HIST 390

The topic of mapping music is one of the most interesting topics I feel that has been discussed in our class. As someone a history major it helps me connect my knowledge of culture and history to show how those aspects reflect upon a certain environment. I was especially interested in the page that listed the different songs of civil war, I am very big civil war historian and I love hearing songs by soldiers in history. It did not come as a surprise when listening to the different songs from different states gave a different view of the war. For instance most of the southern states, which had been apart of the CSA, sung about fighting the north and for their homes and when you hear songs from the northern states it is not shocking to hear that most of the songs are about putting down a rebellion or have a very patriotic view of the Union. This mapping of music from a historical perspective can help give a narrative how perspective both from a governmental to a social level were and that they also give a more humanistic approach to looking at people or societies from the past.

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This article about the complexity of Pandora really fascinates me. Firstly, because I have never once used Pandora once in my life, I am more accustomed to Google Play, Soundcloud, and using Youtube Red to listen to my music, that or just downloading from links I find on subreddits of bands that I follow. I always forget that since I use other forms of media to listen to my music of how big Pandora still is, the same goes for my view on Spotify, another program which I have never used. Secondly, because of how this article is describing Pandora’s algorithm. This article somewhat describes Pandora’s algorithm as out of date and one that needs improving, which I both agree and disagree. For example, which taking about the rating system is done my actual people and not an AI algorithmic system that would automatically filter songs, I agree that Pandora should stick with actual people. I say this in comparison to how YouTube as been handling its rating system. YouTube uses an AI system to rate videos, especially all the VEVO music accounts to show in a viewers recommendation bar. This system backfired a little when popularity = good for the AI system because it then flooded viewers recommendation tabs, which in turn sparked out cry from some of the viewers. By having a human rating things, taking out their own biases into the ratings, popularity doesn’t always mean that the song would be good and flooded on a front page of the app. The part of their algorithm I do agree with is the idea of having a global chart for musicians using the app to see where the majority of their fans are that way in turn the artist could pander to that audience for more revenue which Pandora could charge the artist for using the map which could generate revenue for the app (even thought the artist could probably just use another app to see where his/her majority following would be at).

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While I understand that each article is talking about copyright surrounding the “Birthday Song” and explains about how the copyright surrounding the song might be in jeopardy and how the gmu link explains what copyright is in a legal fashion neither article answers my own personal question I had when reading these two article; How do those who hold the copyright on an item or concept know how much to charge someone for using there idea or concept? Do those who hold the copyright suggest a starting price and haggle with the other person for a specific price? Is there a set legal value for certain items that hold a copyright? For example, can a song have a higher copyright than say a product placement in a movie? Does the price of the copyright depend on the popularity of the item? Can the person using the item set how much they can pay at that time to use the item in, for example a skit or movie? I have always wondered for example when I watch a movie and there is a shot of a car that clearly pans over the company of the car, which shows that the makers of the movie are sponsoring that car company, does this mean that these people get paid by that company to show off their car while at the same time have to pay the car company for showing their product in the movie? If that’s the case who actually benefits from this and do both payments cancel each other out?

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I searched Swing music for my music genre. The first earliest mention for Swing comes from around the late 1920’s. The earliest publication describing Swing was published around the 1920’s but most of the articles I used are more modern overviews of swing music. The earliest concept I could find for Swing music was an early style of big band music mixed from the 1920’s jazz. Swing would usually incorporate large dance groups following the beat and “swing” of the music. This style of music has a pulse that is would divide unequally between long and short burst. During these bursts would when dancers would mimic the movement of their bodies on how each bursts was played. For example, if short burst would happen repeatedly the dances would either move their feet or arm in short bursts of movements. The biggest  and earliest swing musician I could find was a man named Benny Goodman. Goodman won a radio show with his band and slowly gained traction as listeners turned on the radio. Goodman would also introduce a style of swing called ‘Hot Swing” which called for a call and response from the orchestral and band sections of the main band. Swing would later be an influence for later Hip Hop and Pop music as well as the more modern genre called Electro Swing. Electro Swing incorporates all the styles of classical swing while adding in styles of EDM that are sometimes used in modern clubs to give a modern feel to an older genre of music.

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Stephen Harrison article surrounding the rules of Wikipedia in relationship towards a term used during the Kavanaugh hearing is not one that is really that surprising. As someone who goes on Wikipedia a lot for information or just to dive deep into the rabbit hole of clicking on one term then another its easy to see just how strict Wikipedia when it is dealing with the storing of information. Frankly I am perfectly fine with the way to run the storing of information. Wikipedia always has had the process of information go through a variable number of steps to make sure that the information being put into its system as been crossed referenced with multiple people either administrators or others who would have knowledge of the information being put it. By having information being processed this way it allows for the spreading of false information limited among the site so that proper info may be given to the visitors of the site. Also, Wikipedia as the article states clings to the terms that have been used for a longer time such as the given example of the word “tinder”, that the first information relating to the word would be the literal definition and its other definition in relation to the dating app. In this way Wikipedia stays true to what the website states itself to be, an encyclopedia. For example, even if you looked up the word “tinder” in a modern encyclopedia, you will find the literal definition of tinder and not the dating app. Although I fully agree with the majority of how Wikipedia deals with the information I believe they should have modern reference section with some words that people believe should refer to the current population definition, although doing this may be difficult because everyone has a different definition for certain words in modern lingo.

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As discussed in class  Miller’s book Segregating Sound talks about the commonality between the hillbillies with their country music and racial music such as the blues. Miller goes into detail of how similar themes among the two types of music and also shows the how both of these genres were viewed in their time.  The interesting thing about Miller’s book is that when describing the racial divide of genres of music in the South, Miller says that “people’s music was less defined by who there and more defined by what type of music people were able to hear”. With this idea Miller goes into great detail of different singers reputation depending on what type of music they played rather than focusing on what race the person was. For example he has a black musician playing folk style music and gained much popularity while other black musicians who played blues in the South did not become as popular. Reading this part of book amazed me cause it broke some of my preconceptions of how racial groups were divided in a cultural setting. Before I thought that only certain communities in the South, African Americans for example, could only play certain types of music because of segregation but now thanks to Miller’s book its shows that although these groups were forcibly segregated into their own communities they were allowed to share and developed another communities genre of music and work of it.

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By talking about the steel guitar and the minstrel show the word “appropriated” has come up a lot. The word “appropriated” has become a buzz word in the modern world and has become synonymous to purposely stealing. But although the definition of the word is to take without permission it doesn’t necessarily mean it is the same as the negative connotation of stealing. So as discussed the origin of the banjo comes from Africa and was later ‘appropriated’ by colonizers into a more modern day banjo. So the action of appropriation happened but in a historical context it probably wasn’t to purposefully strip this instrument from a culture and was more likely reused in a different culture because it was available and sounded good to the people appropriating it. This scenario has happened throughout a multitude of time periods and different cultures. For example, the dance Kazachok, a dance used widely in Russia, is originally from the Turkic people of the step who the Russians often traded and conversed with. The appropriation of the dance by the people of early Russia wasn’t differently not done to take the dance away from the Turkic people but became a dance among the Russians because it was a popular dance in the area since the Russian had been in contact with the Turkic people. The simple acts of appropriation  can come from simply just liking what a another culture has and is not always linked to a negative acts of stealing for the sole purpose of taking something something away from a culture to make it your own.

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It is interesting to see how the early version of the internet handled its spreading of information. To have information without some restrictions and show that this project didn’t need a system of hierarchy is very ironic when comparing it to today’s modern version of the internet. For example, ideas of net neutrality and the EU’s new laws, such as article 13, on the internet shows how the spreading or information or even access to the internet is becoming more hierarchical. It also shows how the view of the internet has changed since its first development as ARPANET. When ARPANET started it was used solely used as mass sharing outlet but as it grew this view and use of it changed. Over the years the internet was solely used to help send information from one person to another and was seen as nothing more than that. But recently with the internet expansion to almost every different part of life such as, shopping, media consumption, and communication, the view began to change. Major governmental bodies and companies start to view the internet as some sort of bad lands which there was no rules or sense of hierarchical way of sending information. With this thought comes theses new laws and arguments by governments and companies to put restrictions on what and where someone can gain information on the internet which is the complete opposite as to how this project was originally supposed to be. So,to me it is odd to see how this early version of the internet had barely used a hierarchical process to control and it worked fine with but now in the present it is becoming more hierarchical and controlling with the spreading of information.

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I will be honest the concepts of idealism and realism have never been an interest of mine nor will it probably ever be. Mainly because I’m not a philosophical person in the first place and that I find the idea that a person must be either one thing or the other to be ludicrous . Throughout the class multiple people gave their own reasoning for being either an idealist or a realist, and during the conversations I started to think whether I was a realist or an idealist since I never have thought about it before. But during my thought process I realized that I am both a realist and idealist. For example, I view the idea of peace through an realist point of view, since I think that there is no true version of peace since the idea of peace can differ from person to person. But if I looked at a peace of naturalist art I am an idealist because in naturalist art the point of it is to show things in their natural form to paint or sculpt them as such and if they are not made in such away they are not ideal in my opinion. So for the most part the concepts of realism and idealism are two sides of the same coin and I think that myself and the others can views themselves not just as one of the sides of the coin but the rather the coin itself.

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Welcome to onMason. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

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