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History of Music and Current Recording Industry Crisis

Manuel Marino — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 04:08:53 +0000

Roger L. Bagula wrote this exclusive article for ManuelMarino.com.

History of Music and Current Recording Industry Crisis

In a time when the whole future of how music is distributed is in question, maybe we should look at the history of music for a guide.

Many of us find music is a part of our everyday life; both in terms of listening and making it. I have an egroup on the archaeology of prehistoric men. Music seems to have been part of what distinguishes men for other beats. The discovery of a bone hollowed out to make a flute by Neanderthals has made many speculate that music is one of the oldest “preoccupations” that didn’t actually produce survival rewards.

We picture men with low foreheads sitting around the campfire playing bone flutes and beating on hollow logs. The man who was good on the flute had to be subsidized by the other hunters. In the Sahara Arab culture the women are the make the music. There are ancient Egyptian drawing of people playing stringed instruments, The god Mot is said to have had music in his temples. The ancient Greeks had a very well developed theory of 5 tone music as well.

In the European tradition what is called “church music” was actually scripted in a staff in 8 tones during the medieval era. In both church and secular life music was an everyday entertainment and some people spent their lives as singers in the Jewish Cantor tradition. At this time a distinction between “holy” and profane (dance) music seems to have been made.

The age of reason gave us Bach fugues and well tempered music with twelve major tones instead of just 8. Keyboard instruments appeared in churches and the drawing rooms of the rich and famous. Europe was a center of world culture in the arts and sciences with university courses being taught in music theory.

Revolt against this almost always pleasant sounding music turned up in the form of Schönberg and his ideas of twelve tone sequences. Others experimented with expressionism and what they called “tone color” in trying to match the music and art of a puzzling modern world.

But little known to the European intellectuals a new music form came to life in America based on a African folk form and being fostered by the black community quite by itself. Jazz was a free form music where chord forms called progressions were used and many of the people playing the music couldn’t read sheet music at all. It involved syncopation, drums and rhythm fugues as well as multi-melodies in an ad lib setting. It was involved in moods as the blues and dance in terms of swing and jitter-bug and was considered profane in many white communities. Until recording and radio it was pretty much played for free in clubs where blacks went at night . But even as simple as the chord progression were it displaced classical forms in the hearts of most of the world’s population in less than 50 years form Rag time in 1900 to the 1950′s Rock and Roll. In the materialistic society success came with money and records by these artists sold so well that they became the new rich of the 20th century.

In the ’60′s I met a black sargent (hard stiriper) in Army who did this odd kind of poetic singing that he called rap. We all scorned him because we knew that Rock and Roll was king and it was here to stay. Again out of the sub-community of the black in a America and off shot of funk music used as backing for this rap singing came out of seeming nowhere in the 90′s to become a real musical movement world wide. The poor black was angry: he had been promised “equal rights”, but he got welfare and lingering on street corners while dope dealers preyed on him and his community.

Urban renewal meant that he was shoved out of his generational neighborhoods so that up town whites could have new condos closer to work. Gangs took control of streets and whole communities and had shooting wars while the mostly white police forces hid in their substations until the shooting stopped. As far as I know there has been little reform in response to this widely popular music style and the angry and profane words involved.

Another trend in music has been multi-tonality. Everyone knows listening to a slide trombone that there are an infinite scale of notes possible to music. Mostly we think in terms of a scale based on powers of two. The twelve tone scale came about when the Greek pentatonic scale was rationalized with the church 8 tone scale. Adding an C flat and an F flat (or two more sharps) seems to even out the keyboard in 14 tones instead of 12. The Arab musical intellectuals who were influenced by ancient Indian musical theory added twelve “between” tones and special Indian like tuning forms. To western ears Indian and Arab music has a unique blue or “color tonal” feel to it that is attractive to a mind tired out by a limited tone scale of 12 tones.

In the early 20th century an electronic instrument called a Theremin was invented using the electronics that came with shortwave and AM radio. This instrument involved producing tones of all kinds of sine waves. By the 50′s this kind of music found it’s way into science fiction classics as Alien music.

In the 60′s with the use of computers the digital slicing and dicing of sound had started. The result as we all know is the compressed digital sound file called the mp3, but electronic music had become more than this ! From digital midi sequencing and interfaces that captured keyboard notes as score notes on an electronic staff to distortion electronics that could make a guitar sound completely different with feedback and reverberation effects, new music that had never been heard by human ears before was being invented and circulated. Like rap music, it wasn’t at first very easy to get such music to the mass audience, but the European “House” dance music of night clubs began to change that in the 80′s. Here a century long decline in European music began to turn around, so that the German school of electronic music is a leader in innovation and Americans seem to be trailing behind?

The conversion of the CD digital formate files (Aiff and wave) to mp3 in the 90′s by Classic Mac SoundJam which was taken over by Mac and called iTunes made upload of digital files to the Internet easy. People began to share their favorite music internationally. Downloads of digital music even at several megabytes each became very common.

The recording Industry being on the back end of this movement and historically behind in the innovation curve was caught unprepared. They began suing private citizens (college students who are the poor). For the rich to be openly prosecuting the poor for the crime of “downloading” became the democratically most unpopular move in ages.

It is the royalty money from the sale of recoded media that has made the new music rich like the Beetles. The failure of recording industry executives to find a way to plug this hole in revenues seems to signal a decline in such music as a way of passing music around that has been popular since the 1920′s and AM radio started it off. Before that it was sheet music that passed the music from one place to another.

The result of this crisis is that we are faced with a change in how music is given to the public. From my own experiences the recording industry corporate model hasn’t been a perfect one. We are looking at an art form where their are several kinds of artists who need to support their families: composers, performers and song lyrics writers. If these people “suffer”, then the listeners will be affected shortly after in not being able to get music that they want.

Survival and eating are usually a little above making music on the daily calendar.

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How Has the Internet Affected the Music Industry?

Manuel Marino — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 14:04:29 +0000

This article is written by web designer Josh Gutteridge who runs Skyte Media. Skyte Media is based in the Midlands (England) and is a professional web design company that specialises in web design and development. Josh would like to receive comments about this article on his blog. But of course you can comment it also here, on ManuelMarino.com!

How Has the Internet Affected the Music Industry?

Music has always been something that has inspired mankind. Sir Thomas Beecham once said ‘a musicologist is a man who can read music but can’t hear it’. The pure beauty of music is that we can all listen to the same notes played by many different instruments, yet make our own individual conclusions with regards to what the music means to us; and nobody can argue.

It is not in the nature of this post to go in depth on musical history. Nonetheless, music has developed rapidly through the ages with the vinyl when it was first really used in 1948 by Columbia Records. Since then the music industry has seen the use of the Audio-Cassette and Compact Disc (CD).

Consequently, since the internet became more widely available it has made music more easily accessed by such means as Online Music Stores. There are thousands of these stores online including three of the most famous: iTunes, Napster and Rhapsody (US only). Let’s focus in on iTunes; an offshoot of the Apple Company.

I refer to iTunes as the ‘pied piper of the 21st century’ lulling people into easily downloading content with minimal hassle. iTunes is a free piece of software developed by the Apple company at Macworld Expo in San Francisco. This allows you to download digital music, music videos, television shows, iPod games, audio books, various pod casts and in the USA feature length films, and ringtones. Downloaded content can then be used to create your own play lists and personalised albums to burn to CD. It can also be transferred onto various different types of iPod including the new iPhone making music more accessible and easy to get hold of.

How does this affect the ordinary person who enjoys listening to their preferred genre(s) of music?

In this case, music has never been so easily manipulated and accessible. We live in a convenience obsessed world with personalised portals such as Last FM where you can listen to any artist known to mankind, you can listen to personalised internet radio with Pandora and also listen to all the music and view the videos on YouTube. It doesn’t take much effort to rip music (ripping is the term for digital audio extraction). The cost of downloading an album from the net is generally cheaper than an album brought in the shops, after all, downloads should cost less as there are less overheads for the record label to pay for: CD sleeve, CD case, CD cost, copying equipment etc.

How does this affect the music industry?

Some artists find the concept of the internet hard to adapt to; however, as they are forced into the mould of technology modern artists tend to embrace the internet as a friend rather than a foe. They view it as a ‘creative and inspiration-enhancing workspace where they can communicate, collaborate, and promote their work’ – Mary Madden (Research Specialist) in her project ‘Artists, Musicians and the Internet’. Sites such as MySpace have helped Artists and Musicians address their target audience rousing more interest in their style of music.

But let’s face it; there will always be people that are looking to find a loophole. I’m talking about those who engage in illegal music downloading. Experts admit that illegal downloads will never be stopped. This messes up the system and makes it unfair for both the artist and the people who are paying for downloads. The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has joined forces with the Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI) to take legal action against internet file-sharers.

How will illegal downloader’s effect record labels? A record label makes, distributes and markets sound recordings; basically at the end of the day they’re out there to make money. The music industry produce mainly alums…how many albums have you brought just because you like one song? I have! We’re forced to buy albums to get the songs we love. As sales figures are falling record labels will be forced to look at the logic. Are people going to buy a whole album or just download one song? What effects do you think this will bring? Might we see a rise in the cost of internet downloads?

So in conclusion we have seen that the music industry has created stronger ties with new technology over the past decades and now can only go forward. We have seen that internet music downloads can be both an advantage and a disadvantage as we see the battle between the illegal downloader and the record companies continues. However, it is safe to conclude people – adapt or die!

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Recording Music Industry

Manuel Marino — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 16:57:15 +0000

This is a post I’ve received from Julien Bernier-Haineault and he is a music producer from Quebec, Canada. He made several songs for a lot of bands that never really got appreciated to their real value. I can say that trying, failing and trying again, now he absolutely knows a lot about Recording Music Industry.

He said me: It’s countless hours, in fact I could count it as months, I’ve put into this industry for very low results in the end. This is my first attempt at writing articles and I hope people gets the point across that this art is reserved to an elite and that you must obey to some fixed rules to get into their circle. I hope to help people understand what are those traps and guide them to avoid those.

Julien, your voice can be heard now, thanks to ManuelMarino.com!

Recording Music Industry

Lately I’ve questioned myself why was there so much newcomers in the music industry that didn’t grab my attention. Soul less recordings, heavy thumping bass, yells and screams is all I hear these days. Where is the hear candy? You know that kind of song you listen once and you’re not sure you like until you give it more listens. The kind of lyric that hooks you and makes you want to change something about you, or even the world. The strange feeling of nostalgia, of fear or faith. That is all gone since the music industry is now all about money and none about feelings.

What people want these days are instant rewards, premature orgasms while what we need from the music industry is more like a long term relationship. Don’t get me wrong; I understand why people want it that way, but there’s one kind of songs that’ll eventually fade in history while the other one will be there to stay. I think music needs a second chance, a change in the way of thinking, a split for newcomers that don’t want to fit in the prefabricated mold that today’s industry is.

Most contemporary musicians want to have the right “recipe” for success. The recipe that would get their songs top the charts and generate a buzz. They want the special ingredient that would get them out of normal life and throw them right into the elitist artist world. And that is understandable since the industry demands it. Instant success stories are heard all over the newspapers but from experience I know that most of those stories are forgotten shortly after. And if they are not, maybe they should.

What’s sad is that the music that doesn’t fit the standards gets pushed on the midnight playlist on Tuesdays, or worst, not played at all. So the infamous Verse Chorus Verse type of song is filling the entire rush hour playlist. Miss “Perfect Body” and Mr. “Perfect Voice” are all over the radio stations. We’ve come to an era where the beauty of the singer is more important than the beauty of the song. And that’s where it must stop. Sure an anti-charismatic singer won’t attract much audience at first, but fans listen to the music more than looks at the eyes, do they?

I really don’t care what the band looks like. They could be just “okay” but if what they do is pure genius, nobody will notice. What people will notice after some time is the music, the real reason why the band existed in the first place. Since when does a rock star need to be a supermodel to sell tickets? What we want is presence not nude skin.

Maybe I’m wrong a little bit though, since so much people are going to Justin’s or Britney’ shows. As they say “sex sells” and this can’t be truer. A lot of artists are betting on this to make their stash bigger. Think Janet Jackson at the superbowl. Publicity, marketing and word of mouth are what is important now, no matter what you do to get it. Good or bad, talk about it, heh? That’s what they want… And it works! What’s sure though is that good rock music has left its place to rap, screaming rock and pop music this decade and I can only hope it will be back for the next.

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Independent Filmmaking

Manuel Marino — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 06:28:37 +0000

We’re back with a new interview, to Actress and Producer Glorinda Marie. We talk about independent filmmaking, filmmakers, actors and movies industry.

Here are some interesting links to check, after reading the interview:

- Actress Website
- imdb
- SF Indieclub
- Get Bizzzy Acting Coach

Manuel Marino: “Glorinda, what do you think is an artist?”

Glorinda Marie: “An artist creates something through utilizing his or her imagination or minds eye as the primary tool of invention.”

MM: “You teach and coach other artists, why do some artists fail and other succeed?”

GM: “I teach my ‘Get Bizzzy’ students to practice the 5 P’s:
- Professionalism
- Punctuality
- Practice your Craft
- Persistence
- Patience
If any one of these key elements is missing, one can fail. Always be a professional treating everyone respectfully. You see the same people on the way up as on the way down. Show up early or on time for auditions and work. I know some CD’s that take points off for actors that are late for auditions and producers who will fire people from jobs if they are late. Also, it is especially vital that an actor hone their skills continuously – so practicing one’s craft, keeping one’s instrument sharp and tuned. And – truly persistence is the key that opens the door to opportunity! I think many talented people give up way too soon. So, practicing persistence and patience while doing the other things listed above, will eventually pay off! I loved Allison Janney’s speech at the Emmy’s a few years ago. Some one had referred to her as an ‘overnight sensation’. She laughed and retorted that it was the longest 30 years of overnight ever!”

MM: “You manage SF Indieclub, what can you tell us about it?”

GM: “I founded SF Indieclub to help enhance local filmmaking and filmmakers. Our collective mission is to create more work for all of us and also to enhance the quality of films being made locally. We hope to be inspirational, informative and helpful to our filmmakers. In the 8 years I have led the group, we have made some progress and sincerely intend to continue to do so. At this time, we network together over 2,000 filmmakers, directors, producers, writers, crew and talent. It is extremely rewarding to see many of our filmmakers go to festivals, win awards and even obtain distribution! My mantra for them is… keep creating!”

MM: “What are your next steps in career and life?”

GM: “Although SF Indieclub has proved to be somewhat instrumental in improving and expanding local filmmaking in the SF Bay Area, there is no comparison to the bountiful union work that is available in Los Angeles. As a SAG actress, I must expand my career and take it to the next level. Therefore, I have been living nomadically between Northern and Southern California. Although I am relatively established in the SF Bay Area, I nearly have to start all over again in LA. I’ve been going down there during pilot season and taking classes, meeting new teachers, meeting new casting directors and networking with actors. I am submitting myself in the hopes of finding a quality mid size agent to help me reach the next level in my career. I want to find someone who believes in me and my talent. In the meantime, I am submitting myself for every breakdown that would be considered my appropriate ‘type’ possible in film and TV. I believe that even if one does have an agent, the agent does 10% of the work and takes 10% of the cut because they do 10% of the work. An actor must always be actively involved in his or her own career. My goal is to get my feet in the doors of some TV shows and do some Guest Star and Co Star roles. Of course, I wish to play many more interesting roles in film as well.

As for life – I am traveling to Thailand next month. I love to expand my horizons and explore new cultures and people, customs, beliefs and ways of life. When I return home refreshed, I will enjoy the holidays with my friends and family before going back to LA again.”

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Cereal, a blend of old and new

Manuel Marino — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 01:22:38 +0000

Today we interview Jaques Smit, an incredible man. Just read all his current positions: Managing Director at MindNova Advertising Pty (Ltd), Marketing Director at Inland Kitesurfing Pty (Ltd), CEO at Avonstorm Entertainment, Producer at Avonstorm Pictures Pty (Ltd), Technical Director at Blo-Tant Pty (Ltd).

Here is the interview and I initially ask about Cereal, his new project/show, a real blend of old and new:

Cereal, a blend of old and new

MM: “Cereal is the perfect example of how an Idea can be developed despite the obstacles, can you explain briefly what is Cereal?”

JS: “The title “Cereal” is a play on words as the show is a pseudo-parody of the serials of old. Serials were the old fashioned, Saturday afternoon cliffhanger matinees, complete with dashing heroes, damsels in distress and fiendish villains… Not to mention the ol’ ‘conquer the universe’ plot motif.

Instead of trying to remake the classics of old, “Cereal” uses footage from original television shows; kicking off the first half of the first season is “Radar Men from the Moon!”

“Cereal” does follow a coherent plot and does feature reappearing characters as a regular show would, but the visuals are all that remain from the originals. The sound effects, music and voices are rerecorded and rewritten by the actors and creators behind “Cereal” to create an offbeat blend of old and new and produces hysterical results in doing so.

Cereal is aimed at a broad audience and sets out to create a get away from every day stresses. The show is runs with the plot of commander Cody that must save the world form strange aliens that are destroying the railroad lines for some unforeseen evil intent (revealed in episode 5 ;-P). Commander Cody and his heroic band of miss fits light up the show with witty comments and questionable lines.

The first episode “A sale at Penny’s” introduces the hero’s to the audience and sets the mood for the under lying joke that will run throughout the first season.”

MM: “I know you encountered obstacles…”

JS: “Creating the series was easy as it came natural to the well trained staff we had at our disposal. But upon completion of the pilot episode the next step was the hardest. Finding a TV station willing to broadcast something as revolutionary as Cereal. We approached all the large stations we could get a hold of and after being kept waiting on answers for excessive periods of time we finally decided to use the Web as a broadcasting platform instead.”

MM: “So the show runs online like web series. Are you having success?”

JS: “We started posting the series on the web one week ago with no advertisement backing other than word of mouth. The results have been astonishing. We went from ten friends viewing the show to give us support to an average one hundred viewers a day within a seven day period. We have received raving reviews from fans that have started quoting the show in every day conversations.

Our next step was to start searching for sponsoring companies willing to advertize on the site in order for us to keep developing the show. Our first sponsor came from the faithful directors on one of my other companies called Inland Kitesurfing. We are still searching for more sponsors but thanks to our fantastic fans we will have no problem there at all.”

MM: “What are your next projects?”

JS: “Avonstorm Entertainment is a group of young entrepreneurs that have come together to make their dreams a reality. Our first two projects were Avonstorm Gaming and Avonstorm Motion Pictures. As Avonstorm Gaming we are launching our first MMO-Cell phone game in January 2008 called Wappet.

As for Avonstorm Motion Pictures, we have been working on another more conventional television series that we are trying to raise funds for. In the true spirit of our organization we will stick to great comedy as we send two forgetful Hungarian spy’s into a suburban community to complete a mission they have forgot about in a land they know nothing of. The preliminary scripts are hilarious and are living up to all the ideals we set out to meet.”

Thank you, sir, what else to say?

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