I’ve seen it attributed to Duke Ellington, Elvis Costello and Steve Martin.
Talking about music is like dancing about architecture
Whoever did say it, it resonates with me (and many others, judging by how often it shows up). I’ve always felt that everything you need to know about music can be gained by just listening (and listening better). The second you open your mouth to talk about it, the chance of communicating any valuable insight decreases tenfold.
But… I like to read music magazines, like TapeOp and Sound On Sound. I like Nate Chinen in the NYT. And I follow music blogs, like Fuck Yeah Classical, Et Musique Pour Tous, A Blog Supreme, Aurgasm, Do The Math, I Guess I’m Floating, AudioPorn, The Late Greats, Create Digital Music and rekkerd.org.
Why? Mostly to satisfy my hunger for new music and new ways to make music. I’ll rip a music review out of Time Out NY and stuff it in my pocket, so I can Google the artist later and check out the music. When I read about a new audio plugin, I usually go hunt down the demo, to hear it for myself. In other words, even though it’s not easy, I try to bridge that gap between the written word and the audio. I don’t always agree with the writer, but at least I’ve had the opportunity to hear something I might not have known about otherwise.
Two recent innovations have me exited at the potential make the text-audio connection more intuitive, to bring the music closer to the words:
1. The Digital edition of Jazziz.
Love this – check it out here. Reading an article about an artist? Click on it and hear some music or watch a video. See an ad for an interesting sounding album? Click to hear an excerpt. Sure, music blogs have been doing this for years, but it feels even better in the context of a magazine. The interface is somewhat clunky, but I really enjoyed looking through the magazine and listening to a bunch of music I was unfamiliar with. It feels very natural to me — if I’m reading about music, I’d like to hear it!
2. The iPad
OK, so it’s been getting spanked by pretty much every media outlet I care about. But if you checked out the digital Jazziz, you may have felt, like I did, that it’s biggest drawback was that you have to be sitting in front of a computer to use it. Imagine this on the iPad. Seems like a natural.
After all, like the song says, it’s all about the convenient distribution of software and media…
