Ways of Hearing

Discussion questions for episodes 5 & 6

Episode 5

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?

When Krukowski visited the record store, he discovered that there is some music that are preserve for longtime and are not used. He thinks that kind of songs are at the present not needed by the society. But these rejected music could be a form of way to propose different view related to the art, the society and to the power itself. Nowadays, we see that online research and business for music such as amazon or others has contributed to increase our lack of interest for record store. In the episode, Krukowski said that he found a lot of information by visiting the record store. For example, workers provide information about years, they can even advise about some useful online research for music. Also, we can understand that music in the record store are material, physic that can attract our attention more than the online immaterial music.

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

According to Paul Lamere, we can recommend the composition of any music by knowing the culture, the acoustic and the social data. For him, it is important to focus on the digital technology and pay attention to people’ comment in the internet. In the record store, specialist in music are sometimes limited about the information they need.

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?

By using the computer algorithm, engineers try to understand what we are interested in. They are not pushing our curiosity to something that we don’t like but they work on to help us to find what we are looking for. That mean thy don’t want to surprise their customer about new music or different type of music but they assist clients to discover the genre of music the client is searching. it is important because it can save time and energy to satisfy our desire of that kind of music.

Episode 6

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

According to Krukowski, the noise is something we can hear but don’t understand the meaning and the signal is a form of tone that we realize its signification. Therefore, by using the digital analogue we can bust the signal without the noise. We can make the music louder or not; the digital technology has changed our world.

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

We see in this episode; many music producers try to minimize the impact of the noise in music. The signal is one of the significant aspects of the song, the noise is that son we can perceive but don’t understand the meaning while the signal is that information we perceive, we are able to comprehend. In the episode, Krukowski says that in some cases, noise is inevitable, it gives the meaning of the son.

How does this episode relate to other episodes? 

This episode gives us one of the most important point in the music, in the real time it was not easy to control the noise and the signal. In the machine time, we come to approach to reduce the noise and focus on the signal. For example, in the public space we can use headphone to enjoy the signal of our song and reduce the noise we are hearing around. Also, we see that the proximity effect is significant for the signal and with cellphone, we lose the feeling of the signal.