Musical Space

A lot of the music you hear comes from production music libraries. These are collections of sound cues that are licensed for use in media. It’s like using stock footage in a movie; convenient for a producer who can’t afford or be bothered to hire a composer, which is why stock music has become as universal as it is generic. The concept of production music is as old as talkies - film studios had reels of generic music they would reuse to accompany fight scenes, love scenes, and chase scenes.

Video podcasts are just like the audio podcasts I talked about a few weeks ago, but with the added video dimension. This is a broad category, and I don’t even know what to call them: videocasts, vodcasts, or vlogs. They’re made by small groups for a niche audience on a tiny budget - often just someone in their living room using their phone cameras. But the good ones share a plucky, DIY spirit and they create content that is more unusual, informative, and personal than anything on commercial TV.

Most of my listening time is now devoted to music podcasts. They fit the way I live; I like the format - most podcasts are almost as ad-free as what you’re listening to now. And they make car rides feel like less of a waste of time. Some are interviews, others are just curated playlists. My favorite music podcasts, though, are the ones that can really take advantage of the medium. This is the most democratic of all media -- anyone can make and distribute a podcast for next to zero dollars. They

The late Amy Winehouse will be going on tour this year. More accurately, a company called Base Hologram has created a digital 3-D representation of the singer, which will be presented all over the world, backed up by a live band. There are plans for other holographic acts, too: Roy Orbison, Billie Holiday, Elvis. Being someone who always lobbies for hearing living, breathing musicians in the flesh, you can probably guess my opinion on this, but please allow me to tell you exactly why. The

Prohibition began with the ratification of the 18th Amendment on Jan. 16, 1919. This didn’t change much here in Kansas: We had a constitutional ban on alcohol going back to 1880. But it did put Kansans into the national divide between the partygoers and the teetotalers.

Today, 2019, is a tabula rasa, a blank slate, and getting on with the business of the new year means letting go of 2018. There are beautiful traditions all over the world for dispensing with the accumulated dreck of past, like throwing furniture out of the window, lighting huge communal bonfires, and even burning the pictures of politicians. Your musical space could probably use a ritual cleansing, too. Maybe your life has some unwanted sonic clutter, like on your phone, for instance. You could

Next year will mark the 60 th anniversary of the Broadway debut of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s final collaboration, “The Sound of Music.” It was inspired by the real-life Trapp Family, who were forced to flee their home in Austria because of their philosophical differences with the Nazi party, and for whom music became their sanctuary and their passport to a new life. The much-loved story has been given a wide range of dramatic and musical interpretations, and I’ll have the privilege

The annual fuss about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is upon us, as the 15 nominees for 2019 induction have been announced. But this is not going to be a piece about who deserves to be in the Hall of Fame; hoards of internet trolls, music bloggers and Ted Nugent have all been screaming about this enough. I have nothing against this year’s nominees - in fact, I like almost all of them. But what does it do to music when we put it in a museum?

It was just announced that the late rapper Mac Miller’s death a few months ago was due to an overdose of the opioid fentanyl. I’ll admit I’d never heard of him before his death, didn’t know about his hitting No. 1 in the charts or his relationship with Ariana Grande. But, to be fair, he was only 26. Since musicians are role models and trend setters, I think it’s important to talk about how opioid abuse has been killing our musical heroes. Let’s separate opioid use from any romantic ideas about

The laws of physics are against musicians who play low notes. Any sounding medium - like a string or the air in a tube - vibrates at a frequency inversely proportional to its length; the longer it is, the lower the note.