Blog 8 Miller/Sampled Beats

First, pull 1-2 quotes you find appealing from each section and explain what they mean

By far this book’s content is hard to grasp and understand.  I found some interesting quotes but just couldn’t really put my finger on what exactly he was talking about maybe someone else would like to take a crack at it?

Rhythmic Cinema

“ ….any shift in the traffic of information can create not only new thoughts, but new ways of thinking.”  We can think of this when an artist or anyone samples an old material to that to their own work that creates new thoughts and new ways of thinking about that newly created material thus adding to something completely different.  

Rhythmic Space

“Speaking in code, we live in a world so utterly infused with digitality that it makes even the slightest action ripple across the collection of data bases we call the web” (89).  I agree with his statement it seems like we cannot live without anything that is digital nowadays. 

Errata Erratum

“When he was talking about his mix of Errata Erratum project he continues with what I think are his ideas of originality and making something your own work out of something already made or old. “Whatever mix you make of it, it can only be a guess – you have to make your own version, and that’s kind of the point.  With that in mind, I ask that you think of this as a mix lab – an “open system” where any voice can be you” (93).  Then he later states “the Errata Erratum remix is a twenty-first-century update on the idea.”  The idea that “Dj-ing deals with extended kinship system of rhythm-one beat matches or doesn’t match a sound-flow, and it’s the interpretation of gestures that make up the mix that creates the atmosphere in a room” (96).

The Future is Here

“We’re probably the first generation to grow up in completely electronic environment” (101).  

I’m just happy to be alive in this era.  It’s truly exciting to travel around just checking out how strange it all is.  I’d say this is going to be a century of hyper-acceleration, and I just get a kick out of seeing it” (100).  I thought he was just going to leave it there but I like his mini stories explaining his opening statement to this section.  I find it interesting because I have travelled to a few places and everything new always seems strange. 

The Prostitute

“Enter the keyword “truth,” and the search engine brings you conflicting meanings.  That’s the prostitute’s revenge: so many people, so little time.  In the network, you can’t take a bite.  The prostitute in the conveyor belt.  It’s a simpler one.  In both cases you must realize that it’s not about a person, but the locus of intent and the negative dialectics of a role playing where your demands of a person are based just as much on their willingness to play a role as on the basic fact that the money being handed over is an emblem of your time and energy.” 

“-the transfer of information between them is an Interrelationship between music and art and writing.”  He is talking about his work later he states “the paradox here is that you have a culture founded on unceasing change and transformation-“  I find this quote very true, everyone is always borrowing (sampling, mixing) old stuff to make new and he uses prostitution as the oldest profession as a metaphor to this view of what is going on this culture of borrowing. 

Second, spend some time at Who Sampled Choose a song and notice the samples, the related songs, possible covers or remixes

One of all time favorite songs is Slippin’ by DMX in the album Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood Def Jam 1998. The song's music video portrays DMX's youth. Slippin' is also known as one of DMX's most poetic songs created and it's also a song that has influenced a lot of people suffering from depression. I never knew that he had sample the melody (not sure what else to call it) from Grover Washington, Jr’s Moonstreams from the album Feels So Good Kudu 1975. 

When I listened to the original beat, first thing that come to mind was boring in 1975 Jazz and blues seemed to play a major role in the music scene but the producer of the beat of Slippin’ took that old, dull beat and added a few more drum patterns and turned it into something new.  He remixed and sampled the beat of the song onto DMX works made it more hip….Creating a Hip-Hop beat that would sure capture the ears of the new generation something new.

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deBourgoing’s touches on different means of communication within the Hip Hop community and how it has changed with new up and coming artists and their usage of digital means to communicate directly with their fans.  She touches on the affects of transmedia on the “LA renaissance” movement with the help of new digital means of expression and the evolvement across different platforms.  She seems to argue the validity of the role of new technology medium and the power that allows an artist to evolve to its own style.  Technology and it’s perks allows artist to cut the middle man and allows the fans to interact more directly (Twitter).   She elaborates on the seven practices of transmedia inspired by her observation of the LA movement.

1. Spread your brand: Open Mic

2. Keeping it real: be authentic yet marketable

3. Be the change you want to see

4. Collaborate

5. It ain't hard to tell

6. It's a man's world but it would be nothing without a woman

7. We were scholars before colleges

deBourgoing’s article relates to the first half of the material covered in class on many aspects she mentions how promotional media has turned to services such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, being used by artist to cut the middle man.  She uses transmedia (Twitter, Facebook) as a means for artist to promote their selves and to be better known to the community or anyone that is interested in their products.  “Twitter more than Facebook is a fertile terrain for transactions of all sorts: business, artists to artists, fans to artists, artists retweeting other fans. It's used for promotion, casual conversations, to express opinions, and indicate what the artists are up to.”  We can see how it relates to Real Time everyone wants to know what their favorite artist is doing or will be doing within the next 30 minutes and artist are willing to post or tweet what they are about to do.  We can argue that these social network services are multiple media platforms which can distribute content to or from multiple media industries to everyone in that “scene”.  Its interesting because these new trends and platforms type of medias can be categorized and organized in its own media platforms Facebook uses comments and post and Twitter uses tweets and everyone is re-using the wheel to come up with something different.  

Everything thus far that we have studied has to do with collaboration, the wisdom of the crowd, crowd sourcing, and organizing “music” defined by emotions.  On Rhythm Science Paul Miller expresses different ideas on this section of the book he goes from reading to writing, to writing to dj-ing and poetry to rhythm.  I find page 64 the most meaningful section and the one section that explains his ideas on the new “multiplex consciousness” generation.  We have jumped around from wisdom of the crowd to organizing our media folders and explaining why we organized it the way we have trying to explain the layers of complexity.  I cannot paraphrase his words so I’ll just quote Miller.  “The multiplex consciousness of rhythm science adds several layers of complexity: the “current”- all puns intended, alternating and direct- has been deleted.  Any sound can be you.  It’s an emotion of abstraction and attention deficit disorder.  There’s so much information about who you should be or what you should be that you’re not left with the option of trying to create a mix of your very self. ….The mix absorbs almost anything it can engage – and much that it can’t.   I think that this paragraph describes a lot of what we have discussed in class thus far.  We are a “current” generation that mixes and remixes things by collaborating old and new ideas to invent new forms of “music” or innovations that represent us.

Miller “you can always squeeze something out of the past and make it becomes new.”

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Jenkins starts off by what the book is about and key terms that he will be discussing he states “This book is about the relationship between three concepts—media convergence, participatory culture, and collective intelligence.”  We can relate this with Weinberger statement- “We have taken technology and the power of the masses into a whole different level “crowdsourcing”.  We are able to use information and manipulate it anyway we want, whenever we want and most importantly now!” On page two Jenkins states “Welcome to convergence culture, where old and new media collide, where grassroots and corporate media intersect where the power of the media producer and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways.”

Jenkins defines convergence as follows: By convergence, I mean the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences who will go almost anywhere in search of the kinds of entertainment experiences they want.”  Later on his work he states that “Convergence is, in that sense, an old concept taking on new meanings.”  I think that he is describing our age of mixing old things with new things.  

In turn, media convergence impacts the way we consume media. A teenager doing homework may juggle four or five windows, scan the Web, listen to and download MP3 files, chat with friends, word-process a paper, and respond to e-mail, shifting rapidly among tasks.  We can see how this may tie up within term of how we organize our lives and our work today.  We can tie this up with what Weinberger said:  “In the digital age, computers have become demonically good at sorting through gigantic, complex piles of information” (pg 85).  

Weinberger believes that all miscellaneous has a place if there is a place for it as he described in his orders of order. Jenkins states “Now, convergence has reemerged as an important reference point as old and new media companies try to imagine the future of the entertainment industry. If the digital revolution paradigm presumed that new media would displace old media, the emerging convergence paradigm assumes that old and new media will interact in ever more complex ways.” Almost everything that we organize has been organized by someone else thus we create something new from something old to define us. 

 “In the world of media convergence, every important story gets told, every brand gets sold, and every consumer gets courted across multiple media platforms.” Jenkins I think these holds true on the Splashy pants and Old Spice advertising success.