Natural Soundstage

Warning–total hack, I’m just posting because it’s kind of a delightful hack.

Run 2 music players at once–the MusicIP Mixer for music, and some lesser platform in the background.

In your secondary player, put a nature soundtrack behind the music. They’ve been floating around for years in CD form–thunderstorms, rainshowers, surf, and so on. (Handy tip for eMusic subscribers…when you just have 1 download left in your monthly allotment, troll for nature soundtracks, which tend to run nearly an hour!)

The acoustic effect is–at least to me–quite startling. It changes the music. I -think- we’re probably wired to expect natural sound-cues, and the spatial depth (this bird is close, that bird is further away) that come built-in to that soundstage. Recording studios are quite artificial and flat in that sense.

Play with the sound levels, try different backgrounds. YMMV. Cheers

Popkomm 06, Berlin

Popkomm in Berlin

First non-US music/technology conf for me. Much to mull there.

• “Down with ‘world music'”. The strangeness of this genre-label was even more evident against the backdrop of national-scale music export offices. I’d say fully @40% of the hall space was devoted to the booths of many nations. Is that an artifact of the hits business, or billboard on the long tail highway?
• Blah blah the universal language. On the one hand, seeing music and groups from all over Europe was very cool. However. If you asked a visitor from Mars (or, say, California) which music vid came from which country, I doubt that they’d guess. Still a great deal of MTV-WANNAB looks and sounds. Rock & Roll, another pervasive cultural export.
• Major label booths. Big. EMPTY. This may sound snarky, but a review of the security videotapes would vet my point quantitatively. Universal had a huge plywood-frame globe (pic below)…and the Munich-region just-some-chairs booth had probably 5X the traffic.

• Rewrite. There was a strange undercurrent to conversations–sort of “we know this whole digital thing is happening AND we’re going to be part of it BUT does anyone have the slightest clue what the rules are?”
• Apple. Man…single topic of conversation, as big as the d*** banner. Every digital distrib company flogged their clout with iTunes. Device guys–oh, wait, there weren’t any there…hmmm. Well, when you -DO- meet a device guy, sooner or later he talks about Apple. Musicians didn’t seem to have a love or hate thing, it’s just a fact with them. (And, note, never once did anyone equate Apple to the US.)
• Music is a MAJOR export. One of the first speakers–Feargal Sharkey, former rock star turned gov’t expert, rattled off stats about the value of music and creativity in the UK economy. Brazil had a booth that was worthy of CES–and music is a huge export. Finland–big booth. Sweden–big booth. Lithuania–love ’em, not a big booth but they had a booth! I even talked to the hip young guy from Hungary–yep, they had a booth.

So if you want a neat punch-line conclusion, it’s this. The globalization of music is just at its bare beginnings–but there are some entrepeneurial nations that recognize the opportunity. The govt-support-for-the-arts roots of some of the EU countries may have an unexpected payoff as this moves forward.

Oh, yeah, and “world music” really is a stupid label. As opposed to what…Martian drum corps tunes? Sheesh!