Category Archives: Tasks

The thing that I noticed, listening to the podcast, was the progression or order that the music was listed. They started with the evolution of the planet, from big bang to humans using tools to modern transportation and launch of a space craft.  Then the music started in seemingly random order.  

In the podcast, Tim Ferris states that the order was chosen to represent various states of being, as well as human values (Voyager Golden Record, 2019, 09:13). As well, they wanted  “music from all around the world, not just from the culture that created the craft” (Voyager Golden Record, 2019,12:35). I wonder, though, while the intergalactic society may understand the music, would they understand the context? Like listening to a mystery sound, it is difficult to identify without any context. For this task, I decided to match the progression of the music with the progression of man and civilization though it’s music within an evolutionary frame.

Here, then, is my list, in evolutionary order.

1. Peru, Wedding song, recorded by John Cohen. 0:38
2. Senegal, Percussion, recorded by Charles Duvelle. 2:08
3. Peru, Panpipes and drum, collected by Casa de la Cultura, Lima. 0:52
4. Navajo Indians, Night Chant, recorded by Willard Rhodes. 0:57
5. Holborne, Paueans, Galliards, Almains and Other Short Aeirs, “The Fairie Round,” performed by David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London. 1:17
6. Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F. First Movement, Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, conductor. 4:40
7. Mozart, The Magic Flute, Queen of the Night aria, no. 14. Edda Moser, soprano. Bavarian State Opera,
8. “Dark Was the Night,” written and performed by Blind Willie Johnson. 3:15
9. “Melancholy Blues,” performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven. 3:05
10. “Johnny B. Goode,” written and performed by Chuck Berry. 2:38

The Music

1. Peru “Wedding song” (John Cohen)

I chose this one first as the foundational piece, representing the beginnings of musical performance.  This haunting melody and acapella voice is simple and expressive. This aligns with the idea of “hauntingly beautiful” as Tim Ferris wanted, though it also represents one of the earliest forms of music.

2. Second is from Senegal “Percussion” (Charles Duvelle)

This is the natural progression from the voice is percussion, and this piece sounds like original percussion of people banging on things within their environment and using wind instruments like reeds and hollow tubes/flutes that are naturally found in their environment.

3. Peru, Panpipes and drum, collected by Casa de la Cultura, Lima

From simple voice to percussion with natural instruments found in the environment, we move to more constructed instruments like panpipes. Rhythms and melody become more complex and layered as musical literacy progresses in a natural manner.

4. Navajo Indians, Night Chant, recorded by Willard Rhodes

For the fourth selection, I chose to go with the Navajo piece, representing sophisticated tribal societies and the inclusion of spiritual themes with complex rhythm structures on top of simple instruments.

5. Holborne, Paueans, Galliards, Almains and Other Short Aeirs, “The Fairie Round,” performed by David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London.

Now we get into the development of larger city centres and expanded trade. The ‘Fairie Round” demonstrates increasing complexity in melody and rhythm and layers in terms of instruments and composition. Equating to the expansion of economic and societal intricacies in a burgeoning technological world.

6. Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F. First Movement, Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, conductor.

In the podcast, Golden Record producer and astronomer Tim Ferris noted that one of the pieces should represent strong mathematical foundations (08:21), in case mathematics is a language that a future intergalactic being would understand.

7. Mozart, The Magic Flute, Queen of the Night aria, no. 14. Edda Moser, soprano. Bavarian State Opera,

Continuing with the theme of mathematically constructed music as humans progressed into greater technological advancement, we are presented with Mozart’s opera, The Magic Flute. The opera can be an example of how musical literacy was becoming more common and more accessible to the general public. This move towards more accessible performances to the general public is similar to how the printing press opened up a more literate world to the common person.

8. “Dark Was the Night,” written and performed by Blind Willie Johnson

In a big leap over whole periods of musical development, we arrive at one of the grandfathers of blues. With it’s roots in folk traditions of the African culture, the Blues was the springboard for a wide variety of music in genres to come, so makes sense to include in such a foundational list of human achievements.

9. “Melancholy Blues,” performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven

With the popularity of blues in the 1900’s, it enabled more and more black artists to become popular (in Western Society) and jazz was introduced.  Jazz was a stepping stone for many of the forms of popular music we see in Western society today. So the next song in our musical evolutionary journey is the jazz inclusion from the late, great Louis Armstrong.

10. “Johnny B. Goode,” written and performed by Chuck Berry

And for the final track, I chose the most current song from the collection, popular rock & roll from the 1950’s. As the only rock and roll selection on the album, this had to be the last thought to bring us to the end of our very brief travel through the evolution of music on earth. While not all inclusive from a music of the world perspective, this list does provide a brief overview or snap shot of musical development on our planet.

Final Thoughts

It is amazingly difficult to put together any selection of music to represent the world. So many distinct cultural and societal influences happen to produce the music and sound that exists that it would be impossible to to chose just a few pieces and then to provide context for each one would be nigh impossible. There is an endless way to decide which songs go into such a collection, and endless ways of combining them. Would future intergalactic races understand mash-ups? In the decisions of what to keep, like Dr. Smith Rumsey (2017) states, what do we also lose? This will depend, of course, on the bias, whether conscious or not, of the person or people making the decisions, amoung other things that Dr. Smith Rumsey mentions around this subject.

References

Smith Rumsey, A. (2017, February 7). Why Digitize? •. CLIR. https://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub80-smith/pub80-2/

Taylor, D. (Host). (2019, April). Voyager golden record. Audio podcast episode]. In Twenty thousand hertz. Defacto Sound. 

Voyager’s Golden Record all songs. (n.d.). [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3lxrIznkXXYS1K0PJ5_sou2QdE06Msve

The transcribed text is found below the questions.

How does the text deviate from conventions of written English?

When I am writing something, particularly in a word processing program or email, I automatically edit and punctuate as I go. I learned touch typing in high school, so just automatically use punctuation, such as commas and periods, as a type of ‘muscle memory’.  When reading a story out loud, say to my daughter, there are cadences, pauses, emphasis on some words and not others, and, sometimes, use of different voices for characters to differentiate them one from another.  One of the criticisms of email or other types of written electronic communication is that there is no emotional tone, no nuance of behaviour to help the reader understand context or tone.  Hence the development of emoticons to help readers understand the tone in which the passage is written (Schmandt-Besserat & Erard, 2007, p. 23), such as a “winky face” 😉 to denote a lighthearted or jovial tone.

There is also no paragraph structure, indentations, line spacing or other elements of a properly formatted text, such as APA 7 (General Format – Purdue OWL® – Purdue University, n.d.). Though perhaps this is something that can be set up prior to the dictation?

But what does this say about thought processes? In written text, you have time to formulate your response, so some word-smithing and editing to help ensure it (hopefully) comes out the way you want. With the spoken word, this is more challenging, unless the person is a talented orator or the conversation is rehearsed or known beforehand.

What is “wrong” in the text? What is “right”?

The lack of punctuation at the beginning and lack of other formatting elements makes this one long, rambling paragraph, with double words in places and some words that didn’t translate very well. For example, near the bottom “…new technology anet it is…”. It does point out my speech patterns, in terms of my trailing off at the end of the sentence, again pointing out my tendency to not finish my thought or not appear confident in what I’m saying. It is easier to point out the things that are wrong in the text, rather than the right things. Being from a very literate society and hyperliterate family/household (Haas, 2013) of University graduates, it is difficult for me to read the dictated text without trying to format the paragraphs in my head, and judging the grammar and syntax. When listening to someone speak, I generally don’t try to format the paragraphs into written text in my head.

What are the most common “mistakes” in the text and why do you consider them “mistakes”?

Again, the lack of punctuation is disconcerting.  It is difficult to know when to pause in the reading. Which also makes deciphering some of the sentences difficult, as they all run together.  When this happens, it is difficult to know what the sentence is about – is it part of the previous subject or is it a new subject? With the spoken word, these are more easily identified as the person is speaking, with natural pauses and inflections indicating the new subject or topic. Without these natural pauses and inflections, it is harder to decipher the written form of a dictated speech.

What if you had “scripted” the story? What difference might that have made?

If the story had been scripted, it would likely have been more organized. I perhaps would have included the punctuation earlier, as I would have included the punctuation in the written script. I would also have been able to fill in and clarify more of the details. With more time to wordsmith the story of my first experience with dictating in MS Word, it would probably make more sense and provide more context. More of the details would be filled in and the sentences would flow together in a more coherent manner.

In what ways does oral storytelling differ from written storytelling? 

Oral and written storytelling require different skills. This is akin to reading a play vs watching a performance of the play.  The Shakespeare plays we read in high school are very difficult to read and understand without a lot of thought and interpretation. As someone who regularly attends the Vancouver Shakespeare festival (Bard on the Beach https://bardonthebeach.org/ ). I can attest to the difference in reading vs performance of these plays.

A storyteller who writes their stories has tools of writing, and time to carefully craft how the work looks on the page. As Ong (2002, 1982) describes on p. 11, the oral tradition is  ethereal, with no lasting permanence.  It changes and morphs into other forms as the story is relayed from person to person, as in the telephone game described by Gnanadesikan (2011).

In oral traditions, these stories are often metaphorical or spiritual in nature and passed on from knowledge keepers to other knowledge keepers and while they can change the way and manner in which the story is told, they don’t change the message or core of the story.  This is similar to printed stories, though these are more permanent and less mutable, except in re-prints.

References

General Format – Purdue OWL® – Purdue University. (n.d.). https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/general_format.html

Gnanadesikan, A.E. (2011). The first IT revolution. In The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the internet. (pp. 1-12). John Wiley & Sons.

Haas, C. (2013). The technology question. In Writing technology: Studies on the materiality of literacy. (pp. 3-23). Routledge.

Ong, W.J. (2002).Chapter 1: The orality of written language. In Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word (pp. 5-16). Routledge. (Original work published 1982).

Schmandt-Besserat, D., & Erard, M. (2007). Origins and forms of writing. In C. Bazerman (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Writing: History, society, school, individual, text. (pp. 7-26). Routledge.

The voice to text transcript:

You know it’s funny I’ve been using word since almost the time it actually came out when it first started I didn’t even remember when and I’ve never actually used this dictation thing before I’ve thought about it a lot in terms of my students and making notes when I’m after a visit with them so I can better fill out their evaluations and make it more robust but I’ve looked at this little button on the the toolbar of word and thought OK I’ve never actually didn’t ever register before so here I’m going to use it now for the first time so it’s an interesting foray into a new technology for me when I was on zoom a lot like during the pandemic it I would turn on the closed captioning mainly in the interest of accessibility and multimodal or ways of learning so you know visual learners oral learners and etc would have some options in terms of the lectures they were live live synchronous sessions so I know we have the close captioning on and it’s kind of distracting sometimes when you’re watching the closed captioning things happen because it it will start a word and then it will auto correct itself and it’s very very strange to see it unfolding as you talk but now that I notice I’m not sure if I can use it on my phone I’ve tried a couple of voice to text apps on my phone but they never seem to I don’t know work very well I’ll see if I can use this on my phone ’cause it will be much easier if I can just dictate a note in Word and then send it to myself at the end of the day and transcribe it onto or save it on to my computer and a file from my students to do their evaluations so that would be the main reason I would use it I actually enjoy typing I like the feel of the keyboard in my fingers I I like the clicking the sounds that it makes I guess they don’t click anymore but just that that typing sound it’s it’s actually I’ve never thought about that sound before it’s not a clicking it’s it’s it’s more subtle than that but you can still hear it even though these keyboards are supposed to be silent you can get typewriter sounds I think but now I’m rambling anyway this voice to text technology I had it on my phone I think most phones actually come with like a voice app sort of thing but I’ve never actually used it but now that I see that this I’m dictation thing in Word works kind of I’m not sure how punctuation works I’m going to try. Hi I did it it’s really weird I need to watch as it’s unfolding but now that I know I can say the punctuation that would probably be the good thing: I’ll try this now see it works again so that’s that’s interesting I just have to remember to actually say the phrases or the but the punctuation is how much I don’t all right now I’m running out of things to say I’m not used to talking for 5 minutes at a stretch so I’m going to prop it up but this is very interesting foray into a new technology anet it is interesting and I’ll get into the analysis after of my thoughts as I’m talking I’m also trying to analyze which I should probably stop doing ’cause I just get a little tongue tide and worried about how it’s sounding different talk without listening to yourself yeah it’s kind of annoying I do that so I’m going to wrap it up here. And I hope I can do a good job with the analysis by