In a digital age when 2,000 over-produced MP3s can be stuffed in a pocket-sized iPod connected to cheap earbud headphones, there is a haven where music is not just a plastic commodity — and it’s right here on campus.

Tucked away above a music department auditorium, a control room cramped with only seven people blasts the music of Lyle Lovett and Tom Waits. The instructor and students analyze the songs’ production, dissecting the slightest discrepancies in sound, unrecognizable to the average listener.

Professor Dean Rood offers an alternative to a passive, digital world through three courses in analog technology and studio recording, within the specializations emphasis in the City College Music Department. His students learn to appreciate music not as some formless, downloadable file, but as a tangible piece of artwork.

“Music has become a commodity,” Rood says. “It’s no different than anything else — a Web page or an Adobe file.”

In MUSM 354, the recording sessions workshop, students engineer weekly five-hour sessions with local bands. They get experience placing microphones, setting recording levels and giving artists feedback.

“By the end of it, you’ve created this something that never existed six hours ago,” Rood says. “It’s something new and it’s unique, and it’s unique to that moment.”

Through MUSM 351, Analog Recording Consoles and Tape Machines, and MUSM 355, Microphones and Effects Processors, Rood teaches how to use the equipment and understand the concepts behind them. He stresses that, between analog and digital technology, one is not better than the other. A good engineer must combine the best of both methods.

“You get the analog sound everyone likes and the ease of mixing the sounds on recording software,” explains Robin Kahn, former MUSM student and freelance engineer.

Rood believes a good sound engineer must also combine technical and artistic aspects of the recording process. Knowing how to use the tools is the start, he says, but understanding what the finished product should sound like and how to give the musicians creative input is the ultimate goal.

“All music students can become empowered by taking some of the recording courses,” says Music Department chair Rob Knable. “This is because the other new development, do-it-yourself, is here to stay.”

Rood’s own DIY venture began around 14 years ago, using the most rudimentary equipment to record his own music. In the 1990s he went through the same MUSM program, and in 2006 quit his previous career to teach here. Now at age 49, with a room at home filled with high-end recording gear, he’s finishing a master’s in music technology from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

He now passes along an appreciation of music as a technical and creative art form that is quickly fading in this digital age. Music downloaded online lacks album art, poster inserts, production credits and, perhaps most importantly, a connection between consumer and creator.

“It’s devalued because there’s no tangible, hard thing,” Rood says.

According to Rood, the future of music lies with MP3s until a more convenient, even more accessible, format is invented, undoubtedly also driven by the Internet. And the sound quality of digital audio files will only increase when Internet bandwidth increases to support it.

“By then I’ll probably be deaf.”

Last night I DJed at a private Sacramento high school for their winter semi-formal dance. I thought it would be my chance to be a cool kid at prom, spinnin’ records with a pretty dress and headphones on, instead of the shy girl chatting it up with my English teacher chaperone and not dancing.

But kids are mean! I felt more pressure last night than I did when I was actually in high school. I got dirty, condescending looks and comments from dozens of teens (and one teacher!) because we didn’t have their Top 40 requests. I literally heard “boo”s when throwing on certain songs. I even watched one guy point me out to his friends and then yell, “You suck!”

I was going to say that the main difference last night was that I was finally okay being the uncool kid at prom, but the truth is I was proud to be an offbeat at that age. I gracefully accepted that social standing long ago.

The difference is that now when I’m the uncool kid at prom, I get paid $100.

Eat that, jock!

So instead of hibernating or sleeping all day, I am escaping this admittedly mild winter for a tropical island whose temperature rarely drops below 70 degrees. In a little over month, I’m flying to Okinawa, Japan for a family/research adventure. Near-equatorial weather aside, I’ll be among people who are just pushed and pulled by climate as I.

Cathy Davidson says this about weather in 36 Views of Mount Fuji:

The Japanese expect connections between external conditions and internal ones. If the rainy season, for example, comes too late or lasts too long, everyone starts acting strange; it becomes almost a national obsession. The national meteorological service feels compelled to apologize publicly for the disruption.

I get anxious when the groundhog doesn’t see his shadow. I get cranky when I’m cold.  I let external conditions affect my own, but Davidson continues:

In the West, our usual impulse is to deny that anything as significant as the ego could be influenced by mere nature.

But isn’t it easier to blame nature than ourselves for any faults of ego? Nature, weather, rain is the perfect scapegoat for the fact that I’m still in bed at 1 o’clock. Maybe in Japan I could get away with that argument, but with a warm forecast I won’t have to.

As a lifetime Sacramento region resident involved in the music scene, I’ve seen a trend of local bands denouncing their town. So many great bands abandon the River City, thinking they can do better in San Francisco or Portland, only to get lost in the over-populated scene sea.

But our flagship rock band Cake never gave up on Sacramento. They proudly call it their hometown, even though frontman John McCrea now lives in Oakland. They make references to the city in songs. They even maintain their studio in Sacramento, and recently retrofitted it to be totally solar-powered.

But most importantly, they show their loyalty to Sacramento by offering these cozy secret shows every year or two. The first time I saw them was Christmas Eve 2001 or so, for free at the old Capitol Garage. Last Tuesday I got to see them again at the Blue Lamp, their second show there in the last month. They played old favorites and tested out new material for the upcoming album – all of which, I’m happy to report, is dope.

So be proud to be from Sacramento! The scene may be smaller than the Bay Area’s, but I say it’s sweeter.

Happy anniversary, KDVS and me! Five years ago on this very night, I timidly entered a Wellman classroom and for two hours sat entranced by DJ Rick‘s storytelling. Here is what I wrote in my journal that night:

“KDVS meeting tonight, music history chart of hip-hop and prog/industrial all over the board. So cool! Learned more there than in English 1. So I’m an official volunteer now, they seem like cool people.”

When I ventured into that first meeting as a mid-quarter newcomer, I didn’t know I would find a welcoming, stimulating community in a matter of weeks. The catacombs of KDVS became a home base, a refuge providing warmth in the winter, AC in the summer and good sounds year-round.

When I performed my first volunteer task for Joe Finkel, scanning images for the next KDViationS, I didn’t know that for three glorious years my name would be at the top of that masthead. I, too, got the distinct pleasure of ordering hours-hungry minions to do my bidding.

When I first heard Big Sammy‘s radio show, I didn’t know that I could like hip-hop that much, having only heard KSFM’s garbage until then. It was the first of many revelations about new kinds of music, a series that altered my own radio show until unrecognizable from its original form.

So thank you, KDVS and all my fellow DJs, for five fantastic years. I never dreamed I would find such a love.

Yours,
Elisa

The recent trend of consuming local produce is not just true of food. We are learning to seek out regional goods in grocery stores, shop more at farmers’ markets, and this awareness is reflected in our consumption of local media.

Everyone knows print newspapers are on their way out — they simply cannot compete with the immediacy and accessibility of online news. But many believe the dominance of e-news accompanies the resurgence of locally oriented publications. “Community journalism” sources like The Sacramento Press covers “hyperlocal” stories that The Bee would never get around to, and the community is responding positively.

Glossy magazines are suffering the same fate as newspapers, according to this article, with many going out of print. Localism will prevail, though, if small-time rags like Midtown Monthly and Sactown continue to succeed. I’m probably not alone in having more respect for those publications than for Playgirl and Teen Magazine (RIP).

This other article claims music is coming to a dead end. “The bigger the audience gets the more the ‘message’ has to be watered down,” so the answer is simple: Intimate audiences are optimal, organic. The author insists people only want to listen to old music since new music isn’t evolving, but some local musicians are currently making the most innovative and engaging music I’ve ever heard. Who needs the music industry?

All these shifts toward localism are welcome and necessary. I don’t think the term “slow media” will catch on, but the idea certainly will.

The Bee’s article “Placerville seeks to slow growth of thrift shops” (Cathy Locke, Nov. 5) explains the Placerville City Council’s recent 45-day moratorium on thrift stores. During this period, no second-hand shops can be established, expanded or relocated.

This is sad news for me and my friends, a community of toy-instrument bands and crate diggers.  We’ve reveled in the recent rise of thrift stores, but there is no doubt, the article points out, that their success is due to the failing national economy. Now, city officials believe the shops are hindering local economy. It’s a vicious cycle that benefits college students and low-income households — not to mention the nonprofits these shops often represent.

But with three new stores in the last year and two on the way, Placerville is hurting from the lack of sales tax. I think the city is embarrassed to have so many second-hand shops on main streets, complete with unattractive drop-off piles. Their storefronts aren’t classy like some Midtown boutiques, but their contents are so much more sensible, in this economic time or any time.

The City Council decision came as a result of Snowline Hospice‘s plan to move into an old auto dealership. Even though it’s been vacant for two years, the city would rather a regular retailer occupy that “prime commercial space.” Doesn’t it look worse to have a giant building vacant for so long? Isn’t second-hand business better than no business?

But it’s not like the city is closing all thrift stores, so all these people can chill.

Every interview I’ve read or conducted about a teacher mentions their “A-ha! moment.” Apparently it’s this magical epiphany when a student finally understands the concepts a teacher has been driving at all along. It’s proof that their work is not for naught.

Well, I’ve never delivered an A-ha! moment, but I have executed many — what I will call — Ta-da! moments.  This came to mind tonight as I concluded my screenprinting class at the UC Davis Craft Center. The Ta-da! is the epiphany when a student realizes he is capable of amazing things.

Ta-da! You can silkscreen any image you want onto a T-shirt and wear it right out of the classroom, without going to a professional printer!

Ta-da! Your hand-scrawled poetry has been printed 6,000 times in a magazine and is being distributed all over the country!

Ta-da! You can record a song in your bedroom at night and hear it played on the radio the next day!

I remember my first Ta-da moment delivered: In high school I booked my friends’ band, Red Sauce, to play a concert in our auditorium. When I brought to lunch a copy of Alive & Kicking that listed their name in the events calendar, the guitarist ran through the quad yelling unintelligibly and flailing the paper around. That’s when I decided I must find more ways to say, “Ta-da!”

According to The State of the News Media‘s 2009 Online Journalist Survey, we journalism students have some things to worry about. Not only is the format of our chosen area of study changing from paper to web, but apparently our journalistic ethics and values are changing, too.

The survey polled employees of the Online News Association and found that 45 percent believe journalism is heading on “the right track.” The 54 percent who said we’re on the wrong track had better just hop off now, because the future of journalism is what it is. There is only one track. We cannot reverse the advancements in technology that have lead us to this age of digital media. We cannot ignore the fact that the internet is the most accessible medium to our generation, a generation of (hopeful) future journalists.

As for our ethics changing — mostly for the worse, according to the survey — an expected decline in accuracy is the trade-off for faster breaking news, a greater array of voices heard and the potential for interactive, multimedia coverage. There have always been inaccuracies in the news, but there has never been so much opportunity for future writers, reporters, photographers, artists, designers, web techs, on and on and on.

However, all these wonderful progressions cannot happen without revenue. The survey shows that only 61 percent of news websites are making a profit. I guess it is what it is.

A couple weeks ago I saw this gamelan opera called A House in Bali. It was pretty wack. I wrote a review of it for my music class, so if you want to read all about how it failed, you can follow the jump.

A House in Bali is Evan Ziporyn’s operatic culture clash of Bali and the West. I saw the performance on Sept. 27 in Zellerbach Hall at UC Berkeley, and while I am glad I went, I cannot help but heavily criticize many aspects of the production.

The opera is based on the true story of Canadian composer and musicologist Colin McPhee, who traveled to Bali, Indonesia in 1932 and was so taken by the native song and dance that he returned to study and document the art forms. He analyzed the traditional gamelan music and instruments, and was one of the first to present these styles to the Western world. McPhee eventually became alienated in the foreign society and fled. True to McPhee’s journey, the opera presented a purposeful clashing between the West and Bali’s language, music and dress.

To symbolize McPhee’s dueling worlds, the opera featured the Bang on a Can All-Stars (a six-piece Western orchestra) and Gamelan Salukat (a 15-piece gamelan orchestra). The Western ensemble contained all the traditional instruments: piano, cello, guitar, upright bass, violin and drum kit. The gamelan also contained all its traditional instruments: gong ageng (large hanging gong), bonang (row of smaller, horizontal gongs), sarons (metallophones), genders (metallophones with bamboo resonators), ketuk (single horizontal gong) and kendang (multiple wooden skin-headed hand drums).

The gamelan alone sounded beautiful. Balinese gamelan is some of the most high-energy, mind-boggling music I’ve ever seen performed. It sounds as if the musicians are playing at lightning speed, but one of the tricks of gamelan music is that pairs of players interlock their lines to sound like one continuous, inhumanly fast melody. All the instruments (except the drums) are cast in bronze, a chemical amalgamation that allows an amalgamation of sounds: full, warm tones from the large gongs and sharp tones from the smaller metallophones.

However, the gamelan rarely played on its own, instead layered under the Western ensemble. The two groups playing together was chaotic, as it was supposed to be, but to the point of being unpleasant and almost unlistenable. The gamelan’s colotomic structure clashed with the Western’s more through-composed structure, the gamelan’s unique pentatonic tuning system clashed with the Western’s Western tuning, and the gamelan’s dynamic mix of warm and sharp timbres clashed with the Western’s (may I say) boring timbres.

There were only two instances when I felt the blending of the ensembles was successful. At one point, the two alternated, with only the Western drum kit gracefully ushering the transitions. In the same number, the Western’s wooden xylophone beautifully matched the warmer tones of the genders. Other than that, the music was muddled between both groups.

Maybe it was Ziporyn’s intent, but there was also a clash of time periods. McPhee’s journey took place in the 1930s, but in the opera he was dressed in Dockers and a Macy’s dress shirt, followed around by a similarly dressed man with a camcorder that projected unflattering footage of the actor on an overhead screen. When villagers trashed McPhee’s new house in Bali, they did so with Domino’s Pizza boxes. Only the Balinese actors were dressed appropriately for their time and place; the two females dancers especially wore beautiful, colorful traditional costumes.

Besides the action on the stage, the scenic and lighting design also left much to be desired. The set seemed like a half-baked plan, with a full (plain) backdrop and wings exposed. The gamelan players were, for the entirety of the opera, flooded with harsh yellow light, and the first thing they teach you in theatrical stage lighting is that everyone looks bad in yellow light. Even the dancers, with their complicated and subtle movements, were not even allowed a spotlight.

For all its flaws, the production did have some clever moments. For instance, the single Dutch officer who came to bust one of McPhee’s German cohorts is portrayed in costume and direction as a clown. And the silly, slapstick humor in the story reflected another popular Indonesian performance art, wayang, fairy tale-type stories enacted by puppets or shadow puppets. Ziporyn also incorporated one short but necessary moment of kecak, beatbox-like a cappella Balinese trance music.

There’s good reason McPhee fled the now-tourist-destination island: Western and Balinese worlds are very different, in terms of people, culture and music. McPhee disrespected many of the Balinese people’s customs and ideals by forcing on them his own, just as I feel Ziporyn has disrespected Balinese gamelan by forcing over them his Western ensemble.