What's all this business about SOPA and PIPA? Why is the internet so up (or down) in arms? How might this legislation affect classical music? Why should you care?

How does all that stuff we learned in school about music theory and analysis apply to the way we actually make music? How can we express our own analytical observations in performance and composition?

It's a brand new year. Now that all the festivities are over, Tim and Dave propose some resolutions for themselves and for music. Yeah, that's right. We speak for all of music. Happy New Year!

While we take a couple of weeks to spend time with family and friends, enjoy some of the best moments from across all of our shows this year: SoundNotion, Music is Hard, and Streamers and Punches. See you in 2012!

George Carlin said there were seven words you can't say on television, but are there any that you can't say in a concert? What is the value of shocking the audience? Do we need to warn audiences when we present material that might be offensive?

What does good (or bad, if you must) programming look like? What do you think of “theme” concerts? How can constructing a good program affect how the audience thinks about the music they are listening to?

As musicians, we have an obligation to stay informed about the music happening around us. How do we discover new music and new scholarship for the first time?

What good are academic music conferences? Why should we care about them? How can we make them better? Also, this new Google Music thing is pretty rad.

Tim and Dave talk about the transfer of agency from composer to performer. What does the performer owe the composer? Anything? Who is responsible (liable?) for the final presentation to an audience?

It's not real art unless there is one winner and a lot of disgruntled losers, right? What good are competitions? How do they serve music as a whole and musicians in particular? What can we learn from them? How can we do them better?