A music teacher / MIT Media Lab researcher has developed an innovative new tool for composing music on the computer. He calls it HyperScore, software that would convert expressive gestures -- lines, patterns, textures and colors -- made on the screen into pleasing and variable sounds. The goal, he said, is to let children have "the direct experience of translating their own thoughts and feelings into music."

From a Few Colored Lines Come the Sounds of Music

"I expected it to be huge, but it was bigger than expected. There was a lot of noise on that record. Everybody was asking about it."

What was that I heard about trouble in the music business? Sounds like things are going just fine for those artists with both talent and good marketing. To all the whiners: either go write some good songs already, or get a real job and stop complaining.

Ashanti Is Low-Price Leader

Jaron Lanier: "I'm 41 now so I've decided I need to develop my grumpy side. So here's a rant about the sorry state of pop music."

I'm not going to include a bunch of excerpts for this one, because I want everyone to read the whole thing start to finish. It will only take a few minutes; like most good rants, it's short, direct, and thought provoking.

'Where did the music go?' by Jaron Lanier

Behind the smiles, a particularly troubling set of circumstances is plaguing the record industry, which is in dire straits on almost every front. The major record labels depend on three things to survive: the money of fans, the music of their artists and the support of the multinational corporations that own them. But the labels are suddenly realizing that they can't depend on any of these. ... "If the industry doesn't change the way we do business," said Val Azzoli, co-chairman of Atlantic Records, "we're going to be bankrupt." While it has been widely reported that music sales were down 5 percent last year, this is the least of the music business's woes. ....

Neil Strauss of the New York Times issues a report on the (sad) state of the music industry, including the tough economic tradeoffs faced by conglomerates like Sony.

Behind the Grammys, Revolt in the Industry

In this paper, we describe the architecture of MusArt ... metadata creation; theme extraction; dynamic time-warping search engine; stochastic search engine ...

The MusArt Music-Retrieval System: An Overview

Abstract: "Considerable attention has been given to the legal implications arising from the distribution of music in a digital format via the Internet. However, less attention has been paid to the technological and social drivers of change in the music industry. This paper attempts to demonstrate the significant impact that social and technological forces have on the music industry, especially regarding lowering barriers to entry."

About: Mark Fox is Associate Professor of Management & Entrepreneurship in the School of Business & Economics at Indiana University South Bend.

Technological and Social Drivers of Change in the Online Music Industry | FM Feb 2002

"Welcome to the website dedicated to making mixed tapes and cds. Browse the archive and check out recent submissions. Or, submit a mix yourself. And, Art of the Mix is home to a community of people all devoted to the fine art of making mixes."

A neat site. You can set up an account and log your mixes in various categories. Everyone provides feedback, and a community develops around the discussion. People can select the mixes they like and arrange CD/cassette trades with others.

The Art of the Mix

"an interactive 24/7 radio installation by volkmar klien"

aural codes exposes the sonic world of the internet, randomly sampling its digital data streams and remixing these to create a constantly changing, reassuringly meaningless 24/7 AM radio broadcast.

a hearing aid to hidden sound.
an interaction of undiscovered noise.
a dj free space where listening makes music.

enhance your local bit of ubiquity and mc the sonic broadcast at the interactive gateways.

...

aural codes rewires computer networks to radio.

data streams at arbitrarily selected points of computer networks in the region are interpreted as digital representations of sound. they serve as sound-sources and process-controls.
the sound sources are fed into a dsp - blackbox controlled by the process-controls. additionally interactive gateways are spread over the local area (serial-sockets on street corners, etc.).

thus a hybrid network of possibilities of influences is set up. the resulting stream of sonic events is modulated onto a carrier-frequency and broadcast via radio as a reassuringly meaningless band of noise hidden between all the other noises in the AM-range.
every sonic event is information and via the mediator energy-exchange, all information can become a sonic event.

aural codes acts as a hearing aid, a hearing aid for listening in its widest sense. something that originally cannot be heard is transposed into something that - without technical equipment - cannot be heard.

aural codes: rewiring of reality