Gern Leonhard's Music 2.0

Author and Media Futurist Gerd Leonhard  has released his new book, Music 2.0, a collection of essays about the next generation of music making, distribution and values systems. The printed version is available for €39.95,  or can be downloaded in an unprotected PDF format. No registration is required, and the Creative Commons license encourages that the book be freely shared on the web. Donations may also be made.


In the following movie, Leonhard talks about his plans for 2008: the Music 2.0 book, his 3rd book "Open is King - the future of Media beyond Control", his influences and the continuing extension of his work into advertising and branding.

Developing Creativity

I'm presently reading a terrific book, Developing Creativity in Higher Education: An Imaginative Curriculum. An edited collection of works from all sorts of backgrounds, with insightful opening and closing chapters by one of the editors, Prof Norman Jackson, the Director of the UK's SCEPTrE  (Surrey Centre for Excellence in Professional Training and Education) at the University of Surrey.

I was drawn especially to this chapter by Paul Tosey, cutely entitled Interfering with the interference. Although Tovey is from the Management discipline, he provides thought-provoking analogies from the creative arts and music areas to make excellent points: He suggests that "creativity is triggered by constraining events or circumstances", and that this view of creativity "does not entail a romantic notion of total artistic freedom in which constraints are negative". He says, "Necessity is the mother of emergence as well of invention".

Hmmm . .  provides me with a whole new perspective on all those undergraduates cramming for exams or leaving projects right 'till the last minute.  He also puts forward the metaphor -- "change as drama" . . .  as they say here in Australia, 'I reckon!'

So, obviously I'm recommending this thought provoking book to those of you engaged with teaching in the so-called 'creative' disciplines – or as Erica McWilliam asks more widely – Is creativity teachable? Conceptualising the creativity/pedagogy relationship in higher education.

Tosey leaves us with this wonderful musical anecdote:

"A well-known Congolese drummer, TaTitos, was asked how new compositions are created in that culture. TaTitos replied that there are three methods. In the first, a new piece of music is presented to someone in their dreams; in the second, musicians notice and build on mistakes they make while they are playing and generate new variations from those errors; in the third, someone consciously constructs a new composition. However, TaTitos added, there are no known examples of successful composition using the third method" (pp 29-30).

I'd also like to add, 'Technique, (dare I say) Craft and Experience', a discussion that so often seems to be missing. But that's a story for another day . . . In the meantime, I came across this fascinating presentation by Aniruddh Patel, called 'Music and the Mind':

Research, Teaching & Knowledge Transfer

The new teaching semester is almost upon us here in Australia. And, in the process of orienting a new, part-time lecturer to our degree program and the university context, he exclaimed:

"I thought we were just here to teach!" he said, somewhat aghast about other higher education imperatives, including research.

Universities are in the business of Research. This links directly in the following ways:

Both are centrally about knowledge transfer and applied in university's missions in various ways, but here in this context, is applied in terms of learning and teaching.

KT in teaching draws upon current research, practice, lifelong learning and application. In the case of University academics, they participate in the knowledge economy by undertaking research and the output of this research contributes directly to government, industry and yes, education.

Universities are in the business of Knowledge Transfer.

Research does not mean simply googling or reading other's works, but of course can include this. It also means original research, arguing, constructing, presenting, publishing and peer validation - then applying such new original knowledge in practical applications.

In this way, then teachers don't simply perpetuate opinion, old habits, outmoded conceptions or unsupported conjecture. They are be able to lead, facilitate and challenge both themselves and student's thinking through such a proven and personally constructed research base.

For example, a brilliant piece of work by US music technology university educator. Imagine how this works in *his* classes: Moorefield, V. (2005). "The producer as composer: Shaping the sounds of popular music". London: MIT Press. (Available Griffith library ML3470 .M66 2005)

Audio Files & Audiophiles

The New Times reports that its ‘Hard to Be an Audiophile in an iPod World’ and cites some of the work of Mark Katz at the University of North Carolina. Like many others, this article seems to show a fascination for MP3s, but almost completely ignores the other hi-fi aspects of 96kHz recording, SAC-D, 5.1 film soundtracks and so on. Its almost as if ‘the art of record production’ never existed, ie, as an art form in its own right.

Unfortunately, the discussion still centres around the premise that ‘recording’ was just that – focussing on purity of reproduction, and now these days with MP3s, iPods and filesharing, everything (art, fidelity, precision, integrity) has somehow taken a back seat to ‘convenience’, eg: wearable, portable sound where ‘low-er fi’ doesn’t really matter.

Unfortunately, the term ‘recording’ is used as if this were a passive, technical matter – simply operating the start and stop button; perhaps some acknowledgement of fidelity or simply attempting to re-create a naturalistic setting. (Never see that happen with a Film Director, would we? Clearly, film-making is understood as a highly crafted process, complete with virtual, artistic outputs that stand up in their own right. Then again, I can’t imagine we’d see musos out on strike against the same bastardry perpetuated by Hollywood on their script writers).

These arguments about audio files and audiophiles tend to ignore much of the great recorded art of recent history, work that stands by itself, is not meant to replicate live performance, indeed, is an art form in its own right. For example: Queen’s ‘A Night at the Opera’, The Beatles ‘Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band’, or more recently say, The Dissociatives brilliant 2005 record.

Even more stunning to my mind, the article claims that ‘Few musicians have been audiophiles’ and that they do like their iPods . . [if] the sound is acceptable . . convenience is the selling point’. Apparently: we only chase the buck and have no regard for the sound  . . I don’t know where these guys have been, but clearly it has not in a recording studio and making music; ‘The Studio as a Compositional Tool’ as Brian Eno wrote almost two decades ago in Downbeat.

Seems as though the idea of ‘audiophile’ is associated with classic music buffs listening to records on specialized systems, and where the hi-fi magazines of old used to pummel this marker with ads for new equipment. The article claims that this is dead and now we go with the convenience and limitations of MP3s/iPods. Obviously they’re not involved with the huge audio technology market for pro-ams, independent musicians and recordists. See any related magazine: from Mix, to Sound on Sound, Electronic Musician, Audio Technology and many others. . .

Where once there were a handful of expensive mics available to the specialist, today there are literally thousands, most being comparatively inexpensive. And, this is replicated through the entire studio chain: from software to computers, to powered monitors, amplifiers, MIDI keyboards, baffles and other home-studo paraphernalia. Extensions of guitars, voices, songwriting and expanded scores where 2 or 3 computers screens provide infinitely more accurate and malleable information that a score or lead sheet ever did.

The musican is not an audiophile? I can’t imagine anything further from the truth, or more out of step with reality. Disintermediation (cutting out the middle man) in the music industry should not be limited to just a one-sided discussion about audio files and downloading. It now operates at the very heart of music making: studios are portable, personal, powerful and are increasingly treated as musical instruments by musicians. Sound is everything: timbre, touch, reverb, dynamics, the ‘killer groove’.

The muso of today is disintermediated as the producer, performer, engineer, arranger and composer. And above all: an audiophile who makes active decisions about what to ‘print’ as audio files and fitness for purpose: Radio & dynamics, CD and the car, 48kHz for film, MP3s etc.

Seems to me that the chatter about music on-line and the ‘death of the music industry’ really has to get over this lopsided fascination about MP3s and file-sharing, and focus more on what 21st century musicianship really has become.