Expansion of the First Sound of the Future
Everyone loves music! Except deaf people. Though if a loyal fan were to hear a confession from their favorite artist that they are in fact, not human but instead, synthesizer paired with a hologram, then how will he react? Will he still listen to the artist’s music, or feel betrayed? Is anything wrong at all?
An example of this is Miku Hatsune: a Japanese teal-haired, slender 16-year-old girl designed by artist KEI who sings her fans’ songs in a high-pitched voice. Her name literally meaning “first sound of the future”. Though she has never lied about her identity, she is no human. Miku Hatsune is a mascot created by Crypton Future Media in 2007 for a voicebank run by the Yamaha VOCALOID2 engine. Her released boomed with thousands of copies sold and Crypton scrambling due to the unexpected roar of demand. Since then, over 30,000 songs have been created with her voicebank. Imagine the numbers including the other 49 members of the VOCALOID army that have been released since Miku’s debut (with much more to come). Sold-out concerts of her and her friends performing live have taken place even in Los Angeles and New York.
It all seems like something one would see in a Sci-fi flick. Although as amazing as this technology may be and the impact it caused, VOCALOID is unaccepted by the general public and the fandom behind it unintentionally isn’t helping effectively.
The Mainstream Perspective
The most common argument made against VOCALOID is that it’s fake. Well, define fake. Fake means, according to Google, “a thing that is not genuine; a forgery or sham”. Well, every decade has people complaining about the current music and “geez, what happened to good music?” Older folks and even the you...
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...players ,dancers, fandubbers, listeners, buyers, it’s all amazing. All the sweat and tears someone puts into a song deserved to be heard. A lot of times people don’t notice that there’s someone on the other side of the screen that put the work need to create VOCALOID song or video. Even some fans forget. The focus should be on the producers. “By the fans, for the fans” should be the slogan. Crypton has supported this through it’s record label KarenT.
One of the most popular producers has an upcoming anime called Mekaku City Actors that will air starting April 2014. His name is Jin and he is the creator of the song series Kagerou Project which uses VOCALOIDs Miku Hatsune and IA, has 20 songs at the moment, a light novel series, and manga series. A concert was held with a variety of singers covering his songs and a projection of the character ENE on a glass screen.
Debra Rathwell is the Senior VP for AEG Live. Rathwell oversees the active New York office of AEG along with being a force in national touring. Rathwell has more than 30 years of experience in the industry and her dedication inspires me. I know she is well respected in the industry and I think it is impressive that she books on average 800 shows every year. Being a woman in the music industry is a big challenge, but Rathwell proves to me and the world that being hard working will help prove yourself. The first step that really started Rathwell’s career was during her last year at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario. Rathwell was Harvey Glatt’s assistant and went on to work as Bass Clef Entertainment, which partnered on shows with Canada’s concert leaders. This introduced Rathwell to the industry and the rest was like a snowball effect, one job led to another. Another step Rathwell took in her career was pivotal was joining Donald Tarlton for 12 years at DKD. With DKD, Rathwell managed a staff ...
Marika Kovac-Houlihan’s TED Talk hurt me. Hearing her stories first hand truly reveals the discrimination Deaf people face. It’s an easy to listen and understand the definition of discrimination but to experience it or witness is different. Kovac-Houlihan’s intention was for the audience to be stunned by her experiences, I imagine most of those people feel the same way I currently do. Her understanding was that most hearing people see Deaf people as disable or inferior, not every hearing person thinks that way, but most do. Kovac-Houlihan believes hearing people’s assumption is “that a deaf person may be isolated, uneducated or without language” (2:29 Kovac-Houlihan). I slightly disagree with her, but there are exceptions to every rule, one individual does not always impact the thoughts of the mob. I choose this video because of my reaction to Kovac-Houlihan’s primary discussion topics: the phonocentric ideology, loss of identity, and the divide between hearing and Deaf
The Braindead Megaphone is essentially an essay about media’s affect on our culture and how technology has created a numb opinion through constant bias perception. The way we portray our own culture is much different now with the availability of technology and although that can bring us a lot of important information, we are receiving it in a way that is causing us to form our own opinions based on the way media convinces us we should think. Our perception of concepts through media is very skewed because of the careless agenda driven side of media and business. Today in the media, the information that we receive is condensed into what they want you to see verses complex and thoughtful information. Over time we see less and less real life concepts and more poorly perceived ideas and it causes us to become numb and thoughtless about these ideas because they aren’t being brought to our attention.
In the past, singers made money through CDs and cassettes. These forms of media have been replaced with digital copies of albums and songs. Even this method of accessing music has begun to fade away with the replacement of streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music, or Soundcloud. Artists’ music has also been used in advertisements. This can negatively affect the artist’s career. Music artists shouldn’t have their songs in advertising.
Some of your favorite pop stars wouldn’t have the career they have without autotune in the studio. Take Kanye and Iggy Azalea. Iggy Azalea has had a fair amount of success with her songs, but whether she writes her own rhymes or not, you can’t argue that she can freestyle. When asked to freestyle at one of her live concerts, she miserably failed, ending up spouting random gibberish. With Kanye, although his rap skills are high-par, he’s proved he’s not fit for the role of a singer in his performance of Bohemian Rhapsody from Queen. You can name endless more of these consumer culture giants, and may possibly include one of your favorite
In this reading, the author discusses their opinion on Deaf Art. During their own experience, they explain the expression and point of view of Deaf artists. As seen in their work, these artists share their point of view: positive and negative. The author also discusses two of the Deaf artists that have influenced themselves the most. One of these artists is Chuck Baird, and the other is Betty G. Miller.
Without a doubt there is one major performer that certainly stands out within our pop culture world. The name of this very famous American icon is, Dolly Parton. Dolly has surpassed any rags to riches story that ever lived. She has touched the lives of so many individuals over many decades through her many talents. Dolly started her career at a very young age and continued fulfilling her life endeavors through country music, pop music, and even acting. This American icon didn’t stop with just her talents, she also gave back to our society through charity, fundraising, and establishing her own theme park. Dolly Parton was brought up in a very poor family, however through much dedication she became the famous icon everyone idolized today.
Artists and fans alike have been at the forefront of the music-scene revolution, and both have benefited in a number of ways. While major record labels try to find new ways to return to the years of massive profit, many artists have found new ways to connect with fans on a more personal level as well as new ways to get their music heard. Fans are discovering the perks of following artists that aren't controlled by four-record deals and corporate input. The music landscape is changing. This is a good thing.
When the human brain is used for ten minutes straight, it generates enough electricity to power the Sears Tower for forty-eight seconds. That’s more than a hundred floors of electricity powered. The brain creates more brainwave signals than every cell phone signal in the world at one time, in one second of use. When humans listen to music, we generate three times the amount of electricity and brainwaves. Music is widely used to express ourselves thoroughly. Bruno Mars’ “Unorthodox Jukebox” album does just that. It expresses. It allows us to express how we feel about s...
In this day and age, pop music dominates the airwaves at every turn. Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Kanye West, and many are commonplace names among teenagers and younger demographics not only in the United States, but all around the world. The United States has accepted the position of international, cultural role model long ago, dating back to the 1950’s when rock and roll caught fire as a hybrid of blues, country, and jazz and spread to the rest of the world almost infectiously. Since then, every major artist that comes out of the United States has easily become a global icon, regardless of the language or nationality of their adoring fans. However, one could conceive that this glamorized version of music comes less from the soul of the artist and is merely born of fiscal ambitions and visions of grandeur. The point made previously is not to critique any pop icon’s talent, which clearly they have proved to possess an abundance of it to keep the public swooning at their every whim, but instead, to show that there are musicians out there producing beautiful music without the threat of corruption and adherence to mainstream culture.
Spotify’s Time. (n.d.). Music Business Journal Berklee College of Music RSS. Retrieved May 21, 2014, from http://www.thembj.org/2014/05/spotifys-time/
The voice is our primary mean of communication and expression. We rarely last more than a few minutes without its use whether it is talking to someone else or humming quietly to ourselves. We can use the voice artistically in many ways. For example, singing carries the rhythm and melody of speech. It creates patterns of pitch, loudness, and duration that tie together syllables, phrases and sentences. We use the voice for survival, emotion, expression, and to reflect our personality. The loss of the voice is a severe curtailment to many professions. It is affected by general body condition which is why we need to consider the location of the larynx and how that organ produces voice. Surprisingly, this complex biological design is mechanical in function. It is mechanical to the point that when it has been excised from a cadaver and mounted on a laboratory bench, the larynx produces sounds resembling normal phonation. (Titze, Principles)
Generation y has revolutionized how people think and create music. “The world considers generation y to be generation x on steroids (Sophia Yan).” The adults and teens...
"The mass production of free, high-quality re-recorded music became a serious threat to the music industry" ("Music Industry"). This mass production is costing artists and producers money that they would have made from people buying their music. Listeners have turned to streaming services as a cheaper alternative to purchasing to songs they love. Streaming services have increased the availability of music, which one may think is a good thing but is in fact a fulmination to the music industry because artists are not making as much money as they would have if songs were being purchased individually. People who worked in the music industry had showered praise on to streaming services, considering them a savior that would help the music industry and increase revenue, but they instead had an adverse effect on music sales and artist salary (O’Brien). Streaming services have led to protests from artists on many different levels due to the amount of payment that artists are receiving. "Prince, Neil Young and Ms. Swift have withdrawn their music from some streaming outlets, and various musicians have called for greater transparency in how the music industry operates (Sisario).” While the protests have been successful, it is only when famous high-level artists bring attention to the issues. This controversy is one of the negatives of streaming services because
To overcome the cultural barrier and attract more oversea supporters, the K-pop groups are welcome to keep its singer’s nationality diversity. For example, the girl group “Twice” debuted last year was formed by five Korean members, three Japanese members, and one Taiwanese member. [ ] Adding different nationality members of a band group is helping the group to enter the particular market since they clearly have a language advantage over other competitors and have some kind of emotional or cultural similarities can be used to appeal to oversea fans. At the same time, producing K-pop music is also a process of global sourcing. Such as Girls’ Generation’s song “Genie” was arranged by Yu Yeong-jin, a Korean musician, but it was composed by Design Group from Europe and choreography by a Japanese- American dancer called Rino Nakasone Razalan.