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An eclectic collection of musical musings—musical art, philosophical rants, YouTube covers—that don't make it to my column about music and technology for Forbes.

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The artist Empress Of (via Urban Outfitters)

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A map at KEXP shows the Seattle radio station’s reach, with pins marking where listeners have emailed from.

(via In the Stream of Internet Radio, Music Stations Hold Their Own)

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My first post for Forbes!

A philosophical marriage of Spotify and GoPro.

Hope you guys enjoy :)

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Throwback Thursday: early advertisement for the wah-wah pedal.

(via The Invention of the Wah-Wah Pedal)

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Emily King—“Georgia” (Vocal Cover)

Decided to take a break from writing writing writing and record this belated video. This delicately emotional song has been the cure for the myriad instances of chaos or woes I’ve run into so far as a junior.

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Painting based on John Mayer’s “Gravity” by synesthetic artist Melissa McCracken. (link)

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Artwork for Nathaniel Rich’s intriguing article Hit Charade in The Atlantic about the stealthy minds and mechanisms behind the latest pop songs.

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Marvel Comics’ reimagined cover for Guardians of Infinity #1, inspired by the album art for Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly.

Check out the other awesome hip-hop-inspired comic art here!

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Artwork for the Harvard Business Review article Why More and More Companies Are Ditching Performance Ratings, written by David Rock and Beth Jones.

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A tag cloud of the most popular metal sub-genres, courtesy of Everynoise. Didn’t even know most of these existed (for those wondering, NWOTHM stands for “New Wave of Traditional Heavy Metal” and NWOBHM stands for “New Wave of British Heavy Metal”).

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Tame Impala - “Let It Happen” (Soulwave Remix)

tight remix of a tight song.

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Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 18 - II. Adagio sostenuto Krystian Zimerman, piano Boston Symphony Orchestra | Seiji Ozawa, conductor

My first musical undertaking for the semester: accompanying my friend at a concerto competition. This is my first time serving as an accompanist. The experience so far has felt pretty low-key in the sense that I'm not in the spotlight, but definitely not low-key in the sense that the accompaniment plays a crucial role in the flow of the music and, more importantly, in how well the soloist performs.

God knows how many times I (and probably you) have heard Rachmaninoff’s famed Piano Concerto No. 2, but being the accompanist has revealed to me that I don’t really know this concerto front-to-back like I thought I did—and that my classical listening experiences have become jarringly passive. Both for this concerto and for many other pieces, I pay close attention to melodies, but take for granted the harmonic progressions supporting them; I can recognize instruments, but often do not understand how all of the voices in the orchestra interact with each other in complex dialogue and polyphony. I am also learning firsthand how difficult it is to translate woodwind and string textures to the piano.

So, lessons for the future: accompanying can reveal both previously uncovered insights about a piece of music and unsuspecting areas for improvement in your own piano playing.

Anyhow, my friend/soloist sent me the above recording because of Zimerman’s particularly clean sixteenth notes, which start at around 6:58. Overall, this is just an amazing performance with an all-star cast that demands to be heard.

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Illustration by Brian Stauffer for Jonathan Ringen’s article about lessons learned from Spotify, Apple Music, and the streaming wars.

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welp.

So since I’m already a rising junior in college(!!), I may or may not be writing a joint thesis on Statistics and Music around a year from now. Never too early to think (i.e. freak out) about a thesis.

I’m thinking of approaching stat+music from a business perspective, applying statistical models to some aspect of the music industry (overall industry revenues over time, influence of social networks on music tastes, evaluation of alternative payment models for songs, etc.). Ideally I would also incorporate either a focus on the digital music sphere (Spotify, Pandora, Apple, Google, etc.) or an international perspective (I’m interested in comparing American music markets to those of Europe, particularly in France, Germany and Sweden).

Silly me to think that not much research has been done on this already. All it took was an innocent Google search—“statistical model music industry”—and I have now spent almost 120 minutes skimming and compiling what must be ~700 pages worth of academic papers and industry reports at the intersection of music and stats. Some interesting title fragments: “Music Tastes in the United States and France,” “A Bayesian Lifetime Model for ‘Hot 100′ Billboard Songs,” “A Statistical Framework for the Australian Music Sector,” “Employment Prospects in the Irish Pop Music Industry.”

So terrified yet excited to find that this is such an intellectually rich topic. Tons and tons of reading and loner-ing ahead.

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Amanda Palmer, eight months pregnant and exquisitely painted, recreates Damien Hirst’s Verity statue (top) in a performance art piece for the New York Public Library’s children’s book drive. Proud papa-to-be Neil Gaiman (bottom) extends a loving hand to this modern-day nude descending a staircase, after donating a copy of his own charming children’s book, Chu’s Day. 

For more of Palmer’s beautiful bibliophilia, treat yourself to her bewitching poetry readings of Polish Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska.

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what a BOSS

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Artwork by Nick Dupey as featured on Musicians + Bits + Blocks, a piece by Matt Weiss (of the design firm IDEO) on how Bitcoin’s blockchain technology can help transform the music industry.

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The end of a melody is not its goal; but nonetheless, if the melody had not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.

Friedrich Nietzsche