This is all about honesty, and honesty is inextricably tied to judgment. People constantly judge art. The “politically correct” mentality is that art just IS and cannot be judged. However, to be human is to have likes and dislikes. Some art speaks to us while some remains impenetrable. Finding shame in declaring a piece of art not to your liking only perpetuates this false utopia in which all art is equal. Every time you consider buying a CD and decide not to, you decide that the art does not mean …

In previous articles on “The Recording Industry is Dead” we have looked into why it is dead and or dying, Music Piracy and Distribution and the idea of paying for the music you love.
Some people choose to go the library and rip CDs from there. This is a commodity freely offered for public consumption. The CDs are the legal property of the library, legally obtained and legally lent to library users at no cost. This differs from piracy in that the consumer does not gain ownership of the material; in …

Throughout this series of articles on why the Music Recording Industry is Dying we have discussed reasons the Industry is actually killing itself. All of examples have been specific cases from personal experience in which the music industry either benefits from or is debatable unchanged by music piracy, regardless of legality. They are also two specific illustrations of clear flaws in The System that have the potential to affect me both as a consumer and as an artist.
The entire music community has spent years trying to figure out how to …

In the previous article: “The Recording Industry is Dead; Part 1” we discussed why the Music Industry is dead and/or dying.
Back in high school, I fell in love with an obscure Swedish band whose music was distributed mostly in Japan, and only in limited quantities. I didn’t know a ton about their music, but the songs I did know, I loved. When you’re young and your spending money is in short supply, one or two songs is not enough of a basis for a decision that involves an unfavorable currency …

The recording industry as we know it is dead, or close to it. Outdated legislature is no longer enough to protect the interests of an industry built on an outdated business model. Consumers have become increasingly aware of this fact and at last have begun to respond to it.
For example, the idea of an album is, with few exceptions, a marketing trick to bring in more money on a handful of good singles padded with worthless fluff. In response to the inconsistent quality of songs across relatively high-priced albums, …

Essentially Modern Popular Music is a (d)evolved variation of the Classical Music Lieder, Art Song or likewise. A Lieder, as defined by Essentials of Music, is “German for ’song’; most commonly associated with the solo art song of the nineteenth century, usually accompanied by piano.” The obvious difference is that instead of piano, artists are using a number of instruments in addition or or in replace of the piano. Also the format of songs versus traditional lieder divided the two even further especially with the lack of variations in most …

With our condensed history lesson in Classical Music vs. Popular Music: Where Music Parted Ways we discussed how and why Popular Music and Classical Music parted ways. Popular Music began to venture itself away from Classical Music in many forms including culture, notation, instrumentation, etc. However, in many ways these two entities are still actually very close and only have but a few things separating them. To expose the similarities we must also look into the differences.
One of the prominent factors that drives the wedge is the instruments …

Despite the underwhelming press Classical Music Composers get now-a-days, there are actually a lot of jobs out there for Classical Composers. I remember while in school I always got asked, “What can you do with that degree?” Well, a lot of things. Here’s a list of the top 10 careers a composer can start in:

Teaching
An easy one to start out with is simply teaching other musicians. Either in composing or with your favorite instrument.

Performance
Almost all Composers are good musicians. This is yet another way to …

Hellogoodbye and Vanessa Carlton
If you’ve worked on the classical side of vocal music, either as a composer or a performer, you may have heard the old joke, “What’s the difference between art songs and pop songs?” Record sales. Air play. Pick a punchline suggesting modern commercial viability. It’s enough to reduce a musicologist to tears, hearing Our Good Man Schubert’s work compared to “Disturbia” and “Baby One More Time.” When it comes down to it, though, what were art songs back in Our Good Man …

There seems to be a misconception with music lovers and in the music community that Classical Music and Popular Music are two entirely different beasts. To be fair, Classical Musicians tend to think of Popular Musicians as “lesser musicians” or “lesser composers” and Popular Musicians and Songwriters tend to think of Classical Musicians and Classical Composers as up-tight nazis who don’t understand what music is truly about. But who says they are truly different or have to be different? And at what point do we draw the …

For years there has been a friendly feud between members of the Classical Music Community: vocalist and instrumentalist. The only difference Between these two “factions” is the instrument used; one is man-made the other is organic. Their education is generally the same with emphasis on their chosen form of sound production and they read roughly the same music. So what divides them within? What drives them to cast seemingly harmless, sarcastic remarks towards one another and sometimes degrade one another?
From being in school for many years as …

A week ago I was asked, “What is the difference between a musician and a classically trained musician?” For the life of me I couldn’t find a good, straight answer. It’s music…. maybe a different style but that knowledge could easily be transferred from one to the other. I learned how to play the classical guitar and have transferred that knowledge over to my electric. A pianist could do the same as with many wind instruments. Transferring the piano skills to keyboards or wind instruments …

What does it take?
Here is an article written by Roger Bourland of UCLA about a student who appllied and did not get in.  When I first read this thread I was not angry, I was amazed.  I was impressed.  It’s obvious that the student was not accpected because his musical skills were deemed unfit, which is perfectly reasonable.  But at what point do you go to school for music? At what point do you learn to write, reherse and perform your own compositions?
From the article it can be assumed that either this applicant’s writing is either a) …

Music is unique among the arts. It captures emotions and feelings and connects people to a deeper level. People can connect with a photo or a movie faster, but rarely to the degree that music does. It connects deep in a person’s roots, identifying with them with an emotion unlike any other form of communication or expression.
Music is life.
It’s hard to believe that a collection of sounds rules/dictates/commands/predominates/controls/influences/alters/ our lives in such a way that it can make us feel, think and live. These feelings are …

Regretfully, in the following years Hamburg’s opera house began its decline (Hogwood 29). Through Keiser’s inability to separate the producer and the composer he brought the opera house to its knees. Each time he saved himself and the opera theater through marriage in a wealthy wife (“Encyclopedia 342, 342). Reinhard left the theater in 1717 and for several years it switched directors. Finally it closed in 1739 just before Keiser’s death (“Composers” 198). This was the end of its sixty year reign as “the” German opera theater for the baroque …

In 1677 the first German opera house had be established in Hamburg Germany. Shortly after its opening in 1678 Hamburg became the center to all opera in Germany (Oxford 304). However, it took almost another twenty years for the German Baroque opera to take another step forward. Reinhard Keiser was born just a year after Jupiter and Jo was produced in Saxony and he become “the” operatic composer and producer of his time. He wrote over one hundred operas in his sixty-five years of living, three of which had been …

Opera, in its conventional form, had first appeared in 1597 in Italy and later expanded toward Germany, France and England (“Encyclopedia” 491). Opera began just three years before the first years of what we now consider to be the Baroque Period (1600-1750 AD) in music. The word “baroque” according to Webster’s Dictionary means: “a jeweler’s trade term for ill-shaped pearls.” This term is in reference to general sound of the music that was composed within this era. Although it had intellectually surpassed that of the prior generations it still did …

After Napster was sued by the ever so poor Metallica there was a gaping hole in the Online Music Store community. iTunes was out but was new and not too much more than a music library that worked well with the iPod. Soon after Mac got its act together and pushed for the online store that sells a song for $.99 each. Which is reasonable to point.
Then the Zune came along. I was looking into one instead of the iPod until I found out that it …

In 1993 the law Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was passed with the promise that the Government will not ask to tell or disclose the sexual orientation of our Soldiers. However, thousands of Soldiers are being discharged from under the Don‘t Ask Don‘t Tell law. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) may have research proving the Government is using Gay Profiling to seek out soldiers to discharge them under this law by searching through e-mails and personal belongings, if this is true it would be violating the law entirely.
Unfortunately today the …