Old music in the time of streaming

Not this type of streaming. "Truckee River, Tahoe" byUnofficialSquaw.com is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 

A few weeks ago, NPR produced a series of new articles about the opportunities, perils, and possible future streaming music as it has become for many the main way of accessing music. These articles were an update of a series they produced in 2015, which I covered on this blog.

While this new series of articles covered some important issues in the new world of streaming, such as how new stars are made, how artists get paid (or not), even how music is written differently, I noticed one strain that was absent in the coverage: how people find and listen to music that is not coming out now. There were several in-depth reports of pining after old methods of distribution (cassette mixtapes, Tumblr, and early alternative streaming services) that helped people discover music, but even those focused on how people found the new music of time.

But there is a lot of music out there that is not new, but undiscovered to many people, and what is apparent from NPR's coverage is that the major streaming services care less about this older music than promoting new music.

Not on streaming?

It turns out there is a lot of older music that is not available via streaming; it was only ever distributed on physical formats. It costs a non-negligible amount money to put and keep music online (not just the format transfer, but keeping track of rights and revenue), and if the music doesn't fit a service's criteria, it doesn't get posted. Jazz and classical music are only 1% each of the music market, but they and other genres produce a lot of music. Because there is so much music online, many assume that everything is online—but this is patently false.

Where does music go to die?

Modern streaming services, like the old-school record labels, don't take care of things that they don't think are going to make them money. This was part of the reason that the master recordings that burned in the Universal fire were stored in bad conditions and not cataloged well—Universal did not justify spending money on something that wasn't making money for them now. For streaming services, how do they decide when a song or album isn't worth posting on their platform? What about taking down songs or albums or genres that aren't earning enough money or have rights problems too complicated to deal with?

The Universal fire also showcases the ephemeral nature of recorded music—it has to be stored somewhere, even if it only is distributed via streaming. And unlike with physical media, where multiple copies are distributed that can be re-discovered, the access-only model streaming services control what who has a copy. What happens when streaming services decide an album that was only released on streaming should be taken down? And then a fire or simply bad cataloging causes the label or streaming service to lose track of the music? Or, maybe more likely, a popular streaming service suddenly goes bankrupt and shuts down overnight? (After all, Spotify has still never really made a profit).

In these cases, the music ceases to exist, for all intents and purposes. I predict that in 30 years, 2050, our era will be known in music circles as the “lost years” because there will be a lot of music that just isn’t available because no one was able to collect it and streaming companies decided it was not worth preserving.

Under protection...from preservation

Before the 2018 Music Modernization Act (MMA), there as no federal copyright protection for sound recordings produced before 1972, but instead a loose patchwork of state copyright applied. The MMA patched up this loophole, at least as far is streaming is concerned, but in doing so, it greatly extended protections for older music—which while these protections are good for a few artists and acts that are still well-known and popular, the protections are certainly bad for lesser-known music. Long copyright terms before passing into the public domain only hurt the chances that preservation will occur for these older recordings—and there are some major preservation problems. Magnetic media (such as cassette tapes) and even CDs not stored in optimal conditions may deteriorate in less than half of the time of their copyright terms, so we may get to the point where we are allowed to copy recorded music, only to find it doesn't exist anymore. The MMA does allow some preservation exceptions for recordings that aren't being commercially exploited, but there are some somewhat cumbersome steps you need to take first—and these exceptions would not have been part of the law at all if some library organizations hadn't lobbied for them. Finally, those services that do take the steps to preserve these recordings have to pay a lot of money to digitize and keep the recordings accessible—and who knows when someone will decide it is not worth it for their organization, either?

Let's figure out a way to keep old music available, okay?

What do you think?

Parody and copyright, pt. 2: When the copyright owner holds all the chips

Last March, I wrote about my experience posting a parody music video on YouTube. I got some encouragement from my readers to dispute EMI’s copyright claim to the music video, and so I went ahead and submitted my dispute. When I entered the dispute process, YouTube presented me with a list of pre-selected possible arguments for the dispute. I selected the option “this video uses copyrighted material in a manner that does not require approval of the copyright holder. It is fair use under copyright law,” then wrote a very brief explanation that this music video was a parody and protected under Fair Use. Here's a screenshot of my dispute submission:

At the top of the screenshot, you see the tail end of the 20(!) organizations that have a copyright claim on “Dynamite.” Also, note the threatening language of terms and conditions.

I got a response from YouTube only a few days later in an email: “After reviewing your dispute, Sony ATV Publishing has decided that their copyright claim is still valid.” They are keeping my video up and continuing to monetize it—exactly what they were doing before. I wasn’t given an exact reason, but instead a list of two possible reasons:

    •    The copyright owner might disagree with your dispute.
    •    The reason you gave for disputing the claim may have been insufficient or invalid.

In other words, the publisher itself (notice the official copyright claimant has changed from EMI to Sony ATV—Sony ATV owns EMI publishing, but I'm not sure why the initial claim when through as EMI and then changed during the dispute) made the sole legal judgement about the Fair Use of their own intellectual property. There is no outside or impartial judge making these decisions—the publisher has all the power. So unless the publisher decides that the music used is a completely different composition (and maybe not even then), they have no incentive to grant the appeal. Further, though I needed to give a reason for the dispute, they didn’t even need to give a reason why the dispute was turned down. I think it is very possible Sony ATV didn’t actually watch the video—instead, they probably researched the person who filed a dispute (me) to see if they had a lawyer. The whole process is fishy, but YouTube probably agreed to the process for two reasons: 1) it is two expensive to hire their own lawyers to handle the appeals, and 2) the publishers have the financial power to slap YouTube with a very expensive lawsuit, whether right or wrong, and YouTube would rather be making money on the videos.

Now, there is a process to appeal the dispute decision, but from what I understand, the stakes are higher:

If I appeal, there is no option of keeping the video up—either I win and the video stays up without monetization, or it gets taken down. But for the publisher, the decision is exactly the same the second time around—and since I don’t have a lawyer, there is still no incentive for the publisher to do anything but deny my claim again. As I would prefer to have my video up, making a very small amount of money for Sony ATV, I’m not planning on doing filing a second appeal.

What happens when you post a parody video on YouTube? Copyright, that’s what

When fake lyrics are better than real lyrics

More than six months ago, I posted a YouTube video that had been at least two years in the making. Around 2014, a misheard a phrase in Taio Cruz’s pop hit “Dynamite.” “Gotta let go” changed to “Galileo” (a leap I was not the first person to make), which eventually grew into “Ganymede,” a parody song about the four largest moons of the planet Jupiter. The new parody lyric was memorable while being educational, and also had the advantage of actually rhyming. After I put the lyric to paper, I realized that I wanted to share with a wider audience, but the lyric sat while I tried to find someone else to perform the music and make a video. Last summer, 2016, I realized a music video wasn’t going to happen unless I made it myself, so I bit the bullet, taught myself GarageBand and iMovie, and made it. Here’s the final product:

This treatment is not a cover, but a parody—instead of putting my own spin on someone else’s artistic vision, this parody derives humor from the music being recognizable. Because of this, I put a lot of effort trying to recreate the sounds of "Dynamite" with the tools that came prepackaged in GarageBand (though I transposed it down a minor third to fit my voice), with mixed results.

Wait, is that legal?

Something interesting happened less that 48 hours after I had privately posted the video on YouTube—YouTube’s music algorithm identified the song as “Dynamite acapella cover” and additionally, EMI music claimed the song as their property and then optioned it for monetization (meaning they put a commercial in front of it). I was impressed that the algorithm was correct in identifying the song title, even if the version was wrong, but is EMI correct in claiming ownership of the music?

Recorded music actually has two copyrights—one for the underlying musical composition (usually controlled by the publishers) and one for the actual recording (usually controlled by the producers); that is why when someone records a cover, they still need to get copyright permission from the songwriters. In my case, it is the publishers (EMI) that asserted their rights over the underlying composition of “Dynamite” on the basis that it's cover version.

But parodies are a special case: in order to make their comic point, they need to borrow music, otherwise the joke doesn’t make sense. Courts have protected parodies under copyright Fair Use, which is a legal doctrine in copyright law that allows use of copyrighted material in a limited way, usually with a transformational intent. Fair Use is how we can quote other copyrighted works without asking permission or getting sued all the time; or how the news can show video clips; or we can xerox parts of a book—the point is we are not using the copyrighted material to steal financial or other gain from someone else, but critiquing it, putting into another context, or changing it into something else.

Fair Use is complicated, but to boil it down, parody is protected because it conveys a transformational message that can only be accomplished by using a fairly large portion of the original material. This 2012 article from Library Journal (also a good introduction to some of the problems of posting a parody video) raises another important point—defining something as parody can be tenuous. Parody has to make fun of the material itself, instead of just being satire (which is not protected). Does one need to ask for permission to write a parody, though, like Weird Al does? The answer is no; asking permission is not a legal requirement for Fair Use. Also, if people could sue you just because you made fun of them, it would be curbing free speech.

A new approach

Since 2012, publishing companies have realized that putting down take-down notices on YouTube videos is unsustainable, bad PR, and might even squelch free advertising. Instead, they’ve just decided to monetize these videos, which is what happened with my music video "Ganymede." The YouTube algorithm, though, analyzes music, not lyrics, so it will automatically flag anything that sounds like the original, regardless of if it a parody or not. This is a big problem with the system. There is a mechanism to dispute the copyright claim, but most people don’t have the time or money for the legal battle which may ensue or just don't understand copyright law (and can you blame them?) The result is that these companies make money off of someone’s else work.

I believe “Ganymede” is a parody and should be protected under Fair Use, but on the other hand, I’m not interested in making money. Six months after posting, the video still only has less than 200 views, so it doesn’t look like I’ll be getting any viral YouTube fame. I'm not planning on disputing the claim at the moment.

But the video was fun to make and I learned a lot about making music—and copyright.

What do you think? Should I dispute EMI’s copyright claim?

Update 6/26/2017: I decided to dispute the claim; you can read about what happened here.

How you clap at concerts is wrong

From Flickr, under a creative commons license.

One important part of live music is how concert-goers show appreciation for the music they’ve just heard. Strangely, this is different for different types of music and concert venues. Most involve some form of clapping (a form of applause). And much of the time, the way clapping is used just doesn’t make sense. Here’s what I mean:
 

1. Classical

For some reason, in classical music concerts in America, we give a standing ovation at the end of pretty much every concert. This doesn’t make sense. I am of the school that a standing ovation should mean something special, but also that musicians shouldn’t feel bad when they don’t get one. Also, there should be a middle ground between sitting and standing. European audiences have this solved: if they really like the concert, they will start clapping in sync with each other, which has the added effect of being way more interesting for an audience member than just continuing to clap asynchronously.

These Classical concert standing ovations often last for a long time, too, while the conductor or soloists come out and bow 3–4 times. I think hardly anyone (performers or audience) actually likes this. I think that classical music should take a cue from the theater and have one highly-staged bowing event (where the performers take turns bowing, with the soloists bowing last, and then one final group bow or two), and then they are done. If after this bowing event, the audience really doesn’t want to stop clapping after a few minutes, that’s the time to encore.

Also, at classical music concerts, there is the constant fear that someone will clap in between movements. I’m not sure what to do about that, partially because (believe it or not) during the early 1800s, people often clapped after every movement. In fact, sometimes they clapped hard enough to encore a single movement. Part of me thinks this makes more sense than the current system, but on the other hand, a lot of music in the late 19th and 20th centuries were written without the expectation of clapping between movements.

2. Popular

In most larger-venue popular concerts, we’ve gotten to the point that the audience expects the performers to do about three more songs as an encore. This annoying practice is so widespread that a few years ago I heard a performer say: “We’re getting close to that time in the concert where I leave the stage and then come back on and play a few more songs.” Let’s have encores be real encores.

3. Jazz

I know you are “supposed” to clap to for individual solos, but often we end up covering over the next’s person’s solo or other music. Couldn’t we just wait until the music stops and then clap? Instead, how about some whoops or hollers that don’t interrupt the music as much, but still give the soloist some energy?

No, I don’t have some unified theory of clapping for music appreciation, though generally I think there should be less of it. In fact, the more I think about the act of clapping (banging hands together to show appreciation for some artistic performance) the weirder it gets.

The highest form of showing appreciation, of course? Paying the musicians. Something that is for the most part happening less.

Running a symphony orchestra like a museum

Last week, I wrote about how modern art music is hard to practice and perform, and that in order to get symphony orchestras to program more of it, they would need to rethink their performance model. My solution for this is to have symphony orchestras act more like museums—in other words, the organization’s goal should be to present the art in an educational way, with curated, themed collections and exhibitions mixed with bits of history, context, and interpretation. And as with art, museums don’t have to just program past, as Alex Ross’s article indicated in last week’s post. Pretending that a concert is akin to a religious ceremony, as most symphonies do, is unproductive for having audiences understand avant-garde musical art and possibly even older music, too. However, orchestras don’t want to say that they are presenting relics for fear of being labeled relics themselves.

I don’t think, however, that symphony orchestras should shy away from being museums, which have a prominent place and social function in our society. Why do people go to museums? To see famous things that change the world, or to promote thought, or to learn about expressing emotion. They probably don’t do it be soothed or simply entertained, for the most part. Symphony orchestras should promote themselves similarly.

Much of the symphony orchestra’s music is not from this time period, meaning that today we don’t have the context to understand what is going on—the past is a foreign country (not to mention much of its repertoire is from a foreign country) and even if the music is contemporary, it may not be understandable to today's average concert-goers, especially a the absent young crowd. Why not, along with the music, tell people how audiences reacted to this music when it was presented and give permission for them to do it? How about letting people encore a movement of a Beethoven Sonata, letting them clap between movements, putting girls behind a soloist playing Liszt, or letting people play cards during a Mozart opera? Sometimes the new music, as with modern art, can only be understood with connection to older music, too, so why not play both older and newer? Does art just get displayed in modern art museum? No, the audience is given context or the author’s intent.

Another strategy that symphony orchestra’s can adopt is curated, themed collections and special exhibitions of one artist or a particular topic. By collection, I don’t just mean one concert, but a concert series. How about a  series of musical concerts themed with logical arguments or progression on the same theme? How about a series not just about “the baroque,” or “the 3 Bs,” but built around a theme that matters to modern—global warming, or crimes of passion, or slavery, or prejudice? Symphonies can still keep playing their old workhorses they know, their “permanent collection”, but what if they used Beethoven’s 3rd as the centerpiece of a concert series about deafness, or about overcoming obstacles, or about Europe during the time of Napoleon? And the symphony orchestra could get other smaller musical ensembles or soloists involved, either from the group itself or from the community, like an opera company or chamber music ensemble. And why not have modern ensembles like modern museums of art, that specialize in new music and history?

We need more long-term curation in classical music. This would require a lot more planning, which may not be possible with the current system of hot-shot artistic director/conductors that spend little time in one town. But planning is less expensive than rehearsal time and could have some great results—a musical establishment that has more of a social function than simply to entertain people in suits and ties, but to educate about history, to place art in context, and to be a forum of social issues.

Maybe if my local symphony orchestra did a series like this, I would be more interested in going.

Response to Ross's “Why do we hate modern classical music?”—well, it's hard

Not everyone wants to do this with their grand piano. From Flickr with a Creative Commons License.

One of my Facebook friends recently shared an old Alex Ross article from November 2010 called “Why do we hate modern classical music?” I hadn’t read it before, and I think it is still a question that many people are asking. So, I’d like to respond to it here. If you haven't read it, you can find it here.
 
Ross’s basic argument is that while other avant-garde arts (painting, literature, theater, architecture) from the previous 100 years has become famous and valuable, most classical concert goers would rather hear music from at least 100 years ago. He brings up several theories about why people don’t like avant-garde art music, and then discounts them. Instead, Ross blames the institutions that promote classical music—unlike art museums, orchestras are not willing to be champions of the new. If everyone were exposed to the new stuff more often so they acquire the taste, he argues, it would be different. He uses himself as an example of someone who used to love the music of 100 years ago, but now likes the new stuff, too. Further, audiences need someone to 1) explain the new music and 2) banish the idea that all music is meant to be soothing.

Modern classical music is hard

While I think that Ross undermines his argument by picking specific examples instead of giving a big picture, he is probably right—avant-garde art music from the last 100 years isn’t well understood because it isn’t played enough.

I think Ross fails to mention a major reason about why art music is not performed more, though—not just because musical institutions and critics worship the past, but because new music is much harder. Not only is it harder to listen to and understand, but it is harder to practice and put on, taking more work and more coordination. While avant-garde art, literature, and architecture are also difficult to make, they are pretty much ready to consume after they are made. People can peruse them as much as they like and get used to them. It is easier for non-music art to be seen and become part of the art landscape. The hurdle is higher for new avant-garde art music because you have to practice, produce, and perform it, instead of just exhibit or read it, and practicing, producing, and performing new avant-garde art music is way more difficult than with older art music.

What about recorded music, though? It is consumed as easily as literature and art, right? Well, it still takes time to sit and listen to the music, which is especially hard when there is so much well-known, easily graspable music out there. Also, releasing recording music into the void takes away the control of the tastemakers, and as Ross insinuates, as with visual art, unless the musical institutions program it, people will just listen to something easier, because listening to new music is hard. While it takes time to sit through a book, also, music is inherently more abstract than literature, especially when the music doesn’t have words. When the music has been made less abstract—with a lecture, or added words, or added pictures (as in the case of the movies)—people have something more they can hold on to as they try to make sense of the abstractness. All of these extra needed layers means that the acceptance of the musical avant-garde comes around later the acceptance of the other arts. New music was also hard to put on 100 years ago, for those people—even more so, without recordings—so this explains why people 100 years ago also preferred music of the past.

So, we shouldn’t tell musical institutions simply to preform more new music, because it doesn’t acknowledge a very real challenge in musical programming. Instead, we should take from a different approach—that audiences need to hear new music because it is important, not just new music for new music’s sake.

Because it’s just easier to put on Messiah and Carmina Burana again—everyone knows the parts already and people will come and hum bits to themselves when they leave (see?).

Next week, I’ll propose a way for music institutions to do just that—show new music as part of something bigger and an important part of a whole. Sneak peak: it involves musical institutions like symphony orchestras acting more like museums.

The ethics of field recording

Ethnomusicology has changed as the world has become more egalitarian. Instead of the white man showing up in a small village, setting up a wax cylinder or microphone, recording some volunteers, and then selling the recording for their own scholarship or profit with little or no attribution, native performers are now getting more credit and monetary rewards for being recorded.

But how do we correct the wrongs that have been done in the past? Well, museums are giving back pieces of art work and historical objects that had been stolen. Sometimes, this is called repatriation (though the Elgin marbles are not going back to Greece anytime soon). Can we do that with recorded music, too?

Well, NPR did a story recently about someone trying this approach, going to a village to give back music recorded 65 years before:

http://www.npr.org/2015/06/28/417462792/in-a-kenyan-village-a-65-year-old-recording-comes-home
 
Besides a delightful vignette of villagers singing their version of Jimmie Rodgers the man-eater, this story touches on a limit of this approach of musical repatriation: who has CD players? Not these villagers.

In librarian terms, this is a recording preservation issue—in order to preserve and play back a recording, you need a specific machine, and those machines aren’t as prevalent as the recordings. Case in point: they don’t even make VHS players anymore (in fact, I would bet that there are more 33 1/3 players than VHS players nowadays). CD players will probably die out faster than CDs do (I’m giving them another 30 years). But there, I guess, is a root of the field recorder’s problem—when the recordings were made originally, these villagers were not ready to keep and maintain the recording machine or preserve the recordings; and it looks like they still don’t really have a preservation plan. Does everyone making a field recording need to also teach that culture how to maintain a playback machine and store the recording? It seems a tall, perhaps impossible order in some cases. But even if the culture could keep and preserve the "original" recording, music recordings are inherently a copy, so we can’t really return the object as is the case with physical art.

So, while music repatriation is an interesting idea, and could certainly work in some cases, I think we’ll have to use other approaches to paying people back for music exploitation most of the time. Or at least, when an ethnomusicologist finds a new music-making populace and before they start to record, they should think for a while about ethics and how a recording could best benefit that particular population.

Krugman, Benjamin, and the live performance of music

How much do performers earn from this, anyways? From Flikr.

Someone a little unexpected showed up at the South by Southwest music festival a few weeks ago: economist Paul Krugman. He took part in a panel about celebrity economy in music. You can read a recap here.

The part that stuck out to me was this quote by Krugman: “Things have changed a lot less for the musicians, for the artists, than you might think…[Even in the peak of CD sales in the ’90s] artists earned about 7 times as much from live performance…It’s always been really about the live performances as far as the artist is concerned. There is really no reason to think that’s going to change.”

This statistic, that even in peak CD-sales times, artists still earned many times more in live performance than from recordings, might be an eye-opener. For many people, the recording is the final product. Many people judge musicians and music from the recording. The music industry spends a lot of time tracking and advertising the top-selling recordings. For the much of the industry (be it streaming services or recording labels) selling records or access to the records is how they make money. But outside of a few exceptional artists, the recording only serves mostly as an advertisement for the musicians, at least in regard to making money

Krugman’s statistic goes hand in hand with Walter Benjamin’s essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1936). Basically, Benjamin’s argument is that as cheap reproductions of art flourish, what becomes valuable is the original or the authentic. In the case of music, where the original is often considered to be the cheaply-reproducible recording, live performance by the musicians becomes the sought-after authentic substitute. So while the music industry struggles to profit from the artists in this new age of even cheaper and more-widely available mechanical reproduction, the sad lot of the artist hasn’t really changed much. 

The moral of the story is…if you are going to form a band nowadays, make sure you can play live and you don’t mind performing and touring all of the time. Which really isn’t new.

Why are so many good songs about bad behavior?

 "The Dixie Chicks do not advocate premeditated murder"

I realize this post does not lend itself to writing about actual music, but there's a topic I’ve been thinking about a lot and deserves a treatment: there is a lot of good music out there featuring lyrics of people behaving badly. Why is that?

First, why do I care? Because many people reject songs simply because of the lyrical content. I myself become uncomfortable listening to some music. And while I respect someone's decisions to listen or not, I think portraying bad behavior in song can be more complicated than simple glorification of actions of dubious morality.

Although I should probably try and define bad behavior, a can of worms in itself, I’ll just simply say that it’s hard to define.* In fact, that is the point of some of these songs feature bad behavior—some artists write about bad behavior precisely because other people define the behavior as bad, and the artists disagree. These artists either create their songs to argue against the dominant narrative and normalize the “bad” behavior, or more commonly (especially in hip hop) present caricatures of the bad behavior to make fun of negative stereotypes thrust upon them. While listeners are free to agree or disagree with the artist’s opinion, I think a listener should at least recognize when an artist is motivated in this way.

Besides glorification or normalization, another reason to depict bad behavior in a song is to critique the behavior as bad. Just like how stories need evil villains, sometimes artists need to depict bad behavior to successfully critique it. Songs are so short, however, we may only get the evil perspective instead of the good.

Unfortunately, the line can be fine between critique and glorification. Songs can be easily misinterpreted because of hard-to-understand poetry or obscured lyrics; a song that the listener might think is glorifying bad behavior may be critiquing it. Or it may be ambiguous. And at some point, the author’s intentions may not even matter—what’s important is how the song is used by the listeners.** Also, sometimes artists seem to be having a bit too much fun behaving badly, undermining their original motivation.

Which brings up another reason why people write bad behavior in songs: in order to vicariously be a part of the bad behavior. More than any other type of passive entertainment, music invites the listener to role play. Music is a fiction (despite rap music being used as evidence in criminal trials) that invites participation, for example dance or karaoke, and the listener can be a part of the forbidden, tempting bad behavior without actually doing anything immoral. And because of music’s ability to heighten and prolong emotion, listening to the bad behavior in song form is more powerful than just reading or talking about it.

Another reason for the depiction of bad behavior could be money—songs about good behavior don’t necessarily make as much money as songs about bad behavior. Not only is this because people enjoy exciting and tawdry things sometimes, but also because depicting good behavior does not usually produce passionate art. Good behavior can be boring, or at very least isn’t a problem that artists need to solve.

I’ve thought about another reason for depicting bad behavior in music: simply presenting the bad behavior. However, I think this option is not possible with music, because of how music can elevate what is depicted. Music is not a language of neutrality.

Once we have parsed why (or our interpretation of why) the bad behavior is depicted, then we have enough information to decide if we should reject the song or not. Or we can just feel guilty for liking a song that is definitely glorifying bad behavior.


* I'll include "explicit" language in this definition, at least.
** Anyone heard "Every Breath You Take" sung at a wedding?

Video game music: why the big deal?

I just put this picture here and you’re already hearing some music in your head, aren’t you?

For some people video game music is a big deal. Not only do the thousands of people pay hundreds of dollars to hear a symphony orchestra play video game music live, but also there are many more (not just in Japan) who find enough pleasure in video game music to want to experience the music outside of gameplay, sometimes years after the original game releases. For example, there are online fan communities that recompose, rearrange, and share video game music. And not just amateurs are joining the fray; the professional field is growing, too—many composers, finding it hard to break into a movie music industry controlled by a few composers, are instead scoring video games.

I should mention here that not all video game music is created equal. Just like movie, popular, and art music, there is good music and bad music. Strangely, there is consensus that the best video game music comes from a period when it was simple, limited to 8- and 16-bit game systems, a claim I will attempt to address in a future blog post. The best video game music sometimes has continued to generate interest after the game itself has stopped generating revenue.

So, why is good video game music such a big deal, at least to groups of loyal fans? I’ve got some speculations below. The first three could apply to movie music, too; the last two apply more directly to games.

Video game music:

1. Connects with emotions - Music can heighten the emotions that the video games are trying to convey, whether sad or happy, dramatic or infantile, serenity or even chaos and freneticness (much more effective in video games than movies).
2. Associates itself with positive experiences - People enjoy playing video games, and so when they hear the music again, they associate positive feelings with the music.
3. Builds community - While there are certainly exceptions, a video game experience is often a solo experience. Even with multiplayer games, gamers are often in a room by themselves interacting with the game in their individual way. But everyone playing experiences the music, so the music can serve as shorthand for communal game experience.
4. Is repetitive - Because video games are often a long form of entertainment (games usually are at least several times longer than their movie counterparts), the music is often very repetitive. Certainly, modern Wagnerian-inspired movie music will have reoccurring themes, but when a gamer is playing a 30-100 hour video game, they will hear the themes many more times. Because of this, gamers have the music engrained in their memories, especially if the melodies are catchy.
5. Signals interaction - Music is a often a crucial part of the interaction of video games, especially longer games with a story. Music can signal shifts in the story, mood, or interaction method (such as signaling combat or puzzles). Music can also help gamers be somewhat stimulated when they are doing a boring task, which happens occasionally in longer games. Because of this interactive element, people tend to pay attention to music in video games more than they might when watching a movie.

So, video game music is an important part of the experience, and especially good or effective music stays with gamers for long after they’ve put the game down. Just a final experience to reiterate my point: once I played a video game for which the music was broken. I knew that it was a well-reviewed and well-liked video game, but I had a hard time getting into it. I know the lack of music played a big role in my feelings for the game.

Why do you think video game music is a big deal?

Vocab: theme, melody

Goodreads for music?

This week, Goodreads sent me a list of all the books I read this year. As I contemplated why the number was so low (mostly, I forgot to record the dates read), I wondered how many albums I listened to this year. I realize that it doesn't take as long to listen to an album as read a book, but I've probably listened to 30 or 40, at least. I'm sure I would listen to more, had I the time and money.

Maybe I would know if there was a Goodreads for music—an online forum where you could keep track of your own listening experiences and then share those experiences with your friends. In an ideal system, many people could easily share and find sound recording reviews and ratings, maybe with recommendations based on previous reviews and ratings (some monetization is necessary for survival, of course).

There is one site that comes close to this: Discogs.com. While Discogs has much of the functionality of Goodreads, with star ratings and reviews, its focus is different. Discogs is mostly for audiophiles who are trying to buy and sell vinyl. It isn't really people-centered. The "community" activity is really negligible (electronica/techno may be an exception for this), and people aren't really there as themselves to share their musical opinions with their friends. Also, a large percentage of resources is spent to describe the variants of a single "master" recording—something that is only slightly important in Goodreads.

Of course, Goodreads would need to be altered for use with sound recordings. There are a few issues that make this  medium different. Genre is a problem, as there are more possible genres and sound recordings have a harder time fitting into genres than books. I think, however, that an online forum and crowdsourcing (letting users describe the album's genres themselves) would actually help solve this problem. Another problem is that many more people are involved in the creation of a sound recording than a book. One solution might be a IMDB-style person tool, so that a user could find everything produced by a particular person (Discogs is pretty bad about personnel information, too).

Would something like Goodreads really work? I don't know. Music apps like the ones developed by MySpace and Twitter have failed to gain traction, but those failures could be based on technical problems more than anything else. The shear volume of metadata needed for each recording makes a sound recording system much more complicated and time intensive than it would be for a book system. At the moment, the best system for musicevangelism is still word of mouth (or word of Facebook).

Would you use a service like the one I described? Any Discogs users out there?

Vocab: vinyl, audiophiles, metadata

Music Libraries…of the Future!

This past week, I wrote a reflection paper for a class on my predictions about music libraries of the future, and I'd thought I'd share some of my thoughts here. I think parts delve more into a wishlist than prediction, but I tried to base my speculation on current trends. I'm sure it will be amusing to read in 10 years and realize how wrong I was, but it's still fun to think about the future.

I believe that in 10-15 years, there will be two main trends in music libraries, especially academic music libraries: First, collections that are increasingly 1) electronic, 2) searchable AND browsable online, and 3) aggregators for third-party content. Second, management that focuses on greater outreach, more specialization, and a shrinking (or at least not growing) number of professional positions.

Trend 1: Streaming music, browsable sound collections

   
As more and more musical resources are put online, music libraries will offer more streaming services, even starting to offer popular music streaming services such as Spotify or Pandora. Of course, the streaming services now existent (Alexander Street Press, Naxos, and DRAM) will continue to add content and also increase their prices. Because of this expansion in electronic sound recording content, music libraries will find their budget for physical sound recordings dwindle, and will have to rely more finding rare music that is hard to find electronically on third-party markets. Although libraries will develop the tools to lend MP3s, legal problems will prevent the execution of this program. Subscription video streaming services will continue in the same way, becoming a greater percentage of music library’s budget as more and more music content becomes available online and fewer and fewer resources are published in a physical form. As physical sound recording budgets shrink and CDs become less of a theft risk, music librarians will figure out new ways to increase their physical circulation or risk their material having almost no use at all, perhaps finding a cheaper method of moving from closed stacks to open stacks or making their physical collections virtually browsable online.

Trend 2: E-books and e-scores

Music libraries will begin to catch up with other libraries on the purchase of e-books, as more music e-books become available and demand for them increases. Better tools will be developed to display textbook and academic e-books, making theme more popular, because the market will call for it, and because these tools as so bad now, they can only get better. In addition to e-books, some scores will start to be leased through aggregate publisher databases for use on tablets. These program will allow musicians to mark their own copies, and perhaps keep those markings for the next time they will lease the music, solving one of the big problems of non-physical copies. In the next few years, however, the score leasing model will only apply to old public domain material and new music from active composers who are willing to try the new model. In order for patron to use this new music leasing, the library will have to start lending the technology to use such music, such as tablet computers. In addition to tablets, the library will need to rent other multimedia technology that will continue to be too expensive for students, such as video equipment, microphones, and video and sound editing software.

Trend 3: More (and cheaper) e-journals, with content aggregators

While legal action will not convince courts to allow the lending of MP3s, lawsuits against big academic publishers will finally make electronic academic journal access cheaper rise only as fast as inflation. More journals will be open access, but in the next few years these open access journals will still not have figured out how to keep their academic standards high in the new model, such as working peer review process. Large, publisher-driven journals from academic presses will still continue to function and carry the most credibility, even with decreased revenue and court settlements. While the number of journals will continue to increase, more and more periodicals and books will be published as e-only. The library will become the aggregator of these resources for their patrons. With the continuing increase of e-content, someone will have to develop a tool so that these items electronic items are readily browsable, instead of just searchable. New books and journal issues will be funneled into something like Feedly or even Facebook, a reader that posts new content that is available in the library, such as the table of contents of patron’s favorite journals or a type of new books, so that patrons can quickly see what’s new. While browsing capabilities will continue to increase, music databases will become better at pinpointing material patrons need based on their search queries and search query history, a direction that we are moving already.  

Trend 4: Public domain expansion

While American copyright probably will not change much in the next 10-15 years, I will continue to hope that the restrictions to public domain material will slacken. There is currently an international movement to pull back the life-plus-seventy copyright stipulation back to a more reasonable life-plus-fifty. As demand and availability of out-of-copyright sources increases, libraries will become more involved in the location of online public domain resources and the production of out-of-copyright resources for these online platforms. Fair use will continue to be nebulous, but libraries will become more important in informing the public how to navigate these laws.

Trend 5: Less product, more service outreach

   
In addition all the changing collections (or perhaps because of it), music libraries will function differently, especially in terms of public service and personnel. Because of the de-emphasis in physical resources and large increase in online providing, music librarians will be doing more time with laptops having “office hours” in music schools, marketing themselves as a provider of resources instead of a repository of resources. While other academic libraries, such as large graduate and undergraduate libraries, will continue to gain in study and technology space, music libraries will be forced into smaller and smaller spaces, another reason why music librarians will need to concentrate on outreach.

As part of this outreach, music librarians will continue to do advertising exhibits; if anything, these exhibits will get bigger and more complicated and will be connected to social media (maybe a series of exhibits on a similar theme throughout the year, pushed heavily on university websites and Facebook and Twitter). Advertising of resources will become even more important, as will education about the increasingly complicated and varied music tools available.

In order to do this outreach, librarians will increasingly rely on paraprofessional and part-time workers. I think as budgets continue to flatline, the trend will continue to have fewer top people with library degrees and more full-time paraprofessional positions. However, the top positions will continue to require MLS degrees because of the continuing importance of technical education. MLS programs will be changing, however, to reflect the need of greater technical expertise. Because of the peculiarities of musical resources and overabundance of trained musicians versus jobs, though, musical expertise will continue to be desired for these top-level music librarian positions.

What do you think is in the future of music libraries?

Vocab: streaming, MP3, paraprofessional

I don't know how music works

What's with this guy, anyway?

A few weeks ago, I performed as a singer in four performances Beethoven's 9th Symphony. It's a long work, and the choir doesn't come in until close to the end, so I had a lot of time to sit and think about what was going on in the music. And with Beethoven, there's always a lot going on. As any regular readers of this blog know, I like taking music apart and analyzing it to see how it works. At the end of the four performances, what I decided was this:

I don't know how music works.

I know what pitches the open strings of a violin sound, how many times a second a string vibrates to sound an 'A' in Europe or the U.S., how to spot a second theme in the first movement of a classical sonata or symphony, how to lift my soft palate so that my vowels sound better, and how to sing beautifully in German.

But I don't know how this music made Beethoven, a middle-class German who lived centuries ago, a hero and household name for all the generations since.

I know how to analyze or write a four-part fugue, how to orchestrate, transpose, and balance a woodwind section, how to finger an Ab on a trumpet and what the same note would sound like if played on a bassoon. I know how to take apart a clarinet, how a baritone sax is different than a soprano sax is different than a bass clarinet. I know the German name for viola, how to dance an Irish jig, and the difference between a bulgar and a freilach. I know how to dampen an Javanese reyong, how to chant kechak, and how to count gong cycles.

But I don't know what about the music of 9th symphony made it a symbol of New Years in Japan or the reunification of Germany in 1990.

I know how to conduct music in 11/8, how to recognize a blues progression and improvise a solo over it, how to correctly voice and resolve a Neapolitan chord, how low a bass can usually sing and what happens to their tone above an 'A'.

But I don't know what about Beethoven's 9th (or any other piece of music) would make someone dedicate their whole lives (with minimal financial award) to studying a composer who died years ago. I don't know why some people decide to spend thousands of dollars on a music education with little hope of financial reward. I don't know why a few people spend millions of dollars to shore up the failing finances of symphony orchestras all over the world because those musicians hardly make enough money to buy their instruments.

Assumptions

When you get down to it, this symphonic performance is just a bunch of people waving their arms and moving their fingers and blowing, or shouting in a very specialized way, and vibrating strings and membranes and columns of air. And it's not just classical art music—all music is just vibrating air molecules that we pick up with some very small bones in our ear and transfer into electrochemical pulses in our brains. It's not like art or literature, where pictures or words can represent tangible things in our lives and relationships (and by the way, many critics think that the words to "Ode to Joy" by themselves are pretty much drivel). How can a vibration be a symbol for joy or anger or pain or group belonging?

So how does it help me to know what I don't know? It's important because we need to know what we are assuming before we can move on. Take science—it starts with assumptions, or postulates. For instance, in Euclidian geometry we have to assume that there's such a thing as two parallel lines that never meet. But we can't really prove that, and in fact on the Earth, which is not flat, Euclidian geometry doesn't really work on a large scale, just as Newtonian physics doesn't work in large-scale space.

In music's case, we take as a postulate the transformative power of music. This assumption helps us move on to make some conclusions that in practice seem to work out. But I think we should never forget that it's an assumption. We don't know how or why music is or can become such a big deal, such an important factor for change in the world. And our lack of answers is one of the things that makes music so intriguing.

Vocab: theme, sonata, symphony, soft palate, fugue, blues progression, transposition, gong cycles

Lyrical repetition in song

Sometimes, critics make fun of songs because of how repetitive the lyrics are. For example:

Baby, baby, baby, oh!
Baby, baby, baby, oh!

Yes, inane lyrics exist, but the truth is that these lyrics are not as repetitive as they look like on paper, because the music changes when the words repeat. And changing the music alters (slightly, in this case) the meaning of the text. By just changing the music on the repetition of a lyric, you can add meaning to the text, alter the text's significance, or even completely change the text's meaning. 

Example 1

Let's try one example. Consider this chorus:

She's got a ticket to ride
She's got a ticket to ri-i-ide,
She's got a ticket to ride,
And she don't care.

Looks pretty repetitive, doesn't it? Well, it's the chorus of a song, and the (text+music) is meant to stick in someone's head. To stick effectively, we need to hear it several times. But as listeners, we don't want to hear the same thing exactly. In this case, the melody of the first three phrases begins the same (although the harmony differs), but is different at the end of the phrase. What does that do? Well, first, it emphasizes this phrase. Second, it lets the listener ponder on the meaning of the words—if we hear it three times, it must be important. Third, it gives the resolution ("and she don't care") more punch because we had to wait so long for it. And fourth, the melodies of the three repeated phrases sound progressively more frantic and worried. If I were to try that using only text, it might look like: "She's got a ticket to ride, oh no, she's ready to go away from here, she's on her way out the door RIGHT NOW—because she doesn't care about me anymore." As you can see, the point is made more effectively—and memorably—using music.

Example 2

The pattern of repeating phrases in "Ticket to Ride" is very similar to another common music/lyrical repetition convention: in most blues music, the first lyrical phrase almost always repeats. The second time around, though, the melody and the chords are different under the same words, creating a strong emotional reinforcement and giving the third phrase (the response to the previous lyrics) more weight. It's kind of like waiting for the punch line of a knock-knock joke.

Here's an example:

You ain't nothing but a hound dog, been snoopin' 'round my door,
You ain't nothing but a hound dog, been snoopin' 'round my door,
You can wag your tail, but I ain't gonna feed you no more

"Hound Dog" (1953), by Leiber and Stoller, sung by Willae Mae "Big Mama" Thornton 

Anyway, my point is, I don't think repetition of lyrics should be an immediate indication of bad song writing. Music and lyrics should be considered as a unit. Now, over-repetition of music? That's another thing. For another post.

Vocab: lyrics, phrase, melody, blues

Jonathan Coulton's "Shop Vac" and being American

Monotonopoly

This week I was traveling through some new states for me (South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida), and while there were some new and different things in each place, one thing that struck me is how the same some things are, especially consumer outlets: strip malls, Walmarts, Targets, McDonald's etc., basically the same stores everywhere. I'm caught up in wanting that homogeneity, too; If I like a store or brand, I want it to spread. I think this is one aspect of life that we as Americans struggle with. We are drawn by the consumer market (that's what the market is good at), but shopping at those stores or keeping up with the Joneses doesn't give us human connection or fulfillment, which is what we really need in our lives.

While we were driving, Jonathan Coulton's "Shop Vac" came up on shuffle, and as we sang along, I remembered this song does a great job of approaching this American problem of brand desire and its folly. While this song is uncharacteristically not about zombies or cyborgs, I think this is one of my favorite Coulton songs. The song's story features a couple who are "living the dream." They have enough money to move out to suburbia, buy a riding mower, a big TV, etc., and shop at all the trendy stores they want. Here it is, with some kinetic typography animation that helps brings out the main points:

While the line "But we haven't got real friends, and now even the fake ones have stopped calling" (which comes up late in the song) crosses the line a little from show to tell, it is the first line of this upbeat song that tells the truth about this couple: they are drowning in their own loneliness. This loneliness is only exacerbated by the white noise of the stereotypically male workshop shop vac downstairs and the woman's TV soap operas upstairs, which drown out their real feelings and don't let either connect personally with each other or anyone else. It seems when the couple does communicate, it's about inconsequential commercial things, like which Starbucks is better, because "the other one's not as good" (the online reviews in the animation is a nice touch). The underlying TV announcement during the last verse tells of the final result: a man going crazy. It turns out brand fulfillment is no fulfillment at all, and he dreams of fleeing from it all. But since he can't run, he continues to drown it out with more assigned stereotypes and consumerism.

Musical sarcasm

So what does the song's music accomplish? Well, it is an upbeat, catchy song with 50s-sounding handclaps. This facade leads the listener into believing that the couple are doing exactly what they want to. But gradually, the listener becomes aware of the tension between the happy music and the sad state of the couple and the music becomes a symbol of another empty brand.

On a more minute analytical level, there are three main sections of the verse, each with its own set of chords. Having three sections with different chords allows for Coulton to switch emotions quickly and effectively at the beginning of any of these sections. Also, the verse starts with longer phrases, with some space in between them, but as the verse progresses, the phrases get shorter and more frantic, which builds to the chorus both emotionally and musically. Whereas a bridge normally takes the song to a new emotional level, this bridge takes the song to a new level of inane, again underlying the musical sarcasm of the song. It is a nice change of texture, too, breaking up the music nicely. The chorus is catchy and memorable, which means that most people might actually memorize the chorus before they realize that the lyrics are actually tragic, the protagonists separate and alone. This only underlines the song's musical sarcasm.

What do you think of "Shop Vac"? Do you have a favorite song that portrays the American condition?

Vocab: phrase, bridge, chorus, lyrics

Patriotic songs

It may be iconic, but the U.S. Flag gets a C+ rating on this rating system. Photo from Flickr.

What makes music patriotic? Two things: lyrics and tradition.

What about lyrics (or the words of a song) makes something patriotic? Usually, mention of place, coupled with a sense of nostalgia or importance. Often, just repeating the place name is enough, as long as the mention is a positive one. Music is a great way to imbue or communicate these positive feelings into an idea, granting the word pomp, especially in the right circumstance.

As for tradition, repetition, especially at symbolic occasions, can lead to song symbolism very quickly. Think of the national anthem sung and played at important civic and sporting events, usually accompanied by raising a flag.

Can you have patriotic music without words? This is much harder, but it is certainly possible. Even a simple patriotic title can go a long ways. In this case, repetition resulting in tradition is really the only recourse. Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture, despite its European story, has become to be associated with patriotism almost because of sheer repetition. It does, however, have some words associated with it, if only a title and a scenario. Perhaps cannons help, too, especially since our independence day traditions are so bombastic.

"What about the music?" You might ask, especially if you are a regular reader of this blog. Well, I'm not sure the music makes much of a difference to whether a song is perceived patriotic, other than that the right music can twist and make fun of a known patriotic lyric. I'm not about to define what makes music convey genuineness or gravity. Certainly, there is a certain style (on a European model) that most countries in the world favor for their national anthems, but patriotic music is not limited to this style.

Star-Spangledness

Here in the United States of America, our most prominent patriotic song is  "The Star-Spangled Banner." Perhaps one downside to its symbolic success and ubiquity is that many Americans don't even listen to the words anymore. In fact, surprisingly, the majority of Americans don't know the words or even what the song is about. In 2007, to combat this dearth of knowledge, the largest national educator's organization, MENC, put together a national anthem roadshow to help, which received a lot of attention.

Some educator factions would like to change the national anthem to "America the Beautiful," because "The Star-Spangled Banner" is actually really hard to sing. Although its difficulty makes it great for divas to sing at sporting events. If you want to know more about the national anthem, especially Jimi Hendrix's fascination with it, you should definitely check out Mark Clague's forthcoming book "O Say Can You Hear: A Music History of America's Anthem."

Do you have a favorite patriotic song? Can you think of examples of patriotic songs without words? What do you think makes music convey genuineness or gravity?

Vocab: lyrics, anthem, diva

Concentrate!

Rodin's Thinker, from Flickr

A lost skill?

I recently heard an (old) This American Life episode about what we learn from music lessons. While much of the lessons illustrated on the program were tongue-and-cheek, one thing that music lessons teach us is concentration, which, according to NPR's Science Friday, is something kids desperately need to learn. The point of Clifford Nass, a psychology professor at Stanford University, is that while everyone (men and women, at least for media tasks) thinks they are being more productive when they multitask, they are all fooling themselves. The antidote for unproductive multitasking is learning how to focus our attention on fewer things and so become more productive. I think music is perfect for this.

Why does music teach us concentration? Well, music is complicated enough, and the coordination required so great that one really needs to focus their whole attention. While it might be easy to listen to music while you check Facebook, it's very hard to practice music doing the same thing. Music rarely pauses, and while one might start and stop while practicing, the final goal is to limit interruptions, which is the opposite of multitasking. Also, in order to improve in music, one needs to practice. Practice is really learning how to repeat something until it's always correct, and that takes patience and persistence.

But there are other ways, right?

Couldn't we learn how to concentrate by another method? Yes, I think one could learn concentration with other arts (such as theater, sculpture, pottery), or sports, or maybe even video games. But music, in my mind, is superior because it combines 4 things: 

1. music is mentally and physically compelling in the moment, 
2. music engages a very large part of the brain, 
3. music is a physical activity, and if done properly, can increase health and well-being, and 
4. music is a skill that continues to benefit practicers years after.*

But, some might argue, that when one performs music, they focus on many things: watching the conductor, counting beats in their heads, moving their fingers, controlling complex breathing patterns, and sometimes marching. Isn't that multitasking? Well, Professor Nass counters this argument: "It's extremely healthy for your brain to do integrative things. It's extremely destructive for your brain to do non-integrative things."

Extremely healthy indeed. Now if we could just pay music teachers more for their needed and health-giving service. Maybe as much as athletic coaches? In my dream world, anyway.

Do you think that something else might teach concentration as well or better than music? Or do you think fears of loss of concentration skills are overblown?

Vocab: conductor, beat

*I will track down studies that have proven these points for next week. Or if any of you know where to find them, please comment!

Crowdsourcing metadata at the Bodleian

"The Cleopatra Galop" by Charles d'Albert

Tomorrow, as part of my library summer seminar in England, I’m visiting the Bodleian library in Oxford. One thing I’m interested in asking about is their “What’s the score at the Bodleian?” project. The Bodleian has a huge collection of 19th-century sheet music (back when printed was the only transportable medium for music) that they would like to digitize, but they don’t have the resources to do so. “What’s the problem?” you might ask, “Don’t they just need to run it through a scanner?” Well, the scanning part is not the time-and-money crunch with digitization projects—it’s the metadata.

Metadata is the information that is attached to the digital picture. in the case of sheet music, useful metadata might be the title of the work, composer, the lyricist, a description of the cover, and publication information. Metadata makes digitized images searchable and therefore findable and useful. Sheet music metadata, luckily, is relatively easy to locate and enter, even for non-musicians, and so the Bodleian has decided to crowdsource the project. They are putting this digitized sheet music online and letting volunteer digitizers fill in the metadata.

Not really free

With this project, the Bodleian is following the lead of the New York Public Library, whose "What's on the menu?" project has been a huge success. So far, NYPL has digitized almost 17,000 historical menus using volunteer support. These two aren't the only volunteer digitization projects around, either. Trusting non-cataloging experts is a big leap of faith for institutions to make. But if they can figure out how to train volunteers, and a find a crowd of willing people, then they can digitize much, much faster than with only their own paid experts. Still, these projects not free; it takes some dedicated staff to coordinate and curate all the entries, and both NYPL and the Bodleian have some major funders. Even with major volunteer support, these projects would not get off the ground without this extra money.

Of course, the other reason I'm interested in "What's the score at the Bodleian?' project is that part of my job at UNC's music library is the exact same thing—minus the digitizing (If only I could get everything scanned, maybe I could get volunteers to do my job, too…) Our collection is not quite a old as the Bodleian's, mostly from 1900-1950. It is kind of fun, actually, to see what's changed and what hasn't in popular music from years ago.
 
Have any of you participated in a crowdsourced metadata digitization project? What did you think?

Vocab: metadata, lyricist, composer, crowdsource

More Parody: Fallon as Morrison

Continuing last week's subject of musical parodies, I stumbled upon this last week (yeah, I know it's from last year): 

Who is that, strutting around in leather pants and singing like Jim Morrison? It's Jimmy Fallon. While Weird Al did pretty good at Jim Morrison, I think Jimmy Fallon does it better.

While Fallon changes the melody of the Reading Rainbow theme, we can still recognize the song because the rhythm remains basically the same. Fallon also gets Jim Morrison's delivery just right, with the swagger, understated beginning, and musical build up to a screamed repetition. And of course, the musical lull for poetry in the middle of the song.

Fallon's choice of lyric was also inspired for this parody. As the Door's songs were often thinly veiled treatises on drug use, the words of "Reading Rainbow" could come straight out of a book of psychedelic imagery. For example, the first line: "Butterfly in the sky, I could go twice as high." In one blow, Fallon manages to poke gentle fun at the Doors over-serious antics and the strange lyrics of the Reading Rainbow theme.

Fallon never ceases to surprise me with his musicality. Either with his acoustic classroom instrument versions of pop songs, or his imitations of famous musicians, usually doing famous TV show themes (Check out Fallon as Neil Young singing theme song of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air). I hope his quirky, gently parodic musical numbers continue as he takes over the Tonight Show.

Do you have a favorite Jimmy Fallon musical vingette?

Vocab: lull