Roman Schwartz’s Post

Nobody who has achieved anything – no writer, no musician, no artist – benefits from looking at the past in the form of regret. A poorly turned phrase, an off note, a skewed brushstroke – they happen to everyone, they are all part of the path to getting better. Simply the phrase ‘getting better’ implies a relationship with a past where there was room for improvement. If we can look at those things we’ve done and see how we could do better, we have benefitted from them. If we look at them with judgment and regret – I’m a crappy writer, I’m a terrible singer – we’ve done nothing to get better. I’m in what I would call the early days of learning to play guitar (...and may always be in that place...). I’m currently learning how to play Fast Car (inspired by that great Grammys performance). For the most part, outside of the chorus, it’s only about a dozen notes. I’ve got those notes under my fingers, and I’m working on the attack and sustain and timing and transitions. I’ve already played those memorable 4 bars a thousand times or more, and I’m still not there, still not sounding like Tracy Chapman. I can take this experience two ways. I can go through those bars, notice all my mistakes and kick myself in the butt for being a crappy guitarist. Or I can hear those mistakes, figure out what I need to make myself a bit better, make some adjustments and keep at it. I prefer the latter. I’m better than I was a week ago, I’m even better at the end of a practice session than I was at the beginning. Those flawed notes that I played, they are now out there and nothing that I do will change them, but I can learn from them and make my next notes better. Because the way I see it, we’re making music with the world all through our lives. The music we’ve made in the past is out there, there’s no way we can change that. We can learn from that, though, with the intent of making sweeter music in the future. Right now, you are making music with the world. Are you making sweet music, or are you dwelling on your past sour notes and knocking yourself down in the process? Me? I want to keep making sweeter music. I’ve hit some seriously sour notes in the past, notes that have driven others to say I’m a crappy musician, and I can’t change that. But I can learn from those things to improve in the future. Whenever I pick up a guitar, I’m learning how to play better notes, but I’m practicing an approach to how I carry myself through life. #learning #noregrets

... interessante Analyse. "In this work, we investigate the dynamics of English lyrics of Western, popular music over five decades and five genres [...] We find that pop music lyrics have become simpler and easier to comprehend over time [...] In addition, we confirm previous analyses showing that the emotion described by lyrics has become more negative and that lyrics have become more personal over the last five decades." #musik Link https://lnkd.in/eUksRtmP

A life experienced In between clients today I was listening to some music; streaming as we all do these days and an album suggestion came up for me. Staring at the cover of the album, I was reminded of the excitement I felt at rushing off to the shop after seeing the film to get my copy of the (original) Jurassic Park soundtrack. Unwrapping the cellophane and carefully removing the inside case notes, I would read the credits and acknowledgements and pore over the still images from the film. I never thought of it in this way at the time but looking back, I was holding my very own piece of the film. So rare did it feel at the time to own a CD, it was a piece of history that was mine to keep, enjoy, and appreciate. It was as if the creators of the film had allowed me a front row seat to their creation and I could disappear into my imagination and let the music envelop me. It made me think that we don't get that anymore. Most of us stream our music now and I can't remember the last time I bought a CD. Albums are meticulously curated but for most people today, listening to an album from beginning to end as intended is almost unheard of. Music listening is disjointed, it's removed from its context and placed into random playlists. We don't get to really own music anymore and we don't get the sense that we're a part of it. It used to be a very tactile experience. Holding the cover and the booklet and loading the disc was an intentional act; a commitment to focus on that one experience for the next 60 minutes or so. Listening is, for me anyway, an intentional activity but it seems muted, and I didn't notice it until now. I feel somewhat removed from it, much in the same way as we are removed from a lot of our experiences. Almost every aspect of our lives can be lived through a screen with no need to ever interact with more than one of our senses. As we physically experience less, we think that we have less need of our somatic experience. As this need seemingly lessens, our awareness of it simply vanishes. Our body has become the mechanism by which our brain moves around, but even that is having a muted and dissociated experience of life. Dulled into submission by stress, threat, medication and technology it seems we are just going through the motions, believing that life can be lived without actually experiencing it. #somaticexperiencing #music #soundtracks #jurassicpark

What makes #CarterFamily music so noteworthy? What's up with the latest #FrankZappa archival release? And why is a new CD from #JanisJoplin & #JormaKaukonen called "The Legendary Typewriter Tape"? See my reviews for answers.

Song Lyrics Have Become Simpler and More Repetitive Over the Last Five Decades: Abstract of a paper on Nature: Music is ubiquitous in our everyday lives, and lyrics play an integral role when we listen to music. The complex relationships between lyrical content, its temporal evolution over the last decades, and genre-specific variations, however, are yet to be fully understood. In this work, we investigate the dynamics of English lyrics of Western, popular music over five decades and five genres, using a wide set of lyrics descriptors, including lyrical complexity, structure, emotion, and popularity. We find that pop music lyrics have become simpler and easier to comprehend over time: not only does the lexical complexity of lyrics decrease (for instance, captured by vocabulary richness or readability of lyrics), but we also observe that the structural complexity (for instance, the repetitiveness of lyrics) has decreased. In addition, we confirm previous analyses showing that the emotion described by lyrics has become more negative and that lyrics have become more personal over the last five decades. Finally, a comparison of lyrics view counts and listening counts shows that when it comes to the listeners' interest in lyrics, for instance, rock fans mostly enjoy lyrics from older songs; country fans are more interested in new songs' lyrics. Read more of this story at Slashdot.