Write down the most important, in your view, results from this survey. The whole structure of popular music is standardized, even where attempts are made to circumvent standardization.
Standardization extends from the most general features to the most specific ones. Best known is the rule that the chorus consists of thirty-two bars and that the range is limited to one octave and one note. This guarantees that regardless of what aberrations occur, the hit will lead back to the same familiar experience, and nothing fundamentally novel will be introduced.
The details themselves are standardized no less than the form, and a whole technology exists for them such as break, blue chords, dirty notes. Their standardization, however, is somewhat different from that of the framework. This contrasting character of the standardization of the whole and part provides a rough, preliminary setting for the effect upon the listener.
The primary effect on this relation between the framework and the detail is that the listener becomes prone to evince stronger reactions to the part than to the whole. His grasp of the whole does not lie in the living experience of this one piece of music he has followed. Serious music, for comparative purposes, may be thus characterized: every detail derives its musical sense from the concrete totality of the piece which, in turn, consists of the life relationship of the details and never mere enforcement of a musical scheme.
Think of a popular song or an instrumental piece currently played on a radio station of your preference. Which part of the song comes to your mind first? Why do you think you remembered this particular part? Do you think his concept of standardization of structure and detail is still relevant today and can be applied to modern popular music? In hit music, however, the structure underlying the piece is abstract, existing independent of the specific course of the music.
This is basic to the illusion that certain complex harmonies are more easily understandable in popular music than the same harmonies in serious music. No such mechanical substitution is possible in serious music. The division of labor among the composer, harmoniser, and arranger is not industrial but rather pretends industrialization in order to look more up to date, whereas it has actually adapted industrial methods for the technique of its promotion.
It would not increase the costs of production if the various composers of hit tunes did not follow certain standard patterns. Therefore, we must look for other reasons for structural standardization — very different from those which account for the standardization of motor cars and breakfast foods.
Imitation offers a lead for coming to grips with the basic reasons for it. The musical standards of popular music were originally developed by a competitive process. As one particular song scored a great success, hundreds of others sprang up imitating the successful ones.
Undoubtedly, we all can list a few examples of songs that support his findings. By pseudo-individualization we mean endowing cultural mass production with the halo of free choice or open market on the basis of standardization itself.
Standardization of song hits keeps the customers in line by doing their listening for them, as it were. The most drastic example of standardization of presumably individualized features is to be found in the so-called improvisations. He relates the consumption of popular music to work under capitalism which, on the one hand, is dull and repetitive and therefore urging people to seek escape and imagine what the world could be, but, on the other hand, is dulling and leaves little energy for real escape.
Thus people seek and find satisfaction in popular forms equally repetitive and boring to their work. Rather, I want to draw your attention to one of the seminal works on popular music that appeared in the 20th century. Before we proceed with other views, I would like you consider what you have become acquainted with so far and answer the following questions.
If yes, can you formulate these questions? Whatever the respective musical and political merits of these new departures, or the scale of their influence, they can be argued to be postmodern. They are concerned with collage, pastiche and quotation, with the mixing of styles which remain musically and historically distinct, with the random and selective pasting together of different musics and styles, with the rejection of divisions between serious and fun or pop music and with the attack on the notion of rock as a serious artistic music which merits the high cultural accolade of the respectful concert a trend identified with punk.
Consider the following questions. Can you provide any examples of recent hits that support the postmodernist understanding of popular music? Can you justify your choice? Admittedly, what Strinati offers in the excerpt above is an attempt to bring together a number of arguments considering the nature of popular music as formulated by different representatives of the postmodern theory.
Inevitably, some of the counter-arguments claiming that such an approach to contemporary popular music is one-sided and superficial have been left out. Elvis Presley arrived in the UK, on record and in photographs, like an alien. Parnes immediately identified his problem. His raw material was working class youth, who had decidedly non-technicolour names.
There got to be some glamour and charisma. Feasting with panthers, Parnes defined the plasticity of the first teenage British stars - that overt yet passive sexuality - and made it clear that pop was about one thing: self-recreation. Homosexuality was always hinted at this new relationship between manager and artist, and the shade of Oscar Wilde hovered in this new dandyism.
Most of the managers were men and most of them liked boys. A few of the managers were women and one or two of them liked girls. The collective power of young women was another central factor: the very first teenage products — cosmetics, magazines like the US Seventeen , singers like Sinatra — exclusively marketed at young women, and it was their extreme enthusiasm which, from on, was the most obvious manifestation of youth power.
And to this day, pop still requires the willing feminization of young men. Do not try and sit down and write a complete song.
Songs that have been written in such a way and reached Number One can only be done by the true song writing genius and be delivered by artists with such forceful convincing passion that the world HAS to listen.
What the Golden Rules can provide you with is a framework that you can slot the component parts into. Secondly, it must be no longer than three minutes and thirty seconds just under 3. If they are any longer Radio One daytime DJs will start fading early or talking over the end, when the chorus is finally being hammered home — the most important part of any record.
Thirdly, it must consist of an intro, a verse, a chorus, second verse, a second chorus, a breakdown section, back into a double length chorus and outro.
Fourthly, lyrics. You'll need some, but not many. Be reassured by us, all music can only be the sum or part total of what has gone before. Every Number One song ever written is only made up from bits from other songs. There is no lost chord. No chances untried. No extra notes to the scale or hidden beats to the bar. There is no point in searching for originality.
The creators of that music just press a few buttons and out comes — a million years of lust. What we are basically saying is, if you have anything in you, anything unique, what others might term as originality, it will come through whatever the component parts used in your future Number One are made up from. Creators of music who desperately search for originality usually end up with music that has none because no room for their spirit has been left to get through.
Even if you were to, you have not got the time to take the trial and error route. The simplest thing to do would be to flick through your copy of Guinness Book of Hits, find a smash hit from a previous era and do a cover of it, dressing it up in the clothes of today. Every year there is at least a couple of artists who get their debut Number One this way. Using an already proven song can give you a false sense of security when you are in the studio recording. You can end up under the illusion that the song is such a classic that whatever you do, the song itself will be able to carry it through.
You tend to lose your objectivity in the production of your version. The all important radio producers hate nothing more than a classic song covered badly.
The classic oldie, while fulfilling all the Golden Rules in pop, might have a lyrical content that may only relate to one period in pop history. Sometimes, almost the opposite can happen.
The other negative of doing a cover version is you lose all the writing credit. That means you will earn no publishing money on the record, however many it sells. There is no denying that picking the right smash from the past and recording it well will result in a sure fire success. That decision was made long before you ever thought of having a Number One.
If there is not a cover that takes your fancy the trick is to construct your song out of disguised, modified and enhanced parts of previous smashes, so that those Radio One producers, TV youth programme researchers and multiple-chain-record-store stock buyers will subliminally warm to your track and feel at ease with it.
Many bands reacted to business problems by setting up their own labels and in the beginning it was thought that this would lead to less dependence on the businessmen. Bands would have complete control over material, packaging, marketing and promotion.
Of course these inflated ideals have collapsed but even the more modest ambitions — such as the freedom not to be pushed around too much - have proved too difficult to achieve. Even the Grateful Dead, the most recent band to launch their own label, have scrapped their original plans.
Meanwhile, the hardware gets more and more complicated. From Hi-Fi to Stereo to Quadrophonic. Cylinder, disc, cassette, eight-track.
More and more live albums are being made, because the equipment to do them justice is at last on the market and more and more people listening to them — in their living rooms. Venues get bigger, roadies multiply, PA systems need articulated lorries to haul them about, ticket prices soar. The oil storage is affecting not only juggernauts but also the record industry.
Vinyl, from which records are made, is a by-product of oil, and the position in the States at the moment is so critical that record company executives admit quite openly that they are having to pass inferior product at the pressing plants simply because the quality of raw materials is deteriorating every week.
Difficulties with raw materials do not only affect the distribution end of the business. United Artists admitted last week that from now on they would only be producing the records they knew they could sell. Not only would the print order be limited but the company would be very reluctant to sign up new artists unless they were guaranteed sellers. So we can expect a fine crop of Great Soundtracks and Ray Conniff anthologies.
The smaller independent labels, who normally employ the pressing facilities owned by the giant conglomerates, will be turned away from the plants, just as the small petrol operators are being given the cold shoulder at this minute by the big Oil companies.
Budget labels will suffer and we will all sink into a morass of middle of the road, mid-Atlantic schmaltz. Music for western civilization to collapse by. Despite these problems, however, the Industry is expanding in the time honoured capitalist tradition.
In the boardrooms brandy-veined cheeks quiver with excitement at the thought of the Japanese market. It has expanded 10 times in the last two years. Beyond stretches the Third World — Music will win it all back. List the main issues discussed in each of the three articles? Text 1. Text 2. Text 3. List any of them you find particularly relevant within Bulgarian context.
Who are you more likely to support — a female or male artist group? What factors would affect your choice? How are you going to proceed with the single itself? Design your strategy that will ensure an overnight success to your debut single album. Are you ready to make compromises for the sake of success? If yes, how far would you go?
Who are you likely to approach for financial support? How are you going to proceed with the single album itself? How can you account for any differences between the two approaches employed to achieve the same goal: success in the music industry? Has this activity raised any other questions in terms of popular music production, distribution and consumption you would like to seek answers to?
This is a problem that goes hand in hand with the period issue. In emails, articles, and reports, we separate thoughts with periods, and a comma here and there. But when it comes to texting and talking , internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch explained to Lifehacker that we don't always use complete sentences —we communicate in what she calls "utterances. Usually this is done by simply starting a new text bubble.
It is clear that a message has ended regardless of punctuation, because each message is in its own bubble. Thus, the message break has become the default full-stop," says The New York Times. If you end a text with a period, whether you realize it or not, it adds meaning "because anytime you do something that's not the default, people have a tendency to interpret that as [meaningful]," says McCulloch.
If the period follows a word or phrase that is normally positive or neutral, it could make it seem aggressive or even passive-aggressive. She suggests looking at how differently these three texts might come across as an example:.
This is not to say that you cannot send texts that have multiple sentences, and yes, you can certainly use periods in between those. Megan Cahn 4 days ago. Live updates. Ad Microsoft. Full screen. Microsoft and partners may be compensated if you purchase something through recommended links in this article.
Using a period at the end of a text message comes across as rude. Texting simulates speaking out loud. Try breaking up your texts. She suggests looking at how differently these three texts might come across as an example: "OK! Slideshow continues on the next slide. It's still acceptable to use a mid-text period. Found the story interesting?
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