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?

• The author here was talking about when he entered the record store where he finds those album and records are left for a long time and nobody is using it until they are expired. Nowadays, people prefer downloading music from the internet or upload the music apps as Spotify, Soundcloud or YouTube rather than going to the music store wasting time picking up CD’s. But music records store is 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. What’s more, they can advise you if you’re struggling in finding a specific song or a type of song.

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

• Forced exposure started as a scene in the 80s. They listened to all the music they could get their hands on and told the rest of us what they thought was worth hunting down and back before the Internet, it really was a hunt. You had to write a letter with the self-address stamped on the envelope. You are taking for months or even years just to track someone down. Paul Lamere’s ultimate goal is the magic music player that automatically knows what you want to listen to. Instead of having to scroll through millions of songs to figure out what you want to play, you just hit the play button and it plays the right song for you. Around 2005, the way people thought about music recommendation was very similar to the way they thought about movie recommendations, if you liked Jurassic Park, you might like The Matrix. It turns out when you do that with music recommendation, you get assertive of funny problems. First you get that real popularity by music releases, two singers released album in the same week. People would listen to them as they are released at the same week although they are different types of music. People would get recommendation if you like this singer or the other one which is a poor recommendation. Those were a real struggle that people faced before Paul Lamere invented the magic play button

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?

• Suspired is not the same as discovered. Surprise in not really a helpful thing. He used a good example saying, “Does google want to surprise us when we use it to search for something?” “Does Facebook wang to surprise us when we are looking for our friends? They want us to find what we are already comfortable with.” Google give us the right answers. Facebook connects us to the people we already know. Same as music recommendation services, wants to give us the music we would like. On the other hand, discovering means that you enter another world. It may be confusing at first, even overwhelming. Spotify provides music without your participation. The algorithm will know what you want. All of the apps or websites’ data are collected about you and are trying to shape the world of information that you find inside their programs. You find the answers you want to the question you wanted to ask. You find the opinions of those who already agree with yours. You find the news that reinforces the opinions and the others too.

Episode 6

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

• “Noise is the signal that you’re not interested in” says Alicia Quinel of Harvard Medical School. To doctor Alicia, signal is whatever sound we are trying to pay attention to. A good example was mentioned, if you’re in a crowded restaurant with your partner who’s trying to say something across the table that you’re trying to hear, that’s a signal and everything else in the restaurant is noise. On the other hand, if somebody on the other table says something that has interest to you, as your ears drop, that voice becomes the signal and whatever is being said at your table is now the noise. We are very skilled at shifting our attention from signal to signal focusing and refocusing on different sounds in the environment. All of this are considered to be noise until we decided to focus on what’s trying to be said, which is considered to be signal.

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

• Making any of signal or noise is an example of noise which result in the production of different sounds. Noise is described as any unwanted sound or a sound which is added to the original signal that is judged as loud voice and disruptive to hear where it begs for your attention to get the information. The difference between sound and noise depends upon the listener and the circumstances. If somebody got a music without any physical instrument, it would sound good, but if this person started combining too many music together it would be annoying. it can be hazardous to a person’s hearing.

3. How does this episode relate to other episodes? 

• This episode gives us the best invention ever which is the magic music play button. This button is used to play the song you need without even trying to search for it and waste a lot of time. What’s more, noise has been reduced in the present time. For example, for now anybody who doesn’t like a conversation or something can put on the headphones and listen to whatever they are excited in and ignore the outer environment and distractions.

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 is referring to the items in the world that have fallen out of fashion. The items that society has decided are not popular anymore. Music with time can become outdated and no longer relevant. He refers to power as the people or corporations, or even programs that make the decisions on what should be bought or played or listened to.

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

Jimmy from Forced Exposure listens to every single song in his portfolio. It has been hand chosen by him. He has decided himself what he considers great music and he has narrowed down hundreds of thousands of songs to around 50,000. Paul Lamere, on the other hand, is a computer programmer. He creates algorithms that can choose from many millions of songs and predict what songs you will like based on your personal tastes. It chooses things that can be similar to things that you have already heard before. 

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?

Krukowski explains that being surprised by music is different from discovering music. The large digital corporations try to steer you towards finding the things you are already familiar with. They use complex programs that can predict what you want based on previous experiences. The digital corporations use the data they have on you to give you what you’re already comfortable with. This prevents you finding new experiences. Krukowski finds that being surprised by something allows one to find new experiences that the large digital corporations would prevent you from finding because their algorithms don’t see you with similar wans. This digital prediction is fine if you only want to experience what you already know, but Krokowski believes there is true value in being surprised by these new experiences.

Episode 6

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

Krukowski describes signals as the sounds you are trying to listen 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. These distinctions are important in music because digital music allows producers to boost the volume of the signals and reduce the volume of noise. This has allowed modern music to increase the volume of the recordings 10 fold.

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

Krukowski feels that noise is very important. That there is something lost when you remove the noise and only keep the signal. He explains there is a richness to noise that allows our brain to choose its signals. He shows that if we cut out noise completely and try to layer signal with other signals, it just becomes competing signals. While if you layer signals with the noise still in the background it can create brand new sounds. When there is noise in the background the audio engineer gets to choose what to highlight as signal and what to leave in back. It allows the engineer to weave sound textures together to create a more complex sound. 

How does this episode relate to other episodes? 

Krukowski uses noise to tie all of the episodes together. He uses digital recording’s ability to eliminate noise to represent each episode separately. The elasticity of time in analog recording is similar to the noise in the background. In public when wearing headphones or earpods, we eliminate the noise around us and only hear the signals being fed to us through our headphones. Cell phones eliminate the noise and in the process eliminates some of the feeling or music in our voices. Digital downloading strip away things that go into making music and thus striped it of its noise. Krukowski then uses us as analogous to signals stripped of noise by the large digital corporations that feed us only what they want us to hear. He believes noise and signals represent the shift of humanity from analog to digital, and how this shift has led to a disconnect from each other.

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

The author says when he enters the record store, he finds that those albums and records are preserved for long time. And they seem to be outdated. Nowadays, people prefer to download music from Internet rather than go to record stores and pick CDs. But it doesn’t mean that those albums or songs are useless for our society. They provide a new view of art for us. In addition, in some record stores, when you pick your favorite albums, you can talk to anyone in the stores. They are interesting and conversable. You can get lots of information from them.

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

In this podcast, according to him, the composition of music is culture and our society. For music platform like Spotify, what they need to do is focus on technology and data. They need to develop their machines, pay attention to listeners’ comments and follow the trend.

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?

Being “surprised” by music is that you have never heard that before. It is totally new for you which may draw your curiosity. But “discovering” is the opposite side of it which means you know clearly about what you are looking for. You listen or search it with definite purpose. Like you want to find the answer on Google. The answer will not surprise you. With the development of technology, the music platform can use data base to analyze and predict our interests and tastes in music, so it is harder for us to be surprised by music.

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

According to Krukowski, signal is significant sound we can hear and something what we are trying to pay attention to. Except for signal, the rest of the sound is noise. What signal and what is noise all depend on your brains. But in musical studio, the clarify of signal and noise is determined by musicians. Their arrangement of it will maximize your enjoyment of music.

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

The signal in music is something that the producers want listeners to hear. So, they try to maximize the volume or influence of it. Meanwhile, they use technology to remove the noise. However, we cannot remove it, what we can do is to reduce it. Noise is inevitable.

6.How does this episode relate to other episodes?

The essence of music or sound is two things—–signal and noise. All the effort we put is to get the signal and reduce the noise.

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.