Question one is about the different ways of listening to music. This is a reading debate essay of the three. Whilst you should make arguments, it is necessary that you quote from readings and back them up because you can’t get enough simply from looking at particular uses of music in the contemporary scene. They should be there to reinforce and illustrate your marshalling of other peoples’ arguments. It doesn’t mean that you’ve got no voice. Your voice in this type of essay first of all is from the way that you use the arguments, certainly which bits you tend to cite or lean on from the texts and also what points you are trying to make by using them. We are looking for a reasonable depth of reading on it and looking for an academic quality of balanced argument. I don’t think when you have done the reading that it is actually viable or valid to come up with a very strong argument down one side of this. There are strong cases, as one would expect really for a mix of these three factors.
I would tend to adopt a set approach to each of the three propositions. In what way can you demonstrate that the music itself affects how listeners listen to it without any knowledge of the artists or anything? I think it is certainly possible to argue that that is only a hypothetical premise anyway because if for example anyone puts on Method Man, people laugh and are clearly going to respond in the contextual way – it is not just music with different musical values, it carries cultural coding and values. Now whether you call that the music itself or whether you call that part of its cultural trappings is down to your line of argument....
pages: 12 (words: 3057)
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added: 04/29/2011
Music censorship has been a major problem plaguing America for over fifty years. In 1957, Elvis Pressley was only allowed to be filmed from the waist up on the Ed Sullivan show (Nuzum 1). Plenty of controversy has taken places between then and now, but more recently it has become much more prominent in the media, and people and organizations are beginning to actually take a stand. For example, Island Records (owned by Disney) dropped the Insane Clown Posse just after their release of The Great Milenko and MTV actually refused to play Madonna's video for Justify My Love because it was considered too sexually explicit (Nuzum 1). Music content is just one of the many issues that puts the First Amendment of our Constitution to work. On one hand people believe that lyrics should be censored so that people can be protected. And on the other hand, people believe that the First Amendment protects everyone's rights to free speech. Basically, it is a matter of whether lyrical censorship be accepted. Many people say yes, that there should be censorship because lyrics from songs are telling our youth it is acceptable to participate in illegal actions such as murder, rape or drugs. These people believe that the lyrics actually drive people to become social deviants. In one case, the parents of John McCullom sued Ozzy Osbourne, because his song "Suicide Solution", "aided, advised and encouraged" McCullom's suicide (Nuzum 1). C. Delores Tucker, chair of National Political Congress of Black Women, said, "No one and no industry should be allowed to continue the social and psychological poisoning of the young minds of this nation that occurs with the music industry" (91). This belief of musical content being "poison" is prominent all over America. During the 1970's, record burning was a popular way to speak...
pages: 4 (words: 1009)
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added: 11/14/2011
Is music an art form? When answering this question take into consideration Bach, Vivaldi and Bocelli, all artists who were allowed to express themselves without being censored. Censoring today's artists and their music hurts them in many ways; it limits their expression and also hurts their record sales. There are many parental and religious groups who fell that censoring music is necessary to protect today's youth. The music displays foul language and expresses pro views on sex, drugs and gangs. People as a way to present the way they feel or to relay a message to large amounts of people have always used music. In this day and age it is harder for musicians to propagate their messages to the masses because once it is played on the radio a "dead noise" is dubbed over any offensive or suggestive words. In doing this, the listener is misguided as to what they are listening to, and in some cases prompts them to find out what was really said. In any instant the censorship is not stopping the listener from uncovering the phrase that has been covered. Parents are less likely to buy their children a CD that has a warning sticker on the front stating that the CD has explicit content. This would clearly hurt record sales and would discourage the artist from making the same type of music. Selling records in very important in the music business and if artist's records do not sell because of the content then is it really the artist's fault? Or should the parents have a more proactive role in helping their children make the right decisions? I fell that a parent should not limit their child to things like listening to music instead they should help their child in understanding the music and letting the child...
pages: 2 (words: 444)
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added: 12/07/2011
Popular music today has been greatly enhanced by modern technology and is much different from say the music fifty years ago. From my own experience I have discovered that pop music is highly popular among young teenagers or old children whereas I have found that punk rock or heavy metal is usually the older teenagers choice. But of coarse there are exceptions to my beliefs. When we talk about charts we must understand that now-days there are an infinite number of charts around and we must not get one chart mixed up with another, but to add to the confusion also each chart could be based on a different theme like for example one chart could be based on how many albums have been sold while another on how many votes. The point I'm trying to express is that not all charts can be trusted because they could be based on a completely biased category like for example the most colourful hair or the most singers. As well as this though some charts can not be entirely full-proof for example on a voting based chart you might have to vote on a website but this is a problem for people without a computer meaning not one hundred percent of the population vote. Personally I have no particular individual favourite band, I like a range of bands but I only like two styles of music, which are: punk rock and heavy metal. From the bands I like each one usually produces one or two songs that predominantly stand out to me. Some examples would be "Crawling" by Linkin Park, "Adam's Song" by Blink 182 and "The Kids Aren't All right" by Offspring. These songs were so excellent in my opinion that I utilised the Internet in order to download each of them. The...
pages: 4 (words: 1013)
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added: 07/26/2011
Classical music is known as a serious kind of music whereas Contemporary music is known as “popular”, “folk”, or “light” kind of music. Classical music is music, which ‘must be written down, or at least performable away from its original composer.’ and must also ‘maintain its ability to communicate and entertain listeners over decades, and even centuries.’ (David Hurwitz, 2003, Internet resource) Comparing it with Contemporary music, it is found that Contemporary music is often recorded or written down vaguely as long as the major pattern can be recognized. Contemporary music is often played by other musicians where improvisation or rubato occurred most of the time, but Classical music are never improvised. According to Jan Vièar, classical music is also known as: ‘serious music, independent music, composed (as opposed to improvised) music.’ (Prague: Academia, 1981, Music and its terminological system)
These are the similarities of the two kinds of music. First of all, similar instruments which can be used for both kinds of music are piano, harpsichord, wood wind, brass, string, guitar, vocal and orchestral. It is found that a composer usually composed his or her masterpiece after experiencing certain memorable moment. There was also music that was composed with dedications to their love ones. I grouped these as personal goals as their objectives. Both Classical and Contemporary music are sometimes composed with objective of personal goals.
I found great difference than similarities between Classical and Contemporary music. Classical music is originated somewhere since 1600 and it has gone through a total of 5 periods: The Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Contemporary periods whereas earliest records of Contemporary music were found after the existence of Classical music. (Author unknown, Internet article) It is clearly understood that Classical music is categorized by its period. It can also be categorized by the composer’s name...
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added: 09/22/2011
Dance, poetry, and music seem inseparably associated in the early history of music in ancient Greece. The Greeks considered music a very important aspect of their culture having mathematical and cosmic significance. Music was described as an art exerting great power over human beings, meaning that the sound and influence of music often controlled and assisted in forming the human soul. There were many great philosophers of the time whom believed this theory to be true especially Plato. Plato thought music along with gymnastics should be a central aspect of education of the rulers. Plato was one who heavily believes that music is a potent force in forming the soul and impacts the character as well as the virtue of all humans. This theory forces one to think of the impact of modern music on people today, in a society where there is constant controversy surrounding certain popular music genres such as rap and heavy metal. Music lyrics have undergone dramatic changes since the introduction of rock and rap music more than 50 decades ago. This issue of interest raises several questions that I will address and discuss, pertaining particularly to rap lyrics and videos.
One of the most important questions surrounding this topic is what images and values or understandings about ourselves as humans can be derived from this redesigned form of music and what can be done to prevent this foreseen problem. Well, most teenagers and even myself tend to interpret their favorite songs as being about love, friendship, growing up, life’s struggles, having fun, cars, religion, and other topics that relate to life and the life they wished they had. The lyrics of these songs along with the videos portray an ideal life for any young adult. Most rap videos include beautiful males and females living in luxury,...
pages: 4 (words: 930)
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added: 09/24/2011
In an age of error the most influential thing in a child and or a teenagers life is music. Whether it be Reggae, Hip Hop, Gangster Rap, R&B, Oldies Rock, Latin, or Heavy Metal it still has a way to overpower a persons mind no matter how old they are. Right now pretty much everybody that I talk to when I am on the Internet like Rap. I don't understand how people could listen to non-stop cursing and fast-paced lyrics. Even though my opinion of the music isn't so great the singers have to get some credit for being able to recite poetry in such a manner. I prefer the heavier stuff like Slipknot, KoRn, or Kittie because I enjoy talented people who play their own instruments, and personally I like very loud music. Reggae is well known because of one group and that group is Bob Marley and The Wailers. I happen to like them because they pretty much set the standards for a band that are known to people as Sublime. They are sort of a rock "n" roll/reggae band with hit songs like "What I Got" and "Santeria". My friends and I sometimes refer to Bob Marley as the "God" of music. Another popular style of music is the Pop music category. I think it features a bunch of no talent boy groups like N'Sync* and the Backstreet Boys. It is artists like this who are ruining our countries youth. These bands are corrupting the minds of our teen and pre-teen girls, and I don't believe its right that they are doing this because very rarely do girls like the same music as my friends and I. Finally we get to the music that gets more interesting the heavy metal/rock music. I happen to like this style of music...
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added: 08/22/2011
INTRODUCTION Nietzsche once said, "Without music life would be a mistake." With this eloquent statement, he expresses the magnitude of what lies at the core of every human being and that is simply our inherent love for music. It is a human necessity that strikes a chord (no pun intended) with all of us and always seems to mark every emotion, experience, event, and time period. Music has no boundaries with its interpretations, evolutions and expressions being limitless. Though little could Nietzsche have ever imagined, a world-wide communication network allowing for the consumption of downloadable music from cyber networks by internet explorers on personal computers. In this paper, I will briefly explore the world of music swapping over the internet and how this new phenomenon has sparked one of the largest quandaries of legal episodes to ever hit the modern era. Millions of people are illegally downloading copyrighted songs from the Internet causing the music industry to be caught in a downward spiral as it continues to lose exponential amounts of revenue every year. There is no doubt that this is piracy from a legal standpoint, but who wants to see twelve-year old girls and young college students being dragged into courts because they downloaded Britney Spears singing "Oops! I Did It Again?" No one does. But this paper does not answer the ethical issue of whether or not people have the right to download music from the internet instead of paying $19.95 for a CD. Instead, it analyzes how the music industry, under the umbrella of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), has been legally enabled to do so because of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998. This paper is separated into five different segments that provide: A) a brief background on and current status of internet music swapping;...
pages: 17 (words: 4519)
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added: 08/07/2011
Is downloading music stealing from the music industry? The music industry has prospered for many years in the past with few copyright problems. However, with the rise of the Internet in the late 1990s, the music industry began to face a new foe like no other. With the combination of software such as Napster and the MP3 technology, users can now download songs with near CD quality at no cost. With all this new computer technology(Internet, MP3, Napster), moral issues have been subject to debate like never before. Is downloading free music stealing from the music industry? From the way I see it, the music industry has brought this upon themselves due to overpriced CD's. A CD costs on average 12 dollars. The CD's usually have one or two good songs that are worth listening to. For over twenty years, the industry has not changed their marketing methods. If a person were given a choice, either to buy a 12-dollar CD for one song or download that same song free of charge, this person would most likely choose the latter. This essay will go into depth on the moral aspect of this issue. For example, whether or not it is right to download music for free while artists lose money. Artists after all, have spent a lot of time and effort into producing a CD Indeed, this technology hurts the artists and those involved in the music industry the most. Lawsuits have recently gone on and off, in my opinion, without purpose. The reason being that there are many ways to download music from the Internet and many file swapping softwares being created at the same time. Determining whether or not file sharing is stealing from the music industry will require moral issues to be discussed in depth....
pages: 2 (words: 298)
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added: 01/06/2012
Have you paused lately to give thanks to the Recording Industry Association of America? We certainly have not. Extensive research has been undertaken to reveal how truly evil the RIAA is.
e·vil ( v l) That which causes harm, deceit, or destruction
The RIAA, we have resolved, has significantly shown instances of each of these tiers of evil.
In early September, The RIAA began to initiate a seemingly unending sequence of lawsuits to hold online music sharers accountable for the file-sharing which according to MPAA president Jack Valente is no different than "those who slip a CD under their shirt at a local Tower records." The accused were issued informational subpoenas obtained from users' Internet Service Providers. The cornerstone reasoning is said to be that musicians are losing money due to the increasing trend in file-sharing.
First of all, Artists hardly profit from their CD sales in the first place. The RIAA owns exclusive rights to most of their musicians' music. One of the only bands to speak out against file sharing, Metallica, coincidentally is one of the few bands successful enough to own their own music. Almost all artists have little or no say in what happens to their music. Thanks to an RIAA lobbied adaption to copyright laws, the old copyright restriction of seven years plus a seven year extension has been pushed to the author's life plus seventy-five years. Furthermore none of the money obtained in the currently ensuing lawsuits is arranged to go to the musicians whom the RIAA claims to defend. This proves that lawsuits against file-sharers are not for the benefit of musicians.
Not only does the RIAA have ridiculous reasoning behind their lawsuits, the lawsuits themselves are carried out in an unconstitutional manner. The informational subpoenas issued by the RIAA are obtained in the following manner: The RIAA...
pages: 2 (words: 521)
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added: 07/05/2011