Josh McNeill

Category: Uncategorized (Page 12 of 19)

Why people hate banks. (Off-Topic)

November 10, 2012 / / 0 Comments

While I’m on the topic of businesses that don’t seem to understand, why not touch on banks? I like banks. I’ve had bank accounts since I was legally able to open them and I find them useful. I don’t have a particular distrust of them or feel that they’re out to get me or anything like that. In fact, I currently have 3 banks accounts even though I don’t have nearly enough money to warrant that but I don’t see any harm in having them. So my criticism here, of TD Bank specifically, is not simply a matter of having an axe to grind against bankers or a tinfoil hat problem.

I opened an account with Commerce Bank back in the day, when they first opened in the northeast. They had long hours and no fees so it was great. Apparently, it wasn’t great for them as they eventually were bought out by TD Bank who decided to add fees back in. I’ve never had a problem with that. I had to keep $100 in the bank to avoid any fees, no biggie. I even accidentally went below that limit at some point over the years and called them to see if an exception could be made and it was. There was no arguing or anything so I was thrilled. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a case of understanding on the part of the CSR but simply a company policy that the first request of this sort that any customer makes can be granted but then never again.

Years later I no longer lived anywhere near a TD Bank location. I had really no reason to keep my account with them but the minimum fee was low enough that I didn’t care and I had a credit card with them so it made paying that directly from my checking account easier. Whenever I charged something, I’d transfer that amount into my checking account and pay off the balance from there immediately. One day I was doing this and, for some reason, entered $100 more as a payment to my credit card than I meant to. Instead of bringing my balance in my checking account down to $100 it brought it down to $0. An important note here is that, in reality, not a penny of the money I had with TD Bank changed, it was just located in a different place in their system. I realized my mistake and within minutes of making it transferred another $100 into my checking, hoping to avoid the maintenance fee. When my bill cycle came, I was charged the maintenance fee. I didn’t like paying it but it was clearly my mistake and I wasn’t interested in getting special favors to resolve something dumb that I did. And I figured that was it.

The next month came and I was charged another maintenance fee. I called this time because I had already paid this fee and made no more mistakes. The CSR this time was not nearly so pleasant. I spoke to more than one on my mission to find someone who was reasonable and eventually did come across a supervisor who recognized that I was only charged the successive fee because of the first fee brought my account under the minimum amount for a day. She refunded the fee but I e-mailed TD Bank to ensure that this wasn’t simply going to happen again the next month. These are the exchanges that followed (I apologize for their e-mail system managing chronology horribly):

TD Bank Correspondence 1
TD Bank Correspondence 2

I did, in fact, immediately withdraw my money and close my accounts to escape this fee loop.

I’ve wanted to send this correspondence to TD Bank directly at some point with a more verbose description of why I believe this to be ludicrous but, as always, the only e-mail address I can find for the company goes right to the same customer support people who I am criticizing. The wording is so strange. The claim that the bank understands my frustration while simultaneously not recognizing the absurdity of their behavior makes no sense at all to me. I understand that they can’t simply bypass fees for everyone in every instance, that they have to make the customer take responsibility at some point to maintain their capital, but this is exactly what I did. The failure was that they wanted me to perpetually take that responsibility or to deposit more capital for them to work with than the terms of my account required. It’s troubling that I couldn’t make them see how crazy this was and I think this is really why people hate banks. You’re often faced with people who are either not willing to or not able to look at their customers’ issues on a case by case basis. They respond with boiler plates and by quoting company policy instead of thinking critically about what your problem is and considering whether it’s you who needs to adjust or if their system needs to adjust to you. The latter possibility seems to never enter their minds.

I’m sure the result would have been different if I had hundreds of thousands of dollars in my account but why even attempt to run a bank that takes on small accounts if you see them as being more costly than valuable? They were probably glad to get rid of my account as the administration costs incurred through handling my calls and e-mails was probably greater than the $100 of capital I maintained with them for years. But why the charade in the first place? If you’re going to take on these customers, then take them on and treat them like real people. Any costs incurred on my account would have disappeared immediately if they had recognized my issue after the first communication and fixed it completely. That was literally the only call I had made to them in years. They most definitely profited from my small account even if they lose with other small accounts and yet they actively drove me away once I became even slightly an issue.

Banks still have a huge PR issue. People feel, rightly or wrongly, that they’ve run our economy into the ground then took all our tax money to give bonuses to their CEOs. Instances like mine go nowhere toward fixing that relationship. Like I said, I feel I’m a reasonable person when it comes to this topic and I have nothing against banks but an experience like this certainly moves me toward the “you are not my friend” frame of mind when I look at these institutions.

NOTE: I promise that my next post will not consist of more whining. For some reason it’s less time consuming to post this stuff than to compare Marilyn Mason to Cuban rhythms or to analyze the formants of vowels in comparison to tonal harmonic theory in music (these are both on the back-burner).

An open letter to Radioshack. (off-topic)

October 13, 2012 / / 13 Comments

So I worked for Radioshack for a long time and it left me extremely bitter and resentful. I just recently left after a giant pay cut and I felt the need to voice my long term issues with them both to vent my own feelings and to give them insight into what their policies do to their employees, I sent them an e-mail. I mentioned this on Facebook where multiple people immediately wanted to see it (probably because it got the ridiculous length of 1,900 words or because I still know many employees). Instead of e-mailing it 15 times, I’ve decided to just place it here. Maybe others at the company will see it, maybe some of them will even agree, who knows. Do with it what you will. (Disclaimer: And I realize, objectively, it may sound like whining and complaining as some people experience much worse in their workplaces but these kind of things are relative. Also, many times when the problem is pay, it’s tied to the possibility of the employer failing. I don’t believe that to be the case here.) Here it is:

I apologize in advance for sending this e-mail to customer care but I can find no way to contact upper management directly. I only hope this ends up somewhere meaningful.

I left Radioshack in the middle of August after roughly nine years as a sales associate. I was not simply any associate, I was an ideal associate. I worked under nine different store managers between seven stores in three states and was looked at as the most reliable person to leave in charge in each case. My numbers were good enough that I was consistently in the top 10, sometimes consistently in the top 3, at all times. I rarely used sick time. I regularly trained new associates, not just in operations but in sales, an area of training that is extremely neglected in most Radioshacks. I was even trained early on to be a manager and upset my district manager greatly when I decided to go back to school and remain an associate instead of taking a store. I was around long enough to know what it was like to be a T4, a status that I doubt most upper management is even able to remember at this point.

The reason I preface my e-mail in this way is not to brag but to give Radioshack a sense of what type of employee this is coming from so that it perhaps holds more weight. I hate Radioshack. It’s not that I think the products are bad or the organization doesn’t have nice people in it, it’s because I hate the disconnect between upper management and those at the bottom of the hierarchy. Working at Radioshack, even as an associate, is a mentally exhausting job. One is expected to know a huge amount about the inner workings of electronics, the nuances of multiple contract based services, and be able to communicate all this information clearly to customers who mostly have no idea what’s going on. I dare say that no other entry level retail position in the United States requires the level of expertise that working at Radioshack does. Sure, some associates get away with knowing very little but they’re not successful. They get by, barely, and are often more of a detriment to the business as a whole than a help. No, good associates must be extraordinarily knowledgeable and patient.

With this in mind, Radioshack offers an exceptionally unrewarding work experience. When I started at Radioshack, in my small town in southern New Jersey, I went in to work with pride. It was shocking how rewarding my efforts were. I would leave some days knowing that I made $200 gross in just 8 hours of work. It was a lot of work, as mentioned above, and a lot of effort, but the results could often be amazing. Compared to the other work available in my area, I felt a bit like an aristocrat. I was doing a job that could pass as professional work for an income well above what everyone else was making other than hard laborers or people who had to commute 2 hours away. To top it off, promotions were easy to come by. Within 6 months I was part way through the manager in training program and I had already seen multiple coworkers who started before me get their own stores in that time. Everything seemed perfect.

Then came pay plan updates. Every year or two brought a new pay plan with it. These became the bane of my existence. My first pay plan change was actually beneficial. It came, I believe, shortly after Len Roberts left the company and yielded a significant increase in my gross earnings. Of course, Radioshack realized this very quickly and many of the boosts were removed before being in place for even a year. That seemed okay to me. If the company changed the pay plan in a way the could make them go out of business, it wasn’t worth it. That was the one moment of reward that I’ve ever experienced at Radioshack, though. I must have experienced some 5 or 6 pay plan changes in my time there and literally every single one other than that first was realized as a pay cut for myself. It was amazing. At first it was just a little aggravating but as it happened more and more I developed a sharp sense of bitter resentment at the company. My motivation to excel at my job was drastically reduced, as it was for all my coworkers as well. Radioshack became the thing I would be doing until I could find another job. It was convenient enough that it could pass as a job until there was something better. This essentially became the mantra of every coworker I’ve ever had after my first year or two with the company. This is absolutely the worst situation I can imagine for a company that survives on the sales skills of its associates.

The final blow for me came during the last pay plan change. I was already about to transfer to a new school and focus on only that but even if that weren’t the case, I would have quit Radioshack even in the absence of a new job. I went to the meeting where my district manager explained the pay plan changes and my stomach grumbled as soon as the topic came up. She spun it well. People in the room were mostly convinced that they could actually make more money because of the change in mobile upgrade SPIFFs. I knew better. I kept a spreadsheet detailing my pay on a daily basis for years and I knew I made half of my money in performance SPIFFs. That portion of my pay generally accounted for $2/hour but the max that could be earned under the new plan was $1/hour and relied on the entire store performing, not just me. What’s more, the goals for the drivers that had to be hit were set across the board instead of by store. This was incredibly short sighted (or not?) as, for instance, never in the history of the store I was in did even a single person end a month with a 33% RSSP attach rate let alone had the entire store averaged that. It was full of tourists, foreigners, and rich people who saw money as expendable; there was no way to achieve this kind of result. Similar problems were obvious with other goals but even if everything was reached, like I said, it was a 50% cut in performance SPIFF earnings. Ok, so cell phones are to make up for that, right? Prepaid would pay an extra $2 and upgrades, the majority of post paid phone sales, would pay an extra $7. My store did not have a lot of post paid sales but we had an unusually high amount of prepaid sales. So, I did some calculations. I knew exactly how many hours I worked every week in the past year so I compared that with my phone sales over the past year and found that not once did the extra phone sales make up for the cut in performance SPIFFs. I casually voiced my disdain for the new plan to my manager who seemed baffled that I thought I would make less money. Of course, my math skills showed to be true once the pay plan went into effect.

I received two full pay checks and one partial pay check before leaving the company. I found a roughly 20% decrease in pay on those two pay checks. Coworkers of mine couldn’t calculate their cut but also told me that their paychecks looked significantly smaller. This cut was much larger than any other cut I’d received in 9 years and was completely uncalled for. The last earnings report from Radioshack claimed that the company was doing just fine. There wasn’t as much growth as hoped for, to paraphrase the report, but the company was in no way struggling. And how could the company be struggling? Most large electronics chains that competed with Radioshack had already gone out of business more than a year before this change. No, just as every other pay cut Radioshack gave to its associates over the years, there was literally no reason other than a desire to grab more profits to the detriment of the people who serve as the front line for the business. Pay cuts have happened consistently, in good times and bad, during recessions and during times of general economic growth. There was no excuse.

So I left, with a fierce sense of disdain. So did everyone else in my store. Within a month, my store, whose employee base all had between 2-9 years of experience (most being 5+ years) had literally one employee left who was just about to leave the job for another also. I’ve been to sites like Glass Door over the years to see what retail life is like for at other similar businesses. Four years ago, entry level associates at every corporate cell phone store (Verizon stores, T-Mobile stores, etc.) reported making at least $10k/year more than what Radioshack associates were making. That was well before this 20% pay cut. Today, I can’t even imagine. My store literally has not made even the minimum of the 5 targets for performance SPIFF that are required to date (I’ve kept up through my manager and coworkers who stayed there a bit longer). There is simply no way that working for Radioshack is competitive with other businesses. One can literally work at a hot dog stand and make significantly more money (I know because my roommate was doing just that and averaged $13/hour with tips while my pay had shrunk to an average $11/hour in San Francisco where the minimum wage is $10.24/hour already).

I suppose Radioshack is intent on turning over their workforce until they have, essentially, a bunch of cashiers who don’t realize that Radioshack at one time was a profitable company to work for. It was a company to be proud to be a part of. If that’s the goal, then you are well on your way. If you want to have one of the most knowledgeable and helpful associate bases in the country on your front lines, you’re failing miserably. My personal bitterness has extended beyond simply not wanting to work for the company, I have literally suggested to friends and family that they not go to Radioshack for anything because it’s a company that does not care (and I say this having multiple childhood friends who are store managers). If nine years of dedicated service are rewarded by regular and painful pay cuts and nothing more, what does that say about Radioshack?

I apologize for the length but I feel this really needs to be said, maybe even just for my own sake. In a way, I hope this reaches someone in the company that has a voice and can be swayed to actually change things for the benefit of employees at the bottom of the hierarchy. After all, the business can only be as strong as those who act as its face on a daily basis.

School preludes.. basically.

June 25, 2012 / / 0 Comments

I uploaded a couple short pieces that I did this past year in school. They were all done in like 3-4 hours because I’m dumb enough to try to take over the maximum allowable classes and still have a job at the same time. I still liked the results of these enough to add them as “doodles”. Each one had a pedagogical requirements. The second string piece just had to be 2-4 voices. The first chamber piece was a final that… okay I lied. That piece had no requirements. And the second chamber piece is supposed to be useable as film music (you can try to guess the scene I had in mind if you want, that’s what the class did for each student’s work). Anyway, they’re all available for listening/downloading in the music section.

I have two other chamber pieces that I’ll be posting when I have time to fix ’em a bit.

The morality of Emily White.

June 18, 2012 / / 2 Comments

I’m always a bit confused about why the issue of how musicians make their living is almost always laid at the feet of those who download music without paying. David Lowery has a post over at the Trichordist in reference to a blog posted by Emily White, an intern at NPR about her lack of desire to pay for music albums. He claims that the issue is laid at the feet of downloaders because we shouldn’t be changing our morality, as a culture, to make room for technology, that it should be the other way around. But hasn’t this always been the case? When the printing press was invented, didn’t we adapt our lives to the changes it created? We didn’t say, “We must find a way to fit the printing press into our lives in a way that doesn’t harm scribes.”

This also isn’t just any technology, it’s technology that makes the flow of information and culture infinitely more efficient. The changes technology has created for not only music distribution but also for production have created an atmosphere where it’s almost impossible, for me at least, to justify paying any money at all for access to recorded music. A professional quality album can now be recorded with home recording equipment that’s available even to those who make as little as $20k a year as an entry level job (I know because I own equipment that can do just that). Distribution, through torrents, carries no personal overhead. The artist can literally send their music to the entire world without even owning a web site. Even promotion can arguably be done by the musicians themselves via the internet at no cost other than their time. And that’s really the only thing we’re compensating here if we’re to buy recorded music: the artist’s time. And while it’s nice to have all day every day to create music, an argument can even be made that plenty of people make great albums in their free time while working regular jobs without issue.

If musicians want people to pay for their recorded music, they need to make an argument that they simply deserve it, just because. I think that’s a crappy way to go about this, though. For all intents and purposes, musicians might as well be trying to sell air when they ask people to pay for an MP3. Instead of trying to build a business model around selling air, why not find creative ways to adjust to reality? If we can get over this idea that we need to keep scribes employed and so shouldn’t take full advantage of the possibilities of the printing press, then a new business model that takes this reality into consideration is the only option.

I admit, I don’t have a foolproof model but I can think of starting points. For instance, I had a roommate who was a jazz drummer who made his living through music. He had done some recordings as a session player but I’m pretty sure he didn’t receive royalties as they were small undertakings and he was only out of Berklee maybe two years. What he did was play shows. He didn’t go on tour because, as mentioned in Lowery’s post, touring doesn’t generate income. That doesn’t mean that playing shows doesn’t generate income. Why has touring not been reconsidered in this fashion? Maybe fans will have to come to the artists they love instead of the artists coming to them. Or, maybe video streaming technology, also accessible to bands for free, can at least be a compromise for remote fans.

Maybe tours can even be done still but instead of being something that a band jumps into with their full investment, not knowing what they’ll get back from it, they go the Kickstarter route. Lowery already, rightfully, has said that this isn’t necessarily a way to make a living as a musician but that’s coming from the angle of using Kickstarter to pay for recording expenses. Of course that’s not reliable because little-known musicians can’t expect to reach a goal that would pay all their living expenses for a year or however long they need to finish their project. BUT, tours are a different thing. If the money were raised first, a band would know exactly what they’re getting into. They could use what they receive to pay for their touring expenses (so it would determine how far they could go) and whatever money they receive from ticket sales would be actual profit. I know Deakin of Animal Collective used Kickstarter to make a one off trip to Mali to play a show and it seemed to work.

Speaking of Kickstarter, that whole site is a bit like a public offering for generating music commissions. In that sense, why can’t pop musicians work through commissioning? Classical composers have been doing this since, well, since forever. It is different as composers are generally commissioned by performers while pop musicians write and play their own music, but composers are also commissioned by venues. Why would a venue do this? Because they receive exclusive rights to performances of the commissioned work. That said, why can’t bands work with music venues in a similar fashion? Convince a venue to commission some music that will only be played at that location for a given amount of time. The advantage for the venue is exclusivity and the advantage for a musician is a living. It’s similar to the risk that record companies partake in now but the final product wouldn’t be air. The venue and the act would be working to sell something that can’t be infinitely reproduced by anyone for free. In fact, this can also tie into touring. Sometimes multiple venues will commission a piece from a composer. This means the product is not as exclusive but the risk is smaller for the venue as well. If a band can generate the same sort of deal from maybe ten venues, they could essentially go on a mini-tour paid for through commissioning. This would probably even be the way to go at first as any given venue would be unlikely to take on the whole risk for such a different approach.

And here’s another one: product placement. For instance Moby licensed out every song on Play for advertising. This is an area where fees for the use of music can realistically be enforced (as opposed to trying to sue millions of poor college students) and where it probably should be. Ad agencies are directly making money through the use of the music as opposed to the vast majority who download music who simply want to listen to it. We all know it’s not punk rock to have your music used in a commercial, that it destroys the artistic integrity of the work, but let’s get over that. If you really want to make a living doing nothing but music, you can’t afford to get hung up with arbitrarily created integrity issues.

The same can be done by working with filmmakers. I have to admit that I am truly not familiar with the economics of film making so I’m open to corrections in my assumptions. But Film seems have the disadvantage of higher production costs (I’m not sure anyone can realistically create professional quality films without a large technical crew and facilities yet) but they have the advantage of more avenues for direct financial gain from the finished product. Opening nights can and often do recoup entire production expenses themselves. Why don’t musicians work to get their music used in the movies? The Crow is a good example of how even music not made to be commercially successful from within a mass audience can still be effectively used even in largely successful movies. But, instead of waiting for some filmmaker to come to the artist for something they want to use, why not bring the music to directors and see what can be done. This is, yet again, an area where fees are easily enforceable and where they should be enforced. A director would be using this music to make their film better, which they can profit from handsomely.

These aren’t complete solutions but they’re at least starting points. And that’s what musicians need to do: come up with starting points, experiment. They need to find ways to make money in a world where media can be produced and disseminated at essentially no cost. This is the essence of the “free culture” movement. We can all share our ideas, thoughts, and feelings in creative ways with anyone around the world for free. The loss of the old order is worth this advantage. I am in a position where I could directly benefit from holding on to the old ways of doing things. I have a $20k in student loans for an education in audio engineering that I immediately realized would never get me a job at a recording studio because recording studios were no longer necessary. I want to spend all my time composing music but I instead work a job that I hate every day to pay my bills. I have everything to gain from making it impossible for people to obtain music for free and yet I would not in a million years wish to go back to that old world.

My favorite analogy for the whole issue is markedly nerdy. In Star Trek, food is not cultivated, it’s created in replicators. Literally anything can be made and so there’s no reason to ever pay for food. This instantly solves all the world’s hunger problems. It also puts farmers, chefs, truck drivers, groceries, and everyone else involved in the food industry out of business instantly. So, what would we do if, in reality, we were faced with the advent of a similar technology? Would we limit its use so that the grocery store owner around the corner doesn’t go out of business or would we feed the world? I have a hard time believing anyone would choose the former yet that’s what many choose in the debate over downloading music.

Age schmage.

January 10, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Colin Holter of NewMusicBox asks in a post:

Have you ever read a piece of serious writing on the attitudes of the elderly toward classical music?

And Molly Sheridan echoes the question over at Mind the Gap:

In what other market would we try and sell an experience to a rarely interested buyer while simultaneously overlooking those demographics that have demonstrated a high affinity for it?

The idea is that perhaps classical institutions should be putting their efforts into courting older people instead of hoping to attract younger people because it’s clear that younger people don’t give a crap. While this sounds like a solid idea, there are a number of aspects to it that are being ignored and even Sheridan admits that “these are not perfect questions.”

Possibly the biggest error in this line of reasoning is overlooking that everyone actually does this. As a commenter at Mind the Gap claims:

Marketers are constantly chasing the elusive younger demographic that doesn’t watch TV while ignoring the older (and wealthier) folks who do.

Remember Joe Camel? He was a cartoon camel who lost his post as mascot for Camel cigarettes because it was feared that he marketed the product too directly toward young people. I admit that I’m making an assumption here myself, but I doubt one could find any industry where a significant portion of the marketing wasn’t aimed at a demographic that currently has no interest in the product. Afterall, why bother marketing to people who will buy your product regardless? Sounds like a waste of money to me.

In fact, this even occurs in the industry that classical music most wishes it could be as successful as: pop music. I’m not even referring to boys bands and their ilk but even successful non-classical bands with a markedly less commercial approach do this. One of my favorite bands, Thursday, admits in an interview:

It’s a weird situation to be in. If we just relied on our fans growing up to have a career, it would be impossible. We’ll be playing in a town and go out for dinner that night and the waitress will have a Thursday tattoo and be like, “Oh wow, I don’t go to shows anymore or buy albums, but I still love you guys.” And it’s like, it’s nice that you still love us, but you’re not coming to see us, or getting our record. I’m sure we have a lot of fans who have since grown up and still have a soft spot in their hearts. But generally I think older people get less and less involved in music. Cause when you’re younger, it’s your whole culture.

I think it would be great if young kids were digging us, because, I don’t know, maybe I could pay rent next month.

The difference in Thursday’s case is that the aging fans they can count on are no longer willing to dish out money while classical music fully expects only these older fans to dish out money but the general idea is the same: Thursday needs to constantly court a new demographic to survive.

Holter mentions in his post that “we can agree that it is thought that the patrons of classical music in the United States are old and getting older,” which may be the most telling sign of where all this comes from. This isn’t “conventional wisdom,” it’s fact. That link, from Greg Sandow’s blog, I’m fairly certain, doesn’t even come close to all the evidence Sandow has posted over the years. While I don’t know Holter at all, even in writing, and am so reticent to pass judgement on him, I still feel inclined to speculate that his refusal to flat out accept this fact could be evidence that he wants to deny that there’s a problem. In that light, why wouldn’t the classical world spend all it’s time going after old people? If there’s no problem, if the industry can count on people spontaneously becoming engrossed in classical music once they hit 60, even those who have never listened before, then there’s really no reason to focus so much on procuring a new young audience.

And, if I had time, I might get into the fact that everything about how the classical world operates already seems geared toward old people. Just look at the programs that largely mimic the programs that were being used 60-70 years ago; is that an appeal to young people or to people who were alive back then? I’m sure I don’t need to extrapolate much further than that in order for anyone to get my point.

All Art is Theft: Tom Waits vs Ron Sexsmith

January 2, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Some time ago I was listening to Tom Waits’ compilation/B-sides/album thinger, Orphans, and when I came across this song:

I immediately thought of this song by Ron Sexsmith:

At the time, going from memory, the two appeared to have identical verses in my head save for different instrumentation. It seemed so striking to me that my first reaction was to see who wrote their song first. Sexsmith released Gold in Them Hills back in 2002 while Shiny Things was released in 2006. The problem is, the album Tom Waits released this song on was only about half new tunes and half old unreleased stuff so I’m not sure which came first. Seeing as how I thoroughly enjoy both these musicians, I chalked it up to great minds thinking alike.

Today I went ahead and analyzed the verses from the two songs and came to realize that they’re not as similar as I intially thought, almost to the point where it seemed silly to compare them. Waits’ tune is in 5/4 where Sexsmith sticks to a standard 4/4 time signature. This probably goes a long way to making Gold in Them Hills sound more like a pop song while Shiny Things feels like an odd ode to Americana. I actually had a bit of trouble figuring out the time signature Waits was using. The unusual, for western music, rhythm is highly effective at turning a pretty basic chord progression and melody into something full of surprises.

The chord progressions are, in fact, pretty similar. Both are essentially sticking to a I IV I progression, extremely common in, well, everything western, only varying from each other at the end. Waits goes for a turn-around, playing a slightly different progression leading to a perfect cadence, while Sexsmith shuffles back and forth between ii and V for a while, also creating a perfect cadence but also creating the vague sense of modulating due to how long he sits in this position. Of course, these similarities essentially mean nothing given their ubiquity since the Renaissance.

The melodies are probably the most intriguing parts, and also the parts that made me think the songs were so close. They actually sound very different when listening to them one after the other but, when you look at the actual contour of what’s being played:

They have a lot in common. It’s as if, despite the fact that the rhythm of each melody is different, the key is different, the chord tone the each melody begins on is different, they still manage to recall each other. They each go up a bit, down a bit, up more, then down a bit, and that appears to be enough. It reminds me of an instructional guitar video I once saw where the guitarist explained good phrasing as only getting close to the notes you played last time you went through the melody, but not actually playing the same ones. In other words, someone can play Happy Birthday with all the wrong notes but if they get the general contour right, you’ll still recognize it as Happy Birthday.

There clearly isn’t any real theft here. I wouldn’t be surprised if neither musician had ever heard the other’s song. What’s more interesting is what this says about the creative process. Both artists probably came up with their verses independently and felt they had something good, something that expressed their thoughts and feelings uniquely, something that was theirs. Neither is particularly original, though. I’m sure there are loads of composers hundreds of years before these two that created very similar lines. The actual melody itself is not something anyone can take credit for, the way it’s put to use is. Waits gives his melody one context while Sexsmith gives his another and, ultimately, this change of context makes it feel like they’ve both done something uniquely them. Composition is really much more akin to creating collages than coming up with pigments that have never been seen before.

Ob la di, ob la da.

December 28, 2011 / / 0 Comments

As I was riding the bus a few months ago, a mentally handicapped man got on and immediately yelled, “Go Giants!” Well, this was in San Francisco, and it was also after the Giants became World Series champs, but it was also long after they became World Series champs. Needless to say, much chuckling ensued and the results were all captured on my recorder. Occasionally, the man would randomly repeat his exclamation to the further delight of his bystander audience. It seemed like something that might be useful to sample, although I don’t know exactly how I could use it, but it also made me wonder if giving a microphone to people like this is some form of exploitation. Case in point:

Talk about mixed feelings. I remember listening to this stuff years ago and getting a good laugh out of it due to how incredibly ridiculous and awkward it was and I can’t imagine that Chris Burke has been in on the joke. So is Chris Burke being exploited or is he drawing attention to down syndrome? Is this the kind of attention down syndrome needs? Would I simply be mocking a handicapped man by sampling his enthusiam for the Giants? It’s hard to say. It seems like exploitation and promotional education should be on opposite ends of a spectrum but, the more I think about it, the more it seems as though these two interpretations lie on either side of a thin line at the center of a spectrum.

Ode to My LS-11.

December 26, 2011 / / 0 Comments

In six more days I’ll be parting with my constant companion: my trusty Olympus LS-11 linear PCM recorder. The idea feels a bit stranger than I expected it to; it appears that after a year of carrying this thing around, I’ve gotten quite used to it. I’m regularly reflecting on what odd conversations I’ve stored and relishing the fact that they’re now available to me for good. It’s like an incredibly drawn out Stanley Kubrick film that only I have access to, for now (ya know, because his films progress so damn slowly). And I want more. My recorder is actually starting to die, the buttons not being very responsive anymore, but I can’t imagine that I’ll be putting it away for good after the 31st. For one, the next time I’m in New Jersey, I would really like to record my grandmother. She’s a, uh, character, to say the least, in her 80s, and has a rather unique Louisiana accent. It’s as though, if I were to capture her voice, even just through one conversation, I would somehow be saving her for posterity. I suppose that’s why people make home movies: so that those who didn’t create some grand legacy can still be preserved somewhere for the people they leave behind and their progeny.

I think there’s a weird reliance one develops with the technologies they use on a day-to-day basis. How many people feel complete when they leave their homes without their cell phones? I certainly don’t. I feel disconnected when I can’t instantly Google that odd concept I suddenly became curious about. How would I have casual conversations with friends without text messaging? How will I know what time it is or what my mom’s phone number is? I think leaving my recorder behind will have the same naked effect for me.

I’ve also come to realize that some of the most interesting things I’ve recorded would be some of the most difficult to use in songs. On the one hand, I don’t want to bar the use of anything as that would be out of the spirit of the project but, on the other hand, I don’t want to cause unnecessary problems either. I didn’t really expect the issue of privacy to become so important as I figured most of the issues with privacy would be with my own privacy, in which case I would just stomach it, but I can’t stomach it for other people, and I really have been documenting more than just my own life.

In any case, I figured this little rant was apropos considering how close to the end of the year it is. That’s all.

[Update 1/1/2012: Yup, definitely feels weird to not be recording.]

Too old for prizes?

December 7, 2011 / / 0 Comments

The Rest is Noise reports on French composer Henri Dutilleux receiving the Kravis Prize today, which consists of a $200,000 grant and a commission with the New York Philharmonic. The most interesting part to me is this phrase:

” . . . Henri Dutilleux, who turns ninety-six next month.”

Wow. Go him. But it really makes me wonder what the probability of him completing this commission is. I guess anyone could die at any second so handing out a huge sum of cash and a work order to someone who’s particularly old isn’t much different from handing it out to someone who is particularly young, but I still suspect that the probabilities of dying before the work’s completion are incredibly out of wack. Is it wrong to even take this into consideration? I mean, there are plenty of young up-starts who would kill to get this opportunity. I guess the risk in that case is they may not write something that anyone wants to hear… That brings us to a discussion of the general lack of taking risks on new music in the classical world. But then, Dutilleux doesn’t write safe romantic-style music so I guess he’s a bit of a risk in that sense.

In any case, things like this simply don’t come up in the pop music world where you’re old once you hit thirty.

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