In this episode of the Am Steg podcast, I interview Nancy Rogers and Clifton Callender on their recent research into perceived voice-leading distance. The interview was recorded a few days after the AMS/SMT conference in November of 2006.
You can listen to the podcast episode here:
The following is a message I (and all MySpace Music members) received last week:
Hey MySpace artists,
Music has always been at the heart of the MySpace community. As an artist, you have a place to connect directly with music lovers and build a fan base. Now, through our partnership with SNOCAP, you can sell digital downloads right on your MySpace page. This is something we’ve wanted to bring to you for a long time, and now it’s here! Read the rest of this entry »
Press release from NEC (sorry for the delay):
NEC Mourns Death of Composer, Longtime Faculty Daniel Pinkham
December 18, 2006
Daniel Pinkham, beloved and prolific composer, organist, harpsichordist, conductor, pioneer in the early music movement, and longtime music director at Boston’s historic King’s Chapel, died December 18, 2006, at the age of 83. One of America’s most active and most-performed composers, he had taught at New England Conservatory since 1959. Read the rest of this entry »
Podcast - In this episode of the Am Steg Podcast, Sean Atkinson, Roger Grant, and Kris Shaffer discuss the 2006 joint meeting of the American Musicological Society and the Society for Music Theory, which took place in Los Angeles a few weeks ago.
You can listen to the podcast episode here:
I’d like to draw attention to an article I recently came across: Richard Cohn and Douglas Dempster’s ‘Hierarchical Unity, Plural Unities: Toward a Reconciliation’ (in Disciplining Music: Musicology and its Canons, ed. Bergeron and Bohlman). This article, for any number of reasons (including the authors’ focus on Schenkerian analysis as a case study), does not seem to have made as big a splash in the theory community at-large as I think it should have. The article has received a number of citations in articles within the Schenkerian community. However, I think that the main proposal of this article, the adoption of the product network as an approach to musical hierarchy, is a concept which would be valuable for musical analysis in general. With that in mind, I would like to say a few brief words about this article, in the hopes that others will find its contents stimulating and helpful, as I have.
The Mannes Institute will soon be accepting applications for their program this summer (24-27 June 2007 at the Mannes College of Music in New York City). The topic of this summer’s institute is Arnold Schoenberg and his Legacy. For program details, visit www.mannes.edu/mi.
I know that of all of the graduate students that visit AmSteg.org, a large majority have some type of teaching responsibility at their institution. And I’m sure everyone has been in the dreadfully boring situation where someone (a teacher or presenter) tried to use technology by reading from a series of Powerpoint slides. What follows are a few helpful hints for those of you that might want to start incorporating more technology into your lessons (or presentations), all of which leave Powerpoint at home.
Check this out: Musical robot composes, performs, and teaches (CNN).
AOL recently opened up their XDrive storage system. Now anyone can sign up for a free 5GB XDrive. I’m not a fan of AOL at all, but the XDrive (and similar future products from other companies, should they decide to compete with AOL) has the potential to be a valuable resource for composers and theorists, particularly those who want to share their work.
It’s that time of year. Here are some more conference opportunities.
In this episode, Kris and Roger discuss David Huron’s recently published book Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation (The MIT Press, May 2006). This book is a huge step forward in the study of music cognition and the statistical properties of music. In short, though Kris and Roger are critical of a few aspects of the book, there is a lot of positive research here. It is a must read for anyone in this field.
A lot has been happening over at Sound and Mind in the past couple of weeks. For those of you interested, or who haven’t taken a look at it yet, here are some of the recent topics which have been raised at Sound and Mind:
Read the rest of this entry »
Friday Diversion - The Fresh Prince of Death Metal!
Podcast - In this podcast hosted by Devin Burke, Kris Shaffer reviews the Bang On A Can Summer Marathon concert, which was the finale of the Bang On A Can Summer Institute that took place at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, Massachusetts, this past July. The featured composer for this event was Meredith Monk, though many of the names synonymous with Bang On A Can had pieces performed there as well (Lang, Ziporyn, Wolfe, Gordon, etc.).
With the rebirth of the SMT listserves, a slew of calls for papers have been announced.
According to a report on Reuters, MySpace plans to sell music on behalf of the nearly 3 million unsigned artists on MySpace Music. Though MySpace will charge a fee for each track sold, the composers and bands get to set their own prices selling unprotected mp3 files (and eventually digitally protected files). So far, this is just a news release. There is nothing on MySpace Music about how musicians can take advantage of this, nor have I seen a timeline on when it may be available, but we’ll keep you posted.