Author Archives: shopna mazumdar

https://youtu.be/alOknvftNVQ

 

The human voice has played a significant role in composition throughout the history of music. Among important issues in the vocal repertoire are text intelligibility and the dichotomy between singing and speaking. Electronic means of music production and delivery have increased the potential for experimentation in this regard, resulting in an increased blurring of the distinction between music and language acting as driving force in many recent compositions. A sonic event deserves a unique location in this space if the variance of its characteristics is sufficiently small relative to the other pieces in consideration.​This lets the listener feel the sonic progression, creating anticipation for the climax, which arrives at the chorus  with the introduction of a sonically dominant bass line. It is even more effective at amping up the tension than adding elements because it creates a sonic void, making the listener crave for the return of those key elements.There is no doubt that Damon Krukowski is the right guy to be talking about music. He understands it at an intimate level where I either wished I could talk about it the same way, or that I could spend a couple hours picking his brain over a cup of coffee. Ways of Hearing is a curious book that doesn’t really have a thesis and is more of a work-in-progress. It discusses different aspects of music and noise. Really, it tries to distinguish between the two because even though this book is mostly about music, it’s also a lot about how we hear it, and as such has to deal with how it is that we hear noise in general.

  1.  Krukowski wanted to point out that we are naturally affected by music. Big companies like Amazon, Google, Spotify, or other online music servers, serve us all sources of information irresponsibly .he finds that some specific albums/records are preserved for a long time. Also, these records are expired/out-of-date. Nowadays, people prefer downloading music from the internet or uploading music apps such as Spotify, Sound cloud or YouTube rather than going to the music store wasting time picking up CD’s. But music records stores are a type of art and there are some people who use it. Krukowski mentioned that by visiting the record store, he discovered a lot of information there. He gave an example such as workers over there can provide you with information about years ago that you didn’t know.

 

 

  • Forced Exposure means listening to the opinion of those who listened to all of the available records and wrote about them.Jimmy from Forced Exposure Collects songs of various genres and when he likes something he records it and he knows what he will hear later.  People picked what they wanted to listen to based on this information. In contrast, Spotify is choosing for us a source of music based on our listening history by using the algorithms.Paul Lamre’s experience in sites like Spotify, he makes an automatic way to choose songs based on the person’s taste, and he selects similar songs.

 

 

 

  • Krukowski states the point that surprise is not the same as discovery to a huge digital corporation eager to change every one of us and as much of our time as possible with their product.He gives the examples of Google , Facebook and Spotify. He compares the way how these three companies provide our information we would like to know. According to Krukowski is that people are experiencing a new type of music without the need of searching for a specific kind of music. The main purpose of Spotify is to let the listener hear the music that they are most likely to enjoy.  you can be surprised by a song you discover, for example it could be better or worse than what you expected.Forced Exposure surprises with its variety in which you need to dig a little to find something new and completely different from the usual.

 

 

Episode 6

 

 

  • According to Krukowski, noise is something, we are not paying attention to when we are listening. Signal is the voice we are paying attention to and that we want to listen to. These distinctions are important because until we decide the distinction between signal and noise, we won’t know what we are listening to.Signals are fluid because our attention can shift based on what we want to hear at any given time. Noise is everything we can hear besides the signal we are looking for. 

 

 

 

  • Noise is very important, that is something lost. Remove the noise and only keep the signal. He explains there is a richness to noise that allows our brain to choose its signals.The signal in music is something that the producers want listeners to hear. if we cut out noise completely and try to layer signal with other signals, it just becomes competing signals. When there is noise in the background the audio engineer gets to choose what to highlight as a signal and what to leave in back. It allows the engineer to weave sound textures together to create a more complex sound. 

 

 

 

  • This episode gives us one of the most important points in music, in real time and space. In the machine time, we come to approach to reduce the noise and focus on the signal. In digital time, we can use headphones to enjoy the signal of our song and reduce the noise we are hearing around. We can avoid the noise.

 

 

  1. Microphone maximizes the signal of the voice and minimizes the noise that inevitably comes. The noise may be a sound that comes from the mouth that we do not consider in music. Microphone sounds clearer than a phone. It is used for recording. Senorita control proximity effect. Cellphones are worse to listen to. cell phones do not transmit the full range of sound picked up mic. cell phone background noise put away; it can regulate our voice. Digitally process that sound compressing it to remove whatever engineers have decided is unnecessary data.

 

  1. People have already lost some language skills when we use digital transmission because when people who are separate far away have to use digital transmission, it causes people to lose some feeling. Human voice allows us to send our voice over vast distances, but non-verbal voice quality is lost in digital coding. musical quality of our voice is the nonverbal part of our voice to communicate.
  2.  Music, community, and culture are all interrelated, with each having a continuous effect on the other. Music is inextricably linked with the context in which it is produced, consumed and taught and the inter-relationship between music, society and culture has been researched for many decades. Music like language operating on a different level through symbolic processes using different units of exchange and this work has advanced. music practices around the world and increasing our understanding.

 

Episode 4

  1. ways of hearing “Money” by Damon Krukowski. In this episode he talks about music being property, he states that music should be freely available for everyone because it is something immaterial and therefore it shouldn’t be a price on it. This point that he makes is very interesting because ideally, it would be amazing having the possibilities of being able to listen to any music without having to pay for it. music should not be freely accessible for everyone as it would have a negative effect in the music industry and there would be less artists dedicated to this. In my paper I will be going over and interpreting Krukowki’s arguments in this episode and consequently stating the advantages and disadvantages of music being freely available for everyone.

 

  1. Playing musical instruments is particularly important for human social development because music making is fun and uses different skills to the ones that most people usually make music is relaxing and can relieve feelings of stress and anxiety. In fact, there is now a growing body of research which demonstrates that playing musical instruments is really good for you in terms of both improved physical and mental health. Music does not suffer the frustrations of catering to the diverse group of people that we are likely to see in a modern community because music is non-verbal and does not differentiate or discriminate between age, culture or ability.

6 . Music is like sound which goes inside our ear naturally and we can stop it. In the same way, music is something that we can’t stop but why is it stopped by the tag of money. music should be available free to anyone who is hearing and how free music can make people popular. Music should be something that free of cost because music is for entertainment, and we can’t make this entertainment just for people who can pay for it because poor people need to enjoy as well. That would make more people listen to music which makes artists more famous with more fans. Now companies are becoming rapacious and turning music to a business that they could benefit, so we can’t just put the blame on artists. Some artists do sing as an avocation without caring about money, and street singers.

 

 

 

Sonic example

 

The appropriate sound level of music is not easy to calibrate. Some songs sound best when they are played at full volume, while other songs are meant to be played softly with just the right amount of sound. We’ve all been in an elevator with someone who plays music through their headphones like they’ve already gone deaf, and more often than not, it becomes a nuisance. But are they purposely playing the music loudly because they like the music loud, or is that music simply meant – through its creation – to be just as loud.  After listening to the album version, however, I realized that much of what I liked about the song came from the kind of bad, buzzy recording quality of the youtube version. While I suppose some might argue that the studio version, what the artist intended you to hear, should be the best version, I disagree and think that sometimes a live version or remix might make the song better even if it is worse “quality”.Sound production didn’t take over the tension/release role in pop songs overnight. Over the last couple of decades, there has been a ‘crossfade’ between tonal functions and sonic functions.As sound production became more and more dominant in shaping the musical roller coaster in pop songs, the role of tonal functions was gradually weakened. I can’t identify a specific turning point, but I can point to specific songs and albums that triggered my awareness of this process.

Episode 1

 

Krukowski sent a persuasive case in the new analog listening and reconnecting in a Digital World. He systematically traces the history and evolution of sound and digital encroachment, he determines that the obsolescence of analog based audio plays a bigger than expected role in the evolution of society. In the digital age, we have become self centered, antisocial drones increasingly unaware of the world around us. Analog recording is like an accident in other ways On tape, there was no undo. We could try again if we had the time and money, but we couldn’t move backwards. What is done is done. For better and worse.What we lost analog is better or digital is better. His own understanding is he doesn’t believe that analog is old and digital is new because digital is not only new. Digital may be as old as humankind. This is computer logic. Digital is pre electronic. Analog is not only old because our body is analog ours ears are analog our eyes are analog, our sense of touch is analog . Digital music is downloading it or streaming it off a site. Speaker is an analog device. our technology is a communication tool, we can not hear digital music. Computers and devices can use digital information to exchange. 

2 . When we listen on a speaker like radio. We are listening music on both ear at the same time. This sound is moving in space. When we are listening to music in cub ways and cars . we hear that music with both ears. Other people listen in same time. Furthermore we also moving different sense of our relationship in space to the sound. When we lasting on a speaker we listening to music in both ears at the same time. When we are  Moving to ear bud or head phone, we heard only right channel is right ear and left channel is left ear. We no longer hear one sound in both ear. That means my right ear does not hear the sound that my left ear hears. That removes the way that we locate sounds in space. Our Earbuds lose our stereo hearing. Nobody can locate a sound directly in front People listening music in ear bud think sound come from inside their head. Speaker sound comes outside. Stereo hearing is location hearing and ear buds split our sense of location from our sense of hearing. When we are walking on the street and using ear buds, we may notice that our body language is slightly different than others who are walking responding to the sound around them. We are making a space of our own. Even we are in public space.

Episode 2

1.Jeremiah Moss argues about how A great city lost its soul. the  developers in Astor place are privatizing public space in a very stealth way. He says that the city is suffering a hyper gentrification that means our neighborhoods are being changed slowly, being privatized for example Astor Place it’s a public place but it becomes privatized. He states that dirty city privatized public space tends to reinforce social inequality . Astor Place was rebuilt and architecture     removed part of the street, widened the central square, planted trees, put in concrete slab seating, and tables with umbrellas. It is now used by corporations like IBM and Citibank to hold “advertisement” events. I’m pretty sure this is a prime example of zombie barbarianism.

 2.In the 1920 , when the cities were crowded, vehicles were noisy. People are using elevators to get into the subway, it is difficult for people who are not used to it. Emily Thompson explains that the efforts to control sound in the streets lead to another set of changes to control interior spaces as concert halls with noise insulating walls . Architecture reduces the vibration , so the people can fully enjoy the concerts without interference from outside. Krukowski argues that controlling sound is considered noise to relevant people wearing headphones. People are able to hear music in large halls like Radio City.

  1. Kruskpwski’s overall message that digital technology is shaping and impacting the mind to the detriment of the shared human how we understand sound and how we listen to the forms of sound around us. The medium of digital technology is influencing people’s ways of hearing. We should listen to sound from space, we have to listen to what’s going on around the world.

1

People now accept publicity images as part of the environment. They perceive such images as dynamic, or constantly in motion. publicity expresses certain ideas about freedom, including Western notions of economic free enterprise and consumer choice.Publicity images are distinct from the real benefits of the products they sell.Instead, publicity celebrates the future buyer and the glamorous life the buyer might have a life that may cause others to envy them. Therefore, publicity isn’t about items but “social relations.” It promises people they will be happy because others will envy them. Advertisements often use images from oil paintings and sculptures of the past. What makes art so useful to advertisement. publicity like oil painting celebrates consumerism and the principle “you are what you have.” Berger views advertisements as the last form of post-Renaissance Europe’s visual art. Since advertisements must “sell the past to the future,” they have to use the language of the past. Secondly, publicity images often use historical or mythological references, relying on a viewer’s education.

 

2

The relationship between oil painting and publicity images, which has been obscured by cultural prestige. Publicity images often make direct reference to past art, either by copying it in some way, or by incorporating the art into the publicity image. This ‘quoting’ of art achieves two things. Art is associated with wealth and beauty, and the publicity image benefits from this. Art also has cultural authority, which makes it superior to mere materialism. This use of art allows the publicity image to promote two almost contradictory things, spiritual or cultural refinement and consumerism. Publicity understands the link in oil painting between the work of art and the spectator-owner and uses these to flatter the spectator-buyer. There is, however, a much deeper link to oil painting.

 

3

Berger compares the envied to bureaucrats to show that usually advertisements don’t try to relate to the consumer but attempt to show them what they want to be like. Otherwise, if people are able to connect with the advertisement on a personal level, they wouldn’t have envy and would realize they don’t need the product that is being sold to achieve happiness. Berger’s ideas are applicable to modern day society and I feel that the relationship between publicity and happiness demonstrates an ongoing cycle of selling and buying. I think that advertisements often cause people to feel inadequate and that there is something missing from their lives. A main goal for many people is to have glamour and be envied by others but they are never able to achieve this so they keep on buying things that give them the illusion of glamour. These products don’t give people satisfaction or make them truly happy so advertisements continue to convince them to buy more things that the consumer believes will get them what they want.

 

  • Is the purpose of the essay to educate, announce, entertain, or persuade?

The purpose of the essay is to persuade the readers that your knowledge and creativity encourage the reader.

  • Who might be interested in the topic of the essay?

Author and reader would be interested in the topic.

 

  • Who would be impacted by the essay or the information within it?

Students who do not use to write their essay and also writers who are not organized very well.

  • What does the reader know about this topic?

The topic is very useful,interesting, and has information.

  • What does the reader need to know in order to understand the essay’s points?

The hook of the topic and thesis statement .

  • What kind of hook is necessary to engage the readers and their interest?

General idea about topic.

  • What level of language is required? Words that are too subject-specific may make the writing difficult to grasp for readers unfamiliar with the topic.

The language should be academic and very clear , words should not be difficult .

  • What is an appropriate tone for the topic? A humorous tone that is suitable for an autobiographical, narrative essay may not work for a more serious, persuasive essay.

The appropriate tone for the topic is a persuasive essay, the instructor is telling and teaching the student how to do and write a good essay. 

  1. Opening paragraph is an important part in writing . students should use hook, general information about essays. In the last part of the introduction I have to write a thesis statement. Avoid grammatical errors that is crucial to write a good essay.

1 . According to “ways of seeing” Berger’s states that based on western art, nakedness is to  be oneself , to be nude is to be seen naked by others. The difference is significant because in the nudes the nakedness is a sight for those who are dressed. To be nude is to be on display, while to be naked is to be oneself. The nude painting , as opposed to simply the naked. Looking at yourself in the mirror that reflects your beauty. Nakedness women are rarely portrayed in a passive way. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life.  A woman is laying down naked, implying that she wants to appear beautiful and perfect in the eyes of any man and grab his attention.

2 .  Berger emphasizes how women are not their own beings, but created for the pleasure of men.  Women have always been taught to look and act beautiful.  “Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another. women obtain a part of her own self-worth through the justification of other people.  A man’s presence is dependent upon the promise of power which he embodies and  a woman’s presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her. In the perspective of men, Berger shows the idea that men’s external presence tends to define who they are or who they are seen . This reasoning shows truth in the idea that women are often judged long-term by her short-term actions . Berger reveals the general lens in which women in the world are examined through and is able to highlight that society puts more emphasis on their actions or are more critical simply because they are not men.    

3 .European oil painting  often depicted nude female figures. Adam and Eve, a woman’s nakedness was constituted by her relationship to the viewer: she either performs shame and modesty, or exhibits herself proudly—but never exists as simply naked and unaware she is being looked at. Even as nude oil painting grew more secular, female subjects continued to be defined by their awareness of the spectator. Woman’s gaze is almost always directed outward at the viewer even when a male figure is present. The subject of the painting: the woman looks at herself in a mirror, just as the spectator looks at her in the painting.  mirrors in such paintings often symbolized women’s vanity—allowing painters to condemn the so-called “vanity” of female subjects that they painted in the nude for the sake of their own pleasure. But the symbolic mirror nevertheless served to reinforce that women should be treated primarily as sights to be regarded. The painting’s subject is a competition between women, vying to be recognized by a man as the most beautiful .

Ways of Seeing

Question 1

John Berger- “Ways of Seeing” published in 1972 and based on BBC television program.  Berger points out what is involved in seeing, and how the way we see things is determined by what we know. The process of seeing painting or seeing anything else. It is less spontaneous and natural than we tend to believe. Berger touches on the idea that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and this makes the eye the center of the visible world. A large part of seeing is based on habit and convention. Today we see the art of the past as nobody saw it before. We perceive it in a different way. This difference can be illustrated in terms of what was thought of as perspective. Painting of the tradition used the convention of perspective. The convention of perspective is unique to European art and which was first established in early Renaissance. The conventions called those appearances reality. Perspective makes the single eye the center of the visible world. According to the convention of perspective there is no visual reciprocity. The painting on the wall like a human eye, can only be in one place at one time. Perspective makes the single eye the center of the visible world. One category of European oil painting women was the principle. Ever recurring subject. That category is the nude. In the nudes of European painting we can discover some of the criteria and conventions by which women have been seen and judged as sights. The modern interrogation of centuries old oil paintings was a milestone in cultural theory. He argues that the systemic objectification of women in visual art.

 

Question 2

 

According to Berger “Ways in Seeing” the invention of the camera changed perception of the world- it changed not only what we see but how we see it. The camera demonstrated that there was no center. The invention of cameras changed the way men saw. Berger touches on the idea that the human eye could only be in one place at a time. The images come to us, this meaning, like the news of an event. You do not go to them. People would travel to the image. The camera made it possible that appearances could travel across the world. The painting can only be in one place at one time, the camera reproduces it. He describes original paintings are unique, they look different on television screens . When the camera reproduces a painting change. Visit the national gallery and look at the original painting. It is not fake, it is authentic. We should feel this authenticity. For example, The Virgin of the Rocks by Leonardo DA Vince: it is authentic and therefore it is beautiful. The most important thing about painting is that their image does not speak, they are silent, he claims. Berger argues that I cannot demonstrate that the lines on your screen are never still, and in a sense, the pages of the book are never still. He says, Occasionally, this uninterrupted silence and the stillness of a painting can be very striking.

 

Question 3

 

Berger’s states that painting can become a form of information. Berger emphasized reproduction makes the meaning of works of art ambiguous. This is not negative, it is necessary. The production of works of art can be used by anybody for their own purposes. The art book depends upon reproductions. For instance, children or adults pin up reproductions alongside snapshots. The works of art are reproducible, theoretically be used by anybody in art books, magazines, films or within gift frames in living rooms. The means of reproduction are used politically and commercially to disguise or deny what their existence makes possible.