Timeline of Audio Media

By Tommy Ibrahim

The original author of the word phonograph was F.B. Fenby an inventor in Worcester, Massachusetts; he was granted a patent in 1863 for an unsuccessful device called the “Electro-Magnetic Phonograph”. His concept detailed a system that would record a sequence of keyboard strokēs onto paper tape. Although no model or workable device was ever made, it is often seen as a link to the concept of punched paper for player piano rolls. Arguably, any dēvice used to record sound or reproduce recorded sound could be called a type of “phonograph”, but in common practice, it has come to mean historic technologies of sound recording. In the late 19th and early 2Oth century, the alternative tērm “talking machine” was sometimes used. The phonograph, or gramophone, was the most common device for playing recorded sound from the 1870s through the 198Os. Usage of these terms is not uniform across the English-speaking world. In more modērn usage, this device is often called a turntable, record player, or record changer. The phonograph was the first device for recording and replaying sound. 

While CDs are significantly more durable than earlier audio formats, they are susceptible to damage from daily usage and environmēntal factors.

MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a popular audio encoding format.

Quality is heavily dependent on the choice of encoder and encoding parameters. While quality around l28kbps was somewhere between annoying and acceptable with older encoders, modern MP3 encoders can provide very good quality at those bit rates.

While magnetic tape had many great advantagēs over direct-to-disc recordings, it suffered from one annoying problem—tape hiss. The problem was not all that noticeable at first, but beginning in the 1970s with advances in solid state electronics and improved speaker design, consumer equipment had improved to the point where hiss was becoming apparent. To combat this problem Dolby Laboratories developed a method to reduce tape noise. By boosting Һigher frequencies (the range in which hiss occurs) while recording and then reducing the level of those same frequencies during playback, the hiss was significantly reduced. Most consumers are familiar with Dolby B, which became the standard for cassette tapes, but Dolby A used a similar process that was used in recording studios. It greatly eliminated the hiss problem, but did not eliminate it.

The Digital Era – Digital recording methods were introduced during the 1980s. Over the next decade digital recording gradually displaced analog tape. The real advances in digital recording took place in the early 1990s as the capacity of computer hard drives and computer CPU speeds increased significantly. Today almost all major recording studios have digital capabilities, although some still maintain magnetic tape recorders for certain situations. Digital recording completely eliminates the tape hiss problem.

The advances in this technology is exploding as is the quality of the devices. Will our grandchildren be as shocked at our current media as we are with our grandparents?

Up In the Clouds

By Tommy Ibrahim

Over the past few years, an almost imaginary type of storage has become ever more prevalent. How did we get there? First, let’s think about how we humans spend our lives accumulating ‘stuff’, and once we have gathered enough stuff, we need to find places to store it all. The same applies to data that we come across daily; it seems that everyone with a computer is acquiring vast amounts of data and then trying to find a dēcent place to store it! 0ver the years, we have seen big external storage devices like hard drives. For people who prefer portable devices, there are jump drives or compact discs. Then there are those who are desperate, who delete entire folders for the sake of replacing them with new data. The solution and next frontier to all of this: cloud storage.

While cloud storage sounds like it has something to do with weather fronts and storm systems, it really refers to saving data to an off-site storage system maintained by a third party. Instead of storing information to your computer’s hard drive or other local storage device, you save it to a remote database. The Internet provides the connection between your computer and the database.
On the surface, cloud storage has several advantages over traditional data storage. For example, if you store your data on a cloud storage system, you’ll be able to get to that data from any location that has Internet access. You wouldn’t need to carry around a physical storage device or use the same computer to save and retrieve your information. With the right storage system, you could even allow other people to access the data, turning a personal project into a collaborative effort.­
One issue that information experts, computer scientists and entrepreneurs debate is the concept of data ownership. Who owns the data stored in a cloud system? Does it belong to the client who originally saved the data to the hardware? Does it belong to the company that owns the physical equipment storing the data? What happens if a client goes out of business? Can a cloud storage host delete the former client’s data? Opinions vary on these issues.At its most basic level, a cloud storage system needs just one data server connected to the Internet. A client (e.g., a computer user subscribing to a cloud storage service) sends copies of files over the Internet to the data server, which then records the information. When the client wishes to retrieve the information, he or she accesses the data server through a Web-based interface. The server then either sends the files back to the client or allows the client to access and manipulate the files on the server itself.
Cloud storage systems generally ­rely on hundreds of data servers. Because computers occasionally require maintenance or repair, it’s important to store the same information on multiple machines. This is called redundancy. Without redundancy, a cloud storage system couldn’t ensure clients that they could access their information at any given time. Most systems store the same data on servers that use different power supplies. That way, clients can access their data even if one power supply fails.
Not all cloud storage clients are worried about running out of storage space. They use cloud storage as a way to create backups of data. If something happens to the client’s computer system, the data survives off-site. It’s a digital-age variation of “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

The Progression of Mainstream Music and Marketing

By Cayla Davis

Music, in the olden days, worked as any oral tradition. The bards roaming Medieval England would probably soil their bloomers if they could come to modern times of studio recordings. As well, if Janis Joplin were alive today, it’s likely she’d have a Myspace, Facebook, and/or Bandcamp–speculation as members of The Grateful Dead utilize social media. The evolution of music marketing shows a rapid progression, and as artists struggle for public attention, they raise the stakes for the future.

The most rudimentary way music was presented to others was through the live performance of the craft. Of course, from there, society has moved on to the typical glories of the not-so-distant past of vinyl records and radio broadcasts. Soon thereafter, introduce other formats as 8 track cassettes, cassette tapes, and compact discs. MTV later changed the game with the advent of music videos.

Throughout the 1990s, music videos were more often utilized, and artists like N’Sync, Backstreet Boys, and Britney Spears monopolized the young adult market with assortments of merchandise. In 2000, as mp3s gained prevalence, online peer-to-peer service Napster encountered legal issues of copyright infringement while by 2005, social media mogul Myspace launched Myspace Records.

Today, modern musicians have many options: Facebook, Myspace (for those old school enough to use it), Bandcamp, Soundcloud, Twitter, Tumblr, and even WordPress. Digital and online formats affect more than the ways people listen to music but also the distribution of songs and albums and the behind-the-scenes methodology of the music industry. In previous times, venues and record labels depended on physical press kits to judge music. Artists would compile small packages comprised of cassette or CD music samples, band photos, and a short biography with credentials. Nowadays, sites like Facebook provide all of the necessary information in an easily accessible manner. Websites like Youtube allow for musicians to become “viral” without ever having to formally send out press kits as in the case of Justin Bieber or Rebecca Black–as terrible as she is–and the spread of one’s musical influence depends on an online climate.

Still, by making music more widely available, it opens up a conundrum of how easily individual musicians become noticeable. With the numerous artists competing for the same public recognition, it proves harder for less-established or anti-mainstream acts to emerge. Despite the backlash, Black reiterates the notion of how anyone could make a music video; therefore, her case becomes less special than in the context of The Buggles and the advent of MTV. One band against the countless others utilizing social media as a means of marketing or outreach holds little chance regardless of the amount of talent or promise they hold.

Of course, the mainstream searches for maximum exposure as a new wave of marketing appears. Katy Perry released a movie. Justin Bieber did the same. Not only do these bring up a unique way of presenting their music, but they use film and the big screen to appeal to their own humanity, giving greater emotional control to their music. By presenting themselves in movie theatres, Perry and Bieber not only open up a new venue for music sharing, but they use their personal narratives to compliment their music.

Where does music go from here? If technology has made it possible to resurrect Tupac Shakur as a hologram, surely artists will find new ways of impressing the masses. The music industry suffers from a tension: more marketing options available leads to greater difficulty for any one musician versus a push toward more creative, inventive ways of packaging music. With the already wide variety of options available, one could only speculate as to future of the music industry. One thing’s for sure though: it certainly won’t be the same as it is today.

Are CDs, Cassettes, and Vinyl Outdated?

By Cayla Davis

Let’s be frank. For a long while, mp3’s have been gaining momentum in the market while CD’s are slowly disappearing. As reiterated on Reuters, “At mid-year 2012, album sales were down 3 percent from 2011 at 150.5 million units sold over the last six months. Digital song sales, however, notched a 6 percent rise with 698 million tracks downloaded since January.”

150,500,000 million records sounds like a lot, right? However, N’Sync’s No Strings Attached album sold over 11,000,000 copies. Backstreet Boys’ Black and Blue sold over 5,000,000 copies in its first week alone. Meanwhile, Adele’s 21 sold only 208,000 in its first week. 150,000,00 still perhaps seems to represent a large number, but imagine the number of bands on independent labels putting out work. From mainstream acts to the most underground projects, artists are often putting out music, and the public experiences a constant outpour of new material.

So it would seem–yes–CD’s and the like are obsolete, invalid; however, a push toward a complete digital format represents a few problems:

1. The tangibility of the medium. Not unlike what the ereader threatens for the traditional hard cover or paperback, mp3’s and other digital formats takes away the gratification of having a physical CD. Many listeners enjoy holding an album in his/her hands and knowing the music comes as an item with weight, that one could hold.

   Personally, having physical copies of music act not only as a source of pride but as a form of hoarding trophies. I spend hours sorting through all of my CDs, toggling between different organization systems–alphabetical by artist, alphabetical by album name, ranked from favorite to least favorite. For me, having physical copies of CDs becomes somewhat of showcasing capability. The way I treat the Christina Aguilera CD I got when I was in elementary school is different from the way I treat my hard-to-find “Get Up” single by Sleater-Kinney–one’s in a box somewhere in my closet, the other carefully placed in a prominent space. With the tangible medium, it’s possible for me to measure my affection in something other than how many listen counts it gets on iTunes.

2.  The experience of album art.  Saying album art represents something unique may be seen as a tedious argument especially as a quick Google image search is likely to pull up the cover to whatever album one searches for. In fact, I could have lied and said an album like The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band need to be experienced physically. Though it’s quite a sight, it’s just as easy to search for an image of the cover art and find a list of the people on the web. It’s the exact same information, just minus the tangibility.

   I do still very strongly advocate for seeing album art in the flesh. For example, in the case of Elliott Smith in his self-titled album, he provides more than what mp3’s and Google images could offer. Smith very famously committed suicide in 2003, and his music, especially now, touches upon the dark, tortured, vulnerable aspects of humanity.
   

   The cover alone evokes something painful–a picture of a man jumping to his death as brought to us by a miserable artist who later takes his life. On the self-titled album, Smith chooses to write in his own handwriting, from the track listing on the back cover to the lyrics and liner credits. One could not possibly find a richer way to experience the album than sitting and really listening to the music while following along with the lyrics. The listener feels Smith’s awkwardness and pain as he sings on “Coming Up Roses,” “The things that you tell yourself / they’ll kill you in time” or on “Single File” as he sings, “All we got to show what we really are / is the same kind of scars.” Seeing these words as Smith, himself, wrote them gives the listener greater insight into the song but also a sense of who he was and why he wanted to kill himself. The depth of feelings spilled on the page show something truly profound. Beat that, Kindle.

3. Merchandise to get autographed. 
   This too seems unimportant to some, but CD’s as merchandise shape a lot of the live experience. Visiting the merch table can come with any variety of outcomes. At the Tegan and Sara show I went to, the merch table was ran by some random employee of theirs. At The Thermals, it was run by Hutch Harris’ girlfriend (whether they’re still together still is unknown). At An Horse, it was run by the band. The merch table helps the band with exposure, but it also becomes a secondary aspect of attending live shows.

   As a personal anecdote, on February 23, 2010, Quasi released their album American Gong.

   

   On that date, they had an album release party at Jackpot Records in Portland, OR where they sold the brand new album, played a free show, and hosted a coloring contest with the audience. Of course, as Quasi is my favorite band, I made my way out to the store, rocked out, and bought the CD basically from the band. Just minutes after I owned it, I was able to tear the plastic open–seriously, that’s such a satisfying feeling–and pull out a Sharpie to get autographs from the band. I basically cried tears of joy finally meeting Janet Weiss, Quasi’s drummer, and having then the ability to show off her autograph was a powerful feeling. I also took away the story of when and how I got it which leaves me with much more than what it would have been if I were sold a mere voucher to later download the album online.

Though seen as obsolete, CDs, cassettes, and vinyl represent much more than antiquated forms of packaging music. Traditional DJing calls for vinyl records as its medium, and artists who still emulate this practice are now somewhat of a rarity and asset. As well, local businesses like N Killingsworth’s Record Room grasp onto the nostalgic feeling of using older formats. As a budding musician too, I relied on a tape deck to make my home demos. The process of recording simple tracks was easy to produce, and cassette tapes allowed for me to redo and record as I pleased.

Are CDs, cassettes, and vinyl outdated? Maybe, but they impact much of what encompasses the music experience. The loss of tangibility is more than that; there’s an absence of the finer details which capture, revolt, and/or encourage listeners.

Revolver: The Band That Changed the Game

By Tommy Ibrahim

It seems funny that a string of events lead four boys to come together intrinsically.The Beatles were like no other. The music that they made, and the influence that they hold even today, in terms of songwriting and recording innovation, holds up incredibly well compared to any artist one can name, from any decade.

This is especially true considering that the recording industry is several times larger than it was in the 1960s, and that advances in digital recording technology, which did not exist at all when the Beatles did their work, have made almost anything possible in recorded music. Despite these facts, many fans and critics agree that no one has come close to the particular brand of creative innovation, not to mention worldwide popularity, achieved by John, Paul, George, and Ringo during their heyday as the Beatles.

In the 1960s, a frequent debate among rock fans posed the question about who was better: The Beatles or Rolling Stones? Some would even throw in The Who, or later, Led Zeppelin, to add to this debate. All of those bands are widely respected and could make a legitimate claim to the throne of the greatest rock band. However, if you look at the influence of the Beatles, and the cultural significance of their work beyond the limitations of just “rock music,” it is clear that they have gained a different type of credibility than their peers and have made a level of impact on history that the other bands have not.

The Beatles songwriting not only holds up to modern standards, but is actually seen as much more professional and polished than it was at the time they were a current band. In a way, the influences that went into their records, which included a lot of music from the first half of the 20th century, as well as classical music influences brought about in the studio through the help of classically-trained producer George Martin, make the Beatles’ work a bridge between the old and the new, between the first half of the 20th century and the post-rock-n-roll era.

Much of the Beatles legacy is connected to the incomparable decade of the 1960s, which saw unprecedented changes in human culture, geo-politics, global communication, mass media, and naturally, the music business. The Beatles’ haircuts, outfits, and other superficial aspects of their fame present the risk of having them appear dated. But it always comes back to the music, and on that measure, their music is only growing in popularity, significance, and stature. Albums like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Abbey Road, and the White Album are even better reviewed today than they were when they came out, which cannot be said for the work of many of the Beatles’ imitators from that decade.

The Beatles have a solid case for being considered the one artist that will be named from the 20th century after hundreds of years have passed, much as previous centuries of music are defined by Mozart or Beethoven, or in literature by William Shakespeare. Of course, those artists had peers as well, but most people don’t hear or learn about them nearly as much.

In late 2009, the Beatles re-released their primary catalog with long-awaited remastered recordings of their original works. They followed this up with a unique box set available in a green aluminum apple device containing a USB drive with the entire stereo box set, contained in a high-resolution audio format.

What It Means to Be a Female Musician Today – An Interview with Liz Vaughan

By Cayla Davis

Liz Vaughan, a prominent visual artist from Charleston, SC and a new resident to Portland, OR provides insight into what it means to be a female musician under today’s social contexts and pretenses. As a volunteer for Portland’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls and Girls Rock Charleston, Vaughan actively works to improve conditions by furthering the Girls Rock Movement mission of empowering girls and women through music creation and performance.

Vaughan has played music for thirteen years, rocking on several instruments: guitar, bass, trumpet, and some vocals. She is currently the bassist for new Portland indie-rock trio Break Up Flowers. She also performed in Charleston bands Guam, Liz & Kim, Pomme Duterre, and Ponies & Flowers. Vaughan holds an affinity for the ampersand.

Vaughan’s personal website can be found at lizvaughan.com.

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What got you into playing music?

My mom had a really nice guitar that I’d play as a kid. I fell in love with musicians… I wanted to be like them, and I carried that into my adult life.

Who were your biggest influences growing up?

When I was twelve, I liked Shania Twain and Wynona Judd. I liked to a lot of Tom Petty in the car; he was road trip central. When I was a bit older, I was into the mainstream girl power rock of the 90’s like Alanis Morissette. Ani DiFranco: she was the first cd I bought with my own allowance. Oh, and definitely Indigo Girls.

What stereotypes do you feel plague female musicians?

People expect women to uphold the hippie folk singer image with a guitar or no instrument at all. Or it’s love songs and sweet stuff. Or it’s this mainstream idea of a riot grrl who’s pissed and is sexy and makes commodified punk rock with plaid skirts, studded belts, a bad attitude, and fucked up hair.

Country would have big boobs, curly blonde hair, be really whiny, and sing about how she’s really into her man and God. The soul singer is poor and black and got picked up by some producer. There’s the fat, black female rapper who’s not all that feminine. On the other side, there’s the dumb, ditzy pop singer, who’s very black and white and just there to dance.

Do you feel you’ve ever been a victim of those stereotypes?

I’ve never been considered as someone who could professionally be a musician. It’s not really my chosen profession. I’m not actively seeking it out, but it’s who I am as a creative professional. I’m a visual artist first, but no one realizes how [seriously] I take my musical projects.

I’ve been called “the girl band,” playing “with all chicks.” Or they’d say we “must be punk or something.” People are confused when I can haul my own equipment. Also, when I was younger, I had dreadlocks, so people assumed I was only into hippie shit.

How do you feel about the distinction of “female musician”?

It’s a double-edged sword.

It was important that riot grrl happened. I remember there was a guitar demo with Fender and being the only female in a room with fifty dudes as a twelve year old. I went to concerts with my dad, and we’d usually see female musicians because I’ve always been drawn to it, and the bill would mostly be men. I noticed it then, and I remember feeling weird about it.

By putting [it under a] spotlight, it’s making it important. It’s about evening the playing field and creating visibility. It’s also damaging though because men are also victims of patriarchy. I feel in the past I was distrustful of men to my detriment. I missed out on good relationships by hiding away in a female utopia. It’s empowering but also isolating. It doesn’t need to be hardcore female-only to get the point across, but it’s also more complex than credit is given… Women have different conversations when dudes are around.

The biggest problem is that women, when isolated, get put in the genre of “women rock music” and not in the general world of music. It almost becomes a subset, and it reinforces the whole thing we’re fighting against.

Are things better now for female musicians?

Before, there’d only be one woman on a bill, so female musicians could never meet. Now, female musicians are grouped with other “girl bands.” Overall, I’d say it’s better, but I’m also hesitant to say that… Other problems have come up when others have gone away. It’s helpful that more women have gotten popular. It gives us something to look up to and more people to play [music] with. The dialogue’s started, but the conversation isn’t over.