This is something of a negative and/or holding post, but it seems worthwhile putting it down as a marker to myself if no one else… As I’ve mentioned before, one of my resolutions for lockdown was that I would finally make some progress on my Thucydides musical project. This hasn’t got anywhere, partly because of the ongoing brain fog issue (in the light of recent scary newspaper reports, I’m trying to take the optimistic view that once again I’ve got off lightly compared to others and so this will pass if I just take it easy, rather than contemplating the thought that this might be permanent), but partly as a result of the jazz composition course I’ve been doing online. As I’ve noted, this has been enormously valuable as an exercise in seeing things from the student perspective (and I really feel for the tutor, as he’s falling into exactly the traps that I would fall into, trying to engage with students in a normal manner although this takes much more time than usual, and trying unsuccessfully to get people to make use of the chat facility between classes). But I have also learnt a lot about jazz composition, especially when it comes to modal approaches. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘music’
Take Two…
Posted in Research in Progress, tagged jazz, music, Thucydides on July 9, 2020| 1 Comment »
Fables of the Reconstruction
Posted in Musings, Research in Progress, tagged archaeology, music, technology on February 9, 2019| Leave a Comment »
I’ve just published a piece in Epoiesen, the fantastic online journal for creative engagements with history and archaeology, on the Melian Dilemma game and some of the thinking behind it. I’ve been meaning to get round to this for ages – and I’ve been given extra reason to regret not getting my act together sooner, as my fate now is to be completely overshadowed by Assemblage Theory, the brilliant contribution by Andrew Reinhard, published a few days earlier, on his latest musical experiments: exploring different conceptions of the idea of ‘assemblage’ by producing new songs using ‘found sounds’. Go read, go listen. If this piece doesn’t single-handedly exemplify why a journal of wacky historical creativity is an absolute necessity, you are beyond saving. (more…)
Paying Your Dues
Posted in Musings, tagged academia, digital humanities, employment, music on October 14, 2016| Leave a Comment »
A couple of weeks ago, someone on Facebook raised the question of whether, as an early career researcher with no permanent position, you should accept an invitation to speak somewhere that wasn’t going to pay your travel expenses. The majority of responses were horror-struck that any academic department would even suggest such a thing, with a certain amount of O tempora, o mores lamentation as a counterpoint; yes, we academics do regularly give our time without compensation, as part of our normal activities (reviewing proposals, writing references and tenure reports and so forth), but incurring actual expenditure is something else – especially for those who don’t have a regular income or access to travel funds. However, there was one dissenter: of course you should, the response ran; you’re being given a chance to develop your skills, hone your arguments and raise your profile, just like The Who got good only as a result of playing every gig they could in the early years, paid or unpaid. Actually you should probably pay *them* for providing you with an audience who have to endure your amateurish strummings. (more…)
Tip of the Tail
Posted in Musings, tagged digital, music, publishing, Trwbador on August 20, 2014| Leave a Comment »
The thoroughly wonderful avant-pop-electro-folk duo Trwbador have just released their second album, Several Wolves (which you should all rush off and buy*), and I was struck by a remark from guitarist and producer Owain Gwilym: “I know this album has done way better than the last because it was pirated within 24 hours and is now on about 300 pirate websites“. And that’s good? I asked him. Apparently yes: unless you’re a really successful mega-band, record sales are basically a loss leader: the real sources of income come either from things that can’t easily be copied (live performance) or from people who can’t get away with not paying (national media, advertisers). The record is now a means of advertising the product rather than the product itself.
Partly because I’m in the final throes of getting a book ready for publication (the 600-page Handbook to the Reception of Thucydides), this led me to reflect on parallels and comparisons with academic publishing. One obvious conclusion is that we academics were well ahead of the game; while there are still plenty of musicians complaining loudly that music piracy is robbing them of a living, I doubt if we academics have ever thought that royalties on academic publications would give us a steady income, or recompense us for even a modicum of the time and labour invested in writing and editing them. (more…)
Solid Gold Classics II
Posted in Podcasts, tagged Homer, music, Odysseus, Radio Abahachi, sirens on October 23, 2013| Leave a Comment »
I’m celebrating today submitting a substantial (in both senses of the word) funding application for the next phase of the Thucydides project, which has involved several days’ worth of staring at figures wondering why they were refusing to add up. It really doesn’t help that the university’s Full Economic Costing system and the Je-S application system use different categories for expenditure, so it’s more or less impossible to input exactly the same information in the same format into each – and neither of them really suited my purposes so I produced my own master costings spreadsheet, and hence at times found that I had three different versions of what was supposed to be the same bit of the budget. Anyway, the application finally reached the “that’ll do” stage last night, and this morning I checked the last financial anomaly and pressed the ‘submit’ button on each of the systems (having spent five minutes wondering whether it would make a difference which one went first – this sort of thing does get to one eventually…); I’ve therefore spent a chunk of this afternoon indulging in a bit of light relief, and this podcast is the result; it’s ages since I did one, so it’s definitely a bit rough round the edges, but it’ll do…
http://www.podbean.com/media/player/gnyhg-5cd4c8?from=yiiadmin
Sphinx 