Kronos Quartet Quer Distribuir Suas Músicas De Graça Para Você! E Vai Ensiná-lo Como Tocá-las!

Kronos Quartet Wants To Give You Free Music — And Teach You How To Play It

Irish composer and violist Garth Knox recently wrote a piece called Satellites, which, he says, tries to express sounds he imagines coming from outer space. At a Carnegie Hall rehearsal studio, he explains how to play the piece to four 20-something musicians from San Francisco who call themselves the Friction Quartet. Knox says that to create these extraterrestrial sounds, he used an unconventional approach.

"The small techniques that are overlooked in classical music," he says, "and the little bow noises you can make by doing things not quite as your teacher showed you — but what you do when he's not looking. You can find amazing things. Bows and strings can work in many different ways."

Four days after the workshop, the Friction Quartet performed Knox's Satellites in a concert at Carnegie's Zankel Hall. It's all part of a project by the Kronos Quartet called Fifty for the Future. The group is commissioning 50 works from as many composers. It will premiere each piece, and then hold workshops with the composer and young musicians. Then the score will be posted on the Kronos website, free for anyone to download, along with performance and instructional videos.

Knox was paid for the commission, but the 59-year-old says he doesn't mind giving away the copyright in return for hearing Satellites performed around the world. "I'm very happy that people play my music," he says. "It's a delight for me. I want as many people to play it as possible. There's nothing secret about what I'm doing. I'm very happy to share it. And I find this whole project very generous; a show of generosity."

The 25-year-old violist in the Friction Quartet, Taija Warbelow, says the project is a boon for young musicians.

"When you're starting out in chamber music, you often play Mozart or Haydn or things like this," she says, "and you don't get exposed to new classical music until much later in your career. It would have been great to have these pieces they're commissioning now when I was younger, because you learn a whole host of new techniques, and you help support the music that is being created now if you're exposed to it younger."

The five-year project has a budget of $1.5 million, funded in part by Carnegie Hall. Along with Satellites, the first group of commissions includes a piece for electronics and strings; quartet music from Serbia and Mali; and composer Wu Man's Four Chinese Paintings.

Wu is a virtuoso of the pipa, a pear-shaped, four-stringed instrument sometimes called the Chinese lute. And she wants to get that sound from a string quartet.

"I'm not trying to imitate the bow sound," she says. "I'm hoping bowed instruments could imitate my plucking, the pipa sound — the kind of bending the note, the slide, that's on the left hand. So that brings a different language, very different from European music."

Wu came to New York to show three young quartets how to play the piece after Kronos premiered it.

Kronos Quartet led a workshop for young professional string quartets to explore new works commissioned as part of "Fifty For The Future."

Stefan Cohen/Courtesy of Carnegie Hall

Kronos violinist David Harrington says when all 50 of the commissions are delivered, the result will be a mosaic of what is possible in string quartet music, available for anybody to learn. And Fifty for the Future has some big names on tap, including works for string quartet by Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson and Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

"What I hope will happen is that the art form is just going to expand," he says. "And the explorations that will be possible from this body of work will just bring a lot of new energy into the field."

Uma Gravadora (Matador Records) Teve Que Destruir Todos Novos Vinis! Por Causa De Uma Música Do "The Cars"

Why a Record Label Crushed a Batch of Vinyl Records

Matador Records scrambles for a new pressing after it recalled a Car Seat Headrest album that used parts of a Cars hit

Singer Will Toledo of Car Seat Headrest performed during the Do512 SXSW party on March 14, 2016 in Austin, Texas. PHOTO: SCOTT DUDELSON/GETTY IMAGES

Manhattan headquarters of Matador Records, employees chucked thousands of brand-new copies of an acclaimed album into a garbage truck, which crushed the CDs and vinyl records and carted them away. 

It was a rudely physical coda to a dispute over intangibles: a song’s lyrics and melody. Matador artist Will Toledo, an indie rocker who records under the name Car Seat Headrest, had woven elements of a 1978 hit by the Cars, “Just What I Needed,” into one of his songs. Mr. Toledo and Matador believed they had secured the necessary approval to release the Car Seat Headrest album featuring the hybrid song. But a publishing company representing Cars songwriter Ric Ocasek denied them permission after learning that some of Mr. Ocasek’s lyrics had been changed.

By that time, about 10 days before the May 20 release of the Car Seat Headrest album, “Teens of Denial,” all physical copies—about 5,800 vinyl LPs and 3,700 CDs—had already been shipped to distributors and record stores. Matador issued a recall, the first in the label’s 27-year history, and scrambled to salvage the project. Mr. Toledo created a version of the song without material from “Just What I Needed.” Matador swapped it in to get a digital version of the album out on time. In between documenting and destroying the recalled recordings, the label fast-tracked the vinyl pressing of the replacement album, a process that typically takes several months. 

Mr. Toledo, who is 23 years old, is Car Seat Headrest’s singer, guitar player and sole songwriter. The four-person group has built buzz since Mr. Toledo started putting out music while in college in Virginia. His album snag reflects broader forces in the music industry, such as the revival of vinyl records and the antiquated factories that make them. Vinyl sales, which have risen for 10 years, amount to just 6% of total music retail, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. However, at $416 million in 2015, vinyl sales were higher than revenue from ad-supported music streams on services like YouTube, indicating the lingering importance of physical releases in a world dominated by digital.

Mr. Toledo’s run-in with the rocker behind some of the catchiest hits of the ’70s and ’80s also underscores the power of music publishing, which encompasses the rights to songs as written compositions. It’s a hugely important piece of intellectual property for songwriters trying to supplement sales and streaming revenue with fees from, for example, placing their music in TV commercials or movies.

For veteran acts such as Mr. Ocasek, with a thick catalog of familiar songs, publishing rights not only can supply lifelong profits, they also can be used to promote music to new generations of fans—or shield it from unwelcome uses.

In the original version of Mr. Toledo’s song (previously titled “Just What I Needed/Not Just What I Needed”) he played a syncopated guitar riff borrowed from the Cars hit. Then, after some verses of his own, he quoted the Cars tune but changed Mr. Ocasek’s line from “It’s not the ribbons in your hair” to “It’s not the way you cut your hair.” 

Mr. Ocasek controls his songs through a company called Lido Music, which relies on Universal Music Publishing Group to administer access to the catalog. Universal said the original Car Seat Headrest request that was approved didn’t disclose that the lyric had been changed. After learning of the lyric change, Lido Music said in a statement, the song was blocked because “it is our policy that no lyric changes are ever approved.”

Mr. Ocasek declined to comment.

After his request to use Mr. Ocasek’s work was denied, Mr. Toledo said, he re-recorded the introduction to his song. He replaced the Cars lyrics with a snippet of one of Car Seat Headrest’s songs from a previous album, played backward. The new title: “Not What I Needed.” 

Matador Records expects to lose at least $50,000 on the effort, including what the label had paid to ship the original LPs from a German pressing plant, at about $2 per unit. “When we do the final P&L on this project, it’s not going to look great,” said Rusty Clarke, vice president of sales for Beggars Group, which comprises six record labels, including Matador.

Before a recent performance in Brooklyn, Mr. Toledo said he regretted Matador’s financial hit but didn’t mourn the destroyed records. Before signing with Matador, he self-recorded 11 releases—initially using his car as a recording studio, hence his moniker—and released his recordings independently through the music site Bandcamp. “I grew up releasing music digitally, and I never put out physical records before signing to Matador, so this album release in all practicality looks about the same as what I’m used to,” Mr. Toledo said.

Still, the recall leaves him empty-handed on tour, where he could be selling the new LPs or CDs to fans at concerts. 

The vinyl stock of “Teens of Denial” is expected to be replaced in early July by Independent Record Pressing, a plant near Trenton, N.J., that opened last year. Making IRP’s job more painstaking: the fact that “Teens of Denial” is a double LP. The pressing company will save and “quarantine” the records (featuring sides C and D) that didn’t include the offending song. After IRP presses the replacement records (featuring sides A and B), employees will insert them into the new sleeves (with revised credits) and seal them for shipping. 

IRP, built around six refurbished presses from the ’70s and ’80s, produces about 4,000 records a day and is about to double its output by adding a second shift of workers, says general manager Sean Rutkowski. 

“I think we’re turning a corner, production-wise. For years, people were nervous to invest in it” because they expected the vinyl fad to die down, says Cameron Schaefer, head of music and label relations at Vinyl Me, Please, a subscription service that delivers an exclusive LP to members each month. Launched in 2013, the Boulder, Colo., startup had worked with Matador to create a special edition of the Car Seat Headrest album—750 copies on yellow vinyl.

Copies of Car Seat Headrest's LP ‘Teens of Denial’ sat in a box in the Matador loading dock, waiting to be destroyed PHOTO: COLE WILSON FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

For collectors, however, the more coveted edition of “Teens of Denial” is the recalled original. After hearing about the recall, Steve Gray, a photographer in Bangor, Maine, went online on the album’s release date and searched the inventory of a regional chain of brick-and-mortar record stores called Bull Moose. He hit the Bangor location just after the doors opened at 9 a.m. and found a single copy of the LP, for $26 plus tax.

Later, he poked through the shrink wrap just enough to verify that both LPs were inside. He posted a picture of his score in a forum on the Vinyl Me, Please site, where a handful of other members claimed to have received copies of the recalled record shipped by Amazon.com.

To protect his find, Mr. Gray doesn’t plan to play it on the turntable he got for his birthday a couple of years ago. Instead, he’s been streaming “Teens of Denial” on Spotify.

A Psicologia Da Música - Infográfico

The Psychology of Music

Did you know that music originates as vibrations, which form sound waves as they propagate through the ear? That’s certainly not the first thing on my mind every time I stick my headphones in my ears, but the more I learn about music, the more my attachment to it starts to make sense.

The University of Florida put together this infographic below on the Psychology behind music. According to the graphic, music actually involves more parts of the brain than any other human function. It also increases language skills, creativity, and overall happiness (to name a few).

I don’t go anywhere without headphones. I feel like a soundtrack is not just necessary in the movies but also in everyday life. How else are you going to decide between the regular and organic strawberries at the grocery store? Or get through the last mile on your long run? Or clean your apartment, study for a final, wake up in the morning. etc.? Music is a huge part of life, and I, for one, do not want to imagine our world without it. Check out the infographic below.

Como Os Beatles Mudaram o Jogo Com 'Paperback Writer' E Pavimentaram O Caminho Para 'Revolver' - Escute Só o Baixo!

How Beatles' Game-Changing 'Paperback Writer' Paved Way for 'Revolver'

thanks to  COLIN FLEMING








In the annals of Beatles singles, we have what we might think of as a game-starter in "Please Please Me," a game-ender in something like "Let It Be," and a host of game-changers, the most important of which is rarely discussed as one of the band's top efforts.

And yet, "Paperback Writer" – "just a little bluesy song," according to its modest/understating author, Paul McCartney – which was cut 50 years ago in mid-April 1966, and released May 30th of that year, is perhaps the single that best suggests how the Beatles were about to change things up in their most radical way yet.

Rubber Soul had just been released in December 1965, knocking the listening public on its collective ear, and still dominated the charts in the spring. This was a Beatles album unlike any other, one you couldn't have been prepared for, clearly marking that a new era had begun. Mid-period Beatles was underway.

No one had thought to blend folk music with rhythm & blues, as the Beatles had just done, in essence adding an earthy groove to the wifty-wafty strains of cannabis set to music. A most organic sound, both of nature and the metropolis. But now that mid-period game was about to be kicked up another notch.

Revolver would be the full flowering of the Beatles' next phase; but first, there was "Paperback Writer," the cheeky tease of a song that cajoled you away from the world of Rubber Soul, and into a new galaxy.

Right from the get-go, there is something otherworldly about "Paperback Writer," even though this is in essence a sonic short story about a would-be writer. Paul McCartney's voice starts the song, before John Lennon and George Harrison add to a rich counterpoint, the title words cleaving into Cubist sound fragments. Harrison's distorted guitar then kicks off a hot, scuzzy riff as some spartan bass drum thumps from Ringo Starr follow below, all of it further energised by five, rapid tumbling McCartney bass notes, and away we go into the verse.

A bass guitar had never sounded like this, and one can imagine the looks McCartney and engineer Geoff Emerick must have exchanged, as if they had just unlocked a whole new realm of potential for the instrument.

"'Paperback Writer' was the first time the bass sound had been heard in all its excitement," Emerick remarks in Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. "For a start, Paul played a different bass, a Rickenbacker. Then we boosted it further by using a loudspeaker as a microphone."

It doesn't hurt, either, that McCartney was the possessor of just about matchless bass chops at this point. Lennon, who was never particularly forthcoming with praise, remarked that McCartney "was one of the most innovative bass players that ever played bass." And here, that innovation was worked into the framework of one kick-ass, churning, burning band.

"'Paperback Writer' had a heavier sound than some earlier work – and very good vocal work, too," said producer George Martin. "I think that was just the way it worked out, that the rhythm was the most important part of their make-up by this time."

The studio itself was now a crucial instrument for the band, and this is one of the earliest examples of the Beatles learning how to play it, and play it masterfully. Consider ATOC – Automatic Transient Overload Control.

"It was this huge box with flashing lights and what looked like the eye of a Cyclops staring at you," explains Tony Clark, the man who cut the "Paperback Writer" master lacquer, in Sessions. But what this "monster" did was allow "Paperback Writer" to have an insanely high bass factor and still not make record player needles jump.

The lyrics are equally novel. That first verse takes the form of a letter, the narrator wishing to hawk the manuscript that has required years to write. We almost always think of Lennon as the Beatles' principle jokester and wordsmith, but McCartney is tough to beat on this song. The story is based on a novel by a man named Lear, a pun on Shakespeare and the Spanish verb "leer," meaning "to read." Wordplay, Macca style.

Around this period. McCartney was the band's in-house aesthete, going to the theatre, the cinema, reading the books, having the talks, being the culture vulture.

"Penguin paperbacks was what I really thought of, the archetypal paperback," McCartney says in Barry Miles' Many Years From Now. "I arrived at Weybridge and told John I had this idea of trying to write off to publishers to become a paperback writer, and I said, 'I think it should be written like a letter.' I took a bit of paper out and I said it should be something like 'Dear Sir or Madam, as the case may be ...,' and I proceeded to write it just like a letter in front of him, occasionally rhyming it."

He's your arty one right now, and still the crowd pleaser, which means that "Paperback Writer" modulates from the avant-garde to the populist as seamlessly as any Beatles tune.

The song also makes room for a bit of silliness. English groups at the time had a thing for wiseacre backing vocals. The Beatles on "Girl" had chanted "tit tit tit" again and again; the Who, unable to afford classical musicians, would sing the word "cello" repeatedly where one was supposed to be on "A Quick One"; and with "Paperback Writer," McCartney has the boys go with "Frere Jaques" on the third verse.

Setting that children's sing-song melody against this backdrop of barely-of-this-planet instrumental work, and a tale of publishing dreams that could have been sourced from a more chipper version of a novel like New Grub Street, makes for a weird, wonderful clash of worlds.

There's a lot going on here, and yet, it all blends perfectly. With "Paperback Writer," the Beatles almost seemed to beckon the listener out of the galaxy. Or at least beyond anything quotidian. It was time to start looking way up. And they even had the sense to put the invite in epistolary form for you.

O Compositor Cliff Martinez E O Diretor Nicolas Winding Refn Se Reunem Para o Filme "Neon Demon"

Composer Cliff Martinez and Director Nicolas Winding Refn reunite for The Neon Demon

Three times the charm for veteran film composer Cliff Martinez and director Nicolas Winding Refn. Ever since their initial collaboration on 2011’s sexy indie thriller Drive, the two artists have gone together like Gosling and a hammer.

Now, they’re back for Refn’s latest feature, The Neon Demon, starring the ever-talented Elle Fanning as a young, aspiring model surrounded by a bunch of monstrous, beauty-hungry women. Christina Hendricks and Keanu Reeves co-star.

The film just premiered at Cannes Film Festival and to celebrate Milan Records has unearthed the gloomy, pulsating title track from Martinez’s forthcoming soundtrack. As expected, it’s fit for the dance floor and warrants lots of glitter.

Cliff Martinez, the composer who left his mark on Nicolas Windin Refn's breakthrough film Drive (and more recently TV's The Knick), is working together with the acclaimed director again on the upcoming film THE NEON DEMON. Their third collaboration together (the other being 2013's Only God Forgives), the soundtrack will be released via Milan Records both digitally and on CD June 24, 2016, along with a double vinyl release coming July 1st. In addition to the score, the album release also features the original track “Waving Goodbye” performed by Sia. Today Consequence of Sound premieres the first piece of music from the film -- Cliff's unforgettable, dark-disco leaning theme "Neon Demon". Listen here on Soundcloud. 

Amazon Studios and Broad Green Pictures will be releasing THE NEON DEMON in theaters June 24th before making it available exclusively to Amazon Prime members. The film premiers at Cannes this weekend.

Perhaps inspired by his time in the punk scene, Cliff Martinez’s approach to scoring is nontraditional. His scores tend towards being stark and sparse, utilizing a modern tonal palette to paint the backdrop for films that are often dark, psychological stories like PUMP UP THE VOLUME (1990), THE LIMEY (2009) WONDERLAND (2003), WICKER PARK (2004), and DRIVE (2011). Martinez has been nominated for a Grammy Award (Steven Soderbergh’s TRAFFIC), a Cesar Award (Xavier Giannoli’s A L’origine), and a Broadcast Film Critics Award (DRIVE).

ABOUT NEON DEMON:

THE NEON DEMON is a story about an aspiring model, Jesse (played by Elle Fanning) who moved to Los Angeles to chase her dreams. Her youth and vitality are devoured by a group of beauty-obsessed women who will take any means necessary to get what she does. The film also stars Keanu Reeves, Christina Hendricks and Jena Malone. This is the third Nicolas Winding Refn film Martinez has a part of, first with DRIVE and secondly with ONLY GOD FORGIVES marking it as another trifecta of perfection for the duo.

Mac Quayle O Compositor Do Seriado Mr. Robot

Composer Mac Quayle - Mr Robot

Composer Mac Quayle about his electronic score for the hit show, Mr. Robot which starts its second season on July 13, 2016.

The second season of MR. ROBOT premieres on USA Network Wednesday, July 13 at 10/9 c. Lakeshore Records will release MR. ROBOT – Original Television Series Soundtrack Volume 1 and MR. ROBOT – Original Television Series Soundtrack Volume 2 digitally on June 3 and on CD June 24, 2016.

$100 Milhões Por Um Acordo Com Um Superstar! Eles São Um Bom Investimento?

$100 Million Record Deals For Music's Superstars: Are They A Good Investment?

First of all thanks to Hugh McIntyre for this article.

News broke yesterday that Adele has reportedly signed a $130 million dollar recording contract with Sony . That figure is high enough to give her the largest deal ever offered to a female artist in the music industry, and if it’s correct, this is certainly a good time for the British singer-songwriter to celebrate.

Other record labels have made similarly-sized deals in the past, but they haven’t always ended up being good investments. In fact, it seems like when there is that much money on the table, the company offering the cash is taking a serious risk. There have only ever been a few deals signed that come even close to the $100 million mark, and while some have paid off, others ended up as financial blunders. 

Adele’s reported $130 million might be the largest for a woman in history, but it isn’t the biggest payday for a musician. The largest and most expensive deal of all time belongs to Michael Jackson, though it was only signed after his passing. It has only been a few years since that landmark deal (reportedly worth somewhere between $200 and $250 million) went into effect, but already there’s a good chance that Sony will make its enormous investment back. Jackson’s popularity isn’t likely to fade for generations, and in the years since his death, his estate, which signed the contract with the label, has made over $1 billion. He’s only released one proper album posthumously, but there are many more to come.

Contracts worth at least $100 million have also been signed with the likes of Bruce Springsteen and U2, and while the records that came out of those deals certainly weren’t the biggest or most commercially-successful of their careers, the titles were still big sellers, and money was made.

Other times, investing the big bucks hasn’t paid off, and there are a handful of stories that show just how wrong these situations can go after the paperwork is done. The best-known and most-cited example is that of Mariah Carey’s ill-fated Virgin Records debacle in the early 2000s. The label spent upwards of $100 million on securing her, and it was almost immediately a disaster. While the deal was for five albums, she only ended up dropping one: Glitter, which is still known as the worst of her illustrious career. After the failure of that album and a personal breakdown, the company had to spend tens of millions to buy her out of the contract it had just spent so much money on.

Both Whitney Houston and Lil Wayne have also signed deals reportedly close to $100 million that shouldn’t be considered massive flops on the same page as Mariah’s, but certainly didn’t return dividends like the labels were hoping. Houston only managed two proper albums with Arista before her death a few years ago, and neither one of those made the impact that her previous releases did. 

Things were going especially well for Lil Wayne close to a decade ago, so he re-signed with Cash Money Records, the company he had helped him become one of the most famous faces in hip-hop. In the years since, he has continued to chart and sell, but none of his albums have performed as well as the Tha Carter III, which helped him secure such a profitable deal in the first place. Now he’s in a legal dispute with the company, and there’s no telling how long that will last or how much it will cost.

If Adele’s $130 million deal is done, the superstar likely won’t start releasing albums that count towards it for a few years, as she is still busy promoting her latest, 25, which made history in its debut week and is still selling extremely well six months later. Whether that massive investment ends up being a great or terrible decision on Sony’s part won’t be known for years, or perhaps even decades, but hopefully this story ends well, and not as a cautionary tale on how nothing is certain in the music industry.