The past few lectures Professor O’Malley has been showing us how to use Garage band and how to create a piece of music for our final assignment in class. I’m not gonna lie I am incredibly intimidated by this program and having to create a piece of music with it. I think it is amazing how technology has changed over the decades and that we can have this kind of software on our computers as a free download for students to learn. The one thing that I really appreciate is the midi files that Professor O’Malley showed in class. I plan on using a country midi file for my final piece of music in this class. I am eager to begin working with garage band, but I a also have a feeling that I will become very frustrated with it while I am figuring the program out.

Sarah 

The lecture on technology and citizenship and the argument between Jefferson and Hamilton was honestly my favorite lecture thus far in the semester. I found it interesting to learn the reasons that Jefferson and Hamilton hate each other, I had no idea that it was due to the different view between wanting a  “diverse industrial nation” and an “agricultural nation.” Personally, I don’t know which view I agree with more. I agree with Jefferson on the importance of land maintenance in terms of farming but at the same time I agree with Hamilton on the importance of becoming an industrialized nation. I never paid much attention to how the further west, especially the mid-west how square the states are. I just figured it was because the states were boring and didn’t have much interesting geography too them. The thing that I found the most interesting in lecture was when we started talking about segmentation solutions. We looked up my zip code in class and I did not agree with it at all initially. After class, I pulled it back up again and like you said in class if this doesn’t describe yourself and your family it probably describes someone. That in fact it does, it described a good majority of the people I went to high school with. One last closing note, I think that it is sad that everything has gone to a mass marker/ corporation feel in every store. In terms of grocery stores, you walk in and they all look the same in regards to what is stocked on the shelves.

Sarah White 

How Music Got Free written by Stephen Witt is an exciting and thrilling book about how the digital music industry came about. Before reading this book I never thought about how itunes, spofity, pandora, and downloads came about i just figured it came about how everything else develops. I was born the year that music piracy became a thing, but even during my childhood my mom and I always bought CD’s. It wasn’t till I was in middle school that I began using an mp3 player and ipods. I feel like nobody really looks at downloading music “illegally” as a criminal conspiracy because it is seen as such a common thing in the world. Especially among those younger generations and students. One thing that surprised me most about the book was the fact that “the network” of people trading music and such weren’t caught for years. The explanation about universal and their sale is a perfect example of how listeners don’t necessarily care about the quality of music and production, they care about accessibility more than anything.  “Universal was selling one out of three albums in the United States, and one out of four in the world. But it wasn’t enough: even as the music industry’s number one supplier, Universal’s overall top-line revenues had gone down. The compact disc was going obsolete, and the revenue streams that Steve Jobs had promised him from iTunes were failing to materialize. Digital sales of music accounted for 1 percent of Universal’s revenues in 2005.” The last thing that I am going to touch on with this is the aspect of what this has done to musicians in the world. I think in a way the new digital era takes away money from musicians, but at the same time they make hundreds and thousands of dollars on music sales. It’s a really interesting point and concept to look at that I personally have never really given any thought to until reading this book.

Sarah White 

What exactly is sound? Sound is all around us, its the noise that we hear, people’s voices and much more but what is sound actually defined as. Sound is pressure waves, traveling through the air. It makes sense when Professor O’Malley stated without air there is no sound, since the definition of sound is waves traveling through the air. We’ve been learning about pitch and frequency since probably middle school and its determined by the frequency but the thing that confused me in this lecture was the tutorial we watched about understanding sound waves. It made no sense to me even after Professor O’Malley explained it but it seemed as if the entire class was a little on the confused side. I am looking forward to discussing “How music got free” on Wednesday!

Sarah White 

In class on Tuesday we discussed sampling in the music industry and just what that looked like. Before this lecture if someone asked me what sampling was, I probably would have said something to do with food and trying stuff. “Sampling” that we talked about in class was referring to taking a small piece of audio and replaying it somewhere else. You showed us images of the Mellotron, which can play up to 6 different instruments I believe was amazing !! As you said in class this was first used by rock bands, and that makes sense since rock music was so intricate. I had to leave this class early for an appointment but just before I left we began talking about turntables. It was amazing to see just how much you could do to create a piece of music. It’s sad that people don’t use turntables in today’s times, but it is how music has gotten where it has today and history should never be forgotten. Until next class !

Sarah White 

In class today we discussed the concepts on copyright and what it means. Your opening example of the question of if there is a way to make a claim on property other than violence the answer is yes. Just because someone doesn’t have a piece of property or a fence on that property it is still theres. It could have been passed down to grandchildren and they are not old enough to build on the land yet. It is simply a fact of what is right vs wrong and respecting what people own. The sad thing is people in today’s society don’t respect that concept and that is why people result straight to violence. In regards to copyright, I never knew that there were different terms to how long copy right lasts. I always just thought you couldn’t copyright anything because that was a law, which is true but there are time limitations behind it. In today’s time we will never be able to reproduce something that is created or that we like, but it was still interesting to learn. The thing that I found the most interesting was our conversation on DJ’s at parties. I had no idea that when I go to a party the DJ is illegally playing all of the music, it really got me thinking about if I am guilty of this too!

Overall I enjoyed today’s lecture and am looking forward to discussing more on copyright next week.

Sarah White

I was excited to see that this was one of the topics I could look up because of my passion and love for country music and how it has changed over the decades. I used google books for my research and came across a book called “Categorizing Sound: Genre and Twentieth-Century Popular Music” written by David Brackett. In chapter 4 of his book he brings in the knowledge of southern music and “hillbilly” music. Brackett explains that hillbilly music came about from a small band located in Virginia who made a recording in January 1925. They were asked for a name for the group and Hopkins who was the leader of the group did not know how to reply. Eventually he replied and said “call the band anything you want. We are nothing but a bunch of hillbillies from North Carolina and Virginia anyway.” The release of the record with their six recordings was credited to “Hill Billies” and that is how hillbilly music was born. The term hillbilly did eventually get its acceptance in the music world but it was very short lived with the occurrence of country music increasing its professional songwriters and new songs coming out that were seen to be apart of folk music. “Hillbilly did eventually gain acceptance, however, as a music industry term, but only after the flurry of attention that occasioned its emergence had subsided.” Hillbilly, folk, and country music have all changed and evolved over the years, but ever since country first began there has always been some form of country music in the world.

Sarah White

https://books.google.com/books?id=3lAlDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA197&dq=when+was+hillbilly+music+originated&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjE6aLq6o_aAhVEmVkKHcLRDf0Q6AEILTAB#v=onepage&q=when%20was%20hillbilly%20music%20originated&f=false

I think that touching on race in class is an important topic but I know it is also a very sensitive topic for some people. The idea of race and what it means has evolved and developed over the centuries and decades. There is no black and white bathrooms or black and white anything, that is a time of the past. However, there are still people who do not accept the fact that segregation is done with and look down on different races. As mentioned in class today, record labels were run by immigrants and it was odd for the blacks and whites to walk in and record something when it was run by immigrants. We spoke on how music back then had less to do with you are and more to do with what was available. I believe Miller in Segregating sound did a good job of explaining what artists back then went through. “The had to paint the pop tunes they loved with a patina of down-home credibility. Southern black recording artists were encourages to pretend they did not know about modern pop music. White southerners had to make Tin Pan Alley sound like a farm road” (p. 227). One last thing that I want to touch on in regards to today’s lecture was the idea of Romantic Nationalism. I have heard about romantic nationalism before but have never understood just exactly what it was. However, your example of country patriotic music with eagles and flags flying puts into perspective for me what it exactly means and I thank you for using an example I can relate to!

Sarah White 

When you began lecture with the words “today we will be discussing American country music,” I immediately knew it would be a lecture that I would enjoy. I am southern born and raised so country music is all that I listen to. Even though I didn’t grow up listening to Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams, I still know who they are and more importantly I know how big of an impact they had on country music. Back during the depression they didn’t have all of this pop and rap music, it was old time blues and folk music. American’s did everything they could to survive and keep their homes. Even though millions were displaced from their homes and lost what they had, country music was there and these people could relate to it. I personally believe that country music is truly the only music that every kind of person can relate to. Wether it be a typical break up, partying, church going, or way of living there is at least one country song that everyone can relate to. I feel as if other music especially in today’s culture is all about the same thing, even the new country music. Don’t get me wrong I listen to new country, but I would much rather listen to the country songs that were released during the 90’s because they all sang about different things. I found it interesting when we spoke about honky tonks and one student asked if they are still a thing or even exist in cities. The first thing that came to my mind was umm hello Nashville?! Like you said though, every city has their honky tonk. Whether it be in the middle of the city like Nashville, or in a bad part of town they still exist. This nation was founded on country music and it amazes me to see how much music and culture changes over the decades.

Sarah White

I personally did not get a lot out of today’s lecture. Maybe I was day dreaming about being outside in the 78 degree weather in February. Whatever it might have been, I know we discussed the impact color and race. I found it interesting that you were able to pull up a website and it showed the different races and classifications. Even though it is 2018 and segregation is no longer a thing, there is still the issues of blacks and whites. There might not be signs that say black restroom and white restroom, and blacks do not have to sit in the back of the bus. However, that does not stop people from living into the stigma of race. If everyone was able to follow/ accept laws there wouldn’t have been a need for signs to segregate people in the past. We carry around the common sense of race, but there is a lot more to race than what people see on the outside.