The musings of a Vilma.

Hi, my name is Vilma. I am a full-time University of Florida student, a musician in the bands Sweet City Action and Oh Fortuna, an orchestral violinist, and I book shows to raise money for good causes.
Tue Jan 20
The seven hottest startups of MidemNet 2009

artistspaid:

Stuart / Music Ally:

1. Catch Media - They want to ditch all the acronyms - MP3, WMA, AAC etc - and just let people listen to music, he says. So Play Anywhere comprises technology, licensing, a clearing house structure and a business model, all in one.

2. Passionato - It’s a “site for people who love Classical and Jazz”.

3. SoundCloud - SoundCloud is about making it easier for people to share music - but in the legal industry sense - labels, artists, producers and media who need to send large files to one another.

4. The Echo Nest - They’ve built a “music intelligence” platform, and he’s talking about one of the applications making use of it: Promobot. The Echo Nest tracks blog posts and other online data - “there are thousands of writers out there on the web, but no way to sort them and find the ones who care about your sorts of music,”

5. MPTrax - They’re launching “the world’s first user generated viral booking utility” - it’s launching today in fact. So it’s about getting a band’s gigging calendar into the hands of anyone who might want to book them - including private parties, venues and so on.

6. Instinctiv - They’re offering personalisation technology to help consumers navigate their large libraries of music better - something that’s increasingly relevant in the age of unlimited music services, which can be frankly daunting in the depth of available songs.

7. Mustick - a device created by an industrial design student at the Eindhoven University of Technology.
Mon Jan 19
Secretary of the Arts Petition

My orchestra conductor sent me this, and I just signed it. There are both positive and negative points of view, like there is to everything really, so read up on it a bit. I hope you sign it too.

“To:  President Barack Obama

Congratulations and thank you for all you do.

Your good friend Quincy Jones said: “…next conversation I have with President Obama is to beg for a Secretary of Arts.”
[November 14th 2008 WNYC interview by John Schaefer on “Soundcheck.”]

We the undersigned support Quincy Jones’ plea.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned”

Fri Dec 19
I made a gingerbread house last night!
I made a gingerbread house last night!
Sat Dec 13

My del.icio.us Wordle!

Tue Dec 9
“

The idea came up at the time when I was completely bereft of ideas. I’d been working on my own music for a while and was quite lost, actually. And I really appreciated someone coming along and saying, ‘Here’s a specific problem — solve it.’

The thing from the agency said, ‘We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah-blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional,’ this whole list of adjectives, and then, at the bottom, it said: ‘and it must be 3¼ seconds long.’

I thought this was so funny, and an amazing thought, to actually try to make a little piece of music. It’s like making a tiny little jewel.

In fact, I made eighty-four pieces. I got completely into this world of tiny, tiny, little pieces of music. I was so sensitive to microseconds, at the end of this, that it really broke a logjam in my own work. Then, when I’d finished that and I went back to working with pieces that were, like, three minutes long, it seemed like oceans of time.

 Brian Eno on his creative process when composing the Microsoft sound for Windows 95. (via erin) 
Tue Oct 21
5 People to Watch at The SanFran MusicTech Summit

artistspaid:

From readwriteweb:

Tim Westergren, Pandora founder

Discussion point: What’s the next hurdle for Pandora in the public policy debate about webcasting rates?

Josh Brooks, vice president of MySpace Music

Discussion point: Some have criticized that independent labels are being treated as second tier citizens by MySpace Music. Additionally, there had been some expectation that the indie artists would receive an equity stake much like the big labels were going to receive. What now?

Derek Slater, Google

Discussion point: Google’s public policy strategies and how it relates to the new platforms in development by music technology companies.

Gary Greenstein, Wilson Sonsini

Discussion point: How does Greenstein see licensing models changing and what are his views on the RIAA position concerning “making available.”

Ethan Kaplan, Warner Bros Records

Discussion point: What is the state of open source development in the music industry?
Wed Oct 15
Sweet City Action is playing with Kung Fu Girls on Tuesday, October 21st at 1982 Bar. 
Sweet City Action is playing with Kung Fu Girls on Tuesday, October 21st at 1982 Bar. 
Hope to see you there!
Hope to see you there!
Thu Sep 25

Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center

This is incredibly cool!

via The New York Times:

“Eight years and $200 million in the making, the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, or Empac, resembles an enormous 1950s-era television set.

But inside are not old-fashioned vacuum tubes but the stuff of 21st-century high-tech dreams dedicated to the marriage of art and science as it has never been done before, its creators say — 220,000 square feet of theaters, studios and work spaces hooked to supercomputers.

Within its walls, the designers say, scientists can immerse themselves in data and fly through a breaking wave or inspect the kinks in a DNA molecule, artists can participate in virtual concerts with colleagues in different parts of the world or send spectators on trips through imaginary landscapes, and architects can ponder their creations from the inside before a single brick or two-by-four has been put in place.”

Tue Sep 23

Mozart

amirchev:

If there is one person that I would like meet, it would have to be without a question Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In my eyes, the only true genius that ever existed - it is something so beyond genius - it is divinely inspired.

Everytime I listen to his music, and no matter how many times I hear it, it still sends chills running down my back. If there is ever a piece of music that could describe the very depth’s of one’s soul, it is the music that he has composed. I feel priveleged to have the opportunity to listen to it - rarely is there something so beautiful, so pure that exists on this earth, and his music being one of the few.

No matter how I am feeling, if I start listening to Mozart, it brings me a sense of calm, reassuredness, for instance Piano Concerto in D minor - it says “Everything is the way it is…it’s okay, and everyone and everything is clear and know and there is no reason not to trust the fate or whatever driving force there is in this world.”

Don Giovanni Act II, Commendatore, says, “Anger, misunderstanding between two human beings - yearning to understand one another. But never do, even when it becomes too late.”

Not to speak of the Lacrymosa which brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it.

I think anyone who listens to these will experience the same emotion - it is the deep yearning of every person to be understood by someone else, and when that happens, and it happens so completely- for me it is through Mozart. His music speaks to human psychology so well…it is the eternal, the ethereal that I, and probably some others crazy fools, are forever searching for.