Gooooooooooood evening people of the internet! Contrary to what my previous two little rants may suggest, this was never really meant to be a current affairs, political newsy blog. It was meant to be a little record of whatever I like, about music mostly, so I've decided that it's about time I started on that.
What people I know know about me is that I'm a bit of a struggling musician. I play a great number of instruments on various styles, however, as I'm not really a stunning guitarist, or a singer/songwriter, then I'm not really in much demand popularly on the university circuit. I have the strange affliction (as it seems to be) of being a *cough* jazz nut *cough* This means that I'm a bit of a pariah, there being very few other young musicians, at least where I am, who are interested in this kind of music. Despite a great many guitar based, rock bands pretending to do poor quality impersonations of the Rock bands of yore, Jazz from a few years before is still seen as something that is listened to only by old pretentious artsy fartsy people or that your grandparents danced to during the war...
There seem to be very few oppertunities for small jazz groups as there used to be back in the 50s, the only things that people are interested in are the odd possibility for big bands, however, my major gripe with this idea is that the music ends up becoming something that defeats many of the original jazz ideals, such as freedom of musical expression, there were many famous musicians, such as the great innovator Ornette Coleman, who were unable to read music at all. Improvisation and self expression seems to be a very limited and, by many, sneered upon aspect of popular music- all people want to do is be able to play pieces and solos exactly how they were played by the original artist. Although replication may be useful from an academic point of view, it defeats the reason why the solo was created as a section of a piece in the first place. Creation as a part of performance, to the musical circle of people that I know, seems to be unacceptable and abhorrent- whether they see it as being too self-indulgent (isn't showing off part of music?) This, I feel is more of a regression on the part of music, rather than a progression. Improvisation was part of music for centuries, Mozart and Back improvised when playing live, and now people decide that it isn't musically acceptable to put a personal stamp on pieces that you play.
This is a very personal rant to me, so if anyone has their own views/differing opinions, then please feel free to comment.
Keep the peace internet folk.
Monday 11 July 2011
Thursday 7 July 2011
Read all about it
Well, I know that I posted one of these only yesterday, but there's been lots of things happening today in the news which has made me ponder things and I thought I'd share these musings with the people/person who may read this.
Today, the News of the World had to close after 168 years in publishing. Now, I'm not going to talk about the morality and what they did or anything- the phone hacking of murdered school children, criminals etc was dispicable and horrible, so I'm glad that the paper's been brought to justice. However, surely it was the people involved in the editing of the paper who should have been punished, rather than the actual publication itself (my personal opinion of the quality of this shall be inferred). Surely, the paper itself is completely innocent, it's the editors, investigators, hackers and writers involved in the relevant stories that should have been punished. The editor, I believe, Rebekah Wade (was it? If I'm wrong, then correct me) was forced to quit, so she should be prosecuted now for it, rather than all of the people involved in the publication being published for a minority of people's balls-up. However, the closing down of the paper surely has very little impact at all, the News of the World was the Sunday version of the Sun. Now, the Sun is now going to be published on Sundays and the people in the company will now have similar jobs but as the Sun instead. Which, as a mate of mine put it, is "a bit like getting rid of Blair and bringing in Milliband." i.e. there's literally no difference underneath, just a slightly different face.
There should be something done to make sure that people who are in control of any media are more responsible than they are at the moment. People like Rupert Murdoch encouraging this king of phone hacking in order to get sensationalist scoops in order to try and scare people and move copies. He also needs to be brought to justice, no matter how powerful he may be and no matter how much control he may have over politicians in the country. (which I also believe is wrong; David Cameron should cut himself lose from the Murdoch empire and stop fearing the press)
Really all this is about is an excuse to change the name of a paper and to stereotype journalists as evil, immoral, phone hacking devils.
Although, one thing that I can say is good is that we can now listen to that classic by The Jam "News of the World" and be all ironic and "cool".
Today, the News of the World had to close after 168 years in publishing. Now, I'm not going to talk about the morality and what they did or anything- the phone hacking of murdered school children, criminals etc was dispicable and horrible, so I'm glad that the paper's been brought to justice. However, surely it was the people involved in the editing of the paper who should have been punished, rather than the actual publication itself (my personal opinion of the quality of this shall be inferred). Surely, the paper itself is completely innocent, it's the editors, investigators, hackers and writers involved in the relevant stories that should have been punished. The editor, I believe, Rebekah Wade (was it? If I'm wrong, then correct me) was forced to quit, so she should be prosecuted now for it, rather than all of the people involved in the publication being published for a minority of people's balls-up. However, the closing down of the paper surely has very little impact at all, the News of the World was the Sunday version of the Sun. Now, the Sun is now going to be published on Sundays and the people in the company will now have similar jobs but as the Sun instead. Which, as a mate of mine put it, is "a bit like getting rid of Blair and bringing in Milliband." i.e. there's literally no difference underneath, just a slightly different face.
There should be something done to make sure that people who are in control of any media are more responsible than they are at the moment. People like Rupert Murdoch encouraging this king of phone hacking in order to get sensationalist scoops in order to try and scare people and move copies. He also needs to be brought to justice, no matter how powerful he may be and no matter how much control he may have over politicians in the country. (which I also believe is wrong; David Cameron should cut himself lose from the Murdoch empire and stop fearing the press)
Really all this is about is an excuse to change the name of a paper and to stereotype journalists as evil, immoral, phone hacking devils.
Although, one thing that I can say is good is that we can now listen to that classic by The Jam "News of the World" and be all ironic and "cool".
Wednesday 6 July 2011
The Jazzman Commeth.
Goooooood evening people of the internet. I'm not entirely what I'm going to write in these blogs. They'll probably be a mixture of angry rants, random ramblings and bizzare observations about life, the universe, everything and a couple of bits and pieces in between.(Also, if the grammer or anything starts to get sloppy, then don't get mad as I'm just typing this all out as a stream of thought kind of thing...) I'll keep these as short, to the point, and as clean and insulting to as few people as I can be. However nothing said in any blogs from this point on is meant to be hurtful to anyone and should be taken as nothing more than a joke and an irritable person letting off some steam. Anything said here is also my opinion and has nothing to do with anyone else (unless specifically mentioned). (and yes, I do have a thing about brackets. :-P )
So, I suppose I'd better kick these things off with a little bit of info about myself (yes, I am a self centred, arrogant show off from time to time. I guess this is a way to get rid of my need to have people listen to what I have to say). I'm currently in the summer holidays in between my second and third years at University. I'm studying Music and History (Not the History of Music, or Musical History. But Music AND History as a combined honours degree). I'm largely a performing musician. Playing Saxophone, Clarinet and un petit peu du guitar. My life seems to revolve around a mixture of rehearsals and essay writing. At the moment I seem to have no idea what I want to do after uni finishes. Ideally I want to do something to do with performance, however it's not what you know, it's who you know with that kind of stuff right...
So, first rant. Watching the news and it turns out that the all-powerful facebook seems to be trying to alter the chat service. So you can do group and video chats... Why would they do this when the bog standard, basic chat where it's just a simple box with text. So how do they expect to make this one work? The deal with Skype, although a good concept will either never work, be very slow, or will crash all the time. A video message service takes so much bandwidth etc that it'll make the whole site run excruciatingly slowly. It's also unlikely to work most of the time there would be too many people trying to use it at once, therefore overloading the service and making very few people able to use it at once around the world. I therefore reckon that the computer whizzes should sort out the ordinary chat before trying to expand it.
Well, for the moment I guess this is all that I have to say for myself. I hope this has been readable and not too self-obsessed or anything.
Keep the peace internet folk.
So, I suppose I'd better kick these things off with a little bit of info about myself (yes, I am a self centred, arrogant show off from time to time. I guess this is a way to get rid of my need to have people listen to what I have to say). I'm currently in the summer holidays in between my second and third years at University. I'm studying Music and History (Not the History of Music, or Musical History. But Music AND History as a combined honours degree). I'm largely a performing musician. Playing Saxophone, Clarinet and un petit peu du guitar. My life seems to revolve around a mixture of rehearsals and essay writing. At the moment I seem to have no idea what I want to do after uni finishes. Ideally I want to do something to do with performance, however it's not what you know, it's who you know with that kind of stuff right...
So, first rant. Watching the news and it turns out that the all-powerful facebook seems to be trying to alter the chat service. So you can do group and video chats... Why would they do this when the bog standard, basic chat where it's just a simple box with text. So how do they expect to make this one work? The deal with Skype, although a good concept will either never work, be very slow, or will crash all the time. A video message service takes so much bandwidth etc that it'll make the whole site run excruciatingly slowly. It's also unlikely to work most of the time there would be too many people trying to use it at once, therefore overloading the service and making very few people able to use it at once around the world. I therefore reckon that the computer whizzes should sort out the ordinary chat before trying to expand it.
Well, for the moment I guess this is all that I have to say for myself. I hope this has been readable and not too self-obsessed or anything.
Keep the peace internet folk.
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