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Some Words on Soul Music

Soul is still a wonderfully popular music genre which grew out of 50’s rhythm and blues. There were two wonderfully diffined record labels which dominated this era, Stax and Tamala Motown. The record label Stax started life in Memphis in 1959, founded by Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton. Around the...

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Music – An important Source of Entertainment

Posted by Concert List | Posted in online music, web music | Posted on 20-09-2009

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Music has been one of the key features of the entertainment industry. people have become so addicted to music that they can’t imagine their lives in the absence of it. Listening to music reduces the stress level and advocates to calm an individual. It also rejuvenates and soothes one’s mind. Truly, music refreshes an individual and acts as a stress buster for the people whose lives have become monotonous due to the hectic schedule.

These days, music systems come with a variety of features and enhancements and are well equipped with proper bass, vibe and treble. They have a better sonic resolution. One can arrange their music tracks in their order of like ence while listening. One can also take it as a DJ when arranging for a get together. The karaoke is another vital feature introduced in these systems. This feature shows a listener, lyrics of the song being played which increases the interest of a listener even more. Furthermore, a listener can sing the song along with the same beats and rhythm.

music business is aware of the demands of audiences and so keeps on updating the music systems with new software. Sonos is the fore the majority digital music system that enables an individual to play music in all the rooms of the house.

Web is another medium that makes music accessible to the individuals around the world. No matter if it is an old song that one wants to hear or a latest track all may be downloaded from the Web. PC’s are equipped with memory, software, sound card, processors, record and performance features that may performance the same track infinitely. One such software is named file-sharing program. This enables the Web user to browse a web site and download the music in a digital format. Likewise, all the songs may be downloaded free of fee with best quality voice.

DVD players are another source of music. The players make use of digital video discs to retailer data and movies. Though priced quite logically, they have features that are parallel to high- worth d models. They are portable and likewise have a video screen. It may be used for listening all divergent categories of music like jazz, rock, soft and a lot of others.

Thus, music is an vital source of entertainment and can be listened anywhere through various sources available. The means of music systems vary and are distinctive in range, whether it is music system, Internet music or DVD players.

Online Music – Blessing or Curse?

Posted by Concert List | Posted in online music | Posted on 19-09-2009

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I just learned that April 19, 2008 was Record Store Day, an occasion to celebrate independent record stores. As record stores slowly vanish across the country, it is revealing that April 19 came and went with little fanfare. Perhaps, like me, the get together was invisible to you, too. And I am sorry I missed it, because I value the place of music stores in our culture. But it got me thinking about how music is accessed and sold these days.

I am not fond of vinyl — I don’t miss the pops and clicks, or the way that dust balls would build up in front of the needle and cause the sound to crackle — but those large album sleeves allowed for some nice ly inventive packaging back in the day that cannot be done with CD s. I remember the surprise of opportunity Alice Cooper’s School’s Out. The cover has been the surface of one of those old grammar school desks and lifted up prefer the lid of the desk to reveal the interior. The record has been nested inside a slinky pair of pink girl’s paper panties, which you had to slip off to play the record. Then there has been Jethro Tull’s Thick As A Brick, packaged with a fictional small town paper, “The St. Cleve Chronicle.” It has been a crafty satire of a provincial newspaper replete with articles, television listings, advertisements, a crossword — even a lascivious connect-the-dots puzzle — all oozing with irony. It read prefer a novel, with the same characters reappearing in varying sections.

The Internet provides a wonderful way to discover, sample and purchase music, no doubt about it. It is a wonderful improvement over the experience most of us have had of purchasing a new compact disc  and finding out you only prefer two of the ten songs. And the Internet has really expanded the opportunity for independent artists to reach a expansive r listeners than ever before. But in making snap judgments after listening to a snippet of music On-line, all of us also lose the ability of songs to grow on us. We’re prefer kids dazzled by neon crayons, and all of us risk passing over subtler but richer hues. There is the danger that music becomes less about artistry and more about commodity.

Another problem is the decrease d audio quality of MP3s, a digital format whereby much of the original audio signal is discarded in order to compress the file size and facilitate digital storage, downloading and other transfers. We’ve sacrificed quality for convenience. I confess, though, I love being able to shuffle songs on my iPod. The unpredictability keeps the music fresh for me. But it is not without a price.

As all of us increasingly rely on downloadable music, I worry about what all of us lose. I still like the experience of going to record stores -  the physicality of the merchandise, the role of opening  and being exposed to something accidentally. Erykah Badu has a marvelous music video of the song “Honey” from her recently released album. an anonymous customer (actually Erykah, but her face is never shown) browses vinyl in a record store, and varying classic album covers come alive with images of Erykah. It is a witty video that captures the magic of the experience. The video ends with a message scrolling across the bottom of the screen -  “Support your Regional record store!!!!!” I could not have said it better.

The Growth of Country Music

Posted by Concert List | Posted in Country Music | Posted on 18-09-2009

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Country music originated from the old folk music that the pioneers sang and played as they session tled across the country. They used wagon trains. That is where a group of individuals drive their wagons across the country is a single file trying to go further west. At night they would event and the ones that may play fiddles, banjo, and guitars, would play and make up tunes about their experiences on the trail.

Then came along individuals like the Carter family members and Jimmy Rodgers (the singing brakeman) and they came up with a newer style of country songs. Nonetheless everything has been acoustical, no electrical instruments. When wannabe singers heard Jimmy Rodgers, they all wanted to sing like him. His singing had confidence and you can hear it.

The Grand ole Opry started expansive casting in 1925. This let millions of individuals hear folk and country music all across the country. The Louisiana Hayride started in 1948 and a lot of singers got their start there. The radio shows made a lot of young kids want to sing, and a lot of them did come on and make stars, each bringing a new style to country music. Recording companies then didn’t want you to sound like somebody else, they want your sound. Assuming that they like d it you got a contract.

When Hank Williams was on the hayride, I had a nice friend playing for the hayride. He was playing when Hank had seven encores for lovesick blues. Then everybody wanted to sound prefer Hank Williams. Hank was top dog, then came Elvis to knock him off the mountain. Of course Hank had died before Elvis made it. However Hank was on top after his death.

Every year country progresses to something new. Still there’s a lot of people that do not progress with it. A lot still like the old traditional type of country. That is what makes the world go around.

Some Words on Soul Music

Posted by Concert List | Posted in live music | Posted on 17-09-2009

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Soul is still a incredibly popular music type of which grew out of fifties rhythm and blues. There were two incredibly diffined record labels which dominated this era, Stax and Tamala Motown.

The record label Stax started life in Memphis in 1959, founded by Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton. Around the same time Berry Gordy has been creating the two record labels, Tamla and Motown in Detroit. Stax and Tamla Motown became the biggest of rivals for record sales throughout the 1960’s and 70’s. Their music idiom has been the same, with a focus on the Black music form soul, but marketing and style differed significant ly.

Motown took the music market by storm at a time when white audiencess were ignoring a lot of black music forms. Their success was attributed to their light soul style with their image being aimed at the middle class market. Producing hits such as ‘Stop! In the name of love’ by the Supremes, released in 1965, and ‘Heard it through the grapevine’ by Marvin Gaye, released in 1968. performers such as the Supremes, the Four Tops and Marvin Gaye developed a clean-cut image, appearing on record sleeves and in performances wearing formal clothes such as tuxedos and evening dresses.

Stax records concentrated more on the original form of Black American Southern soul. For Stax records the original music form was more vital than image and marketing. musicians and songs included ‘In the midnight hour’ by Wilson Pickett, released in 1965, and ‘Sittin’ on the dock of the bay’ by Otis Redding, released in 1968.

Soul music has stayed one of the the majority popular music styles right through into the 21st century mainly due to the eminently reason in the title, the music gets into your ‘soul’. A good choice for both young and old!

Music, Culture, and Reality

Posted by Concert List | Posted in live music | Posted on 16-09-2009

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A psychoactive is defined as that which has a profound or meaningful affect on the mental processes. Although typically used in the context of drugs and substances, this idea is regularly extended to anything evoking a evidently ‘mystical experience.’ What people describe as mystical experiences are indistinguishable, neuro understandably and empirically, from deep and poignant religious experiences. Moments of oneness and insight are typical in both cases. In “The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902),” William James describes mystical experiences as ineffable, noetic, passive (rather, a sense of loss of control), and fleeting. From the remote mystics of Sufism and Kabbalah, to modern day ‘urban shamans,’ psychonauts have sought methods other than imbibement to investigate the cosmos within. Through meditation, breath control, lucid dreaming, sensory deprivation, and a host of other methods, music has stood among cultures in this service might since early man 1st danced around campfires.

Ethnomusicolgist Gilbert Rouget explores the connection among music and trance throughout history. Perhaps music is more than simply a mortal construct, rather having cosmic significance. Playing music (and truly appreciating music) forces an individual to focus on the present moment, which in turn is the cornerstone of serious experience. This emphasis on the present moment is the consummation of all other psychonautical resources (mediation, entheogens, etc.). Subscribers of the shamanic and mystical oftentimes view the passage of time as an illusion of the human mind, and regard a ‘perpetual now’ as true reality. Interestingly this is where science begins to align with the esoteric.

Quantum Mechanics argues that particles move backwards as well as forwards in time and appear in all possible places at once. String theory proposes that the physical world is composed of little, tiny strings of vibrating energy (It seems appropriate to allude to chordophones). Terrence McKenna, recounting a DMT (Dimethyltryptamine) induced experience, asserts that the unending dance of ‘machine elves,’ (entities occupying a parallel world) establishes reality as we perceive it. Are the rhythms of music akin to the language of reality? Is music a method of staying in contact with the underlying ‘Logos,’ being the true virtue in which all things exist? Whether it be Spring’s hymn of birds and bees or the elegant, geometrical dance of our physical world, music plays the universal tongue in a reality evidently ripe with babbling discord.

Pop Music May Be Creative

Posted by Concert List | Posted in Pop Music | Posted on 01-09-2009

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Pop music might include elements of rock, hip hop, reggae, dance, R&B, jazz, electronic, and occasionally folk music and various other styles. Pop music performers typically make use of state-of-the-art technology and recording studios to achieve the sound they want, and record producers might have a heavy influence. Pop music generally uses a simple, memorable melody and emphasizes the rhythm, usually with syncopation, and stripped down to a basic riff or loop which repeats throughout much of the song. Pop music is usually criticized for being overly simple and repetitive.

Popular

Popular music is music belonging to any of a number of musical styles that are accessible to the general public and are disseminated by one or more of the mass media. Popular music is music that is not something else ( again and again ‘folk’ or ‘art’ music). Popular music is associated with (produced for or by) a specific social group. Popular music is disseminated by mass media and/or in a mass market. Popular music is also rarely entirely instrumental. Popular music is not really about ‘being heard’, but rather about ‘being heard again’; and ‘being heard again and again and again’ is what really popular music is really about. Pop is contemporary music and a common type of popular music (distinguished from classical or art music and from folk music).

The term popular music does not refer especially to a single genre or sound, and its meaning is varying depending on the time and place. Within popular music, “pop music” is a number of times distinguished from other sub genres by stylistic traits such as a danceable rhythm or beat, simple melodies and a repeating structure. The wide  appeal of pop music is seen to distinguish it from more specific categories of popular music, and pop music performers and recordings are among the optimum -selling and the majority widely known in many regions of the world. The development of recording methods is seen as a major influence on the sound of pop, distinguishing it from classical music and jazz, as well as from some categories of popular music which might seek a more “natural” sound.

Album

In the recorded music era, the single (a single song) and the album (a collection of tunes ) are the usual methods of distributing pop music. Notable highlights for pop music in the 1980s are Michael Jackson’s second Epic label release, Thriller, which went on to become the perfect -selling album of all time. Jackson has been the the majority successful performer of the 80s, spanning nine #1 singles in the United States alone during that decade, and selling over 133 million copies with only two albums — Thriller, and its follow-up Bad.

Pop music in the 1980s was heavily influenced by an electronic sound with synthesizers and drum machines, and dance type music. Pop music, on the other hand, has primarily come into usage to describe music that evolved out of the rock ‘n roll revolution of the mid-1950’s and continues in a definable path to today. Pop music could range from the highly creative, iconoclastic or virtuosic to easy and downright dumb.