Music and Life in Post-postmodernity

Absolute vs relative pitch — my take

2012-02-10T21:22:00.000-05:00

I was practicing guitar — in this case, sight-reading through a book of intermediate/advanced exercises in all different keys — when I found myself, as usual, distracted by reflective ideas about how I was processing the music. In this case, I found myself modulating back-and-forth between processing the notes in an absolute manner versus a relative manner.

Sitting down to write this, I worry about how to take on one of the most controversial issues in all of music in a short article. Entire books and websites and learning programs have been made on this topic. I do not have time or space to review them all or cite all the vast amounts of research, but the Wikipedia articles are a good starting point: Absolute pitch / Relative pitch.

There is more than enough evidence to conclude that all normal people are sensitive to both absolute and relative pitch. Some rare people are highly sensitive to absolute pitch, including the ability to explicitly name any pitch regardless of context — a skill often called "perfect pitch." All my personal acquaintances who have this ability are children of piano teachers or at least started music training at a very young age. It seems that full development of "perfect pitch" requires explicit connection between consistent sounds and consistent names during a critical period in early childhood. Nevertheless, everyone seems somewhat sensitive to absolute pitch (see The Levitin Effect).

In his wonderful book Sweet Anticipation, David Huron argues (among a great number of other insights) that absolute pitch is unremarkable (it is easy to understand a neuron firing for particular pitches, and absolute pitch is how most animals recognize sounds). In contrast, the uniquely human ability to recognize relative pitch patterns is more cognitively significant. He supposes that when most children pick up on the idea that songs can follow patterns independent of their exact frequency, sensitivity to absolute pitch is actively suppressed in favor of relative focus.

David Huron furthermore asserts that relative pitch may be more about tonal categories than about absolute intervals. This is the ultimate view of relative pitch. Neither the precise frequencies of pitches nor the objectively measurable distances between pitches are of important consequence in music. Instead, the important factor is our cognitive representation of a pitch's context, such as the tonic or dominant, part of a major or minor scale, the root or third of a chord, or simply higher or lower (by a lot or a little). Huron undertook numerous empirical studies that support this view, such as the response time of musicians instructed to place a single pitch in a subjective internal tonal context.

Thus the problem with the oft-taught emphasis on learning even relative intervals out-of-context. Major thirds and minor thirds, for example, may be objectively different, but they both have a somewhat major feeling when conceived in a major-chord context (or minor in a minor-chord context). Similarly, using songs as mnemonics for intervals is problematic. True, My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean starts with a major sixth, but it only works well in the same context of the fifth to the third of a major key. This mnemonic might be partly functional in other contexts, but it sure sounds strange to me to try to think of My Bonnie when going from the third to the root of a minor chord! I don't know with certainty that everyone hears this way, but David Huron and I do, and so do all the students I've taught. I am basically in agreement with Huron's views, and I recommend his book to anyone interested in learning more.

So, how does this relative pitch emphasis relate to music teaching, learning, and performing in everyday context?

There are a wide range of opinions on whether music instruction should emphasize absolute versus relative pitch. In many ways, the symbolic systems we use are biased in one way or the other.

The alphabet naming system is mixed. Though letters can be fixed to A440, 12EDO temperament, and concert C; they can also be transposed for different instruments, guitar capo positions, and non-standard tunings. Still, the letter system is rarely or never used in a truly relative way where a certain letter consistently represents the tonal center. Once a tuning is chosen and a transposition is set, the letter names do not move to follow relative changes in the music.

Solfege (Do-Re-Mi etc) is often taught in a truly relative manner (at least in the U.S. and Britain). In other schools of thought or countries (e.g. Spain) it is fixed, thus being simply a substitute for the alphabet system.

The Western staff notation system is unspecified. The staff is fully capable of being a completely relative representation, but it is most often taught to instrumentalists in an absolute manner. Singers, on the other hand, are often taught a relative interpretation of the staff. And dealing with this dichotomy in my own subjective experience is what inspired me to write this article...

When students first learn to read staff notation, they are usually taught in an absolute-pitch manner. This usually means an instruction of mechanical action to do with their instrument whenever they see a particular symbol. As they advance, they are introduced to more and more symbols and then to the complex issue of key signatures. In different keys, visual representation is thus necessarily somewhat relative. Two sets of notes may look the same aside from key signature, and the difference is primarily in the relationships and where the tonic is located. Thus, students can either learn all the different keys as a set of absolute patterns (e.g. knowing which sharps are in the key of E), or they could learn to think more relatively.

In a relative-pitch approach, a key signature only specifies something about the relationships in a scale and where the tonal center is marked. This works great for singers who just need to know where the tonic is and then they can sing the same pattern for any scale as long as they treat it relatively. Of course, because of the historic Western bias of the notation, the "key" is typically either major or minor and there are strict requirements for what can be in the key signature at the beginning. But, in principle, it would be possible to have a staff represent a scale of any number of notes and of any variety, as long as the singer learns what the scale sounds like.

I believe that the absolute-pitch tying of a note to an exact mechanical movement and exact sound is analogous to the "perfect pitch" naming skill. This absolute pitch focus is useful when needing a particular sound in an unexpected context, but it is cumbersome and hampering when playing otherwise predictable patterns in unusual keys.

Different instruments are more or less absolute in orientation. Wind and brass instruments are inherently tuned to certain primary keys and use specific mechanical motions for different notes. These instruments do not easily transpose, but, with extensive training, wind players can learn to mentally surpass the tyranny of absolute pitch. In contrast, the Chapman Stick is a string instrument that uses no open strings, no sympathetic drone strings, and is tuned in parallel intervals (the same proportional pitch change from string to string). The Stick is therefore an optimal relative-pitch instrument. Stick players have no need to learn multiple key signatures. The exact same scale shape will work identically in any key. Once a starting point is determined, a Stick player can read staff notation by simply following the relationships. The guitar is a compromise: an instrument with some consistent relationships and patterns but some other idiosyncrasies that favor keys around the open strings.

A more relative or more absolute perspective on pitch will lead to differences in how one composes and improvises, and this will lead to music that favors one approach over the other. And, as much as I wish that songbooks and music teaching method books were printed with numerals instead of letter names for chords; as much as I would like to see transcriptions of international music styles made by simply mapping different scales onto a basic staff; and as much as I dislike the awkward irregularities of the Western pitch naming and notation systems... my wishes not reality in the world of music today...

So as I was playing through this book of exercises in all keys, I found myself wondering whether I ought to be thinking relatively or absolutely. Is the goal to train myself to relate an exact spot on the guitar to that particular note given in the key of D-flat? Or would I be better off to just recognize the key, find my position, and then think about where the note falls in relation to the key?

Ironically, the key-signature system highlights the value of a relative-pitch mindset (because we can see the common patterns across keys instead of just thinking absolutely about a single key), yet it is also unnecessarily cumbersome for relative pitch. For a purely relative system, we might as well keep the tonic always on the same line and just mark what scale goes around it and where to tune the tonic.

In my experience, the absolute vs relative mentalities create fundamentally different sight-reading experiences. Even playing a bit from memory, if I look at my guitar and think about the absolute pitch, it is a different perspective than seeing the relative patterns. And though I can do both and have some awareness of both at all times, switching is often confusing. It is most comfortable to pick one mindset or the other.

And my most significant subjective revelation: relative pitch feels far more musical.

I can easily see the practical values of absolute pitch. By always connecting to precise sounds, even the most unexpected music can be transcribed by someone with "perfect pitch." Likewise, instrumentalists who know what to do when they see a symbol are capable of playing modern atonal compositions. Communicating with musicians in a modern Western context involves knowing letter names and reading precise musical notes. I've even had some awareness of my own sense of absolute pitch: a certain ineffable surprise upon hearing a familiar song in an unfamiliar key, for example, or an intuitive sense for guitar tuning.

But absolute pitch focus feels like recognizing particular paint colors instead of seeing a beautiful compelling image. Identifying the brush stroke angle and exact colors may make it easier to copy a painting, but this could be a purely technical exercise. I would rather notice my profound emotional response to art and then try to make my own art to replicate those expressive qualities, even if this focus meant missing some of the technical details.

These perspectives may be two sides of the same coin, and they certainly coexist for most of us, but they do not feel the same. To learn to sing barbershop harmony, my friend with "perfect pitch" told me that he had to learn to focus on the relative pitch and blend. Furthermore, he claimed that he stopped tracking the absolute pitch, though he can quickly stop and check the absolute pitch in his mind if someone asks. In suppressing his "perfect pitch," he learned to be open-minded and appreciative of music even when it deviates from his absolute expectations. And he became a better musician in the process, though he still has trouble sight-reading if the key is transposed from what is on the paper. At the risk of presumption, I think my experience in thinking absolutely vs relatively in sight-reading guitar music is the same underlying phenomenon as my friend's "perfect pitch," only perhaps a weaker version. And while I respect his skill, I'm not envious. I'm going to continue trying to diminish my own absolute-pitch sense in favor of thinking more relatively.

Having reflected on these issues, I am even more confident in emphasizing relative pitch in my teaching, even from the very beginning. I have many students use capos to change the pitch of songs, for vocal reasons, for small hands on large guitars, or just for novelty. I had been concerned that this might impede them in some way, but now I think that suppressing absolute pitch in favor of relative is actually positive. I really believe a focus on patterns and relationships is a more musical, more meaningful approach. I may be positioning myself in opposition to the loud voices who proclaim the value of learning absolute pitch, but I believe they work to be loud because they are fighting against the tide. The meaning and experience of music has nothing to do with whether a pitch is A or B or 100Hz or 120Hz. The natural state of music is more relative than absolute. Just as our eyes easily accommodate different lighting, our ears accommodate different contexts. Musicians and teachers who over-emphasize absolute pitch (such as symbol=letter=mechanism) can't see the forest for the trees.

Review: Musical Cognition by Henkjan Honing

2011-10-08T14:22:00.000-04:00

Musical Cognition: A Science of Listening is a short, concise book for popular readers that describes University of Amsterdam professor Henkjan Honing's particular views of music. This review is of the 2011 English translation recently published by Transaction Publishers.

With only 160 brief pages, this is a relatively quick read. The book is more like a long pamphlet introducing basic ideas but not getting deep. The writing style is very accessible and clean, with no technical jargon, notation, or traditional music theory. The 15 short chapters have clear internal breaks and section headings, so it is very easy to digest this in tiny chunks, which is something I appreciate in any book, whether popular or technical.

The introductory content does a superb job of clarifying music as a cognitive process:

Music is not language. There are parallels and shared features between music and language, but they are quite distinct. Emotional prosody, shown most strongly in infant-directed-speech, show musical as well as linguistic properties. Yet attempts to find language-like syntax in music are misguided. Music is not restricted by semantics or strict lexicons. Music can be more or less surprising or stylistic, it can be more or less accessible, but music does not have rules of grammar that can be truly violated the way we have in language.
Music is not sound. Music is a subjective experience within a listener's mind. We can ignore claims about mathematical properties and other structures that supposedly exist in music as a external object. Music is about perception and cognition. If we don't perceive a structure in any regard, then it is not in the music. [In this regard, of course, music and language are the same!]
People are innately musical, whether or not they have any formal training, any performance skills, or any ability to explain anything about music. The act of listening to and enjoying music requires cognitive abilities that are remarkable and complex yet are present in basically all normal human beings.

Honing addresses the subject of music's evolution, arguing that music is an exaptation: it does not serve a necessary survival function, but is built on independent adaptive functions and has now taken on its own purposes in human life. We can see music as an exceptionally rich cognitive and social game — a game powerful enough to strongly influence our moods, emotions, and identities.

I appreciate Honing's approach overall. He attacks the relativism and postmodern anti-scientific attitudes that pervade musicology these days. He uses the music/food analogy (see my post), pointing out that music notation is like a recipe — it doesn't itself provide nourishment.

Honing also points out the relative nature of music. Absolute pitch or timing is not as important as the relationships between pitches and events. Just as we can still enjoy watching a TV show on different screens that have different color settings, we recognize and appreciate music even when played through fuzzy speakers or when pitches or timing are slightly different. On the other hand, we recognize and respond to subtle deviations in pitch and timing within the overall context. I disagree with Honing in his dismissal of the issues of tuning and temperament, but I agree with the focus on perception and cognition over purely mathematical theorizing. Pitch is not a matter of just math, it is a matter of cognition and human experience.

Unfortunately, the only specific music cognition subject covered in in this book with any depth is rhythm — specifically the particular subjects of Honing's main research: beat-induction, timing, and syncopation. Other topics, when discussed at all, are glossed over without a lot more depth than I'm providing in this review.

Honing uses the shave-and-a-haircut rhythm cliche to discuss syncopation (click here for the book's online supplement with audio). Initially he says, regarding the feeling of syncopation in the pause, "no matter how hard you try, you can't hear it any other way." This leads me to try, of course, and I can succeed at hearing it in other ways. If I consciously focus on the rhythm in a triple meter instead of duple, then there is no syncopation. Honing actually acknowledges and explains this himself a few pages later, but then why have the misleading incorrect initial comment? Furthermore (unacknowledged by Honing), it is possible, even with duple meter, to reduce the feeling of syncopation by simply de-emphasizing the note just before the pause and treating it more as a minor echo connected to the strong previous note, instead of as a lead-in to the pause. Of course, my points here fully support Honing's main emphasis that musical experience is all in the mind.

A later chapter discusses how perceived and performed rhythmic timing varies greatly from mechanical exactness. Though not stated as such, the shave-and-a-haircut audio on the website is a perfect demonstration of awkward mechanical timing. I find it to be jarring how even the timing is in that example.

For some reason, Honing seems almost antagonistic about the evidence of non-human beat induction found by Patel et al in Snowball the dancing cockatoo. While acknowledging their results, Honing makes a point of sewing as much doubt as he can about the study. His prior belief that he does not want to give up is that beat induction is uniquely human. Regardless of the validity (the studies appear well-controlled and valid to me), there is no reason why human-uniqueness would have any impact on the significance of music. So humans and parrots both can feel the beat... hmm, very interesting. That certainly doesn't take anything away from my musical experience!

On the other hand, Honing has no hesitation to jump to bold conclusions from his own research on beat induction in newborn babies. I think there is a good chance his conclusions are correct, but his studies are arguably less controlled than Patel's. From what I can tell, Honing did not control for tempos, irregular timing, different sounds, or a number of other factors. His EEG study shows evidence of surprise in babies when a bass drum sound is missing from "beat one" in a rock beat. Maybe the surprise would not happen if the sound occurred a little earlier or late (instead of missing entirely). Maybe a change in sound would elicit surprise as well. Maybe a totally irregular rhythm (no steady beat) that still had events at a certain average frequency would elicit the same surprise when a longer than normal pause between events occurred. Honing's stimuli did not include missing of the bass drum sound at any other points in the beat, so we can't conclude that the babies felt beat "one" as most salient versus beat three or the upbeat after beat three. I expect that Honing is right that newborns have full beat induction, but his limited research is far from conclusive.

Overall, I am in full agreement with Honing about the value of studying cognitive universals in music. Music exists in the mind and so is, in principle, a subject entirely contained within the field of psychology (though worthwhile research is, of course, not at all limited to the controlled psychology lab). However, Honing's emphasis on music as the act of listening, active as listening truly is, betrays some cultural bias for the Western concept of music. Honing would have a sense of steady beat that gives rise to beat induction as fundamental to music (acknowledging that a good beat deviates quite a lot from precise even timing). This denies those musical traditions that do not utilize a steady pulse. Also, Honing shows serious Western bias in his unqualified suggestion that harmonic progressions are fundamental in identifying songs. In this and other ways, cognitive music researchers too often are culturally-biased in how they devise their hypotheses, studies, and conclusions. But this is not the fault of music cognition as a field. I expect Honing and all his colleagues graciously welcome insights from cross-cultural perspectives, as long as they respect the idea of scientific inquiry and music as cognitive experience.

It is exciting to be witnessing a cognitive revolution in the field of music, and Honing is one of the figures at the forefront. Each new book and research publication helps get closer to a new understanding of music free from the constraints of traditional assumptions about notation or talent or culture. I want to recommend Musical Cognition because I want more people to accept this overall viewpoint. However, I'm not sure that it is worth rereading much. It is a bit overpriced given the minimal content. It is something like a long position paper, worth reading once, maybe getting from the library...

Brain Parts Song VIDEO (and Creative Commons discussion)

2011-07-05T21:54:00.013-04:00

Several weeks ago, I posted a recording of my new Brain Parts Song. I mentioned then that it called for a video, and I realized later that I couldn't rely on someone else to do it. But that doesn't mean I had to create everything from scratch. Thanks to the internet and Creative Commons, I was able to put together a very effective video:

The player above is from YouTube, but I also uploaded to Vimeo
and to Archive.org, a great media site that is free, open, and non-profit!

There's so much in this video packed into 3 minutes, so I highly recommend repeated viewings/listenings for anyone wanting to use this song as a memory/learning aid. The song lacks the exact repetitiveness of much pop music, but it can be pretty catchy after hearing it enough.

I was concerned about my original audio-only recording for learning purposes because the brain parts are not the words being rhymed, so they could be wrongly mixed up and the song would still work musically. I think having the associated video content solves the problem. I'm a bit disappointed how the mistake/joke about the Anterior Cingulate Cortex isn't as surprising and funny as it is with audio alone, and other hidden subtleties in the recording are more obvious now that they are illustrated visually, but there's new subtleties and details in the video content, so it's all good.

I had fun making this, and I hope everyone enjoys it and maybe learns something too.

Issues with Creative Commons licensing:

For a mere three minutes, this took a lot of work. Google, Flickr, and Wikimedia were great sources. In finding Creative-Commons-licensed material, however, I came up against an important-to-understand yet non-obvious situation:

The Creative Commons Non-Commercial Share-Alike (CC BY-NC-SA) license substantially hampers the creation of non-commercial derivative works!

This non-commercial license is usually chosen by people who want to share their work with other creative artists yet still be paid royalties for any commercial use. However, a simple CC share-alike license is enough to stop traditional commercial enterprises from taking advantage of the artist's CC generosity. I doubt a network TV show, for example, would use a song licensed as CC BY-SA (other than by paying the creator under a regular copyright license), because they wouldn't want to be forced to license the whole show under Creative Commons. So any share-alike license will probably discourage free commercial use. Small-time commercial uses that would happily accept a share-alike license are probably not going to pay much of anything anyway, and it'd be better for most creators to allow such use.

But here's the real problem with the NC-SA license: I made a non-commercial video but could not use any BY-NC-SA content because that license is incompatible with the BY-SA content I used from Wikimedia and elsewhere!

Again, choosing a BY-NC-SA over the simpler BY-SA license probably makes little difference regarding major commercial use. What NC-SA primarily does is: stops people from mixing the content with anything from Wikimedia or any other BY-SA content. If someone writes a song, licenses it as CC BY-NC-SA, they just stopped fans from making awesome videos using images from Wikimedia.

I used lots of BY-SA content from Wikimedia and Flickr. Therefore, even though I was planning to license that way regardless, I am now required to license my video in the same way. This means everyone is free to share and alter or use parts of my video and song, as long I am credited, any content I used from others is appropriately credited, and any new content is also licensed the same way to keep sharing. I encourage all creative people to use this license and contribute to the growing and valuable resources of Creative Commons!

I recently chose to license this entire blog under Creative Commons, as marked at the bottom of the site.

Click here for the precise details of the CC BY-SA license.

Side note: YouTube recently added the ability to mark videos CC-BY but no other CC license. Vimeo and Archive.org, on the other hand, both have full support for marking all Creative Commons licenses, thus making them superior places (at present) for CC content.

Read on for the written-out lyrics and credits/links for the resources used in my video:

LYRICS:

This is a song about parts of the brain
I'm singing it to memorize the names
The ideas here may be simplistic
But matching meaning and rhyme is a tough logistic

The cerebral cortex has four main lobes
with names from the nearby skull bones

Frontal does the thinking
Occipital deals with vision
Parietal senses objects
and Temporal listens

Inside these lobes there's specialties
like Broca's Area which produces speech
Wernicke's Area handles language comprehension
and the Motor Cortex is for moving with intention

The Sensory Cortex handles perception
of touch, pain, temperature and proprioception

There's two outer brain parts that are distinct
They may seem separate, but everything's linked

The Cerebellum does balance & coordination
and has our memorized-movement archive
The Brainstem sets heartbeat & respiration
and other things that we need to survive

The brain's inner parts are unique
cut the Corpus Callosum to take a peek

The Thalamus handles signal routing
and the Amygdala's emotions can have you shouting

The Hippocampus does our long-term memory saving
and the Hypothalamus makes our sex and food cravings

The Anterior Cingulate Cortex learns from mistakes
and in controlling movement, the basal ganglia is the brakes

The brain parts list is much longer, indeed
But for my class assignment this is all I need

-----

Credits for images:

Patrick J. Lynch, medical illustrator, and C. Carl Jaffe, MD, cardiologist:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Skull_and_brain_normal_human.svg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brain_stem_normal_human.svg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brain_human_sagittal_section.svg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lungs_diagram_detailed.svg

from Gray's Anatomy (public domain):
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gray720.png
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brain_diagram_without_text.svg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schaedel-mensch-seitenansicht.jpg

Human Eye by Rainer Ebert
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rainerebert/3206069919/

Rosenthal rotating cube in Ann Arbor, photo by Douglas Muth:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmuth/477646651/

Ear by David Benbennick
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ear.jpg

Breakdancing:
http://www.archive.org/details/minitobozmoiBboy

Touching Metorite by Bo-Gordy-Stith:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/56981926@N00/2280381435

Cast by Mark Tristan:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marktristan/453108653/

Alpha shivering on the deck:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/avlxyz/3063515370/

Upside Down by Johnny Jet:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnnyjet/2830416793/

Balance Beam:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Balance_beam_GMM.jpg

Juggling by Peter Fristedt:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fristedt/2124210791/

Electronic phase control by Dmitry G:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Electronic_phase_control_relay.jpg

Expression of Emotions by Guillaume Duchenne:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Expression_of_the_Emotions_Figure_21.png

All We Need Is Smile:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimmydavao/3140483621/

Triste by Arwen Abendstern:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/arwen-abendstern/2100162345/

Scream and Shout by Mindaugas Danys:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mindaugasdanys/3766009204/

Always Kiss Me Goodnight by Courtney Carmody:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/calamity_photography/4640356465/

Brooklyn Heights Pizzeria by Robert Banh:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robertbanh/3279100562/

Human Heart by Mikael Häggström:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Human_heart.png

Basal Ganglia by John Henkel:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BrainCaudatePutamen.svg

various images from BodyParts3D/Anatomography:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Animations_using_BodyParts3D_polygon_data
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Animations_from_Anatomography

Review: How Music Works by John Powell

2011-06-06T11:28:00.001-04:00

Since I first learned about things like tuning and temperament, the cognitive processing of rhythm, and the perception of timbre, I have had thoughts of writing some sort of universal how-music-works book. Music is usually taught through cultural context (sometimes without revealing this angle), and little to no mention of universal perceptual and cognitive facts. Clearly, however, I am not alone in having this idea of writing some universal music book. John Powell's 2010 book How Music Works: The Science and Psychology of Beautiful Sounds, from Beethoven to the Beatles and Beyond has a same main title that is included in the subtitle of the book I previously reviewed by Philip Ball from just earlier in 2010. These two books are far from alone in this burgeoning arena of authors hoping to enlighten the world to their grand universal insights on the nature of music. Unfortunately, these attempts all fall short of what I would like to see. If I had the same standards as John Powell, I would probably have already written my submission to the field. But I'm trying to learn from the attempts of others first and/or to find existing books I can truly recommend without qualification (Music and Memory: An Introduction by Bob Snyder being among the best I've yet found).

It is interesting to note the stark contrast between John Powell's book and Philip Ball's. On the one hand, they could have swapped covers and titles with no impact. They both cite David Huron's superb book Sweet Anticipation, just one of many indications that the authors have overlapping background understanding. They both discuss tuning, physics, style, and psychology. They both are biased toward Western traditions even as they attempt to be otherwise. Yet Ball's book is dense, full of complex discussion and examples covering an immense range of topics especially cultural and historical and cognitive issues, and its audience is probably college students seriously wading into these subjects. Powell's book, however, is a light jokey volume glossing over the surface of a smaller set of topics focusing on physics and practical realities about instruments and technology; it is for a truly lay popular audience.

The best parts of How Music Works cover (though mostly in only simple introductory style):

The arbitrariness of the standard tuning of A440
How perfect pitch is learned through very young music training and doesn't really have much relation to musicianship aside from the correlated value of young training (and, of course, how perfect pitch is now connected to the arbitrary A440 standard, but historically was not)
The dubiousness of specific keys (e.g. C vs D) having distinct emotions
how the vibration of strings gives rise to the harmonic series (particularly clear and well-illustrated for a static book)
basic instrument acoustics, how instruments work (though he unfortunately omits pitched inharmonic instruments like bells and gamelon gongs)
the general basics of timbre
understanding loudness perception and the screwy dB measurement system (in this particularly well-written section, Powell advocates convincingly for sones as a superior alternative to decibels)
how microphones and speakers work (clear but extremely brief and lacking detail)
how different media work and why dogmatic ideas such as vinyl discs being superior to CDs are nonsense (though admittedly some recordings on CDs were remastered in inferior ways to their original vinyl releases, that is not inherent to the media)

Powell also has some debatable but good points about comparing popular and classical styles, about improvisation, and about music being just a skill anyone can learn rather than some mystical gift.

Unfortunately, the book is more problematic when it comes to explanations of pitch. Powell is not hesitant to just proclaim things good and bad without explanation. He describes a poorly made souvenir bamboo flute with equally-spaced holes as horrendously out of tune, as though anyone would clearly hear how terrible it is. While his point holds about evenly-spaced holes not producing evenly spaced tones, I find the sound of the flute to be interesting and of musically valid potential despite being exotic to any tuning system I am used to. To teach about the psychology of music perception, we need to describe how we experience different tunings, not just label them right and wrong.

Powell makes a biased and altogether mistaken assumption that the features of the 12-tone equal tempered system have always been the goal for all musicians. He goes on to say basically that Europeans found the solution to tuning in the mid-18th century and that's that. He even attempts a sort of self-deprecating humor by berating a British piano company for failing to move to the new system until well into the 19th century. He suggests that Pythagoras was aiming for modern equal temperament and just got it wrong. There's even a remark implying that transposing and modulating songs to different keys is a universal goal (in reality, the majority of cultures and music throughout history does not have this goal at all).

Powell has a tendency to make vague claims with the apparent assumption that readers will just take his word for things and just think it sorta made sense. He says all pianos are tuned the same now and to simple equal temperament (not quite true, ask any piano tuner). He claims that steady drones as accompaniment to singing were sung as the next step after simple melodies alone, and that this happened in some vague ancient maybe even prehistoric time (these claims are dubious, the first drones were probably instruments, and we have basically no evidence about the details of singing in ancient times).

Powell teaches the pentatonic scale as a universal foundation and tunes it according to Pythagorean chaining (meaning each note is a 2:3 ratio perfect fifth from the previous in the system, then adjusted for octaves). But then, Powell gives just intonation ratios like 4:5 and 3:5 as the tuning for the resulting scale. This is simply wrong. The implication is that musicians would tune one way to derive the scale but then either re-tune to get the simpler harmonies or that the scale works by approximating these simpler harmonies. These are totally questionable claims, and Powell doesn't even acknowledge them. Instead, he appears to suggest that (e.g.) 1.5 x 1.5 x 1.5 = 3.3333... (it really equals 3.375, and these may be very close but the difference is musically quite audible, a difference known as a syntonic comma).

The entire discussion of pitch is basically the minimal showing of some patterns to convince lay readers that the claims are justified — without enough clarity to actually have readers understand the evidence enough to question it or even utilize it in learning.

The section on traditional Western theory (notation, chord names, scales, etc) is unremarkable. Some explanations of chords and scales and rhythms are accurate enough. Nothing here is special or new. Some of it is wrong (he defines the word "harmony" as the progression of chords in a song). Mostly, this section has too much take-my-word-for-it bits, and the result is that real reasons for the patterns and names simply aren't accessibly explained. Readers who already know the Western jargon will get little new here. The biggest problem here is that focusing on the Western notation automatically biases the explanations toward certain things that this book is supposed to be going beyond.

There are many further criticisms I could mention ranging from specific problems with his tuning explanations to the total lack of reference in the book to the contents of the included CD (which is some select explanations of content from the book with narration and sound examples).

Overall, John Powell is clearly motivated in the same way as I am: to take broad scientific insights into music and deliver and new accessible introduction to a general audience. His result is mixed. Like a flashy television documentary, he is more engaging and accessible than many authors. Readers will certainly come away with some new insights and perspective. The overview of instrument acoustics is among the best I've seen. But there are problems here that really deserve better treatment. The whole package feels (like Philip Ball's book I reviewed earlier) like a jumbling together of a bunch of blocks of different quality that don't quite make a grand structure as a unit. Powell should be commended, however, for writing in a very accessible and fun style designed to reach a broad audience.

If you get this book through your local library, it may be worth a read, just keeping in mind the concerns I've presented here.

New recording: The Brain Parts Song

2011-05-22T21:16:00.005-04:00

After giving up the chance to start my PhD now, I'm pushing myself to get involved in lots of projects until I potentially re-apply to grad schools. Among other things, I'm taking an online class through the local community college: Human Development and Learning. This class relates to my interests in psychology and education, plus it will be valuable if I ever pursue formal teacher certification.

This week's assignment was to do something creative involving learning the basic parts of the brain, so I wrote a song, of course:

Brain Parts Song by Aaron Wolf

I had to fight the urge to be a perfectionist. I simply didn't have time to add all sorts of instrumentation or details or make a video... maybe another time, but I'm busy with other things.

This song is very purpose-driven: a song for memorizing. Unfortunately, I don't think it does that optimally. These brain part names are really hard to rhyme, so I resorted to rhyming words that fit descriptions of the parts. However, that choice means that the names could be erroneously mixed up and the song would still work musically. Plus, this might be too much content crammed into three minutes — it would be more memorable if there were room for more exact repetition. I'm happy with the result, and I did my best, but it may not be the best study tool for everyone... At least it's a fun song.

Comparison of Different Media for Music Education

2011-05-16T22:35:00.013-04:00

When I first realized that most of the content I learned in my schooling and private lessons was available in books at the library, it made me question the value of the lessons and classes. On the other hand, maybe I wouldn't have actually read all the books on my own at that younger age... But I wasn't presented with the opportunity so I didn't know it was available. Of course, in the days before the internet, there simply wasn't quite as much information readily available and even finding the right books at the library was harder before computerized catalogs. Of course, books aren't as meaningful until after one has had real-world experience to relate the ideas to.

A teacher's job is to get students to learn and be thoughtful, and, ideally, that is done as efficiently as possible. The most efficient learning for beginners is full multi-sensory immersion: playing music with others in a real-world context. Then students are able to relate these experiences to more removed media like recordings and abstract symbols such as music notation. Of course, efficient also implies practical; so the value of experiencing different media must be weighed against accessibility and cost. Teachers should make students aware of the opportunities of different media as soon as students are ready for them.

Though not all students may follow through, I intend to do everything I can to enable and encourage independent study. Unfortunately, while information is now more readily available than ever, the options are overwhelming (see this compelling video: Barry Schwartz On The Paradox of Choice). So my job is both to directly teach particular ideas as well as to be a guide to the learning process in general.

This post is about evaluating different media. I am sure that information scientists (i.e. librarians et al) and pedagogy scholars have done extensive work studying this subject (please let me know if you have specific recommendations about research I should check out), but here I would like to share my personal thoughts specific to the study of music through different media including private lessons, classes, books, videos, software, and more.

Different media offer different benefits. Therefore, the best learning is multimedia using the all the forms for their different values.

Pros and cons of learning music through different media:

Live Private Instruction

Possibly the best medium with a great teacher

Pros: human, multi-sensory, responsive, set time and place helps reduce outside distraction, teachers can utilize other media as well; personalized: content and pacing is largely controllable and set to match the student

Cons: limited to particular teacher's ability and values, scheduling and economic challenges, lesson time may not always match peak focus time for either student or teacher, most lessons are only weekly (or even less frequent) so most study time is independent, on its own lacks the broader social context of ensemble music

Private lessons are arguably the very best way to learn music. The ultimate student engagement tends to occur with direct interaction with an attentive teacher, and all other media are more passive. Private lessons can cater to the specific interests, abilities, and learning styles of each student. Beware, however, that the value of lessons can be extremely variable based on the differences among teachers.

I might not have become a musician were it not for my private teachers who encouraged me and taught me the basics (though maybe I would be as happy or successful in another field... I'm just saying that personal attention from teachers is extremely valuable, and that is true in any field). On the other hand, I had questions and interests that my teachers were not always able to address. I later found that much of the content that I learned in lessons was readily available in other forms. I've even found that some of the ideas I was taught are actually incorrect or very biased.

As a teacher myself, I have spent much of my own learning time with other media instead of private lessons — mostly looking for the best ideas for my students. I have found other media to be much more economical, but I still feel something may be missing without the direct personal interaction of an instructor. Perhaps a teacher is necessary to get students engaged initially before they can eventually be more independent. Also, teachers help students develop perspective and knowledge to think critically about the ideas they then encounter elsewhere.

Because of the brief time of short weekly lessons, substantial progress requires study outside of lessons through use of other media (generally that recommended by the teacher, but not exclusively).

Group / Class Instruction
Great for certain stages or subjects if appropriate class is offered

Pros: same pros as private instruction except not personalized; extra benefits include: connection to peers, both cooperative and competitive motivations and learning contexts

Cons: like private lessons, quality is dependent on the teacher; classmates may be distracting, content may not match interest or level, only some control over pacing

In the rare case that the learning styles, goals, and levels of all students in a class are well-matched, class instruction can be very successful. Music presents unique challenges because it is harder than other subjects to have students working independently in the same room. There are many things, such as ensemble music and coordination, that are best learned in a class. There are other things a class teacher will never be able to address which are best learned in private lessons. Classes can be the best choice for many, but inherently require compromise to coordinate all the students.

Internet Lessons and Online Classes
Not as good, but still interactive and may be practical

Pros: may be more time-flexible and economic than in-person, offer many of the same benefits of working with a teacher privately or in a class

Cons: only auditory and visual — less multisensory, less direct and human than live instruction, requires staring at computer screen

While internet-based teaching may make sense for some, my understanding is that there is a greater tendency for drop-out. Online learning simply isn't as directly engaging. For students motivated enough and where online is more practical for various reasons, it may make sense. There are even ways to coordinate online music ensembles, though this is certainly nothing like a live group experience.

Friends and Other Casual Social Learning
Great, should be utilized, but alone may be inadequate

Pros: free or inexpensive, social and fun, otherwise many of the same benefits as private lessons

Cons: often more limited than professional instruction, may learn incorrect ideas, far more variable quality, may have inconsistent timing, inconsistent content

If one is lucky enough to have a friend who is a great teacher full of knowledge, patience, and time to teach, then great! In most cases, friends and acquaintances will not compare well with experienced teachers. But it is great to utilize such connections nonetheless, perhaps in addition to private lessons.

Books

Often, there is too much mediocre bulk to wade through when selecting, but the right book is a wonderful learning tool — if students already have enough real-world experience to relate the concepts.

Pros: clear, organized, portable, scalable precision (see below), reader controlled, inexpensive (may be free if you use the public library), may be modified by writing in them (if not from the library)

Cons: only visual and conceptual, requires self-motivation, no feedback

Books are a tried and true medium. A well-written book (an important qualifier!) has an accessible layout and carefully organized content. Readers may skip around, skim and speed-read, review, and otherwise go at their own appropriate pace. I greatly appreciate skimming through a book to get an idea of its content and being able to stop and read a section if I choose. Books offer pacing that is directly controlled by the reader's own mind.

Music notation in particular has the ability to specify certain things and not others. A book can indicate a series of notes without specifying expressive nuances. When a teacher or recording performs the same notes, there are always nuances that may be useful or may be distracting (teachers may use books, of course, when appropriate). Students learning music from books alone will be very limited because music is inherently aural rather than visual; but when students get a general sense of music from lessons, experience, or recordings, then books can be used very effectively. The best music-related books have accompanying or associated audio (and sometimes video) content.

Audio Recordings
Debatable for being the only instructional content, but ideal for just listening and for supplementing teachers, books, and other media.

Pros: dynamic, expressive, may be very high quality, somewhat controllable (especially using appropriate software), can be very flexible and portable in digital formats

Cons: necessarily contains set nuances, format is linear, only aural, no feedback

Audio recordings are particularly valuable in music study, of course. However, they are very passive, offering no feedback or reaction to students. Though software can be used to alter playback speed, visualize a recording, and more. Still, audio recordings do not offer the control of a book. It is far easier for students to become distracted from audio than from a multi-sensory medium like video or a live teacher. On the other hand, this also means that audio may be studied less consciously; recordings can play in the background while students attend to other things.

I find audio recordings of music much more valuable than audio recordings of an instructor talking. Music can be enjoyable and valuable listening regardless of direct lessons. Listening to an instructor requires attention, and it is too easy to get distracted from the disembodied voice droning on. Also, while a book allows skimming, it is harder to skip around in an instructional audio recording and have any sense of what it is.

Video Recordings

Can be great, but not a substitute for a teacher, not as controllable as a book

Pros: multi-sensory (though not as much as live instruction), reasonably inexpensive, somewhat human (depending on content),

Cons: staring at screen, limited control, no feedback, fatiguing.

Some things can be heard in audio, read in a book, and even taught in a group class yet still not quite connect for a student; yet video recordings may work. A video may be made to carefully present a precise idea both visually and aurally. It may be paused, and even sped up or slowed down (with digital content and the free VLC software). Video may be the most practical, affordable, or perhaps the only way to get somewhat more human, engaging instruction from experts in many areas.

Unfortunately, video has many downsides. I find videos more frustrating than books for learning particular skills. A rare video that is just right for my level may be great, but I need to watch the video to find out. It is hard to know in advanced if a video is rambling and pointless or overwhelming and unclear. With a book, it is easier to skim and get a sense of it. Like audio, video may be more effective for music performances than for instruction. On the other hand, it is harder than with audio to passively take in a video while focusing on other things. Video instruction is a gamble because time (and maybe money) must be spent before really knowing whether it will be of value. And unlike a live teacher, it makes no adjustment to the viewer and provides no feedback. In my view, the video medium is in some regards the best and in others the worst. I've learned some valuable things from video, but it is far from my preferred way to learn specific skills. Documentary films, on the other hand, can be great when done well...

Computer Software
Vast possibilities, should be utilized when appropriate

Pros: multimedia, open-ended, tons of possibilities, lots of control, some feedback, very creative options

Cons: more time staring at the computer

I have used software for creative purposes such as music recording and composing. For those types of tasks, software is probably the best tool. I have not used or reviewed much of the software used for direct music instruction. Some of it seems quite amazing. There appears, however, a tendency of instructional software to favor the most cliché popular or classical music — even more so than other instructional media. One common instructional music software type is that for ear-training. I have mixed feelings about these. They are largely tedious, removed from real music context, and biased toward certain music theories.

Overall, it is hard to generalize about computer software. It can use the best of other media, even including interaction with live teachers... Reading a book or interacting with other people in person will always be different than staring at a screen, but computers may become more and more preferred in many contexts.

Internet: web sites, forums, etc.
Wonderful, but best with some guidance, can be overwhelming, never quite the same as a book or anything like a live teacher

Pros: multimedia, extremely vast, can include feedback, searchable

Cons: overwhelming, undirected, biased toward whatever is popular

Learning via the internet is a gamble. One may find just the right thing, may become misguided, may waste time, or (most likely) some mix of these. Aside from the physical experience of books and live people, the internet contains all the media mentioned above and more. My experience is that the internet is simply too overwhelming to allow for comfortable focus. It lacks the sense of concreteness and closure that a good book has. I still use the internet all the time. It is the best reference search tool, of course. The challenge is to find the best paths through it all and to try to ignore the distractions.

The internet-specific medium of discussion forums warrants unique mention. There are forums for students of all sorts to share their thoughts and questions. These can absorb people and take a lot of time, but they can also be rich and rewarding. It is far easier to engage in an online forum than to organize a local meeting of people with some particular narrow interest. For those who can resist getting overly focused on tangential online chat, forums offer a free way to get something somewhat like the human feedback of in-person casual learning from friends.

Update 5/24/11:
Wiki-type internet content in particular:
Wikipedia, the most significant but just one of many wiki-type sites, is certainly an excellent go-to site. While many other sites have redundant material, the wiki format is inherently succinct and consolidated because writers all add to the same page instead of duplicating each others' work. The best content can be mixed with the best writing style because everyone contributes and the reader can see just the latest result.

This here blog, for example, may be valuable (I hope), but is personal and limited to one person's perspective. I try not to redundantly reproduce information readily available elsewhere, but it is hard to know everything about what is out there. I also often wish I could just improve some lousy writing in otherwise good books in order to feel more comfortable recommending them to students. The wiki model is the best tool for consolidation of information and quality presentation, so I encourage everyone to use, appreciate, and contribute to free public wiki's like Wikipedia.

MEDIA CREATION

All of the above discussion assumes the use of media created by others. Obviously, there are great learning opportunities in creating media. Students can learn a great deal through teaching others, writing a book, making audio and video recordings, programming software (whether new or contributing improvements to existing free and open-source software), or making a website, or editing Wikipedia. In all cases, student creators will benefit from understanding the pros and cons of each medium, and this understanding will also help them be critical students when using media otherwise.

----
This post last updated: 5/28/11

Opportunities vs life circumstances: music vs environment...

2011-05-06T16:19:00.003-04:00

I've been through a lot since my last post. I went from being quite certain that I would move across the country to pursue a PhD in Musicology (with a cross-cultural focus) to changing plans and now staying in Ann Arbor while my wife, Samantha, does a MS degree in Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan. I won't get into discussing the complex issues of different universities, my general feelings about academia, the issues about the prospects of UofM for me, other alternatives, etc (maybe another time...). Simply put, every opportunity comes in a package with all sorts of issues, pros and cons, open or closed doors, costs, etc. Making decisions about these things is very complex. It is impossible to truly know what unchosen decisions would have brought. Among many other factors, I am sincerely excited for Samantha — and not just for her sake, but because I also find biology and environmental issues fascinating and important.

So now I am continuing to teach private lessons while also considering how else to make the most of the next couple years. I have several projects to pursue. I already have more than a dozen planned blog articles on many subjects. I have an endless reading list. I want to record and compose new music. I ought to get out and perform more, perhaps get together an ensemble with other musicians. I intend to pursue formal publication of some of my academic research. I may take and/or audit various classes. And I just got started working with a programmer friend with the goal of realizing some of my computer-based music theory education ideas. I could even start on finally writing my guitar method (given that I've reviewed over 700 related publications and still haven't found anything quite like what I want), but I think that project may have to wait...

Today I want to share two specific items:

(A) I fully revised my page here: Lessons: Details, Philosophy
The updated page describes much of my attitude as a music teacher and clarifies (I hope) my wacky philosophical title of this site. I had trepidations about trying to explain in a few sentences some philosophical concepts so complex that I'm not sure I fully understand them. But, as Professor Bob Woody replied recently when I commented on his blog, maybe writing controversial or simplistic things might encourage more comments! I have certainly gained more understanding by sharing my thoughts and making them open for criticism than by trying to hold onto my ideas until I think they are flawless (which is never). As that static page doesn't allow comment, please comment here regarding that page.

(B) I thought of a way to be more environmentally responsible in my teaching:

The background: I feel happy and responsible that my wife and I share a single car — and still, it is rarely used. We put much less miles on our shared car than the average single-driver car. This is possible for many reasons, including our decision to run errands by bicycle or foot as much as possible and to avoid other unnecessary driving. But the main reason I drive so little is that I teach out of my home studio most days. The problem is: while this saves me a lot of money, it doesn't actually reduce cost and pollution overall because my students still drive to come to me. Yeah, it's still better than if my students and I both drove to meet at some separate location, but it still isn't an ideal sustainable arrangement considering environmental and energy costs (and I don't believe in the absurd premise that electric cars or similar can somehow be efficient enough to make sprawling, commuting suburb life sustainable). If my career is to be feasible and responsible in the future, this needs to be addressed.

There is the possibility of online teaching with video conferencing and such, and maybe I'll try that sometime. Online can never be quite the same as in-person lessons, but maybe it really could be a fair compromise in some cases. But I thought of a more immediate solution:

I just need to encourage students to take public transit or bike (or even walk) to lessons. I had hesitated to do this in the past because I know it is hard (though not impossible) to bike with a guitar, but I realize now I just need to have enough various instruments of my own so that students can use one of my guitars in their lessons. Yes, it is better for me to see how they play with their own guitar, but it is more important to encourage students to save money and reduce pollution and waste. I want to live in a world where people are healthy and responsible and bike more, and I'm thrilled to have thought of a way to directly encourage that. I added a note to my official policy and will mention it to my students in the future. I hope it works out for at least some folks!

----
Thanks for reading. Check back here (or subscribe via the form to the right) to keep up with future updates. The vast majority of my planned posts are about general insights in music and related things, in contrast to the largely personal nature of this post. Thanks goes out to the numerous folks who helped me in so many ways throughout my grad school application process — I gained a lot of perspective and understanding even though I will not be going back to school yet.

Tonal Plexus microtonal keyboard: 3 videos

2011-03-19T14:42:00.009-04:00

In 2008, I became one of the first owners of a Tonal Plexus keyboard from H-Pi Instruments (a mostly one-man production of owner Aaron Hunt, who hand-builds the keyboards and creates the supporting software).

I had already deeply studied pitch in music through barbershop harmony, alternatively tuning my guitars, listening to software tone generators, listening to a wide variety of music from around the world and from composers who explored pitch (such as Lou Harrison, Harry Partch, Toby Twining, Jon Catler, and many others), and through extensive reading (including Hermann Helmholtz, Easley Blackwood, Bill Sethares, and many more).

At one time, I had hoped to find some simple scale or guitar tuning or guitar fretting system that would achieve the sounds I was seeking; but no optimal system seemed possible. If I wanted one chord tuning, it interfered with tuning another chord. Frets would have to be so close together, that I might as well have no frets. No frets allows any pitch, but then it is much harder to avoid errors in tuning. Violinists and barbershop singers work hard enough to get one pitch tuned just so. Achieving consistent accuracy (to the degree that I want) with multiple notes and complex chords all on a single stringed instrument is unrealistic.

With the Tonal Plexus (TPX) keyboard, a whole new flexibility is possible without sacrificing accuracy. The sheer number of pitches approximates a complete pitch continuum. In other words, the very low-bit digital system of the traditional keyboard or fretted instruments is rough and blocky, like an old eight or sixteen color computer screen, whereas the Tonal Plexus is still digital but is more like 8-bit or 16-bit color (meaning hundreds to thousands of colors) on a computer monitor which can much better approximate the full color spectrum. Full analog devices are completely continuous, but being digital offers more accessible accuracy. I can press a specific button and get a specific predetermined pitch.

On the downside, the TPX cannot achieve the natural fluidity of analog instruments like fretless strings or the human voice. Also, the lack of touch sensitivity further limits the keyboard's expressive potential. Of course, adding touch sensitivity for so many buttons would make the instrument prohibitively expensive, if it were even possible. At least there is a randomization option for velocity as well as a whole-keyboard option for volume and velocity control via footpedals. It is worth noting that harpsichords and organs have still been used to make effective music despite their lack of touch sensitivity.

While I learned much upon initially playing with the keyboard, I found it frustrating that it still could not achieve quite what I wanted. The stretches seemed awkward. I wondered about all sorts of other alternatives. I decided to finally get a fretless guitar (see my 2009 video). The guitar's nuances and fluidity were thrilling, but it wasn't the full answer either. I've come to accept that my imagined complete instrument may simply be practically impossible (even though simultaneous fluid melodic motion, precise harmony, harmonic deviance, and control of touch sensitive nuance is — in principle — possible). Maybe touch-sensitive multi-touch computer screens along with some complex algorithmic tuning will get closer, but we're not there yet.

In the end, I have realized that what matters more is the human context: the cultural and psychological experience of music over the details of the objective form. And yet, I am convinced that much of the pitch subtlety available on the TPX is psychologically relevant. I have much more to study and hope to get more involved in that sort of research, but that's a subject for another time.

In an effort to be less idealistic and perfectionist, I have gone back to the TPX to show off its unique capabilities. It certainly can do particular expressive things that no other musical instrument has ever achieved. It is worth appreciating that without worrying about the compromises. All instruments bring different insights and potential, and exploring the Tonal Plexus for what it offers has been very enriching.

With help from my friend Doug Jones doing the camera-work and providing some direction and feedback, I have made an initial set of videos on my TPX. The first is an introductory explanation:

Next, a melodic improvisation over a drone:

Finally, a barbershop tag in just intonation:

[note: click the links to YouTube to read the specific descriptions I wrote of each video]

More videos will come soon. I hope these first ones highlight just a little of the enormous potential here. My future with this could include more careful practice, maybe detailed compositions, additional controllers for more timbrel and dynamic (and even additional pitch) nuance, and coordination with other instruments and musicians.

I welcome any comments or questions, though I suggest that anyone interested in the theory explore the H-Pi website first. There, Mr. Hunt has included everything from history to theory about much of the ideas behind this keyboard. He also offers software including a FREE virtual version of the keyboard (which is also used by owners to create alternate tunings or other adjustments). H-Pi also offers software for ear-training, an alternate-tuning device for standard keyboards, and much more.

Review: The Music Instinct by Philip Ball

2011-01-07T00:00:00.007-05:00

It is at once mundane and yet remarkable how much one's impression of the world is influenced by what one focuses on. In college, I was taught traditional eurocentric classical music theory. Though some exceptional professors had broader perspectives, it seemed they were still resigned to the primacy of the conservative traditions. Not wanting to be an ignorant critic, I made a conscious effort to understand and appreciate the traditional views. Later, I did the same with guitar pedagogy: reading through all the classical literature to understand that perspective. I learned a lot and valued some of the ideas, but I felt small and alone in my persistent interests in music cognition, ethnomusicology, and other less-classical approaches.

More recently, I began seeking out more cutting edge contemporary research. At first, I had little guidance because most of my professional acquaintances have only superficial awareness of the questions that interest me. But then one connection led to another, and I was soon overwhelmed with books, journal articles, conferences, websites, music, and names. It seems I wasn't so alone after all. Now I feel as though I am just one of a vast number, possibly even a majority, of younger researchers and teachers who are fully engaged and open to the broad perspectives on music that are available in the 21st century. It now seems to me that everyone acknowledges the validity of all the world's musics, appreciates the insights of cognitive neuroscience, and is interested in the whole complicated discourse of various perspectives. But, is this impression just a result of with whom and with what I am now surrounding myself? I think the reality is somewhere in the middle.

Philip Ball's new book The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can't Do Without It presents an impressive overview of the current issues in music scholarship, balancing respect and awareness of both classical perspectives and the important questions of global and scientific insights. Reading it, I felt very humbled. How can this popular science writer (who is not a career musician and has covered a wide range of subjects from art to physics to biology) be so knowledgeable about all these music issues that took me years of study to understand? He even seems to possess a thoughtful perspective on evaluating it all. Ball starts off with an introduction that beautifully addresses the concerns that I and others have dealt with in today's world of music. It emphasizes the inherent musicality of cognitive music listening skills over the Western emphasis on performance and note-reading. He addresses the concerns that ethnomusicologists have about attempts to understand music universally. He deals with the philosophical questions of music's significance to humanity.

Ball's book, along with other recent popular titles like This Is Your Brain On Music by Daniel Levitin and Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks, is one sign that the zeitgeist is truly shifting. The questions I have been asking for a long while are now mainstream. (Incidentally, I was excited that Ball uses the same music/cooking analogy that I thought of). As I read further, however, I found that The Music Instinct is a mixed attempt, still hampered by some of the older assumptions and terminology. The Western art music tradition is foremost, balanced mostly by reference to Western popular music. Ball understands and explicitly states that non-Western music traditions are as rich, but he knows less about them and so offers little in that direction aside from some minor mentions. While his attitude is commendable, his compilation of a wide range of subjects is a jumble of blocks that struggle to cohere into a greater whole.

The main value of this book is its up-to-date overview of many of the interesting subjects at the forefront of musicology today. I see it as a signpost in the exciting progression of our understanding of music. It does not get all the way to the destination that is in sight — a place where understanding of music will be comprehensive, better organized, and liberated from cultural or historical bias.

The Music Instinct fails to justify the subtitle of "why we can't do without it." Even the known benefits of music, such as making repetitive work more fun and tolerable, are not addressed here. My own consciousness was raised by the remarkable movie Sound and Fury. In one scene, some members of the deaf community, happy — even proud — in their deafness, dismiss the supposed importance of music. I think, in fact, we can do without music, though I, for one, certainly prefer having it. And I enjoy understanding music enough to appreciate Philip Ball's compendium of issues in musicology despite his imperfect organization. I'm just not quite sure to whom I could recommend the book. It is too difficult a read for any true novice, not optimal for teaching music appreciation or theory, and not in-depth enough for serious academics (I was particularly frustrated that he mentions studies sometimes without any identifying title or citation). Perhaps the best fit is someone like me: already aware of many of these issues but interested in reading different perspectives.

Read on for more content summary and further discussion:

The Music Instinct companion website contains excellent general introductions to the ideas of each chapter, both in written text and audio with reading of the same. There are also lousy unmusical MIDI files for the book’s notated figures along with YouTube links for some of the mentioned music. In my summaries below, I will not explain or introduce the topics but will list and critique the content so that potential readers may understand what this book actually covers.

After the introductory two chapters, Chapter Three covers psychoacoustics, basics of Western theory jargon, notation, tuning, scales, modes, keys, harmonics, and more. This unfortunate chapter, full of esoteric details, is probably enough to stop many truly lay readers from continuing further. Too much is crammed in here including the full mathematical basis of temperaments. The important concepts are the uneven step-size in most scales, complex tones having multiple partials (often in a harmonic series in musical tones), and the general idea that perception is more important than physical measurement.

Ball attacks the dogmatic assumptions of mathematical theorists (those claiming that music must match simplistic ideas like precise tuning ratios), but he then goes too far and dismisses any significance of tuning. It is easy to tear down the straw men who claim that there is one "correct" tuning system or who grossly exaggerate the significance of minuscule tuning details. But Ball falls into the tired fallacy (typical of pianists like Ball) of mostly ignoring the continuous and complex nature of pitch in many (if not most) musical contexts. He fails to adequately address the preponderance of approximately harmonic intervals in much of the world's musics. He also makes the awful decision to use the term "overtone" in discussing harmonic partials, thereby making the numbers unnecessarily confusing, as if the subjects of Chapter Three were not already complex and opaque enough. This chapter inundates the reader with complex ideas which are then declared irrelevant —not a great way to make music understanding more widely accessible. Thankfully, the rest of the book does a somewhat better job.

Chapter Four covers melody: contour, tonality, phrases, patterns... Basically, this summarizes content from relevant sections of David Huron's superb book Sweet Anticipation (a source utilized throughout much of The Music Instinct, with varying degree of acknowledged credit). Emphasis is on statistics about pitch classes, statistical learning of tonal systems based on exposure, phrase arches, preponderance of small steps, and other related ideas. The chapter ends with an introduction to atonal serialism, which is mostly decried as cognitively difficult but still given fair treatment and perspective.

Chapter Five is on Gestalt grouping as applied to music. A simple history of Western polyphony is included along with general discussion of texture and auditory streaming. The otherwise excellent introduction to these ideas is presented with a bias which treats music generally as being as rigid and definite as Western notation implies.

Chapter Six includes sensory roughness (here Ball is somewhat less rejecting of tuning significance than in Chapter Three), Western harmony basics, cadences, implied harmony, key changes, chord inversions, and mappings of key relationships. Though decent and more progressive than some descriptions, this section may still turn away the general public who are (rightfully) skeptical of all this jargon and abstraction.

Chapter Seven on rhythm is shorter than I initially expected, partly because some related subjects (such as syncopation) are oddly deferred until later chapters. Topics here include regular pulse, meter, binary divisions common in Western music, additive rhythms common elsewhere, poetic feet (as per The Rhythmic Structure of Music by Cooper & Meyer), shifting accents (as in Stravinsky's Rite of Spring), morphing rhythm in minimalism, and non-rhythmic flow of sound in ambient and experimental works. The simplistic definition of rhythm here is "the actual pattern of note events and their duration" — a definition which fails to live up to the general theme of the book: that cognitive experience is where music exists. Especially problematic, the examples demonstrating poetic feet such as trochee are actually wrong. His explanation of elision is also erroneous. He then mentions America from West Side Story in a general discussion of note patterns that do not align with metric accents instead of describing hemiola and the fact that America is simply a caricature of common Spanish/Latin rhythms. On a positive note, Ball succinctly clarifies how performance rhythm varies from strict notation, how folk musicians (such as blues guitarists) even add extra beats or measures without much awareness and to no musical detriment, and, therefore, how misguided are the strict notation transcriptions of folk and popular musics that are often published. The chapter ends with a welcome mention of Snowball the cockatoo (who has been scientifically tested to prove that humans are not alone in truly feeling the beat of music — technically called "beat induction").

Chapter Eight is on timbre. The general description is alright, though he fails to mention localization among the sound parameters that timbre does not include. Then there is discussion of orchestration and of how timbre is a major defining component of style. Next, Ball concedes that timbre is hard to understand, so he apologizes for the overly brief cursory chapter and moves on.

Chapter Nine is a brief intro to the cognitive neuroscience of music. First there is a quick debunking of the so-called "Mozart Effect." A short introduction to brain anatomy leads into discussion about disorders relating to music followed by references to various notable studies in music psychology. The basic theme is: music involves the whole brain in complex ways.

Chapter Ten on music and emotion is among the most in-depth sections of the book. Included are anecdotes of listening experiences; discussion of general expression of the distinct basic emotions like happiness, sadness, anger, and fear; the difference between expression and induction of emotion; the complex subjective nature of emotion; philosophical questions such as music and agency; cross-cultural perspectives; learned associations; and more. The lengthy second part of the chapter delves into the idea of emotion driven by expectation and surprise, particularly as Leonard Meyer described in his classic book Emotion and Meaning in Music. Expectation issues are then discussed in detail with specific theoretical examples on syncopation, sequences, cadences, chromaticism, modulation, ornamentation, performance expression/interpretation, and more about tension and release.

Chapter Eleven is on style/genre. The overall excellent discussion covers topics such as originality, schematic mental representation, taste and acculturation, computer/algorithmic music designed to mimic certain styles, and current approaches to music categorization like Pandora's Music Genome Project. Ball nicely points out that interest in music is often driven by deviation, and that music necessarily will evolve and change. A side column discusses the unfortunate disregard for listener response at the height of the technical and abstract serialist movement in the mid-20th century. There is a nice clear discussion on how the most preferred music is in the middle of the simple-to-complex spectrum and so achieves a balance between originality and accessibility.

Chapter Twelve relates music to language in terms of syntax and other issues. A fair critique of Schenkerian analysis points out how limited it is to Western music of a certain time period. There is also discussion and modest critique of Lerdahl and Jackendoff's now-classic book A Generative Theory of Tonal Music. Lastly, there is a short mention of neurological testing of expectation and surprise.

Chapter Thirteen tackles the issue of meaning in music. Can music refer to something beyond itself? Ball says no, aside from explicitly learned codes. He has a harsh critique for the New Musicologists who read specific narratives into purely instrumental music. Instead, Ball suggests (and I agree), that music stands on its own with connections to cognitive mechanisms, vague and entirely subjective associations, mimicry of emotion in spoken language, and all the other complex issues described throughout the book. With such rich and multifaceted an art, there is no need to treat it as having mundane narratives or references that could be expressed in words.

----
NOTE: Although I've linked to Amazon.com for some of the titles mentioned and am happy if you purchase books there (I will get a modest credit for the referral), I encourage readers to utilize the public library system.

Improvisation on Chapman Stick, thoughts on creativity

2010-12-16T23:23:00.004-05:00

When I was young, I was thrilled by each lesson I learned, each discovery I made in the course of my musical development. When I found a new chord I liked or composed a piece of a melody, I thought it was the greatest thing ever. I was inspired to flesh out full compositions for each idea.

Eventually, I learned so many forms and tricks that I had far more ideas than time to work on them all. Then something shifted. I realized that I was able to easily come up with an infinite number of ideas and quickly. That awareness made each idea less special, and I was less motivated to develop them. My compositional output dropped, even as I became a more skilled musician.

At a more mature level, motivation comes from deeper purpose. Instead of working on ideas for their own sake, I consider particular goals such as expressing something or teaching a particular concept. Still, being more knowledge of all the possibilities, it is far more time-consuming to realize the ever-more-detailed ideas in my imagination.

I miss the pure, creative drive I used to have. I probably can't return to my childhood experience of seeing almost everything as novel; but I can just decide to sit down and create something with the limited time I have and learn to accept that it won't be perfect.

Here's a product of this effort, an impromptu improvisation on Chapman Stick:

This wasn't the most satisfying achievement, but it feels better to have done it than not. I still hope to find the optimal perspective and situation that will get me back to really enthusiastic inspiration. Perhaps I will find that in collaborative settings, in graduate school or elsewhere... But for now, I intend to keep making music where I am.

Some Perspective: How Music Is Like Cooking

2010-10-24T23:01:00.002-04:00

I've been struggling with questions and nagging doubts about my music career as I consider schools and programs for a return to academia. Any area of study could potentially consume all of one's time and energy. Any field will have a community of researchers who find the details engaging and hold conferences and such to discuss it all. But I worry about keeping broader perspective on the larger purpose.

I recently thought of an analogy that seems valuable: cooking. Unlike music, the importance of food is more readily apparent, more concrete, more universally defined. Like music, however, cooking has innumerable facets and philosophies. By directly comparing music and cooking I have a way to consider the meaning of music. If some attitude we have about music would seem ludicrous regarding food, then we should question if the attitude is justified.

At its most basic, cooking provides safe, digestible, and ideally healthy sustenance. Music is definitely not as necessary and fundamental, but perhaps it could be described as emotional or spiritual sustenance. There are many functions of music that I won't get into here (though understanding and defining them is definitely important). Anyway, this music/cooking analogy is not going to hold up completely but consider the following:

In classical music, extreme deference is given to composers, and many classical teachers are absolutely insistent that the "correct" music is precisely the notes written in a score, though unspecified musical parameters are open to interpretation. Is there such a classical idea in cooking about recipes? Are there any chefs who learn their craft solely by following detailed recipes as strictly as possible?
In collaborative music making, there is a complex dynamic between individual expression and group coordination and sublimation of the individual. Surely there are times in collaborating on a meal or on a dish that chefs must be thoughtful about how their contribution fits in the whole.
Music is often considered artistic and some music teachers act as though artistry is the entire point and without artistry music is nothing. But cooking has potential for artistry yet remains undeniably valuable even when no artistry is present. Maybe we need to acknowledge that just engaging in music is healthy and doesn't need to always be artistic.
In music, cults of personality are widespread. Great musicians and composers are idolized, revered, and studied from myriad angles. Certainly respect is given to great chefs, but it seems ludicrous to me to consider emphasizing specific recipes from renound chefs at the level that we do with music compositions. Maybe musical hero-worship needs to be de-emphasized.
Cooking and music are both very strongly tied to culture. Nutritionists are justified, however, in talking universally about health and nutrition (as long as they acknowledge that people do vary physiologically). Similarly, music definitely has universal and cross-cultural aspects which should be studied and appreciated alongside the respect for cultural traditions.
The value of learning to cook is undeniable. Everyone ought to know how to cook basic food for themselves to be healthy and economical. Any suggestion that beginning cooks ought to aspire to be professional chefs would be absurd. In music, however, there is less clarity of what it means to learn to be competent and functional in order to just make simple, effective music for oneself. We don't assume that the only valid reason to learn to cook is to prepare meals for guests; and we shouldn't assume that the only reason to learn to make music is to perform for others — even though cooking or performing for others can be great. Music and cooking can both be very social, and are perhaps best that way, but the social element is not the only goal.
Creativity can be a very exciting aspect of either music or cooking. But clearly there is value in cooking even with no creativity, and the same must be acknowledged about music.
A large number of musicians veer toward perfectionism. Too often, perfectionism is essentially taught as part of music lessons, even at relatively early stages. Some degree of accuracy is import, of course, but just as you can still eat food that is a tad too salty or too dry or whatever, we can still appreciate imperfect music. In fact, we better appreciate imperfection because otherwise we'll starve and make no music.
People certainly vary in their tastes. We can talk about general preferences, but some people like more spices than others. I really prefer to be able to add salt if I want instead of food being salted a lot already. I prefer much less spices than many other people. On the other hand, I have complex musical tastes.
In both the world of food and music, unskilled ignorant consumers take in highly-marketed products of debatable quality and health-value. Good chefs and musicians have a responsibility to introduce people to healthier options — that are still delicious.
In both cooking and music there is a tension between accepting practical or limited ingredients versus wanting to draw from the widest possible choices of spices or instruments...
There are cooking competitions but everyone recognizes how subjective they are; and most people never consider competition in relation to their own food and cooking. Music is the same, and some musicians need to be reminded of that. Even the most competitive contest chef probably never loses awareness of the quirky place of competition in the broad world of cooking.
In both music and cooking, experiencing great works from masters can inspire and be part of learning to make your own.

This list could go on longer. By considering the complex yet concrete world of food in comparison to the somewhat ineffable world of music, one gains a humbling perspective. Far more could be said about this analogy, but I think readers should ponder further independently. Please consider adding comments below...

[post updated June 2, 2011]

Octave equivalence? Not so fast...

2010-10-07T20:57:00.012-04:00

Sometimes I just feel like such an iconoclast in the world of music theory and pedagogy. Today I was inspired to make a video that attacks one of the most basic precepts of Western music theory: the idea of octave equivalence. To be sure, I'm far from the first to question the nature of octaves. I was inspired because today during a break I was practicing and came up with a very straightforward and accessible way to present one angle on the subject... read on and see the video below:

There are so many problems with the generic idea of octaves as taught in Western music that I can't get into them all here. The question of why do we treat octaves as equivalent has to be qualified by questions of when. In Bill Sethares' notable book Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale (click the link for summary and samples), he describes and provides audio examples of how the idea of equivalence and blend is related to the particular vibrations in a sound's spectrum. Among the simplest examples, as piano tuners know, the inharmonicity of hammered (or plucked) strings can lead to stretched octaves. Bill goes on to discuss harmony for completely inharmonic sounds as well, which is a whole further (and very interesting) issue.

There have been many attempts to explain why the octave is so significant, some based on carefully controlled scientific experiments. What we know about octaves is that they are, at the most basic, a doubling (or halving) of vibration speed (or close). Because of that, they blend very well and fit into the same overall periodicity. Men and women have likely been singing octaves since prehistoric times. The vast majority of all the world's music treats the octave specially, usually with equivalency, giving the same note name to pitches at an octave.

While the significance of octaves must be acknowledged, there is more than enough evidence to disprove any claim that octaves are absolutely universally equivalent. Octaves are not fully equivalent. They sound different. Harmony does not work the same way at all octaves. A close position major chord sounds great in middle to high ranges, but move it down some octaves into bass ranges and it sounds muddy even if the tuning is not tempered. The vast majority of all guitar methods teach that octaves are equivalent and so any combination of C, E, and G makes a C chord; but the very same books almost universally teach students not to play the low E when holding a C chord. That E doesn't fit as well the harmonic series of the rest of the C chord, so it sounds rougher. All that is usually taught is that the E is technically part of the chord, but we just don't play it because it sounds bad. Some books say it is because the lowest note should be C for a C chord, but there is relatively widespread acceptance of the same chord with a low G bass note — which fits the harmonic series in that octave better than the E. Explaining all this is simple once we drop the idea that octaves are totally equivalent.

Another great example is Diana Deutch's Mysterious Melody. She shows how if the octaves are mixed up in a melody it is unrecognizable. Significantly, however, once the melody is known by hearing it normally, then one can still hear it within the mixed-up-octaves version! So octaves have some equivalence: they can substitute for one another if our expectations are clear. But they aren't fully equivalent; it is based on expectations and context.

A common question says, "if octaves are equivalent because they fit into the same periodicity and are a simple 1:2 ratio and part of the harmonic series, wouldn't the 1:3 ratio be comparable and therefore also be equivalent?"
Maybe octaves are more significant because of cultural reinforcement. Maybe it's because men and women don't have such different ranges that they would sing at an even further 1:3 ratio. Maybe it's because 1:3 can be divided by 1:2, thus making 1:1.5 which is not so simple and thus 1:2 is more absolutely basic... but maybe we shouldn't even assume that 1:3 can't be equivalent. Maybe it can be.

I was playing around with this today and decided to make a video showing how effective it is to play at a set 1:3 ratio (a twelfth in standard Western music theory terms).

Notice how the final note in the video sounds fully resolved (it does to me anyway). Both the low and high notes each feel not just like part of a tonic harmony but actually feel like the main tonal center, even though one is E and the other is B. But this isn't bitonality to me, though it might be arguably similar. I think this is more like twelfths equivalency and feels about the same as octave equivalency, just lacking the life-long cultural reinforcement. Maybe in a new 12ths-based theory the E and B would actually get the same name, like we usually do with octaves. Though the 12ths don't sound completely identical, remember that octaves don't either...

EDIT update 11/15/10:
I should mention that the technique I used (playing some music and then checking whether an isolated tone seems to fit) has technical terms. The preparation listening is called "priming" and the isolated tone is called a "probe tone." These are some of the standard methods used in empirical studies of music cognition. My simple demonstration could easily be repeated in controlled testing administered to a number of listeners from different backgrounds. Different priming and different probe tones could be used. The results could better clarify my hypotheses about the potential for listeners to learn 12ths-equivalence (or other alternate equivalences), though additional varieties of tests would be needed to truly be conclusive.

Getting old stuff in order still

2010-09-15T17:20:00.000-04:00

I've reworked the old content from my previous website to be at least functional finally. While most stuff is now included in this blog, the site has some autobiographical details on my music background, information about my compositions and published recordings, and a good selection of streaming music.

Check it out here: www.wolftune.com/music

First Day With Fretless Guitar (re-post from old site)

2010-06-12T23:45:00.005-04:00

I have made a total of one YouTube video so far. Nearly a year and a half ago I got a fretless guitar, and I recorded my very first experiments in the first hour of trying it and edited a quick video.

I am now consolidating my web content into this updated blog, so here's this now-old video.

A few more older items will be posted soon and then some new posts and I'm planning a new video featuring my microtonal keyboard from h-pi.com.

Further thoughts & a link on purpose, meaning, motivation

2010-05-30T23:10:00.007-04:00

My personal struggles with ethics and purpose are described a couple posts ago:
http://wolftune.blogspot.com/2010/04/massive-blog-post-revalation-on.html

There I described my questions about Kant's categorical imperative and the stress of responsibility I may have had due to the implication that one should be a role model for the world. I decided to let that go.

However, I have not become comfortable with the idea of simply pursuing purely selfish desires. I recently was referred to an excellent video featuring Dan Pink. This particular one happens to be an entertaining and accessible, illustrated version of a talk he has given a few times that is also available in live video such as from TED. The illustrated version is here:

He describes the well-studied, essentially proven fact that external rewards actually reduce achievement for tasks that are anything more than mindlessly mechanical. When people are faced with complex challenges with no obvious solution, they are motivated primarily by three things: A. autonomy, B. desire for mastery, B. purpose (no particular order).

This isn't dramatically new to me, but it always helps to be reminded of things, especially with such clarity. Here's how these relate to my situation:

A. I am autonomous. I'm self-employed. Despite mixed issues with that, I'm very hesitant to give it up to go join some business or academic bureaucracy. I appreciate my autonomy and am definitely motivated by my ability to make of my business whatever I can. I do have desire for collaboration though, and I'm still working to figure out the best decisions in that direction.

B. Desire for mastery: the challenge that music presented is a large part of why I ended up in music. Mathematics and science were interesting but very easy for me as a young student. Being more understanding of mathematics than most of my peers or teachers, I felt unchallenged and had low motivation. Music was an area where I felt just talented enough that I believed it wasn't impossible for me to achieve something but still felt very challenged and humbled. On a side-note, I read that renowned biologist Richard Dawkins claims the reverse: that he had a knack for music and could pick up tunes on any instrument. He liked the music but found it un-motivating and never really pursued it with any seriousness. Science he found more challenging.
Anyway, today I have an issue with this mastery/challenge. I have progressed to the point where I am no longer completed awed by musical skills. I know that if I invest certain levels of time and energy I can achieve things I once found baffling and impossible. I am definitely still challenged. If I decide to pursue a musical skill, I do not find it boring and easy. But I have lost some of the passion I once had now that I know enough about what to do and what it is like to master something.

This brings me to the most important element:
C. Purpose? What purpose does music have? For what purpose am I working at what I do?
In previous posts here I have described music's functions and benefits. Great, that's something, but what purpose do I have in that? I am unconvinced that anyone needs me to make new music in order for those functions and benefits of music to be available to the public. I do realize that my particular students appreciate and gain from my teaching and that's motivating to a certain extent. If I have a student who is happy, well-adjusted, and not especially desperate for the benefits of music but is motivated and interested enough to still work hard... well, it's fun to teach them but it doesn't seem of extreme importance in the grand scheme of things. I don't think of music as clearly superior to most other fields as some musicians seem to believe.
Perhaps music therapy would be worth pursuing. There are other angles I've thought of as well. Perhaps I just need to develop my teaching in a direction that is even more purposeful and focused and promote it as such. Sometimes I think I really should have gone into science or engineering after all, and maybe I still should...

At this point, I don't know all the answers, but it is nice to have an answer as to a framework for thinking about it all. The need for purpose is what drove me to think about Kant's categorical imperative, and maybe if I interpret the imperative as just meaning that everyone should be purposeful and consider the greater public interest in their actions, then maybe I can still hold on to that value without feeling like I'm responsible for anyone besides myself. For now, autonomy and mastery are successfully keeping me going and I'm fulfilling my desire for purpose by putting in time and energy exploring the question.

One simple way to connect to students and be a more humble, patient teacher: practice upside-down...

2010-05-18T14:27:00.003-04:00

Try doing something backwards or different than usual. For instance, as a typical right-handed guitarist, try flipping the guitar around and learning to play it left-handed and upside-down. One can get a sense of the experience of beginners.

This is distinct from just learning an entirely new skill. When a teacher learns a new skill, they have no way to evaluate it and are truly just a beginning student. Of course, it is important for teachers to learn new things and that helps their teaching; but it isn't the same as playing upside-down.

When learning a new skill, it is hard to judge what to expect and whether it is being taught well; it is hard to judge the value, and hard to know what it will feel like when mastered. When reversing a guitar (or whatever is comparable for any other skill), all of those things are clear. Thus, the teacher may evaluate and understand the challenges in a way that no other experience can elucidate.

massive blog post: revelation on morality, welcome to new version of blog

2010-04-19T17:18:00.007-04:00

This is the first blog post I've made in over 18 months.

This morning I had a revelation that seems potentially life-changing.

The background story

For a few years now, I've struggled to be comfortable with my place in the world (an apparently common situation for people).

I've always been very socially-minded. From an early age, I recognized problems with selfishness and greed. I have always tried to help the less fortunate, whether it was the timid kid being left out from activities at school recess or the broad issues of economic and political justice on an international scale. This eventually led to sympathy for the ideals of socialism and a general interest in politics.

However, I've also been ambitious in all my pursuits, particularly anything creative. It happened that I ended up focusing my creativity on music. I've long wanted to create the best, most innovative music ever and I put in substantial time and energy in that direction.

Thus, a real conflict emerged between my social orientation and my personal ambitions. This led to a mild form of self-hatred for my ambitious, selfish side. I felt it was honorable to help others but greedy and selfish to focus only on one's own interests. This inherently led to a paradoxical situation. I found myself, for example, generally admiring people working to end discrimination and injustice, but I was contemptuous of "self-centered" folks who complain of being victims of discrimination.

Clearly, if there is to be generosity in the world, there must also be reception; but that could still fit in the world-view I held. We could have everyone giving and receiving, like in that old parable about heaven and hell being the same big feast with absurdly long forks (in hell everyone fails to feed themselves, and in heaven everyone happily feeds each other). The problem I had was not with accepting generosity from others, it was with pursuing one's own selfish interests. It is a valid concern that those who focus on their own misfortunes might be selfish enough to discriminate against others if the situation were reversed.

Still, I had to eventually confront the problems with accepting advocacy on certain issues only from those not affected. As I matured in my understanding, I eventually learned to respect a healthy degree of selfishness. I grew to have a much more nuanced perspective of all these complex issues. That said, I am no relativist. Truth may be too complex for human understanding but that doesn't mean everything is a matter of opinion. I continued to pursue (and expect I will continue for the rest of my life) an understanding of morality and life purpose that fits with my values.

One day, a teacher friend mentioned the book "The 4-hour Workweek", which suggests that one can live a healthy, wealthy life with little work and even retire young. I haven't read it, but by my friend explained that this is accomplished by designing products instead of laboring in manufacture or services and by outsourcing the menial work (such as scheduling appointments even) to India. The premise is certainly selfish. It's certainly capitalist to the extreme. But, having learned to be less dogmatic about these things, I had a harder time deciding what to think about it. At a gut level, I thought it was probably either impossible or immoral, but I didn't want to judge so quickly. Then my friend said, "well, of course it does violate Kant's categorical imperative..."

I looked that up and was really inspired. Here's a moral principle I felt I could fully support. "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." Essentially: act as you would if you knew everyone else would follow your example in similar circumstances. This is compatible with the everyone-feeding-each-other idea, but it doesn't reject acting on self-interest. It allows me to pursue my ambitions just keeping in mind that I am not asking others to do differently.

My recent personal philosophy up to today

I started to really apply Kant's imperative to my life. For example, as a teacher I find it frustrating when a new guitar method is published that is lousier than existing ones and offers nothing new. It just crowds the already bloated field and is an annoyance if not a true detriment to society. I want authors to know something about what is already out there and be sure they are adding value, so therefore I should do that myself before I consider publishing anything.

Similarly, I don't generally like being only a spectator to other people's athletics or music or art or academics, I prefer to participate. Therefore, I shouldn't ask others to be passive spectators to my own music. I should instead figure out how to get others to participate. Furthermore, I don't like being told strictly what to do, I like being creative. So I should only present music in ways that allows and encourages creativity from all participants. Also, I don't like ethnocentric teaching that assumes music (or anything else) necessarily works the way one tradition says it does. Therefore, I should teach a broad global perspective. I really appreciate understanding the technical background of things, such as the sciences of physics and psychology in relation to music. Therefore, I should teach a science-based, globally-minded, creative, experimental, participatory approach to music. But I should find out what is already out there and make sure that anything I publish or promote is adding value to society as a whole and not just adding bulk.

Trying to live up to those ideals was stressful, to say the least. Often, I wanted to just go back to recording new original music, writing articles, and lots more; but I kept questioning whether I'd want everyone else out there to follow my example. On the one hand, I want to encourage participation and creativity and so I should be creative myself, thereby in line with the categorical imperative. On the other hand, sometimes I feel overwhelmed by how much total content is out there and I wish I didn't have to wade through mediocrity to find the greatest stuff, so I don't want to publish and publicize more mediocrity. The tentative balance I found was to be creative but not record it unless I thought I had something of exceptionally special value.

This attitude has now come into conflict with practical career and life goals. I am interested in post-graduate programs and I need to present examples of my work as part of applications to various programs; but I've kept the best of my ideas unrecorded—thinking that they aren't quite ready for my absurdly high standard of adding major value to society. I've hesitated to maintain a blog because of my concerns about narcissism and the issues about adding to bulk versus producing substantial value; but now academic advisers are recommending that publishing a blog of academic interest is a good thing for my resumé.

Today's revelation

Today I really questioned it all in a way I hadn't done in a long time.

I had come across philosopher and author Sam Harris' new emphasis on promoting science as a tool in determining morality. This is a very contentious assertion. Science is generally thought of as purely technical and non-judgmental in terms of morality and ethics. Harris asserts that morality is only meaningful in how it promotes well-being generally, and that well-being is, at least conceptually, something able to be studied scientifically.

I was thinking about the various sides of the argument regarding Harris' claims, when I just got a little overwhelmed, maybe uncertain, and decided I wasn't prepared to engage in the subject much further. Then something clicked. I don't know if I can express it in words. Perhaps I realized that if science could inform morality, that doesn't mean it already has the answers that may be possible in principle. Thus, maybe we can reject total relativism and say that there exists right and wrong, moral and immoral (and gray all along the continuum of course) without already knowing what the right and wrong actually are. We can say that we don't know but that we're working on it and have some preliminary ideas.

Somehow I felt a sense of a lifted burden. I never claimed to know absolute morality. I never even claimed that the categorical imperative was necessarily the best guideline. But I had been tentatively following it nonetheless. I had used it in dealing with personal doubts and questions and priorities. Now I am somewhat letting it go.

My exact experience really can't be expressed. I imagine my feelings to be similar to someone believing a supernatural religious viewpoint while intellectually knowing the arguments against it but then suddenly one day really accepting the possibility that the world truly isn't as they'd believed. I guess I'm just trying to say that the shift isn't intellectual. It's more of a feeling. A feeling of freedom, of catharsis.

Conclusion for now: blog

I had been suppressing myself, telling myself that blabbing all my thoughts in a blog to the world was narcissistic and maybe even immoral, even if carefully expressed and edited. This suppression was infecting many aspects of my life even as I was productive and progressing in many ways. Now I'm writing this blog entry. Aside from some perfectionistic dedication to high quality writing, I feel less inclined to self-censorship. Those who know me personally might think, "but Aaron is already perhaps the least self-censoring person I know!" Well, being pent-up in my creative output probably caused me to blow up more when I had a chance to express myself in a casual setting (although I'm not promising to now become quiet and introverted).

In reflecting on the categorical imperative and my general feeling of being overwhelmed and burdened, a lot of things are obvious now. First, there is the absurdity of trying to understand everything about society and the universe before acting. Of course, the simple idea of sensing broad consequences to every action is stressful and also nonsense. The world doesn't actually model any or every person.

Perhaps there will be problems with any moral guideline that says "act as though" we were in some hypothetical reality. Perhaps a better guideline is to act as though the world is as we actually understand to be to the best of our knowledge, given scientific understanding and personal experience. Instead of, e.g., living each day as though it were your last, maybe better advice would be to live each day as though it is most likely not your last but just might be.

From now on, I'll attempt (might not be easy) to consider my behavior and judgments in terms of what I know about each specific situation rather than on some generalized principle or vague possibilities. Of course, rather than analyze every situation, there is also value in trusting intuition. I can trust my own inherent compassion for others to guide me in being socially responsible without a lot of intellectualizing. I'll be a lot happier feeling free to do and say (or not do and say) as feels right without suppressing myself excessively.

Therefore, expect a real blog. I'm still busy, but if I feel I have something to write here, I'll try do it. Please feel free to leave comments. If I get the idea from feedback that I could do something better, I'll work to improve. I still want to be socially-minded and not just driven by selfish impulse, and I still want to be a model for expressing informed, thoughtful, valuable ideas. The start will be any sharing at all. It will be easier to get feedback on how to improve something than feedback on how to improve nothing!

tags/labels revolutionize style and genre in music

2008-09-21T13:07:00.010-04:00

A "genre" is just a set of expectations you could reasonably apply to a large set of items. If all or most of your expectations when you hear a "blues" song are met, then obviously it was useful to call it "blues." If it had a few elements that remind you of that, then maybe "bluesy" would make sense. If there is almost nothing that anyone could expect based on hearing other music before then the piece in question HAS NO GENRE. Genre is not a quality absolutely inherent to everything. It only happens when a large enough quantity of something is able to be identified with a set of distinguishing characteristics. When a new genre starts, it isn't actually a genre until we've heard enough of it to know what to expect.

Categorizing things into styles and genres is a natural and useful part of human culture. Part of artistic, creative interest is in deviation from an existing norm. Those norms must be identified and embedded in the listener's unconscious in order for deviation to have any effect. On the other hand, some art is not intending to deviate, but is merely not related to any known genre, and people's openness to such new things is quite varying.

The future is promising. By using tags/labels in the digital computer world (in programs, like this blog site, that do not limit the number of tags versus the awful mp3 genre id tag that requires a single listing for any mp3), a piece with blues elements can be tagged as "blues" or as "bluesy", without sticking into any box. Tags are not exclusionary or restrictive. We may use as many or as few tags as are useful. Hopefully we will see the extinction of arguments that say, "this piece isn't rock, it's funk-blues." Instead the discussion can be "does this have enough rock elements to have a rock tag? I know it should be tagged with funk and blues, but maybe rock too?" In the past, a record had to be put in either the rock or the blues section at the record store, unless they had copies in both, which was very impractical. Now, an mp3 at an online store can be in both categories at once, and others as well. And we can choose to search for only songs that have both rock and blues tags if we like. Lots of people have tried to put things into one box or another, and those who rebelled tended to reject the entire concept of genres and labeling. I think tagging and digital technology liberates the discussion. I hope this will also encourage musicians to take a much more fluid view of their own stylistic identities.

What and why need to come before how

2008-08-22T22:39:00.008-04:00

It is all too easy to spend immense time learning and preparing how to teach something. Teachers can fail to question the value or accuracy of what is being taught. Certainly, it is better to fail at an attempt to teach the most valuable lessons than it is to succeed at teaching incorrect ideas.

The challenge of the most dedicated teacher is to balance these questions. People who spend all their time on the facts and ideas will certainly be lucky to have even a moderate ability to express them accessibly. On the other hand teachers can sometimes be so focused on how that they actually become more and more dogmatic, close-minded, and even defensive regarding "what" type questions. Those questions could undermine all the work they've done preparing the unquestioned subject.

Of course, we need to be practical. I would simply encourage all teachers and parents, (well, everyone actually) to try to return to what and why every now and then. And if those can't able to be answered with certainty and you can't afford the time to explore further, then at least keep the question open - allow for it to be questioned by others - and just don't teach it as absolute.

Students should not only question what and why but they need to remember sometimes to think about how things are taught. If a student questions how things are taught, then sometimes ideas that are poorly presented can be figured out anyway -- by understanding what is wrong with the teaching style. Or they can figure out how to learn for themselves. They may even empathize with the challenges the teacher faces. Finally, if they are like me, they may be inspired to become teachers themselves, if partly to do a better job than some of the teaching they received.

There is never anything wrong with questions. Everything should be questioned. We just have to realize that questioning everything means a very small proportion of questions are able to be answered. So instead of randomly questioning, we need priorities. If we ask the big what and why questions first, we'll have the best shot at everything else making sense later.

What is the whole point of music?

2008-06-29T11:41:00.008-04:00

Music lessons generally involve learning the technique to play a specific instrument or learning the rules, patterns, and jargon of a particular music culture. However, those nuts and bolts do not address questions of why we bother with this music stuff in the first place.
I've heard explanations like, 'music is part of what makes us civilized', or 'music is food for the soul', or simply, 'music is wonderful and enriching'. Clearly, those answers don't really tell us anything. In some cases, we tend to hear about extramusical side-effects, such as learning teamwork or that music involves mathematics. Certainly, music is one of the many forms of play that develop all sorts of general skills, but as many of us sense, music can be deeper than just playing around.

Perhaps the main drive to music is simply that, for most people, it achieves a strong emotional response. How that happens is certainly worth studying, and that is a substantial aspect of the field of music psychology. Music can have useful functions as well. We use it to control our sense of time, coordinate groups of people, support rhythmic physical activity such as repetitive labor or exercise, augment verbal expression, control moods, entertain, assist in memorizing, and more.

There is an unlimited number of different pieces to learn and techniques and styles to study. Without an understanding of what music is and why we use it, music study can lose direction and meaning. With such understanding, we can prioritize and focus on the specific skills, techniques, and pieces that achieve our practical goals. We can more effectively teach, write, practice, and appreciate music. I strongly believe that no technique or theory should be taught without also explaining its purpose (or at least asking the questions if the answers aren't yet known).

Benefits of Music Study

2008-06-26T13:26:00.015-04:00

In many ways, music is only one of many fields through which students may gain various important lifelong skills. Some people claim music to be more important than other fields such as athletics, visual arts, etc. However, in many respects, the best music teachers, the best athletic coaches, and the best science teachers are all essentially teaching how to be a dedicated, critical, and creative person. Music happens to be my field of expertise, so I teach through music.
Music's intrinsic values and functions should be paramount. Still, there is nothing wrong with discussing some of the more broad benefits as well. It is not reasonable to study music just because it helps with math, but some subjects, such as confidence, have no direct course of study. Confidence is not an activity or field of study, it is something gained through many varying activities, music among them. And while the best way to excel at math is to study it directly, it is alright to note that music does involve math as well.

Below is a list of extramusical items that can be learned through well-taught music study. This list includes both broad skills as well as tangential, interdisciplinary subjects. Any good music teacher should strive for including all of these. (And with such a broad list, there's no excuse for artificially connecting truly unrelated things to music just to be "interdisciplinary") This list helps define some of the what and why of music study, which should always be a prerequisite to studying the how of teaching or learning anything.

Music study may involve or encourage, in no precise order, explained only when I felt necessary (and not an exhaustive list):

Self-awareness & reflection

Critical thinking

Imagination - specifically developing control of aural imagery ('audiation')

Creativity - through interpretation, composition, improvisation, and experimentation

Curiosity

Diligence

Confidence

Respect - for traditions, for teachers, for audience, for fellow musicians...

Teamwork - through ensemble playing

Independence - practice is often done alone, especially at more advanced stages

Vocabulary / language / poetry - through song and songwriting, and through analogous pitch and rhythm aspects of relating language to music

Personal expression

Control over one's own mindset - such as the ability to choose when to have one's listening or playing be more emotionally versus more intellectually focused

Control of the experience of time - different music can encourage smaller or larger time-scale focus. Also, learning to focus on longer and shorter sections of the same music is fundamental to advanced playing. Patience is actually a skill contained within this overall time-flow control.

Habit control - to succeed in music, one must understand of how habits work, how to recognize them, how to unlearn bad habits and develop desired ones.

Physical control, coordination, dexterity - some variance depending on instrument, but the physical skills of playing or singing are substantial. Good music teaching informs students what physical positions are healthy, how muscles work, and how to be conscious of these issues.

Pattern recognition - a major aspect to understanding and learning music. Awareness of the way human psyche processes patterns, including illusions is important.

Mathematics - unfortunately, typical western interval names in music (e.g. "major second") actually are mathematically problematic because they create a fence-post error (two major seconds make a major third, 2+2=3?!? — this is because the naming system lacks a zero and double-counts the note shared by both "second" intervals). Additionally, rhythm terminology is mathematical but often taught purely by rote. It is enabling to learn the real math behind how rhythm, harmony, and melody operate. Explicit math is not a necessary factor in music, but music is overall very mathematical.

Physics - the acoustics of instruments, rooms, and anatomy of the ear are all relevant and should be taught from the very beginning. I haven't yet had a student of any age struggle to understand that strings vibrate - and that is what makes sound. And furthermore that they vibrate faster and slower based on (A) mass (practically described as a string's thickness/density and length) and (B) tension. Many music teachers unfortunately deprive their students of these simple insights by simply asking them to accept by rote that a sound is "low" or "high." Learning these insights into the physics of sound is not only interesting, but also provides the ability to think critically about the actual effect of technical choices in one's playing.

Psychology - music is nothing if not psychological. Because it is so multifaceted, music offers significant insight into psychology in general and everything else listed here exists within a psychological framework.

Culture and history - Music is among the most ancient elements of human society. Musical patterns that happen to have become common historically are very relevant to being a musician in the real world, but they need context and qualification. The best teachers should not say "music works like this" when referring to a cultural tradition. All music should be taught with cultural and historical context.

A Rational View of Copyright

2008-06-03T15:06:00.021-04:00

UPDATE 2011: A lot has changed since I first wrote this article several years ago. The free/libre/open-source, and Creative Commons movements are growing and really showing the benefits of sharing and copyleft licensing. I originally stated a vague good-will and attribution message here, but I have now switched to a more formal Creative Commons Attribution and ShareAlike license. This means anyone can use my work from this site, either as-is or modified, as long as I am given credit and the new use is also given the same Creative Commons license.

In some regards, the bigger social issue involves having a level playing field. I don't want to be "responsible" and pay my share for things while others cheat the system and copy my work without permission. But if we have a social system based on reciprocity where I am contributing freely, knowing that others will do the same and we can all benefit, that works. I am thrilled to make my work available to those who couldn't afford to pay for it. If I can also benefit freely from the work of others, then I can manage with less income. The concerns about freeloaders are real but far less significant than naysayers suppose. Given the opportunity, it is part of human nature for us to contribute to the collective commons as long as we can receive credit, honor, reciprocity, and have adequate basic resources. Some form of reasonable support and funding for creativity is valuable, but there is little justification today for strict traditional copyright as the tool for this.

Here is an updated version of my original article about copyright:
-------
These days, there is a lot of discussion about "piracy," referring to copyright violations. But obviously, comparing music downloading to stealing a car is erroneous. Some folks suggest we are merely seeing threatened corporations trying to desperately protect their wealth and power. Others worry that creative works of high quality will cease to be published if free sharing is allowed to continue. The situation is quite complex, of course.

Most people with investment in the traditional publishing model are understandably defensive about change. Only a portion of creative professionals are humble enough to acknowledge that the validity, in principle, of questioning how much society actually needs specialized professional artists. But if one's position is strong enough, then being questioned should not be threatening. Instead, we should all welcome questions which force us to be sure we are always contributing real value.

Digital cameras, software, and free online forums certainly diminish the need for professional photographers. And society as a whole is richer through the enabling of everyone to create their own high quality photos. However, if we only have gigantic bulk of amateur work and little that is truly superior and valuable, that is a problem. Professional photographers are less necessary, but are still valuable. The same can be said in the field of music recording.

In this article, I am presenting a mix of original ideas, direct references to ideas published by others, and summaries of general ideas that have no specifically known source but are certainly not original to me. My ideas were not formed in a vacuum. Access to past ideas is a necessary part of continued intellectual, scientific, and artistic progress.

I hope that this article is of value to readers. If it is, then I am adding value to society by creating and publishing this. The question of copyright is how to create an optimal system that creates the most benefit for society as a whole. We want to encourage valuable works to be made, while promoting access and fair use.

---
Updates May 2010:

This worthwhile and brief article by Philip Dorrell makes an interesting point that one problem with our present condition is that illegal sharing unjustly puts the burden of financing creative work on those who pay legally. Essentially, the problem is about the unfair difference in cost and access for those respecting legal copyright and those accessing materials freely and illegally. This is a real concern, and it frames the issue from the viewpoint of the audience, not the producer (consumer is a misnomer, by the way, as reading or listening to media does not necessarily consume anything). As I will discuss further below, the interests of the producer should not be the focus, as long as producers are still motivated to produce and have access to necessary resources to do so.

I'd like to also refer readers to Misinterpreting Copyright by Richard Stallman, which points out how the term "piracy" is a slur that is inappropriate to this discussion, given that there are virtually no parallels between illegal copying and actual piracy. Stallman's work is marvelous in reframing the whole issue around the freedoms at stake. Also check out Defective By Design to learn more about the problems with DRM restricted platforms like the Amazon Kindle or the Apple iPhone/iPad/iPod platform and why these things should ideally be avoided.

In a related discussion I had with some friends, we decided that freeloader was a better term to replace pirate. If you use commercial software or listen to commercial music without paying for it, you're a freeloader. On the other hand, much media is now released for free, so this becomes less of an issue. It is still important for everyone to contribute, however, via financial donations and/or contributing their own work — if we want free and legal sharing to be sustainable. The intended implication of the term freeloader is someone failing to meet their reciprocal social responsibilities.
---

In 2007, economist Rufus Pollock (click the link for his valuable recent work) at Cambridge created a theoretical model to calculate the optimal copyright length that would maximize public benefit. His optimal copyright paper is lengthy and full of mathematically represented variables. In my own words and view, the important points of his study are as follows:

Factors that increase value to society as a whole

More works created
Less copying restriction, freedom of access and use
Decreased cost of copying
(my added point) Works being of high quality and social value

Factors that promote the production of new works

Reduced cost of production and distribution (or, my added point, social funding, as in government or other institutional grants)
A level of copyright that optimizes control and profit in order to motivate production.
(my added points) intrinsic motivation in the creative process; and non-monetary motivations such as fame, honor, and social-altruism.

On an important side-note: Pollock didn't address the complex issue of derivative works in his original work (though he has acknowledged it more recently). The vast majority of creative works are arguably based on existing concepts. A large portion actually utilize the content of previous works put into new forms or contexts. Such derivative work is severely hampered by copyright restrictions. For more, see the various writings by Lawrence Lessig, particularly his book Remix, which is available for free download under Creative Commons license. Also, valuable is the superb and entertaining movie inspired by Lessig's book: RIP: A Remix Manifesto; also, check out Lessig's talks at TED.com [TED.com contains an amazingly remarkable collection of top-notch educational and entertaining presentations, all CC-licensed for free sharing and distribution!]

Anyway, Pollock's basic premise is that copyright restrictions benefit society by encouraging new work and also impair society by restricting access, so the issue is finding the optimal balance.

Pollock makes a strong claim that optimal copyright should reduce over time.
As the size of the back-catalog of works increases, the value of new works is reduced. Everyone could still have a lifetime of very diverse music listening if, effective immediately, no more music were ever recorded. The value of new music recording is much more than zero but is far less than it was at the beginning of 20th century, when recording technology was new. Therefore, it is in society's interest to reduce copying restrictions over time. Less restrictions would allow greater access to both old and new works, and we no longer have as much need to actively encourage new works anyway. In the field of music, this is as clear as ever. In the face of massive unauthorized sharing of music online, we still have more music being recorded than ever before.

Part of this is due to technological change that reduces both costs of production and of copying. Clearly, any rational copyright law should take that into consideration. Promoters of stronger copyright enforcement seem to see only the decreased cost of unauthorized copying, but are mostly ignoring the equally significant decrease in the cost of production and distribution due to the same technology. The fact that photocopying and digital sharing are inexpensive means that the public should expect to pay less for access to media compared to when it was more costly to reproduce. According to Pollock, technological advancement generally results in the reduction of theoretically optimal copyright protection time. Of course, technological issues mean that optimal copyright will vary between different media.

The obvious argument that traditional copyright advocates ignore:
Use the public library!

I have evaluated hundreds of guitar and general music books for teaching and personal use through the public library system. In addition to the books, DVDs, and CDs available at my local library, the interlibrary-loan system allows me to get almost any book (and some DVDs or CDs) from any library in the country. Visit worldcat.org to search the content of the world's libraries. Then request anything through the website of your local library and it can be sent for you to pick up locally.

Some of society's greatest scientists, artists, businessmen, and teachers could not do what they do without the public library. Frank Zappa, one of my musical influences, was a strong advocate for the library system. He learned an enormous amount, including orchestral conducting, knowledge of music history, and lots more largely through spending much of his adolescence at the library.

There are, of course, instances when people want continuous, long-term access to something or to truly consume it (such as writing notes in a book). But if everyone were to otherwise follow my advice and use the library for everything else, wouldn't that be great? Would it be substantially different from downloading illegally online? How? As our current system works, it is often illegal for me to download the same movie I get it for free from the library. Why should that be? I can think of some sloppy bad answers; but I know of no legitimate explanation that holds up to logical inquiry. Any legitimate argument against free digital file-sharing needs to address this question. Do copyright-status-quo defenders want to eliminate public libraries or intentionally keep them inefficient and limited?!?

What is copyrighted, anyway?
As pointed out (and boldly exploited) in the excellent inside-look at the music industry, The Manual: How to Have A Number One The Easy Way by The Timelords, not every aspect of a work is legally copyrighted. Present copyright law defines a musical work by its melody and lyrics primarily. While there are a few other factors arguably possible within the law, it generally denies rhythm as a copyright element. Therefore, as per The Timelords' instructions, anyone can legally plagiarize the latest creative rhythmic groove, put new lyrics and melody over it, and claim the result as copyrighted original work.

In some sense, this is also an argument for derivative freedom because entire styles of music might have been severely restricted if someone were allowed to copyright (or patent) a basic rhythm. Many rhythms are not especially original, but the same can be said for lyrics, melodies, and almost any other aspect of a creative work! Virtually all creative works are derivative to some degree.

What about the 'free market'?
Of course, copyright arguments relate to political-economic ideology. Within a theoretical utopian socialist economy, copyright would be unnecessary because creators would be paid by social funding and then all works would be made immediately public domain. On the other extreme, a utopian version of pure libertarian laissez-faire capitalism would not have any government enforcement of copyright. The unregulated market would lead to a mix of some of the things we see today in DRM schemes as well as open sharing.

Of course our reality today has a mix of all these things. We have government-enforced copyright, DRM, various licensing, grants and social endowments. It does not seem, however, that we have a good balance. On the contrary, today's copyright laws seem to be grossly out-of-line with any rational judgment of optimal policy.

In the end, the issues are real, and we should ideally figure out how to maximize valuable creative works along with access and free use. Pollock's theoretical framework indicates that optimal copyright terms are between 5 to 40 years depending on specifics of the medium, with a median optimum of around 15 years. And this is with a framework assuming the traditional rational self-interest view of economic behavior. Today there is substantial evidence of alternative motivation for creativity indicated by the success of Wikipedia and Creative Commons as well as insights from the emerging field of behavioral economics (such as Dan Ariely's studies showing, among other things, the psychological complexities of motivation and reward).

A brief history of U.S. copyright law:
Copyright, as explicitly stated in the U.S. Constitution, exists to support incentives for the creation of works for the public benefit, not for any particular rights or benefit of authors or publishers. The original term for copyright in the first few years of independence was 14 years. It was later increased to 28, and was not changed again until the mid-20th century. It has since been raised to author's lifetime plus 70 years due entirely to lobbying from corporate media interests.

My crazy idea: do long copyright terms support new media creation by sabotaging old media?
One idea I've never seen anyone else mention: the long copyright term doesn't just give control and potential licensing revenue to copyright holders, it also acts as a sabotage against the use of older material, thus reinforcing demand for new media. When a musician, for example, is selecting non-original material to perform, they may choose between public domain and copyrighted material. Today, that means a choice between pre-1923 music and everything newer. If the latter is chosen, it could include 40-year-old music or this year's hits, because either one involves the same licensing hassles. If, however, all the music through the 1990s were public domain, then people would be less likely to deal with licensing hassle just to perform some newer songs. Thus, long copyright might encourage new media creation — even though the new creators are not likely to be substantially motivated by long copyright terms for their own work. Nevertheless, this situation is analogous to encouraging new home-building by imposing an artificial tax on repairing existing homes. This artificial sabotage of the public domain is almost certainly not in the public interest overall.

The practicalities of dealing with this today:
One issue of over-the-top laws like current copyright (and the extreme arguments by some corporate media companies and apologists) is that it criminalizes otherwise ethical and responsible people. It is far too easy cross the legal/illegal line of copyright today. When someone recognizes that they've broken the letter of the law but haven't done anything malicious, they lose some respect for the institution and may even lose sight of their normal sense of justice and ethics of the issue. Once someone feels like a cheater, they are more likely to cheat in other ways (as shown, for example, in a study by Dan Ariely where people wearing "fake" designer glasses were more likely to cheat and otherwise be dishonest).

I suggest everyone try to consider the larger perspective of the economics and act according to what seem just. Use the library! And also ask: "if I got this from the library would it be any different?" Support media authors when you think it really makes a difference and when their behavior is respectful of the public. Be hesitant to buy into schemes like the Amazon's Kindle that restrict flexibility in your use of the media and keep you tied in (see defectivebydesign.org). Eventually, we are likely to see excellent e-ink readers that are not so restricted. Be part of consciousness-raising, and don't allow ridiculous arguments about "stealing" to go unchallenged; but don't drop to unethical behavior in your use of media. Support political movements to reform the law to be more in line with what is just, sustainable, and respectful of our basic freedoms.

Final thought: anyone who still isn't convinced that the copyright system is broken should read about Happy Birthday To You.

last edited October 20, 2011