I was recently interviewed by my good friend Scott Watson on his excellent podcasting site which is titled: What Music Means To Me about my book, The Teachers Guide to Music, Media & Copyright Law. The interview is broken into two parts, and Scott posted Part I today on the site. Topics covered include the history of copyright, my interest in copyright law, fair use and the public domain, and more. I urge you to check out his site and have a listen.

If you have any questions about copyright law, please feel free to visit the companion site to my book and post your question on the Q&A section. I’ll be happy to answer whatever questions you might have about specific situations in your teaching.

This Thursday I will be attending what should be an incredible event at the New York Public Library: Wired Magazine is hosting a discussion with Lawrence Lessig, Shepard Fairey and Stephen Johnson titled Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. The discussion revolves around Lessig’s most recent book of the same name as well as the controversy surrounding the now famous iconic picture of Barack Obama that was created by Shepard Fairey - now hanging in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. The discussion will be moderated by Stephen Johnson, another one of my personal favorite authors. I am really excited about this program, and the last time I saw a similar event at the NYPL, it was incredible. If you around NYC on Thursday night and are interested in the future of creativity and how it relates to intellectual property laws and copyright, I highly recommend buying a ticket and checking it out. Hope to see you there!

For the last couple of days I have been presenting sessions on behalf of SoundTree and TI:ME NJ at the NJMEA Conference in East Brunswick, NJ. I have been attending this conference since 1989 since I was a student at Montclair State University, and I’ve yet to miss one. I have presented numerous sessions here over the years and it is always nice to see so many of my colleagues when I walk around the hotel. This year I am presenting three of my own sessions and helping people out at two “Technology Sandbox” sessions where the SoundTree Lab is open for anyone to come up and check out software and even get some one-on-one instruction on software they are interested in. As always, I have created a special landing page for the conference where all of the session materials are posted. Podcasts of each of my sessions will be available tomorrow on my podcasting site.

If you are around today, please stop by the Rockaway Room in Tower 1 - 15th floor. Hope to see you there!

This past Tuesday evening, I had the distinct pleasure of catching two acoustic sets by one of my absolute favorite groups: Medeski, Martin & Wood at an incredible space - the 92Y Tribeca Mainstage. As I sat and listened to this incredible music event, I thought to myself that it is often a good thing to unplug at a concert and revisit the reason why I started liking music in the first place: an acoustic piano, upright bass, and drums playing together with an incredible synergy. I was in heaven. Often at moments like this one I reflect on the impact that technology has on live music - sometimes a great thing, and sometimes not. As I was thinking about how low-tech the concert was (except for Chris Wood plugging in an electric bass from time to time there was nothing plugged in on stage), I suddenly realized that literally every aspect of my concert experience was in some way connected to technology. As much as I thought this was a non-tech event, I quickly realized how wrong I was.

I found out about the concert throught the MMW e-mail listserve. When I received the email, I simply clicked on the “Get Tickets” link and was immediately connected to the 92Y ticket site. I bought two tickets with my credit card and put them on will call. As I had never been to the venue before, I wrote down the address so that I could find it. I plugged it into Google Maps and looked at the location from space. Thinking about dinner, I added some restaurants to the map and realized that one of my favorite places in NYC was a few blocks away - The Brandy Library. I emailed my friend and set up some plans. I left the office a little early on Tuesday and quickly entered the address of the venue into my GPS. An hour later I arrived at the location, parked the car, and called my friend. He was stuck in horrific traffic on the George Washington Bridge and told me to grab dinner without him. I took out my iPod touch, found an open wireless signal, and used an app called Urban Spoon to find a decent restaurant in the area. Within 10 minutes I was sitting in a perfect little pub called Walkers that had my favorite liquid refreshment on tap. Using my cell phone I got periodic updates from my friend. He called to tell me that he was 5 minutes away, so I ordered him a flight of selected single malts at the Brandy Library. I took a picture of the table with my cell phone. Meanwhile, my friend was using his iPhone to navigate his way on the street to the Brandy Library. We finally hooked up, had some incredible single malts, and walked to the event. The concert was incredible. On the line for the bathroom I spoke with some fellow MMW fans, and one told me that a recording was being made of the concert (legally) and that it would be posted on eTree that night for download. It was. On the MMW site, fans blogged almost immediately about how tight the band was that night and requested tunes for the coming shows. After the show I got back in my car, turned my GPS on to find my way to the West Side Highway, and I was off.

Technology pervaded nearly every aspect of the concert experience, except for the actual music making. When one pauses to reflect how dependent we have all become on technology, it is amazing how all of these uses (which would have seemed Jetsonian 10 years ago) are now transparent. Even low-tech events are now high-tech. The relationship to the actual music making will always be about balance, but every other aspect of an event like the one I attended on Tuesday night will forever be dependent on technology.

On my way to and from the TI:ME 2009 National Conference/TMEA in San Antonio, TX I read an engaging new book by Steve Knopper entitled Appetite for Self Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age . It should be required reading for anyone trying to make sense of where the music industry is heading and how it ended up in the state it is currently in.

Knopper does a wonderful job of tracing the sometimes lurid history of the inner workings of the music industry - from it’s ties to organized crime, the payola scandal, and the extreme excesses of industry moguls who spent millions of dollars on lavish lifestyles and outrageous contracts for recording artists. It is very interesting to see how the author illustrates the digital music revolution and how one 19-year-old was able to topple the business plan of an entire industry.

In my class at TC last night we discussed how kids today perceive the consumption of popular music - and this ties in very closely with the book. When I was a kid I used to purchase an LP, bring it straight home, lie on my bed with headphones on, and listen the album over an over again while studying the cover art and lyrics. When I purchased Pink Floyd’s The Wall I think I stayed in my room for about 6 or 7 hours straight listening - really listening - to every second of that album. The students in my class raised the point that students in today’s society often view music as background noise - something to put on their iPod while they do something else (like text, study, exercise, or download music on P2P file sharing services). Do they really listen to the music? Do they care about the quality of the recording? Are we breeding a generation of youth who simply consume music rather than experience it? Could this perhaps be a reason why many of them steal music from P2P file sharing services without any consideration of the effect that it may have on the artist?

I strongly recommend picking up a copy of the book. I hope that it makes you think as much as it made me think. As a lifelong music lover, this book was a real eye-opener for me. Have you read it yet? What do you think?

This week I am in San Antonio, TX at the TI:ME 2009 National Conference in conjunction with the TMEA Conference. I am presenting five sessions on behalf of SoundTree, and I have created a special landing page for the show. In addition to my sessions, Dr. Thomas Rudolph and Michael Fein are presenting sessions that are sponsored by SoundTree.

Highlights of the conference include the presentation of the 2009 TI:ME Teacher of the Year (which SoundTree is sponsoring) and the Keynote Address which will be given by keyboard genius, Jordan Rudess which is sponsored by Korg USA. There are hundreds of sessions on music technology given by the top experts, including Amy Burns, Robin Hodson, Andrew Surmani, Marc Jacoby, Ray Riley, Dave Sebald, Sandi MacLeod, Charles Menoche, and VJ Manzo. Podcasts of my sessions will be posted on my podcasting site by Sunday. If you’re coming to San Antonio too, please be sure to stop by the SoundTree lab or the SoundTree booth. Hope to see you there!