspective, we are finding that the note patterns, dissonance and timing are important for communicating affective states in both animals and people."
Adapted from materials provided by University of Wisconsin-Madison - Ed.
Top Ten Albums 2009 from critic Bernard Zuel in Sydney Morning Herald Metro Music, 23-24 December 2009
Album of the Year, Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest.
Best Pop, Bob Evans, Goodnight, Bull Creek,
Best art rock, Bat for Lashes, Two Suns,
Best hip-hop, Horrorshow, Inside Story,
Best Adult, Tina Harrod, Temporary People,
Rest Rhythm and Blues, Alice Russell, Pot of Gold,
Best roots, Lucie Thorne, Black Across the Field,
Best electro, Veto, Crushing Lights,
Best country, Dave Rawlings Machine, A Friend of Mine,
Best rock, Arctic Monkeys, Humbug.
CD sales slump: Sales in the US of music CDs slumped 12.7 per cent during 2009. That followed a 14 per drop in 2008,and seven years of decline. (Maximum minutes of music on a compact disc (CD) = 74 minutes.) (Reuters by 13 February 2010)
Upcoming acts in Australia to watch out for
Below are items still uncollected
Number of keys on a piano, 88.
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these domain stats begun 18 December 2005
