Category Archives: Discussion questions

This space is for you to engage in conversation about course reading.

Discussion 7

  1. At the beginning of this episode, Krukowski asserts, “the marginal-the rejected-the repressed-is whatever the powerful have decided is of no use at the moment.” What does he mean by this statement? He goes on to ask, “But might it [the marginal-the rejected-the repressed] not be a key to alternate approaches-to art, to society-to power itself?” (“Marginalized” is an adjective that describes a person, group, or concept that is treated as insignificant or peripheral.)

What is he trying to get at with this question? How does music indicate the differences between the powerful and the marginalized?

Everything can be transformed, and after some work on that it can even be seen as something powerful. What we call marginalized at some point can become something significant for yourself or society once it gets the attention from someone else. He inquires if the forgotten/counter culture can build itself up into its own society and culture

2. How are the music listening experiences enabled by Forced Exposure different from those that Paul Lamere is working on with platforms like Spotify?

Digital Companies such as Spotify, Apple music and Pandora have music recommendations done by computers using algoritmos through social recommendation, acoustic similarity and cultural recommendations. The difference is that the forced exposure is listForced Expose can have a human give you a personalized recommendation because they listened to the music themselves.

3. What distinctions does Krukowski draw between being “surprised” by music and “discovering” music? What are the differences between these experiences and according to Krukowski, why are they important?
Surprise is not always a good thing, we want to find things that we are comfortable with that way Krukowski points out that we are not discovering new things. These programs are giving us what we are looking for based on our music recommendations.

4. According to Krukowski, what is noise? What is signal? Why are these distinctions important?
Signal is the message without interference understanding the sounds, in other words signal is where we want to put our attention in. On the other hand, noises are sounds that we are not interested in.

5. What central idea about noise does this episode convey? Why is it significant?
Noises are sounds that we are not interested in, everything is noise until the point we identify a signal we are interested in. We can never completely delete the noise.

6. How does this episode relate to other episodes?
The importance of combining different sounds creating a significant signal. Krukowski uses the noise concept to relate all the episodes. Concluding that every sound is composed of noises and important it is.

Discussion questions # 7

Episode 5

Question # 1:
I believe Krukowski wanted to point out that we are naturally affected by music, but the question is if the choice of music is also natural. Big companies like Amazon, Google, Spotify, or other online music servers, serve us all sources of information irresponsibly and are using cookies or other practices to provide or unobtrusively intrude to us the music they wanted to based on whatever is currently most popular or seemingly wanted. That is why are some bands or records pushed aside – marginalized. Then the choice of music we listen to is often affected and not natural. Walking into some store with music doesn’t have to be than just snobbish habits of nowadays, but also our diligence in getting the natural and responsible flow of information and so to form our personalities and opinions.

Question # 2:
Forced Exposure means listening to the opinion of those who listened to all of the available records and wrote about them. 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.

Question # 3:
There are algorithms on the internet that are helping us to find precisely what we are looking for. That means no surprises. Spotify is offering the music based on our taste and definitely won’t surprise us with some new kind of music that is not resonating with our current listening history. It is crucial to be aware of that because even Spotify is an efficient tool, it can impoverish our discoveries or experiences. Discovering music can, on the other hand, be very surprising and bring us something new, unexpected, and exciting.

Episode 6

Question # 1:
The signal is one part of the sound on which is our hearing apparatus concentrating at the specific moment the most. Noise is considered all the other sounds going on around, which we don’t care about at the moment. These sounds can be manipulated in the recording studio, by removing all the unwanted noises and adding loudness to these that are chosen as the signal.

Question # 2:
Even the sound considered as noise can be essential in order to get the right impression from music. Manipulation of the sounds in the record studios can be very beneficial to us to listen to the noises of music clearly and as a part of the production.

Question # 3:
In all the episodes, including the one about the noise, are finding out what impact has the digital technologies on our hearing, sensing of sounds and music, and also its impact on our society. Digital technologies are adjusting the sound we are receiving or helping us to avoid what we don’t want to listen at all. Our perception of sound is changed and much less natural. The episodes are exploring these differences and the questions if it is a good or bad thing. We might get more clear sound, but in the end, the digitalized music is already some kind of reproduction, and in my opinion, it will never be the same as the live experience. Also, from all of the episodes, I got the expression that digital and modern technologies are dividing us from each other and creating more distance.

Discussion 7

Question 1:

When the author entered the record store , he found some albums from an ancient time, some of them expired. This indicates that downloading songs from the Internet is now the trend of going to the record store and buying CDs. However, despite all this, going on to the record store is another experience, and it is possible to learn information about songs that we did not know and we may find types of music that we did not know.

Question 2:

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. As for 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.

Question 3:

Krakowski explains that surprising is to make people hear new types of music they have not looked for. So surprise is different from discovering. Also, with the development of music platforms, it has become an analysis of the database of individuals in order to provide songs to their own taste, so surprising opportunities decreased. 

Question 4:

According to Krakowski, noise is the voices that we hear around us, we do not give them attention, and we can easily ignore them. While the signal is the voices we deliberately hear and take attention from us.

Question 5:

The episode talks about signal and noise. Because the signal is always intertwined with the noise. As Korkowski emphasized that it is necessary for people to understand the messages behind the noise, where unexpected things can be reached as a result of its contemplation.

Question 6:

This episode expresses how technology has made us control sounds and music, as we have the ability to add or block sounds. It is also evidence that digital sounds changed human experiences in listening to music. Therefore, this episode is considered as an explanation and a general concept for the program Way Of Hearing

Discussion Questions #7

Episode 5

Question 1.   What Krukowski means by that question is that the marginal, rejected and repressed is what mainstream culture no longer has a use for.  The powers that be decide what is important, good, tasteful and accepted and those groups are certainly not in those categories.  What he means by his second question is that that maybe the marginal, rejected or repressed are the key to learning, not only about ourselves and society, but to a great many things.  Things which which will be better than what is deemed satisfactory by mainstream culture.  In relation to music, the ideas of the powerful and the marginalized is illustrated with the powerful being popular music and the marginalized being the non mainstream music.

Question 2.  The main differences between the music listening experiences enabled by Forced Exposure and platforms like Spotify is the amount of music each method has and the way in which the music is recommended to the clients.  Forced Exposure has a large but finite amount of music, about 50,000 LP’s, and Spotify has almost the entire catalog of music throughout the world.  Forced Exposure’s owner and employees also have listened, and some have even wrote about, all the songs in their inventory, while Spotify uses algorithms to suggest what type of music a person will like.

Question 3.  The distinctions Krukowski makes between discovering and being surprised by music is that discovering is not at all surprising.  When you discover new music you’re really only hearing new music that is similar to the other types of music you like.  Being surprised by new music is hearing music that is not similar to your already established tastes and instead truly find something new.  This is important to big companies because they don’t want surprising, it increases the chances of you not listening and thus missing out on the opportunity to make you listen to valuable advertising time.

Episode 6

Question 1.  According to Krukowski noise is the background sound and signal is the sound we focus on.  According to the hearing doctor, signal is the sound we are trying to pay attention to and noise is all the other sounds.  It’s important because in the digital world noise is trying to be eliminated while signal is enhanced.

Question 2.  In this episode Krukowski is trying to convey that what we deem as noise is just as important as what we consider signal.  In reality everything is noise until we decide what we want to focus on, and that becomes signal.  The totality of all the sound and not just isolated individual parts is what is important and this is best conveyed in the Beach Boys album Pet Sounds.  All the sounds combined together is what gives the music such beauty, and when they digitally remixed the album it didn’t sound nearly as good.  Krukowski also goes on to relate the importance of noise to everyday life and society as a whole.  Being immersed in the total noise of our surroundings may allow us to find the signals that are important to us and be able to convey those messages to others more effectively, is how he roughly puts it.

Question 3.  The way in which this episode relates to all the others is that the theme of eliminating noise has been present throughout the discussion of digital sound.  The way in which our phones isolate only the “important” parts of our voices to transmit, the elimination of public noise in order to put ourselves in our own sound bubbles, and the way in which digital music eliminates the noise of the content of our music are just a few examples.  Each episode’s topic related to this theme in one way or another while coming to a conclusion that noise is just as important as the signal because that is the totality of the world.  The reality of our world is not just the things we like, know or want to know, it is everything, the noise and the signal.  Because in the end everything is noise.

Discussion 5 and 6 Question

Episode 5

  1. At the beginning of this episode, Krukowski asserts, “the marginal-the rejected-the repressed-is whatever the powerful have decided is of no use at the moment.” What does he mean by this statement? He goes on to ask, “But might it [the marginal-the rejected-the repressed] not be a key to alternate approaches-to art, to society-to power itself?” (“Marginalized” is an adjective that describes a person, group, or concept that is treated as insignificant or peripheral.)

 

What is he trying to get at with this question? How does music indicate the differences between the powerful and the marginalized?

 

1: In the beginning of the episode when Kruwoski says” the marginal-the rejected-the repressed-is whatever the powerful have decided is of no use at the moment.” He means that music isn’t being appreciated through CDs anymore. Everything is so advanced now that everyone downloads music instead of going to music store and buying it. The CDs and tapes are being less appreciated.

  1. How are the music listening experiences enabled by Forced Exposure different from those that Paul Lamere is working on with platforms like Spotify?

 

2: Music listening experiences from the Forced Exposure are different from listening to Spotify because during the forced exposure listening moments  they had the opportunity to listen to all the music they could and if you wanted to contact the artist there would be a long wait. Fast forward to modern days with Spotify, you can have your music chosen for you. Spotify can direct you to music according to your mood, contacts etc. Spotify has a variety of music and there is no way you can listen to every song on Spotify.

  1. What distinctions does Krukowski draw between being “surprised” by music and “discovering” music? What are the differences between these experiences and according to Krukowski, why are they important?

 

3: When you hear new music you’ve never heard before you are surprised by the things that your hearing. When your surprised its nothing that you expected. On the other hand, when you’re discovering music your expecting what you’re looking for. This is important because you are using these tools to gain more of an understanding to music.

 

Episode 6

  1. According to Krukowski, what is noise? What is signal? Why are these distinctions important?

 

1: Krukowski describes noise as the thing we are listening to in the background. For an example when you’re listening to two things at one time one becomes the signal and one is the noise. The noise being the sound in the background and the signal being the sound that has your attention. Your brain is more focused on the signal while your listening to the noise but not so much.

  1. What central idea about noise does this episode convey? Why is it significant?

 

2: Noise and signal are important to our everyday life. You can hear up to millions of different signals and noises, noises are the sounds you hear in the background. Signal being the sound you’re hearing first and paying the most attention to. Producers and musicians make music with signal being louder sound then the noise.

 

  1. How does this episode relate to other episodes?

 

3:  Episode six was based on noise, which Krukowski described as the unwanted sound in the background.  The author uses podcast to explain to listeners the importance of each episode. Listening to different noises and signals is apart of our everyday life, the author wants us to understand sound noise and signals. Throughout the podcast we listened to him speak about listening and understanding music. Music has noises and signals and that’s how this episode relates to the others.

Discussion question #7

Episode 5

1.At the beginning of this episode, Krukowski asserts, “the marginal-the rejected-the repressed-is whatever the powerful have decided is of no use at the moment.” What does he mean by this statement? He goes on to ask, “But might it [the marginal-the rejected-the repressed] not be a key to alternate approaches-to art, to society-to power itself?” (“Marginalized” is an adjective that describes a person, group, or concept that is treated as insignificant or peripheral.)

What is he trying to get at with this question? How does music indicate the differences between the powerful and the marginalized?

Krukowski would like to tell us when he visited the record store, he found many music albums and records are being left and forgotten for such a long time.And they are not used even on the day they are expired.After digital music emerges, more and more people prefer music apps than CD. We can easily see how music indicates the differences between powerful and marginalized. With more people use , it’s more powerful, and if nobody uses it , then it’s marginalized. However, Krukowski also mentioned that we might lost lots of valuable experience and information in the record store, therefore we should pay more attention to this forgotten treasure.

 

2.How are the music listening experiences enabled by Forced Exposure different from those that Paul Lamere is working on with platforms like Spotify?

The music listening experiences enabled by Force Exposure is quite different to those that Paul Lamere is working on with platforms like Spotify. In Force Exposure, we can pick up the songs we think good to a playlist. It also has a huge amount of music and songs in its database. And in platforms like Spotify, they are always built by programmers.Taking Spotify as an example, it has algorithm in the app which can expose us different kinds of music and provide the opportunity for us to explore on unfamiliar fields in music.

3.What distinctions does Krukowski draw between being “surprised” by music and “discovering” music? What are the differences between these experiences and according to Krukowski, why are they important?

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 company provide our information we would like to know.Certainly, we want true and exact answers when we searching something in Google, on the other hand, we want some surprising songs or information when we use Spotify or Facebook.It’s quite significant because as a customer we want different experience when using different apps.

Episode 6

1.According to Krukowski, what is noise? What is signal? Why are these distinctions important?

According to Krukowski, noise is the signal we are not interested.On the other hand, signal is some sounds we would like to pay attention to.It’s very important because literally they are two different concepts.What can attract our attention is signal, and we are interested in it.Noise is sound that we don’t want to pay attention and it’s also easily to be ignored.

 

2.What central idea about noise does this episode convey? Why is it significant?

This episode mainly conveys the idea of the difference between sound and noise.For example, when musicians try to produce a song, they will always maximize the volume of the signal sounds and minimize the noise. Also, when a producer would like to create a good TV show ,he needs to control all the recording sounds well and makes them harmony.We can create wonderful music with many instrument,however we should combine all the sounds well, make sure they will not become noise.Sometimes too much is not the best.

3.How does this episode relate to other episodes?

In this episode, Krukowski distinguishes the differences between noise and sound.It’s crucial for us to better understand the meanings of the other episodes.What’s more this episode is like a summary of the series of Way of Hearing.

Discussion question 7

EPISODE 5

  1. At the beginning of this episode, Krukowski is explaining how some music is accepted for some people and rejected by others. By “the marginal-the rejected-the repressed-is whatever the powerful have decided is of no use at the moment.” he means that this music which are being rejected could be of a good source of art to society.

 2.  Forced exposure has the responsibility to listen and also write about all new music arrivals. They release a catalog that describes every record in detail. On the contrary, platforms like Spotify, Apple music and Pandora are not listening to each their song, it is impossible Krukowski says. It is done by computers using music algorithms. I think that what digital music platforms are doing is positive to the artist which music is being rejected. Platforms like Spotify give these artist the chance of being known by others.

3. Being surprise according to Krukowski is that people are experiencing a new type of music without the need of searching for an specific kind of music. On the other hand, to discover something is to look for that specifically. However, your can be surprised by a song you discover, for example it could be better or worst that what you expected.

EPISODE 6

  1.  Signal is whatever is interest to us, everything else is noise. Everything around us is noise as long as it is not important to us, however is we are in a crowded noise an someone says something of our interest then it becomes a signal. I think these differences are important because our brain focuses on what we actually want to hear and is less probable to be distracted by the surrounding noise.
  2. I think that the central idea is that in every noise there is a signal for everyone depending on the listener interest.
  3. It is related to all other episodes because it gives a general explanation and definition of “ways of hearing” in general.

Discussion Questions #7

 Episode 5

  1. Art consists of majority of concepts. However, most of the concepts are ignore by most people. For example, most people don’t listen to an indie band. In relation to alternate approaches to art these repressed concepts might be a key to approaches alternate that they haven’t explore that much compared to more popular concepts.

 

 

  1. Forced Exposure, focuses on listening to different types of music. With that, he listens to them as an individual track as if it was made by someone else. It is important to catalogue each type of music they made and try to understand them regardless of their own preferences. With this, they will try to appreciate each person personal approach to are and what/how they use art and what different approach they take. This enables a broader music listening experience with a wider range of sounds and bands.

 

 

  1. Paul Lamere, develops a system where instead of trying to showcase all different types of music to a person. They figure out a wat to recommend people something they will like to listen to. Paul seems to try and enable a music listening experience that is “deeper” than Forced Exposure by focusing on music the listener already enjoys and finding more music like that without branching off to completely different sounds.

 

 

  1. Surprise is not the same as discover. Surprise implies finding something that we’re not comfortable with. While discover, helps us find something we want/like. To keep us engaged is a major goal for most corporations so, they approach by relies on familiarity (discovery) will keep us hooked and not accidentally scare us off. This is why for some it would be important to focus on helping a user discover something as opposed to surprising them.

Episode 6

  1. Signal is whatever sound you want to listen to. Noise is the sound around you that is blocking the signal. This is really important to understand because we switch to difference signal to point the original signal is become the noise.
  1. This relate to all of the episode that digital time and real time has a big effect with signal and noise. Digital time, is more signal due to the advancement of technology and Real time, is noise is the power of the feedback from your instrument and your amps. Digital technology helps us create our own space to block away noise with our headphones and increase our signal to our music. It compares the quality expression in our voices against the way cellphone isolate the signal of our words. Without noise around us we lose the fullness of its meaning. This also relate to the internet to the way it alternates the way that signal and noise by strip recorded sounds and removing that unwanted noise with all the artist and song producer. It also connects with the how the isolated signal is being manipulated by the online line cooperation or also it is being used to make us in to signal for to make business money.

 

Discussion 7

Episode 5

  1. Music is accepted by one side and rejected by the other. But the marginalized, the rejected, the repressed, most of the time will evolve into new forms or die out completely. Whether being accepted or rejected, I think, is a symbol of benefit. After being rejected, art or music will have different innovations, the social system will be adjusted after being rejected by people, and rights will evolve into a new system after being marginalized. Most of the time, people only focus on what is accepted and popular, but what is ignored is not necessarily bad, but just appreciated from a different Angle.

 

  1. Both are the drawbacks of the digital age. No one knows what the purpose of the operation is behind them, but whether the so-called forced exposure is just another propaganda tool to attract people’s attention and show some marginalized or the next trend in this way. What people see may be superficial phenomena, but I think what the purpose of forced exposure is, there will be no loss, because it will evolve into another form or result, and the beneficiary will always be the business.

 

  1. Surprise satisfies people’s curiosity and thirst for knowledge, like a conclusion. However, in the process of discovery, the development company provides different music enjoyment to the audience through discovery and development. On the side, it is the developer who satisfies the audience’s taste. However, they are related. 

 

Episode 6

  1. Noise and signal are often confused by people, noise depends on people’s choice, everyone’s understanding, and acceptance of noise is different. A signal is a cue by which people get some information. Both are important because I think all sounds can be noise, all sounds come from noise. People decide whether it’s noise, and decisions and signals give them information that they want.

 

  1. Noise and signals are interrelated because all sound comes from noise, and all signals can be considered noise. Krukowski likes to remind people not to think noise is noise subjectively. People need to understand the message that noise conveys. Sometimes people can get from noise to unexpected results.

 

  1. The way of listening is constantly changing, which will also change people’s lives. With the continuous progress and development of digital technology, people become more and more detached from real life. Listening becomes a weapon and tool for people to gain benefits. Away from noise, away from the innovation of digital music, the human ear has also become a victim of sound, and digital progress is depriving the ear of the right to hear. It seems that people are controlling the progress of digitalization, but in fact, digitalization is gradually controlling people.

 

Discussion Questions #7

Episode 5

  1.  what Krukowski means in the beginning of the episode where he says “the marginal-the rejected-the repressed-is whatever the powerful have decided is of no use at the moment”   it means that power is being consoled how people want to hear digital information and sound but they are thinking of making sure that the digital still stays with us. The other point that he explains art is not being used the right way  and it is getting forgotten in the power of people.  what krukowski means by the questions is that he wants to find why power its not being used in a proper way of hearing. 
  2. there different because the way the are being used as a good way for digital followers can listen to and that can be something positive.
  3. The distinction between being surprised by music and discovering music that krukowski explains is that being surprised is unexpected in other words didn’t know what they were going to hear and discovering music is when people are interested in a particular sound or music which integers someone to like it.

Episode 6

  1.  according to krukowski noise is the way you hear a sound and how it is being heard. A signal is the way the sound is being heard if its in many different ways that people grab information. These are important because it helps everyone know where the information is being used.
  2. The central idea of noise is that it is being in the digital world can be easy to hear.
  3. this episode relates to other episodes is because the way people is forgetting the whole concept of the way we hear things it can be a radio,news ,sports,or even space but those things help us think on how listening can be very important.