The Emotional Impact of Sound

Two things you should check out to help you think about the impact of sound on your production work.  The first is an Imagine documentary called "How Music Makes Us Feel", which you can find here.  It contains interviews with musicians, including Emile Sande and Laurie Anderson, psychologists and film composers.  It examines how music creates emotional responses in us and looks at how both composition and instrumentation affects this.
The second is on the blog of the excellent documentary maker, Adam Curtis.  It uses the same piece of film and place two different pieces of music with it.  Watch the two versions and think about how it affects our attitude towards the people within the film.  Watch and read here.

A Great EMI Artist Case Study

Gabrielle Alpin's story has virtually everything you need to know about the contemporary music industry all wrapped up in one "20-year-old unknown from rural Wiltshire".  We will, of course, discuss this in class but you can get ahead of the game by reading about her in last week's Evening Standard.

Where's All The New Music?

The BBC News site recently reported on a statement by the UK head of Universal Music regarding the difficulty in breaking new music acts.  In particular he complained about the fact that commercial radio (radio stations that aim to make a profit, mainly through advertising) are reluctant to play tracks by new artists and instead rely on established artists that are proven to be popular to fill their playlists and maintain their audience numbers.  There are lots of interesting statistics in the article that you could quote in an exam answer.  His statement poses an interesting question around choice and ownership.  We often think of the concentrated ownership and the profit motives of record companies as limiting the choice of music available to consumers.  However, taking on board what is said here, we may need to think about the ownership and profit motives of those who exhibit music - e.g radio stations and TV channels.  When was the last time that you saw a new artist on 4Music or Viva?

Great Music Industry Blog

For a load of resources on the Music Industry, you should look at this blog.  It's put together by one of the examiners for Institutions and Audiences section of the exam paper.