Sound On

You finally made it to college… now what?

1. Get To Class

So much of your success will simply be based on class attendance. Sure, the professor might not be taking roll, but they will be aware if you are around, and being immersed in the classroom is an important part of the collegiate learning experience. Get up and go to class, no matter what (unless you are really ill). Make a pact with yourself that class is your first priority – more important than sleeping in, video games with your dorm-mates, or even completing assignments for another class. Be there, and pay attention to what’s going on. Sit up front near the professor. If you need motivation to take your class time seriously, take a look at how much your tuition/scholarships add up to, matrixed across your actual time hours spent in class. You might take class more seriously if you realize you are effectively dropping a $50 bill on the way through the door each day!

2. Take Notes

During class, take notes by hand, even if you are the only one doing it. You can take notes by hand really quickly, draw pictures and diagrams to help illustrate concepts, not bother anyone with the clickity-clack of a computer keyboard, and avoid the personal attention distraction of a laptop. After class, consider it your homework to type up the notes, organizing them into bulleted/numbered lists. Now you have a searchable hierarchy of what was discussed in class, plus your brain had another opportunity to process and organize the information. You might find that your typed, hierarchal list is in a very different order from that which the material was presented in class – that’s ok. Organize it in a way that makes sense to you.

Before each session of, say, History 101, quickly read through your typed notes from the previous session. This will help re-establish the mental structure of the material. As you build up days and weeks worth of material, try to review as much as possible in that little time slot while everyone gets settled down before class begins. Because you will see your notes so often, you will begin to commit them to memory. Even though you are constantly adding new material, the old material is constantly becoming more familiar, so it all works out.

By the end of the semester, you will be so familiar with your notes from class that you will be nearly sick of them. Any sort of memorization-based test (and yes, there are a lot of them) will be a breeze. Sharing your well organized typed notes will also curry the favor of potential friends, though be aware of your professor’s wishes when distributing your notes to non-classmates.

3. Stay Organized

Come to class with a well organized empty notebook, ready to fill up. Yes, completely organized in advance – a ring binder, the spine neatly labeled with your name, the appropriate school, semester, and class, filled with dividers, paper, and plenty of clear plastic protectors, all ready to go the moment your professor begins handing materials out. The expense will be negligible compared with tuition. You will never spend extra time organizing your notebook or finding materials, because you will be gradually doing it all along. Organize your notebook by WHAT things are – Class Notes, Handouts, Reading Notes, Assignments, Exams – not topically or chronologically (except for within those divider-sections; I recommend topically for class notes and chronologically – when the materials were given to you – for everything else). It took until my senior year to revise this notebook system and I only wish I had finished it sooner – it will serve you well!

4. Get Your Sleep

In order to learn, your body needs to sleep. That means all the extra time you stay up studying is not helping you that much! If you are getting to class, taking, typing, organizing, and reviewing notes, and keeping well marked, organized ring binders in action for all classes, all semester long, you will hopefully never be tempted to exchange sleeping time for studying time. However many hours you need to sleep each day – 7, 8, 9 – make sure you get it on school nights. Adjust your bedtime so that you will get enough hours of sleep and still be able to get up for that morning class. Other than that, don’t sacrifice your sleep time for anything. If you really do find yourself with a backlog of assignments to complete, keep getting enough sleep, and talk to your professor about waiving whatever late penalty may be in place. If you are doing all of the things this article has outlined so far, your professors are going to respect how seriously you take your education and they are going to cut you some slack. If by chance you run out of slack and have more assignments to complete than you could ever possibly finish, carefully consider how important each assignment is, both personally and grade-weight wise, and do as much of the most important work as possible, discarding the rest. Pick your battles. But do not sacrifice on sleep; if you do, you’re only hurting yourself!

5. Get Some Exercise

If you want to learn, you need to keep a fresh supply of oxygen available to your brain. Of course, this means exercise. Exercise is an effective stress reliever. Using the campus facilities is a great way to meet other people who are interested in developing their whole person. If you really want to stick with your schedule, work out each morning before your first class. Getting friends in on your schedule may also help you stick to a workout regiment. Also check out classes and clubs in martial arts, aerobics, etc.

6. Complete Large Projects ASAP

If you have a very large project assigned, e.g. a research paper, get it done ASAP. Sometimes useful library materials are far and few, and by getting the project done early, they will be all yours for the using. You’ll also avoid the stress of waiting until the last minute, competing for those few useful references, and the inevitable “oh yeah, just one more project before the semester ends” unexpected extra workload when you are already at the limit. You’ll be breezing through the end of the semester while your friends panic and slave away at their work. Just be warned that if you choose to turn your project in before the due date, it is likely that the professor may encourage you to revise it. If you don’t want this burden, I suggest waiting until the deadline to turn in your project.

7. Visit Professors During Office Hours

Most professors have times that they must be in their office. They get paid to be there to help you outside of class. Some professors will shun you with a closed door and unfriendly attitude; avoid them, and save your sentiments for the end-of-semester review. But there are professors who will giddily await your arrival at their office, thrilled to discuss and help with class materials, and even shoot the breeze. Some professors use candy and other gimmicks to lure you into their office. If you have any confusion with class work (which you won’t since you are so conscientiously taking, organizing, and reviewing notes, getting enough sleep and exercising regularly), show up at office hours. But don’t also be afraid just to drop by, as some professors can be great people to get to know.

8. Do Your Assignments

It might sound like obvious advice, but get your assignments done. Your classmates may slack off, but you know you are paying good money and want to make the most of your time in class, so you do your assignments and do them well. Your classmates who loathe the thought of completing their assignments (but probably never attempt them) have no idea just how little effort it can take to do an excellent job. If you have reading assignments outside the scope of class discussions, considering taking reading notes and organizing them just as you would class notes, whether your professor asks you to or not. Remember, you are going to college for yourself. Do what you need to do to get the most out of your investment.

9. Go To Parties

Yes, parties are a dime a dozen in college, but definitely attend some (most?) of them. They are a great time to relax, have fun, socialize, play games, joke around, dance, meet people to ask on dates, and otherwise balance out your academic life. Don’t worry about missing a great party this weekend – there will be an even better one next weekend. And don’t think you have to stay for the entire time – you might have just as much fun leaving the party at 3am instead of 5am, but you will be that much better rested and adjusted for class. Even if you don’t like to drink, go to parties anyway, and laugh at everyone else. Besides parties, join some clubs/groups to meet people and further your expertise outside of your major. Lastly, remember to take everything in moderation, including moderation itself.

10. Take Time For Reflection

After each semester is over, go for a walk late at night and think about all that you have accomplished academically, personally, and spiritually. Are you happy with your progress, how you handled difficult situations, etc.? Whatever your most important goal is in life, don’t lose sight of it, and use this time to make sure that everything you do aims you towards your goal. Plan any necessary adjustments to implement in the following semester. In the frenzy of academia, keep an eye on your greatest purpose, keep breathing, and keep smiling!

iTunes Sold One Billion Songs In The Past Six Months

That’s averaging over 41 million songs per day. That’s a lot of music. But the superiority of CDs keeps me from purchasing all but the occasional single from iTunes, for a few reasons:

Losing My Religion (I Mean Music)

When you buy a song from iTunes, a copy is made to your hard drive, and that is it – the transaction is finished. From this point on, it’s my responsibility to keep a working backup of the song available if I want to play it. Though I’m careful to make regularly scheduled backups on various media, etc., I simply don’t feel comfortable enough trusting an entire music library to the whims of various hard drives and backup software, prone to fail sooner or later. It’s possible that with an unfortunate series of events, I could lose my entire iTunes library and backups. It’s just an extra stressful potential for disaster that I would rather avoid. When I buy a CD, I rip it into iTunes, and then it sits on my shelf as a backup. CD: 1, iTunes: 0.

Musics Of Quality

When I rip a CD into iTunes and re-encode the data into Apple Lossless format, I usually end up with a file in the 500-600kbps range. That’s plenty of data and to my ears sounds as good as the CD (as it should, especially with error checking during the rip process. Turn this on through Preferences->Advanced->Importing and check the box for “use error correction.”). The CD itself is not perfect – it has probably been dithered down to a lower data rate during the mastering process in order to accommodate the red book audio standard, but mastering engineers are very good at this. Now let’s check out a song downloaded from the iTunes music store – ouch, only 128kbps. That’s a small fraction of the amount of data I get from a CD, and even with all of the psychoacoustic knowledge we have, the algorithms still cannot perfectly decide which information to keep and which to throw away. Sure, walking down the street you might be hard pressed to tell the difference between this and a CD, but sitting at home on a quiet evening with monitoring headphones, compression artifacts will rear their ugly head and obfuscate the listening process.

Recently, iTunes worked out a deal with EMI to provide tracks with twice the usual bitrate – 256kbps – on the music store. In order to see this, you need to find an EMI album (like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon) and click the link for iTunes Plus. The higher bitrate gets pretty close to CD quality - thanks to psychoacoustics, more than “half way” as the numbers may suggest. But it’s still not quite as good as a CD, and currently is only available on a limited selection of tracks. Pretty much any tune I am interested in is not available at the higher bitrate. CD: 2, iTunes: 0.

Digital Restrictions Management

Music bought on the iTunes music store can only be played in iTunes, or an iPod, or some other Apple-blessed product. There are loopholes, but they are inelegant. For example, you could burn the music you buy onto a CD, and then rip it back into iTunes. But then you end up with either a much bigger file for the same quality product, or a lower quality file of similar size. This is not only inelegant and inefficient, but it’s the same sort of tedious backup work and low quality I am trying to avoid by simply buying a CD in the first place! It is also conceivable that Apple could at some point close shop or otherwise de-authorize iTunes, which would then no longer play the tracks you purchased. Recently, as part of the deal with EMI, the iTunes tracks at 256kbps do not have DRM, so they will play anywhere as long as a player exists to play them. However, once again, this is only available on a limited selection of tracks. CD: 3, iTunes: 0.

Duh Winner

Now you know why I still buy CDs- an automated backup, high quality, restriction free media. But iTunes could be all this and more!

Automated backup: iTunes could simply allow you to re-download any music you buy, in case a hard drive or backup fails or is destroyed.

Higher bitrates: iTunes could not only match, but even exceed the bitrate of CD audio, supplying end users with mastering-grade 192khz files, and beyond.

Digital Restrictions: This one’s easy: take away the restrictions. Give me a format I can play anywhere, anytime, and losslessly transcode to other formats.

Market Lieder

As the iTunes Music Store continues to make incremental improvements at the mercy of an industry that’s collapsing on itself, determined to shoot itself in the foot and run itself into the ground, competitors lurk in the midst. Like most Apple products, the iTunes store seems annoyingly mediocre and depressingly underpowered, frustratingly on the brink of achieving excellence, but not quite getting there. Though no one can yet match iTunes’ impressive array of popular labels, another store is potentially only a contract away from doing so. Indie is on the way in, as musicians produce and market their own work. Lastly, with an increasingly large library of legally free music available online, will the sales of digital recordings survive the twenty-first century? There is so much free content available and constantly being released that you could spend your entire life listening for free and never hear the same thing twice…

If you’re familiar with the musical aptitude tests developed by Dr. Edwin Gordon, you’ll appreciate this “aptitude test:”

Advanced Measures of Contemporary Music Audiation.

Joke Background

To celebrate the end of our Level 1 GIML Certification in Early Childhood Music, I developed the joke. I wasn’t going to do it, but then they lured me with research money.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

One day during class, Dr. Gordon told the following story [I paraphrase]: “I was at a music conference in Europe with composer Morton Feldmen. Karlheinz Stockhausen was explaining one of his pieces using mountains of charts and graphs. Morty told Karlheinz to ‘just sing it!’ Karlheinz couldn’t do it and was very embarrassed.” The musical excerpts in AMCMA are from Stockhausen’s Gruppen for 3 Orchestras (1955-57). Also, many have asked – yes, that is your author’s voice on the recording.

Audie

AMCMA is based on Audie, a musical aptitude test for children ages three through four. The fact that the Advanced Measures of Contemporary Music Audiation uses the same format as a test designed for children ages three through four further pokes fun at contemporary music practices.

It’s All A Joke

The biggest joke here is that I am a huge fan and composer of contemporary music, including the likes of Stockhausen, Cage, and the June in Buffalo festival. Stockhausen’s Helicopter String Quartet is beautiful and magnificently spellbinding. Further, in accordance with the results of Dr. Gordon’s research, I believe that tonality is always perceived, and that learning to audiate helps one to make sense of contemporary music, where tonality may be subjective and or transient. So, Karlheinz, please don’t take my test the wrong way.

Explore

If you want to get in touch with the modern music scene, tune into Counterstream Radio, a product of the American Music Center, which I wrote about in July.