There was a time in the mid 20th century where there was a mass movement of whites and blacks from rural areas to cities. In addition, there was the “white migration” where whites were leaving the south for places like DC, Bakersfield, and Detroit.  Within these movements, people who moved to new places found themselves revolutionizing their styles of music. Whites for example, after moving to DC, found a new form of music in country, and also played with a distinctive guitar style. What I’m wondering is why it took people to moving to different regions of the country to realize that they can create different types of music. It seems like the area they live in/move into have influence on the music that they can create. I think that at this time, the area in which you lived in put a limit on what you were able to produce musically. One thing that was still taking place at the time was racial segregation, so there could’ve been unspoken rules about what one was able to say.

A brief aspect of music discussed in class was how whites handle beats different from blacks. In music, beats typically follow a 1, 2, 3, 4 pattern. Traditionally, Afro-Americans clapped on beats 2 and 4 which were more in-sync with the rhythm. On the other hand, whites historically clapped on beats 1 and 3 which gave off the impression that they were always clapping off-beat. Another aspect of music were Race Records which came about in the 1920’s. Here, music was only made by blacks, but was played by different races. The music was racially divided to the point where the top charts were separated by the music being categorized as a Race Record or not.

The new wave of music in the late 19th and early 20th century was the steel guitar. This was a type of instrument also associated with a certain way of playing the instrument. The steel guitar was adopted by Hawaiian musicians who began putting the instrument on their laps, tuning it, and playing it on a steel bar. In the 1950’s, country musicians developed the pedal steel guitar which allows users of the steel guitar to be able to utilize a higher amount of chords and scales without having to move the bar originally used by the steel guitar.

Music in America at the time though was highly racialized, even Hawaiians had this issue. Certain music was meant for certain people such as country, pop, and race music. As a result of this racialized music, people weren’t allowed to buy music from a different race group.

In the early half of the 20th century in America, music had a racial aspect to it. Minstrel shows were big within the white communities, and they featured performances by white people in black face. This was the most popular form of music in America at the time even though it ridiculed blacks. An instrument that was big at the time was the banjo which surprisingly came from African roots. They were being used in Minstrel shows due to their popularity, and soon became associated with the white community instead of blacks. The song that had the most buzz during this time was the ‘Yellow Rose of Texas.’ This was an anthem about the confederacy which emphasized the separation of blacks from whites in the south. Minstrel shows led to more racial problems as Jim Crow was seen as the face of them, being a caricature of a black man carried on derogatory terms for blacks. This led to the creation of Jim Crow laws and kept blacks oppressed, as they weren’t seen as equal. It wasn’t until the 1940’s where blacks were finally being able to participate in Minstrel shows and reclaiming stereotypes and assuming their role as people in society.

The main theory of discussion was, “Information wants to be free.” This means that information is absolutely useless if it being held by the one who is holding it from everywhere. Information is something that wants to circulate freely and encounter as many people as possible. The next subject was the different forms of technology being created which helped create a domino effect of other technologies being produced. The Audion was a vacuum tube that enable electrical signals to be transported through grids. It helped other technology such as the radio, TV, and record player to be used and developed, but the downside of it was that it was a bulky item that generated lots of heat, and was inefficient to use. Not too long later, the transistor was formed which did the same thing the Audio did, but was smaller and more efficient. This led to other technology being produced to be smaller and more efficient because it ran on smaller parts. A branch of technology being produced was the radio station. In 1920, there was only one radio station in America. Then, in 1930, 100’s of radio station were created and millions of radios were held in nearly every home.

The internet is all the world’s forms of connectivity with the World Wide Web being a subset of it. The internet allowed different pieces of information to be intertwined with each other. The hypertext comes about which makes some or all words some how connected to each other with no end point. On websites such as Wikipedia, people are able to click on hypertexts and surf different sides of the internet with no end in sight.

The main topic was the idea of signal to noise ratio. The idea is that a signal is something you want to hear while noise is the things that aren’t the signal. For example, if you are listening to a speech being given outside, the words from the speaker are the signal, and any other outside sound is considered noise. A polititian  is someone who can give a bad ratio of signal to noise meaning that the amount of relevant info they say is fa less than the total amount of words they say. During the 1920’s, the radio was starting to emerge as a device of use from Americans. In 1921, the number of people with a radio was extremely low. Then, in 1928, the number of radio owners skyrocketed. In class, we also discussed Boolean Algebra which uses philosophical logic to solve problems rather than numbers. It follows the coding process of, “If ___, then ___.” The video shown was a mouse going through a maze. It was programmed to take in info as it went on in terms of which ways blocked him, and which ways got him to the next step. Each correct step was memorized by the mouse until it was able to complete the puzzle. What is interesting about this is that if the mouse were to be placed again in the same environment, it would complete the puzzle with no wrong movements.

In the 1940’s, the entire economy in America was engaged in the war effort. The GI Bill was passed which helped transform American economics, making college education more meaningful. It especially helped veterans of WWII by granting them tuition payments, expenses to attend school and low mortgages. Millions of people as a result were able to achieve higher levels of education which became a major contributor to the economic growth in America. Another body of power with control during this time was the Office of Price Control. They were empowered to set the price and establish rations for goods deemed vital. Items like gas, rubber, and food were things being rationed. During the four years of the war, food prices couldn’t be raised on 90% of the food supply. Also discussed during class was, “As we may think” by Vannevar Bush. In the article, he talks about how the technological advances have not been an extent of a man’s mind. He noted that machines with interchangeable parts were now being heavily funded and constructed with efforts from the economy. Machines like the typewriter, movie camera, and automobile are some of the few things being mass produced.

In class, the topic of the Cold War was discussed, and how the computer was born from it. The computer was an important piece in the War because this was a war dealing with the technological advances of the countries involved. Being able to has a system that could process data without the help of man and increase the effectiveness of technology was something that couldn’t be missed. The vides talked about the different parts and functions of a computer such as shafts, gears, and cams. The shafts completed revolutions as a way to transmit values to linear movements. Gears are used to transmit one shaft to another. Cams are computing mechanisms that have a working surface and a follower which help change values of shafts.

This discussion was interesting because it brought to attention things that I never realized had an impact on they way people think. To begin with idealism, it is said that those who are idealists are religious, and believe that the typical ideal belongs to God. In idealism, the point in life is to seek the ideal which is the justice and decency life has to offer. People themselves aren’t believed to be ideal, and are to be flawed copies of the ideal who strive to become whatever they believe that ideal is. The problem an idealist might face is the possibility that the ideal might not exist. A question that arises in this for someone who is an idealist is, “How do you know it’s ideal?” in which an idealist would respond along the lines of, “It moves you.” My opinion on idealism is this – how does being a realist mean you automatically associate with God? I am a religious person, but I do not believe that you have to believe in a higher power to be able to look at a sunset and believe that it symbolizes the peace that life has to offer.

On the other hand, realism is the belief that there is no ideal, and all that we see is all that is there. People will believe that there is no ideal shirt, or song meaning that each individual thing is itself, and does not contribute to a greater ideal. In the case of shirts, they think that every shirt is a re-representation of every other shirt. Realists are considered to be non-religious individuals and believe that they have no external authority for what is considered good. Idealists, like stated before, believe that something like sunsets are something God created. Realists would look at a sunset and think of it as the ending to a day with a new day coming soon. It is said that every person is either an idealist or realists, and no one is in between.

In our second class, the biggest topic of interest was the loudness of sound in music, and how people say that the new generation of music sucks. Before, music producers were allowing a dynamic range in music where the listener could distinctly tell the difference between the soft parts and the loud parts. What was happening was, people would record songs using instruments at a certain level of noise, but if they wanted the track as a whole to be louder, the overall sound would be amplified to the point where certain instruments are blurting out blaring sounds. That led producers to alternating the pitches of the sound to find the preferred level of sound. That is called, dynamic range compression, and it makes the loud and soft parts sound the same. So, critics now say that this generation’s music is garbage, and it comes from the standpoint of the quality of music is decreasing to make up for how loud it is produced.