Are Current Attitudes on College Healthy?

On most articles on about the pros and cons of college, money is usually the main focus. That will not be the case here. I want to discuss the idea that our hype about college can sometimes harmful to kids who aren’t ready to handle the responsibility.

I have not graduated or currently attend college due to both immaturity and lack of vision upon leaving high school. In high school, I knew I was destined for greatness. I had the highest ACT and second highest SAT score in my class by a distance of 50 points. At one point I had a principal make a home visit and tell my parent I had Harvard level potential. What happened? My answer is naivete and external pressures.

Every year, students are told that they should work hard to get to college and it’s implied that if you don’t you’ll become a social degenerate; a failure. The concept of college is awesome, but the way in which we execute it is flawed and stressful. In my opinion, college isn’t as important as vision and education, but we sometimes stress the idea of “getting into college” more than the concepts of the maturity, independence and goal setting that college allows us to explore in a more controlled environment. This leads to many otherwise promising students dropping out of college, not from lack of intelligence, but lack of maturity that only time and experience can give.

In my case, my father stressed college heavy from day one and after high school he wanted me to get into school ASAP. He didn’t care where as long as it was college. I felt differently I wanted to wait, but I was convinced otherwise. I should have stood my ground because I ended up wasting a load of people’s time including my own. I didn’t have a vision for my future since I didn’t stand for anything I fell for everything. I would got to a bigger college campus and party with my best friend at the time. I would go to class and interact, but I wouldn’t do the homework due to its perceived irrelevance to my life. I was naive, immature and lacked vision resulting in a lack of motivation and my eventual drop out from college.

I also found it interesting how many people expects children who were once raising their hands to speak and potty to be able to manage and plan out their entire life within the several months between graduation and fall semester.College isn’t for everyone and sometimes those people just need time to mature so, to the parents and teachers out there: Do you emphasize college as a life investment that one should take time to consider or do you add fuel to the hype and emphasis college for colleges sake?

 

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NEW MUSIC – Game Changer

 

An Idea

The following is me brainstorming an idea so please forgive any grammatical mistakes. Feel free to leave your two cents as well.

So, I was reading “Think and Grow Rich” and there’s a chapter about the “Mastermind”, which is a group of experts you gather to augment any weak points in your own expertise. I’ve always been into S.A.M.M. (Science , art, math and music) and writing. I’ve always had dreams (literal dreams) of me gathering expertise in those fields and we create a network of artists and geniuses to help up and coming talent obtain jobs or collaboration with each other without all the binds of formality and bureaucracy that normal corporation impose. In a way like mentors because we not only have the knowledge but the connection that an artistic master usually had. The only think is a couple of road block occurred that I haven’t wrapped my head around quite yet.

1) Where do I go to find these people and how do I approach them? Especially since this idea is in it’s infancy. The most I can say is I’ve gathered some friends to collaborate musically, but I also need to figure how to get the non-artist mathematicians and scientist. (I’m well versed in both for a laymen so talking technical isn’t an issue)

2) What do we do once I get the initial batch of people?Assuming the initial batch of people I gather aren’t well connected or financed like myself. What do we do to get the attention of those who do. What kind of projects do we create? When I think on this and try to flesh out the idea, I feel like there is a Gate. Like I need a key from someone else or an idea I don’t know really. I know if together we can help solve a problem maybe I need to pin point said problem, but I don’t want to be over-zealous on the first project since I want to prove to concept successful in the early stages.

3) How to get every to work together? This may be something out of my control, but with something like this it’s possible for leeches to emerge or people to disagree. What do I do to mitigate or prevent tension and conflict?

Pros & Cons of Mass Media

We always hear about how TV is rotting our brains and video games making us violent, but lets take a step back and get an unbiased perspective shall we?

Pros

I think the biggest pro of mass media is the ability for shared experience. It makes the world feel smaller because we have shared experiences and references strengthening the culture as a whole.

Another major pro is the exposure for the arts and an outlet for those creative minds. Mass media also encourages collaboration which is necessary for the evolution of art.

Also,according to  the book “What’s Bad is Good for You” by Steven Johnson, he believes that the complex subplots and mechanics of video games, TV, etc help our critical thinking faculties and mental health overall.

Cons

Sadly, this connectivity comes at a cost. The major con I see with Mass media is the weakness with an system, it’s too rigid. Since, a lot of many for a lot of people are involved many of the innovations are sedated for profit. This not only makes the companies and artist unmotivated to change, but it also makes consumers numb. This is why there are so many reboots and sequels that sell and tend to disappoint most people.

The final con is geared towards informational rather than artistic media. Mass media has the power of misinformation and sensationalization. News outlets have to ability to  cause mass panic or distract the people from problems at hand. Although, it does have to power to unite, it usually doesn’t help the rating which is why it doesn’t happen often.

There’s my thoughts on the Pros and Cons of Mass Media.

Check out my other articles or my YouTube channel for more content.

Further Reading

The Death of the Facebook Like Pages

Journal Entry 12/07/2015

Weird Genres: Abstract Hip-Hop?

Li-Fi: Light based Wi-fi

Above is a video explaining the basics of the light based communication called Li-Fi. What happens is that an LED is flickered very fast and a sensor decodes the flickers into data. In the video above there’s a clip that shows an HD video being played over Li-Fi at a TED talk. It’s pretty crazy. With Li-fi supposedly being 100x faster than Wi-fi what could be possible? Let’s explore that shall we.

Hologram Video Chat

With a connection this blazing I could see the implementation of hologram based communication. It would make sending HD (or even 4k resolution) full body holographic images no problem. The Li-Fi device itself could possibly be bundled with hologram capabilities, although adding it to smartphones would be the likely choice.

Virtual/Augmented Reality Boom

I think with the right spin, this technology can help propel VR technology to next level. It would first start with the 360 degree videos that have recently started on YouTube. I can imagine those type of videos aren’t memory friendly but with Li-Fi streaming and sending those files would be trivial. As we get better at 360 degree video they will add it to Virtual Reality hopefully giving video games a new aspect to work as well as giving the VR tech some more commercial leverage.

Like this commentary? Check out my post on weird  genres where I discuss Musique Concrete.

Also Check out my Daily Music Creation Challenge on YouTube

 

Weird Genres: Musique Concrete

Have you ever sat up early in the morning and listened to the birds chirp and thought “Man, this would make a great tune”? Well, I have and I’ve been looking into weird genres of music and I came across one named “Musique Concrete”. This genre is defined by its use of natural, sometimes everyday sounds. If you’ve ever seen someone create a song with only scissors and a tooth brush. You’ve witness musique concrete. Instead of using words I’ll let the music speak for itself.

Here’s a Modern Version of Musique Concrete where hip hop artist Mac Lethal re-creates “Niggas in Paris” with hair products.

Here’s a 1979 Documentary on Musique Concrete

Liked this article? Check out my post on the parallels of music and linguistics, the study of languages. 

Also Check out my Daily Music Creation Challenge on YouTube

 

 

Music as Language: The Parallels of Linguistics and Music

Before I got into music composition, I wanted to be a linguist. I didn’t necessarily want to learn the language itself, but the structures and rule that governed language and language change thoroughly interested me. For years I’ve heard music is the “Universal Language” or something along those lines and you’d be surprised how close this statement is to the truth.

Phonetics: The Acoustics of Language

Acoustics is essentially the study of wave phenomenon, usually sound since it’s the easiest to reproduce and observe.  It’s like Physics for sound. In linguistics, this is paralleled by the branch called phonetics. They study the acoustical properties of sounds used in human speech. They also study how sounds are articulated and how they are perceived.

Phonology: The “Music Theory” of Language

Music theory is a study and classification of common structures that occur across different songs. Phonology does the same but with languages. They study how sounds are group together and organized in a given language. Phonologists study the phonotactics, or rules and constraints for how sounds can occur in the syllables. Phonologist also study the “prosody” or quality of a sound. This includes its stress, intonation, and pitch, all three of these also important for analyzing music as well.

Grammar: The “Music Composition” of Language

Music composition is how different musical motifs and phrases are placed together to create a unified whole. In language this is reflected in grammar, which is the study of the rules that govern how words and phrases can be combined to create sentences.

There’s a lot more I could go into, but for now I’ll leave it simple.

Check out Yesterday’s article on my musical ideals or check out my Youtube playlist where I post a daily short musical piece as practice.

Ideal Music: Melody

For an artist to understand his craft he has to have a vision or ideal of what he thinks music should sounds like. I’ve been thinking over this for the last week so I decided to write a couple of blog post describing what my ideal music should sound like.

I’ll start with melody which is the most important element of music. (at least in my ears) When people hear songs they usually hum back the melody. For me a melody line has to have these features.

• Unique yet memorable: Melodies should be unique, yet memorable. Have you ever heard a song that you loved the melody yet couldn’t remember the song 2 minutes after listening. That’s a unique melody with out memorable parts.
• Flowing Movement: Melodies should move, but in a flowing way with very few note leaps (unless to set a specific mood),
• Transformation: Melodies should move and transform into other melodies to keep the song from getting stale yet have a related stem that bring them all. Classical music usually takes transformation to its extreme making it difficult for average people to follow, but Pop & Hip hop music tends to lack this feature repeating a phrase multiple times with little or no variation. Ideally there should be a balance between movement and stable parts.

 

There we go my ideals on melody. I’ll probably revisit this late, but for now next time I’ll be writing my ideals on Harmony & Accompaniment.

Don’t forget to check out my playlist for my “Daily Music Making Challenge” Where make a short 1 or 2 minute instrumental a day

Ear Training Day 26 & 27 – Melody Training

Late night at work last night by here’s Ear training day 26 & 27. Today I’m trying something new the melody exercises! It’s like the melodic intervals listening to 3 or more successive notes and guessing the distances. Even though I’m great at melodic intervals this is a challenge which I have accepted and will conquer!

Ear Training Day 25 – Harmonic Intervals

Today is day 25 of ear training and I’m continuing review of Harmonic intervals or guessing the distance between two simultaneous note. The goal is 90% and I got an 83% today

Ear Training 17 & 18 – Chord Progressions

Hey guys! Didn’t get to post my ear training results to wordpress because I didn’t get to my computer after work until it was really late but I did post to instagram (@jamesrevelscomposer) if you want to see the ear training results fresh off the press.

So I’ve been doing doing chord progression recognition of the Major scale particularly the I,ii,IV,V scale degrees. Yesterday I got a 65% which was a huge jump from the 48% I had but today I normalized with a 56% with my goal for each type of training being 90% I still have looads of work to do