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Sousa pointed out, recorded music reduces the number of people who can make a living playing music. He should have read his Henry Ford. http://www.gutenberg.or

Sousa pointed out, recorded music reduces the number of people who can make a living playing music. He should have read his Henry Ford. http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/hnfrd10.txt http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/hnfrd10.txt In a little dark shop on a side street an old man had laboured for years making axe handles. Out of seasoned hickory he fashioned them, with the help of a draw shave, a chisel, and a supply of sandpaper. Carefully was each handle weighed and balanced. No two of them were alike. The curve must exactly fit the hand and must conform to the grain of the wood. From dawn until dark the old man laboured. His average product was eight handles a week, for which he received a dollar and a half each. And often some of these were unsaleable--because the balance was not true. To-day you can buy a better axe handle, made by machinery, for a few cents. And you need not worry about the balance. They are all alike--and every one is perfect. Modern methods applied in a big way have not only brought the cost of axe handles down to a fraction of their former cost--but they have immensely improved the product. Like the machine-made, to the artisan-made, axe handle, recorded music is vastly superior to live music - especially given today's digital recording and distribution systems. Leveraging mass distribution, a musician today can afford the luxury of honing a fine product. A live performance is rarely a fine product. It is usually middling in quality, and often below middling. It is usually expensive. For those that wish to see as well as hear their music, today, with DVD and Blu Ray, the live performances that are good can be distributed in a high-quality captured form to wide audiences, at low cost.

anamax 18y ago
Sousa was quite aware of Henry Ford. Sousa's point is that superior recorded music pretty much destroyed "music in the small". Music isn't much like an axe handle. Is teaching? Don't get me wrong - I think that distributing good lectures is a great thing. Rock-star lecturers will do extremely well and ordinary ones will have to find something else to do. However, there's more to education than lectures. The question is what happens to the rest and to education as a whole when lectures come through a separate channel.
- gravitycop 18y ago
  Music isn't much like an axe handle. Artisan made: Instances are produced one at a time. The quality varies wildly and is usually poor. The cost is high. Machine made: The design is perfected, and then limitless high-quality copies are made. The cost is low. What is the relevant difference between axe-handles and music? Is teaching [much like an axe handle]? Yes. The above applies to teaching, as well as to music and axe-handles. there's more to education than lectures. [...] what happens to the rest Interactive educational software. distributing good lectures is a great thing. By the way, lectures are often written by pharmaceutical companies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_industry#Controversy_about_drug_development_and_testing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_industry#Controv... Lecture scripts and even journal articles presented by academic researchers may actually be 'ghost-written' by pharmaceutical companies.
  - rcoder 18y ago
    > What is the relevant difference between axe-handles and music? Music is more than a product -- live performance is a social experience, not just private consumption. People go to see bands live for many reasons other than the rendition of notes they could get from a recording: they flirt with other concert-goers, they experience mistakes and improvisations by the artists, and they drink and dance in public. Similarly, good teaching is not a solitary or entirely reproducible event. The best teachers I've ever had were the ones who could get students talking to each other, generating and assessing ideas faster than any one pupil could alone. You can't get the same experience reading a textbook or watching time-delayed streaming video of a lecture. I'm not even entirely convinced that online interaction can pull it off, at least in areas like history and the arts, where subjective and emotional arguments are just as critical as hard logic.
  - holygoat 18y ago
    > What is the relevant difference between axe-handles and music? Interaction: calling back to the singer, requesting a song. Fidelity: being right there. Shared experience: being right there with a whole bunch of other excited people. I've had tremendously emotional experiences listening to recorded music, but none so potent as hearing the same song live. You might extend this to teaching: a recording of even the greatest lecturer can't answer your question. Further to the discussion, though: mass production increased the base quality of tools like axes and knives, and improved efficiency. However, if you want something bespoke, mass production doesn't care. I like my semi- and full-custom knives: they were made for me, according to my specifications. Modern tooling can bridge the gap, too, yielding full-custom items of the same quality as mass-produced items.

anamax 18y ago

Sousa was quite aware of Henry Ford. Sousa's point is that superior recorded music pretty much destroyed "music in the small". Music isn't much like an axe handle. Is teaching? Don't get me wrong - I think that distributing good lectures is a great thing. Rock-star lecturers will do extremely well and ordinary ones will have to find something else to do. However, there's more to education than lectures. The question is what happens to the rest and to education as a whole when lectures come through a separate channel.

gravitycop 18y ago
Music isn't much like an axe handle. Artisan made: Instances are produced one at a time. The quality varies wildly and is usually poor. The cost is high. Machine made: The design is perfected, and then limitless high-quality copies are made. The cost is low. What is the relevant difference between axe-handles and music? Is teaching [much like an axe handle]? Yes. The above applies to teaching, as well as to music and axe-handles. there's more to education than lectures. [...] what happens to the rest Interactive educational software. distributing good lectures is a great thing. By the way, lectures are often written by pharmaceutical companies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_industry#Controversy_about_drug_development_and_testing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_industry#Controv... Lecture scripts and even journal articles presented by academic researchers may actually be 'ghost-written' by pharmaceutical companies.
- rcoder 18y ago
  > What is the relevant difference between axe-handles and music? Music is more than a product -- live performance is a social experience, not just private consumption. People go to see bands live for many reasons other than the rendition of notes they could get from a recording: they flirt with other concert-goers, they experience mistakes and improvisations by the artists, and they drink and dance in public. Similarly, good teaching is not a solitary or entirely reproducible event. The best teachers I've ever had were the ones who could get students talking to each other, generating and assessing ideas faster than any one pupil could alone. You can't get the same experience reading a textbook or watching time-delayed streaming video of a lecture. I'm not even entirely convinced that online interaction can pull it off, at least in areas like history and the arts, where subjective and emotional arguments are just as critical as hard logic.
- holygoat 18y ago
  > What is the relevant difference between axe-handles and music? Interaction: calling back to the singer, requesting a song. Fidelity: being right there. Shared experience: being right there with a whole bunch of other excited people. I've had tremendously emotional experiences listening to recorded music, but none so potent as hearing the same song live. You might extend this to teaching: a recording of even the greatest lecturer can't answer your question. Further to the discussion, though: mass production increased the base quality of tools like axes and knives, and improved efficiency. However, if you want something bespoke, mass production doesn't care. I like my semi- and full-custom knives: they were made for me, according to my specifications. Modern tooling can bridge the gap, too, yielding full-custom items of the same quality as mass-produced items.