On Feb 18, 2007, at 12:16 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:


Unlike email spam, "musical spam" doesn't have any monetary cost to
the receivers. It's just a psychological cost.

True, but it's a large one, and the ramifications, as you indicate below, are wide reaching and have a substantial detrimental effect on the lives of most serious musicians.

Chuck



The worst time of year for it is the Christmas holidays. The business
district nearest me in Astoria, at Steinway and Broadway, has
Christmas music playing over loudspeakers. Every time I go to my bank
during that season, I wish I'd thought to bring ear plugs, because
the music is such incredibly low quality that it drives me crazy.

I fear, though, that there's nothing that can be done about it.

If more of us would ask that music be turned off in restaurants, (I do this often, and usually get told that they will turn it down but not off), fewer restaurants would have music. I let them know that I will vote with my wallet. It's lonely out here for those of us who make this sentiment known.

Chuck


Most
people's relationships to music is much more passive than ours -- we
musicians cannot help but end up being actively engaged by music,
because it's the way we are trained as musicians. We wouldn't be good
musicians if we weren't able to engage in that fashion.
Unfortunately, for me at least, I can't really turn it off. I can't
tune out music.

But we're a minority. I found when teaching college students that
most young people "listen" to tons of music of all different kinds,
but never really *hear* what they are listening to. They are passive
and teaching them active listening is one of the things I was aiming
to do in my class. One student wrote to me at the end something to
the effect that now that she'd taken my class whenever she listened
to music she would find her mind picking out various aspects and
analyzing them. I was thrilled by this, except that here conclusion
was "It's very annoying." :)

Yes, indeed -- it *is* very annoying at times.

--
David W. Fenton                    http://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates       http://dfenton.com/DFA/

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Chuck Israels
230 North Garden Terrace
Bellingham, WA 98225-5836
phone (360) 671-3402
fax (360) 676-6055
www.chuckisraels.com

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