so here’s what I wanted to say about your “new age” thoughts:

“Sounds like a composition exercise – and I challenge you. Compose a piece using ‘new age’ musical idioms but a western classical compositional technic. Take that ‘new age sound’ and make it intellectually worthwhile. Of course first you have to identify the usable basic new age idioms, which is a challenge in and of itself…perhaps choose a few and make each one an individual movement.

Just a thought, and one I’d be wildly interested in…AND you could have an absolute blast with the movement titles…”

Only problem is that I’m not enough of a fan of new age music to get there… but yes, interesting compositional exercise.

Positive mention of the Flint Hills always gets my attention! Thanks!
So happy it brought me to your site.

Our 22 county Flint Hills Tourism Coalition, Inc. promotes visits to the Kansas Flint Hills – the website is: http://www.kansasflinthills.travel/

Best wishes!
Dr. Bill
Personal Blog: http://flinthillsofkansas.blogspot.com/

Sorry, don’t want to politicize your blog, just couldn’t resist.

Here is my problem as a classical musician and consumer of classical music: I have not found an internet retailer that even compares with the experience of visiting, for example, Joseph-Beth Bookseller’s classical music section, or Tower Records in 1995. If there is a CD that I want, I can certainly get it from Archiv or CD Baby or Amazon, but I have to know exactly what I’m looking for in order to find it. I have to spell the name of the piece correctly (always a challenge in dealing with foreign languages), and I may even have to go to the record label’s website in the end and order the CD through them.

What is lost is the art of browsing. There is a great difference between a site telling me what it thinks I will like (based on what I bought before) and my looking at everything they have to offer. Most classical music sections are sized so that I can start with Alkan and work my way to Zemlinsky in a half-hour or less, skipping through the eighty-seven recordings of the Messiah and the Brandenburg concertos along the way. The occasions when I’m in the store with money to spend, but I don’t know what I want are when I get some of the best music I’ve ever bought–”I wonder what they have by Hindemith today,” “Wow! A Carlos Kleiber recording I don’t have,” “I wonder what a symphony by Joe Jackson sounds like.” If there was ever something specific that I wanted from Tower or Joseph-Beth, I could order it with no less trouble that I can from anywhere else. It is browsing that is the problem.

The internet has corrupted the term “browsing.” Browsing is seeing what’s there by quickly scanning, whether it’s library shelves, the used-record bins or my own collection. It requires that the senses simultaneously comprehend multiple choices, which may or may not be related. In the record store, Bach is right next to Bax, and I could quickly make that leap. On Google or Amazon, I only get results that are related verbally in some way. Not only is there too much information, it often isn’t the right kind. For example, a person searching for information about my music would probably get referenced to the Internet Movie Database because of a movie character with my name.

Should the information be out there? Yes, whole-heartedly. Has the internet improved that way we find that information? Not always.

Video Form: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=XCFIfPlrAvE

Written Blog Form:
http://www.speakmediablog.com/2008/09/social-media-keep-up-or-fall-back.html

Jennifer A. Jones
Speak Media Blog