String Theory Media

Dixie Fix

Finally, the Dixie Chicks tour story I've been working on for weeks hit the airwaves of NPR on Morning Edition. It's a fairly straightforward account of the band's comeback, if that's what it is, from the hiatus that followed "the incident." It's not the political/musical analysis I wanted to do, but a version of the story more focused on the left/right dichotomy in country music ran a few weeks ago on WPLN, my home base radio station. I am now officially done ever doing Dixie Chicks stories. I just want to see their show and intend to go when they visit Nashville late this fall.

Don't Pull My Tab

A telling, chilling story of the times in the New York Times today in which music publishers are attacking guitar tab sharing sites. Here's the nut graf.

In the last few months, trade groups representing music publishers have used the threat of copyright lawsuits to shut down guitar tablature sites, where users exchange tips on how to play songs like “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” “Highway to Hell” and thousands of others.

As a guitarist and a supporter of songwriters I've got profoundly mixed feelings about this. But in my first think-through, the publishers are wrong. Most guitar tab represents not a reproduction of an underlying work but an approach to rendering it on an instrument, potentially for public performance but otherwise for purely private enjoyment. If it's performed in public, then the publisher will be compensated through music venues in good standing. If it's private, then no good changed hands. A dude learned how to play an arrangement of Strawberry Fields Forever on his Gibson jumbo. Who's supposed to pay what to whom for this?

In any event, the important intellectual property inherent in guitar tab is not the song but the arrangement. If the arranger wants to ask a site to take down one of his copyrighted tablatures, I don't think anybody would have a problem with that. But many if not most of these tabs are transcribed by amateurs who share licks like they share tips about guitar bags. I do sympathize with the publisher of tab books who has seen his sales on particular titles plummet. To the degree that folks are zapping facsimiles of formally published sheet music in tab form, yes, individual works ought to be removed and posters ought to be notified and perhaps prosecuted. Guitar tab companies ought to be offering a high-quality, fairly-priced on line alternative to the shareware tab. But for publishers to intrude on a forum for ideas and learning, an extension of the weekend picking party, is counterproductive and cruel. Thoughts?

The story follows...

Testing the idea of ensemble

This BBC story about Daniel Barenboim's Western-Eastern Divan Orchestra bolsters what I've long believed: that music can be a powerful metaphor for anything. The half Israeli-Jew and half Arab Muslim ensemble is not and should not be above or immune to intense political debate and disagreement. But the group offers its players more opportunity than 99% of the rest of the world has for real exposure and dialogue between polarized peoples. The idea of this group working, arguing and then ultimately performing together is truly moving. During a piece, everyone is on the same page.

Story reprinted HERE...

Kids Today...

A new study goes further than any before it in finding that pop music with degrading, hyper-sexualized lyrics isn't just associated with early and unhealthy sexual behavior, but that it can help influence teenagers to make stupid sexual decisions. Here are the facts as soberly reported by Reuters.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Music that depicts women as sex objects and men as insatiable studs may encourage some teenagers to become sexually active, according to a study of U.S. teens.

Much more here...