Every year at The University of South Wales we ask our students to engage in a group project which is entrepreneurial in nature – that focuses on either an ‘Arts’ or ‘Business’ philosophy. Here are a few examples
This post is really aimed at current 3rd years, to post some examples of their creative work via the ‘comments’ tab, so fellow students can see what they do!
Post Away!
A recent BBC report indicated how Boris Johnson has set up a task force to work out how smaller venues can be protected in London. Having commissioned the Music Venue Trust to write a report, I am looking forward to the findings – and will be interested to see if they reflect work I have been involved with in the past. Although the BBC article does discuss the reason why small venues are so important, it does not mention any previous work that has dealt with issues such as this. Firstly, the Welsh Music Foundation were doing some great work in this area before their funding was withdrawn. In fact I produced a report for them several years ago which considered many of the Welsh related issues – although I suspect they will resonate to some extent with the situation in London today. Off the back of the report, the Institute of Welsh Affairs, describing grass roots music as ‘a neglected Welsh cultural sector‘ ran a one day event which considered some of the many issues local venues face – but here we are four years later – still dealing with similar concerns. The ‘Johnson Report’ should also examine the archive at the Live Music Exchange. I actually presented some of my research at one of their excellent academic/industry conferences up in Leeds A few years ago – copied below.
Not long after this, the Higher Education Academy commissioned me to write a report looking at the ways that higher education can feed into this problem in terms of jobs training – although thinking about it retrospectively – much of the narrative tends to focus on training students for larger venues – as opposed to grassroots. I suppose as a nation we need to ask ourselves why we are prepared to pay such large sums of money to see established acts – but a reluctant to pay a fiver to see an up and coming band in a local venue. Although there are some fantastic venues who put profit margins on the line in order to nurture live music – only a couple of months ago I was asked if I would play some jazz guitar in a local venue – ‘for the experience’. I am in my 50s now, and although I am not necessarily needing to play music live for money anymore – I am certainly not doing it for the experience. As I stated in a previous post – how would the venue have responded if I had asked them to knock up a pizza for the experience! I know what the response would be. I may be romanticising my teenage years – but I seem to remember a time when local grassroots music was valued – where both audiences and venue owners were prepared to pay for local music. My question is – how long will it be before as a culture we get back to this. Indeed – will we ever?
Student accommodation now takes up 95% of student loans according to a recent article in The Guardian (much more in London). In an environment where parents/guardians are having to meet the rest of the cost – something has to be done if higher education is available to everyone – regardless of family income. The article discusses strike action as a way forward – but this will only negatively impact the education of the students in my view. Is it time for local councils and national government to intervene – to stop the price increases? Or – will there be a greater tendency for students to simply stay at home while studying – is student accommodation becoming a luxury? Another Guardian article reports on the rapid increase in student rents over the last few years – although the demand for accommodation is not slowing down. Are we simply facing a time when the majority of students are going to have to work when studying for their degree = or will the student loan simply increase in line with the rising rents? With the maintenance grant being a thing of the past from next year – it may have to!
There have been a number of reports in the national press today discussing parents being prosecuted for taking their children on holiday outside of the official school holidays. As this report in the Guardian shows – if you are given and fine and don’t pay it – you could end up in prison. So – what are the answers? Legislating against holiday firms upping their rates during ‘peak times’, varying school holiday times between schools or what about asking the children to write a report of their time away? See Can parents take their children on holiday during school terms – Q&A | Education | The Guardian.
I never thought I would hear of a musical instrument such as the bassoon becoming extinct. So – if anyone is thinking of taking up a instrument – here is your answer. Could the bassoon be the next ‘hip’ instrument – maybe someone could do for it what Nigel Kennedy done for ‘classical music’ and the violin all those hears ago – by bringing it into the public eye?
via The bassoon is facing extinction – News – Music – The Independent.
Early last Spotify spent a reported $100 million to acquire The Echo Nest, the music data company started by Brian Whitman. In an attempt to reposition themselves in the wake of real competition from Apple Music, Spotify are now attempting to find new ways of positioning themselves within the ‘machine listening‘ market. So – we now have Fresh Finds as part of the Spotify Package. Fresh Finds aims to identify unknown artists that are generating interest amongst industry movers and shakers – although at the moment the general public won’t know about them – a sort of a machine code A&R service !
“Fresh Finds is a distillation of the hippest users on Spotify,” says Whitman, “These are the artists that are going to break out soon because they’re being listened to by these people.”
So this type of service is not aiming to generate music you already like – but what you may like!
Spotify also recently started their ‘Discover Weekly’ service – which is a more personalised service = essentially giving you music that it calculates you will like.
I a currently a month into a three month Apple Music trial – and have decided to compare both services carefully before deciding why way to go. I was originally thinking of going down the Apple Music route – but I am now going to make my mind up after careful comparison.
So – i am going to spend the next couple of days checking out both Fresh Finds and Discover Weekly, before comparing to Apple Music. I would be interested in anyones views – either here of via Facebook etc.
One closing point about machine generated content – which as been around for a long time now. Is there not a danger that we are been told what to like by the new superpowers of music listening? Are we not in danger of machines actually subliminally telling us what we like – this could be an excellent tool that I would imagine record companies would be happy to pay for.
A recent article in the Guardian reports that the song Happy Birthday has ran out of copyright without the publishers realising! This means that Warner Chapel have some compensation to pay! Copyright expires anyway in the EU – meaning we can expect to hear the music being used much more in the movies we watch 🙂 See the link below
World’s most popular song is not under copyright, according to lawsuit | Music | The Guardian.
Berklee College of Music started its online program in 2002 when the internet was still figuring itself out. This was pre YouTube or Facebook. Now, over 10,000 students from 140 countries each year enroll in Berklee Online certificate programs including 12 week courses like Pro Tools, Music Video Editing, Commercial Songwriting, Orchestration, Music Theory, Guitar, Afro-Cuban Drums, Music Production, 3D Design, Ear Training For Mixing Engineers, Arranging: Horn Writing, Artist Management, Music Licensing, Music Marketing and over 100 others. Click here for the rest of the post
My question is this. If Berklee are spending $100,000 per online course – where does this leave the institutions in the UK – who simply don’t invest this type of money into online provision? This type of programme is potentially opening up high quality music education to the world – and I can see the UK getting left behind unless similar investment is made.
Maybe its time we attempted to catch up?
I was thinking this week about Sting’s creative process when writing both Nothing Like The Sun and The Soul Cages. It is well documented how Nothing Like the Sun was written during a time when Sting’s mother died from cancer, while The Soul Cages is dedicated to the memory of his father – who also suffered and died from the disease in same year – 1987. This prompted me to consider other artists that have undergone a similar process to see if there any any unifying characterisics. After asking some popular music colleagues for recommendations – here are a few songs/albums that cover this territory.
Singles
Albums
Other songs mentioned include Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’ and ‘Shine on You, Crazy Diamond’, James Taylor’s ‘Fire and Rain’, Sinead O’Connor’s ‘I Am Stretched on Your Grave’, in addition to the many songs about the death of Hank Williams and all the gospel and country songs about the death of JFK (for example ‘Sunny’ by Bobby Hebb), the soul and gospel songs about the death of Martin Luther King (For example ‘Happy Birthday’ by Stevie Wonder), and the whole genre of “coffin songs” related to teenage car driving/biking casualties, between the end of the 1950s and the mid-1960s (for example ‘Teen Angel’, ‘Tell Laura I Love Her’, ‘Leader of the Pack’). There were also a few songs directly related to the subject of aids – including ‘Halloween Parade’ by Lou Reed, Madonna’s ‘In This Life’ and of course Elton John’s rewrite of ‘Candle In The Wind’ – which is related to Princess Diana – although it was proposed that the original was missing emotive grief.
Indeed this brings me back to to original impetus for the post – Sting’s music. IASPM colleagues also informed me of a number of instances of song’s that were not intended to be associated with grief – but ended up being so. The first example I can think of with Sting is the song ‘Fragile’ – which of course is not inextricably linked to the 9/11 Twin Towers disaster – although this was not its original intension.
Although I am only focusing on the ‘English Language’ songs – there is a whole other area of non EL songs, which I have not covered in this post – so I appologise for not having the time to cover this. I would be interested in any additional thoughts anyone has regarding the creative process of songwriting and grief. How does it impact the creative process? Are there any unifying traits anyone has noticed?
To finish, here are a couple of interesting web posts – one in The Guardian here, and another on ‘disaster songs here.
Professor Paul Carr Music Consultancy 