Hi Donald:
The only flaw in your logic is, school taxes are higher than ever. Blame the bloated
administrations, generous pay for the top dogs and the teachers unions and their lush, lush
contracts for starving all manner of learning. Public education is funded to a record per-pupil
level in most districts in the U.S, and yet the quality of learning experience is vastly inferior to
decades ago. Money isn't the issue, at all. It's priorities and values. Parenting is also terrible
these days, and no one -- at any level -- is willing to take responsibility or enforce personal
accountability. This is true in all levels of society, we are truly a decadent nation right now.
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald Clarke" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, August 15, 2013 9:53 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Why Vinyl Is NOT Going To Save The Music Industry (And What Will) - Trust
Me, I'm A Scientist
> This is spot on, Tom. I worked in a shopping mall until recently, and the junk that assaults our
> ears is astonishing. The kids who used to hang out in the music dept at Barnes & Noble are now
> sprawled all over the floor reading Japanese comic books.
> Max Roach made a good point some years ago. No matter what kind of poverty his old pals
> Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie came from, they got musical tuition in the schools, and
> instruments to practice on. But Americans don't want to pay taxes for anything, not even schools
> and certainly not music, while every generation has to make its own noise, so in NYC in the 1970s
> they used turntables and microphones and broke into lamp posts to steal electricity. What Roach
> said to the taxpayers was, "If you don't like rap, you're getting what you paid for."
>
> Donald Clarke
>
> On Aug 15, 2013, at 6:52 AM, Tom Fine wrote:
>
> Hi Don:
>
> I think you are over-optimistic about today's youth. There is little music education in the public
> schools, at least in the U.S. If there is a "real" piano present, it is badly out of tune and may
> have been vandalized to the point of non-fuction. It's probably used as a prop in the auditorium.
> As for an acoustic guitar, unless you like music and have learned music or hang around musicians,
> you likely have not heard an acoustic guitar. Many kids dabble in cheap electric guitars, plus
> there is Guitar Band video gaming, but many fewer dabble in acoustic instruments. Some dabble with
> computer-generated "music" via GarageBand and other software and phone apps. But there is far less
> formal musical training and general education than one or two generations ago.
>
> Some in the young generartion, the sons of Richard and Cory for example, were drawn to music and
> received formal training and education. They have heard enough real, live music to understand a
> few things about sound and tone, and now they are pursuing advanced education which will likely
> expose them to further sound experiences to consider and absorb. They are the vast, vast minority.
> For most young folks, music is background noise, part of a relentless and constant buzz in their
> ears. They may know a few words (usually particularly filthy or violent raps), or a hum a few
> music phrases, but their relationship with music is very different from the days when a young
> person would sit down and LISTEN to an album. Even in those days, the majority of kids absorbed a
> constant drone of 3-minute singles from the AM radio. There was a very brief time in the history
> of the music business, basically when the baby boomers got some wealth and maturity, when many
> people had a good sound system and sat down regularly to listen to an album's worth of music. The
> "long-hairs" (classical and jazz fans) were doing this from the dawn of the LP, but they were
> always a small minority of music buyers and listeners.
>
> I think music cheapened itself. When major rock and country artists started licensing their songs
> to TV shows and commercials, then phone ring-tones, then Guitar Band, that was it. Back when there
> was some idealism and "honor" among these musicians, it was considered a sell-out to license music
> for a TV commercial. Once Chevy ads and "CSI" TV shows started featuring Who songs, you knew the
> deal was done. The once-angry rebel band had completely sold out. Even songs from the once "rebel
> kings" Clash have turned up as sonic wallpaper. All of this cheapens the songs and thus the kids
> tune out and the music just becomes part of the roaring drone that is modern life.
>
> -- Tom Fine
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Don Cox" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Thursday, August 15, 2013 4:01 AM
> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Why Vinyl Is NOT Going To Save The Music Industry (And What Will) - Trust
> Me, I'm A Scientist
>
>
>> On 15/08/2013, Michael Biel wrote:
>>
>>> Don't forget it is not only us old farts with lousy hearing -- the
>>> kids have been ruining their hearing at a faster rate than we had.
>>> There is a thought some have that MP3 is BETTER for their ears than
>>> wideband now.
>>
>> MP3 files don't have less high frequency sound than uncompressed files.
>> They are simply less accurate.
>>
>>> Plus, most of them have never known what live unaugmented music
>>> sounds like. Pity.
>>>
>> I think everyone must have heard an acoustic guitar on its own. It is
>> still a big challenge for an audio system to reproduce the sound of a
>> solo acoustic guitar at a realistic level.
>>
>> And many will have heard a real piano.
>>
>> Regards
>> --
>> Don Cox
>> [log in to unmask]
>>
>
>
|