This week I went to class with a clearer understanding of the direction we were going. I was eager to learn more about the foundation of the internet, and that is exactly what we discussed. We talked about Arpanet, the beginnings of the internet that was funded by the Department of Defense. We also discussed the development of the internet, and how it has become so easy to interface with. Things such as hypertext, hypercard, a graphic interface, and the mouse have made this possible. We also talked about the development of the world wide web by Berners-Lee. This is a subset of the internet and contained http (hyper text transfer protocol) and html (hyper text markup language).

I went into this week being super confused about the direction this class was going. It was hard for me to follow the lectures and the readings and I was genuinely concerned about whether or not I would be able to understand anything! The lecture on Wednesday (9/16) really helped clear everything up. We began to talk about the Cold War and how that led to the development of the internet. I think this background information will really help tie everything together as far as the history of music production is concerned. We discussed the the production of vacuum tubes and how those changed the way we hear things even today. We also talked about the development of the internet and how it was used as a military tool and for universities. I had no idea that the military developed the internet, and that definitely affects the way I think about it even today. This background information has set the groundwork for the development of music throughout the years. In my opinion, the internet plays a large role in music, especially today. It is the main way many people get their music and share it with their friends. I look forward to learning more about different ways music has grown throughout the years.

This week we began learning about the loudness of music throughout the years. I read several articles about how differently songs are produced now compared to how they were, throughout the 1900s. Both articles displayed graphs showing the difference in frequency from song to song and decade to decade. I also read an article about the loudness war, which helped tie the previous two articles together. The loudness war is a concept that songs are getting increasingly louder as time progresses. When Frank Sinatra was releasing music, you could tell that he, and the band, were louder during some parts of the song. Nowadays, however, there seems to be one constant sound. This is due to the way the songs are produced. I believe producers are beginning to make songs louder and louder because it helps draw attention to the song. There are so many people in the music business just so they can make money, very few of them actually care about the quality of the music. If producing the song to be louder makes them more money, then thats exactly what they are going to do. Learning about the loudness war, and the different ways songs can be produced, helped set the foundation for learning about the development of music throughout the decades.

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