January 5, 2010

i've got a notion.. a preconceived one.


looking over my coffee cup and through the window i watched it all unfold. boom. an older model jetta had collided with a F-150. the jetta was backing out of a parking space and only looking one direction as he backed out. he did not see the F-150 coming from the other direction. the F-150 was driving quite fast, and the wrong direction through the Starbucks drive-thru. they both parked their vehicles and argued with each other using over-exaggerated arm motions. they had exchanged information and ten minutes later were on their way. obviously news of this had spread throughout the coffee-shop and people started offering their opinions as to who was at fault. a cute skinny blonde employee was not shy about her feelings and expressed several times that, "the shitty jetta" was at fault. even though the brand new F-150 was breaking two laws at the time. speeding and driving the wrong way through a drive-thru wide enough for one vehicle. for some reason the stupid, now not-so-cute employee had something against the jetta because it was old and beat to crap. this amazed me. what is this world coming to? how has our world view changed so much that we take innocent people and throw them under the bus? place blame upon them. all because of appearances.

this is my transition into the music industry....

vocal tuning has been around since the very late nineties. the ability to correct the pitch of a sung note. when you turn this correction up to a higher setting, you get the robotic tone while switching notes i.e. cher's "do you believe in life after love", kid rock's "only god knows why", and most of t-payne's songs on the radio today. at first this technology was used very little, in fact the whole purpose of it was to use it in moderation so that you can correct tiny flaws in your vocal track. it tightens up harmonies quite well. the technology has progressed over the past 10yrs and now you simply have to sing somewhere near the note desired and the program will 'bump' your note to the correct note. this technology is now widely used in live performances as well. you don't have to have any musical talent to be a singer anymore. thus shifting all the attention away from ability to appearances.

how good do you look on stage? will your image sell?

i just searched "judge a book by its cover" in Google Images.. guess what was on the first page?


please watch this video, and when susan replies to simons question of, "what is your dream?" there is a fantastic expression from a girl in the audience wearing a blue shirt at 1:23.



until now, the pitch-correcting was limited to a single note in a single track. the german based company, Melodyne introduced this technology 10yrs ago and have come quite a long way since then. they are now releasing a new version where you can take a recorded piano or guitar chord and break down each individual note that is played... even if they are played at the same time. it can distinguish each individual note and move them wherever you want them to be. you could simply strum the guitar one time... and copy and paste that recording a couple hundred times and move each individual note to form different chords. did you hear me?? you don't even have to know how to play the guitar! if you form the wrong chord or hit a wrong note in a piano concerto you don't have to go back and re-record the track, simply bump the sour note to the correct place. mark my words, the music industry will be changing tremendously in the next five years. and not for the better. the music industry is already all about image and not about musical talent.

where will this end up? how far can we continue like this?

no longer do the majority of us care about the inside. its all about our outsides. our.... covers. i remember the one and only time i purchased a book because of the title and how it looked. it was titled, "Why Men Don't Want to go to Church". its not that good of a book... at all. i don't go to church anymore and i don't relate to most of what the book says. but thats what i get for not finding out what's on the inside. its the same with people. we all have initial reactions when we first see someone. he's dirty and unshaven, has holes in his clothes. he must be homeless, or really poor. she's driving a mercedes, wearing D&G sunglasses, with a prada purse over her shoulder. she must be rich and have her life together. who would you sit next to in the restaurant? who would you hold the door open for? i do it too... and i hate myself for it. unless we change the way we view people, we will always have this social tier system in our brains. i think it all boils down to being closed-minded. i am the biggest victim of this horrible disease. i do it with music, movies, and sadly... people. there are few times when i throw away my preconceived notion and find i enjoy things much more when i do. i also find that people don't get frustrated with me as much... go figure...

something i will be working on until i die.... bare with me