The official class blog for English 102 section C02 at the University of South Carolina. Check back for links to student written album reviews, genre criticisms, cultural analyses, and more.
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
R.R. 9/9
R.R. Choose one piece of advice from pages 20-23. Summarize the advice and explain why it is/was/will be useful for you in writing your review.
The advice I chose to follow was from Mark Richardson, Editor-in-chief of Pitchfork (pg. 23). He said he just listens to the music over and over until whatever he is looking for comes to him. I found this helpful when deciding what to review for this worksheet. I was in-between 2 albums, so I listened to them until I felt like the decision had been made for me. I think this also helps you get a better angle on the music, you may hear something you didn't hear the first time.
I throughly enjoyed the advice form Matthew Gastier, "making it illegal to review a record sooner than a month after release", it's impossible to really get the true intentions and the true vibes from a piece after the first time you listen to a song, let alone a week after you listen to it. Opinions change, something once believed classic can easily fade from memory. It'll be useful in my review to really listen to the songs in different settings, not constantly, but repeatedly. To really get the vibe of every aspect of the music and get every opinion I have solidified, before even writing the review itself. Take time with the piece, don't rush into something and review an album released 5 minutes ago.
On page twenty the author says he always listens to the album he is reviewing multiple times because he could always tell when a reviewer had only listened to the album once. I think this will be very useful advice because I also noticed this when I was looking up reviews of the album I am planning on reviewing. I had no idea it would be so obvious to tell that someone only listened to the album once through their writing, but it is. This advice is important to me because I want to make sure I don't give off that impression to my audience.
My favorite advice is from Bruce Eaton. He said he would love to do away with the star rating, as readers of the review would be more likely to just skim over it after seeing a bunch of 3-3.5 star ratings, and also it takes away from the review itself, as an author is more likely to establish a rating and then write their review based upon that rating. This is something that I think I would like to do, as it engages both the reader and the writer, myself, in the album review process.
I think the most valuable piece of advice I got from pages 20-23 came from Lindsay Zoladz. The main point I gathered from her excerpt was to listen to the music in many different forms, whether that be in just headphones or in the car or with a group of people. Also, she talks about how once she feels like she is ready or that she can write a review then she just sits down and writes without not really knowing what to write. I find this extremely helpful because it enforces that writing a review doesn't have to be a science. Everyone writes reviews differently, and it's a process for each one of us. I think that knowing that even professionals don't really know what they're going to write before they start a review is really comforting, that sometimes we should just let our ideas flow and see what comes out of it. Then edit and polish the piece into what we were trying to go for.
One piece of advice was to immerse yourself in the music before you start writing about it; listen to the music multiple times, in your daily life, when you're walking places, or just doing work at home. This piece of advice helped me get an authentic vantage point on the album, listening to it in real-life circumstances, rather than just listening to it because I have to for the review. It's useful because it advises to really live in the music, making it a part of your life before actually writing about it.
Matt LeMay talks about listening to music first in traditional ways such as on the way to work or just with headphone before thinking about it in a critical way. I thought that this was good advice. I feel like if I just jumped into listening to music and looking at it critically, I could miss the main point or feeling that the song is supposed to give. Listening to the music first casually could give you your first impressions on the songs and get an idea of how the song flows is going to be how I start. Then I am going to look at it more critically as in the meaning of the lyrics of some songs, what the main themes of the songs are, what could have influenced the album to be written and made how it was, ect.
My favorite piece of advice from HTWAM was Matt LeMay's quote about listening to music "in the wild" before listening to it critically. He says that he approaches the album by first listening to it casually, in the car, on the way to work, etc. I think it is very good advice to just listen to music for music's sake. This allows us to really understand and appreciate the music before we become critical and look for things wrong with the album. Sometimes it it easy to get too wrapped up in the technicality of an album, and it is important to take a step back and assess the more emotional side to it. I had been listening to many of the songs on the album I'm reviewing long before this class, which has given me time to make emotional connections to the music. However, I can still approach it critically.
I appreciated Matthew Gasteier's advice/statement that albums shouldn't be reviewed sooner than a month after release. His point is that the listeners can't get the proper understanding out of an album in a few weeks, or days for that matter. This is useful because I know that a couple albums are going to be released in the next few months and it would definitely be smarter to review one of these albums after a period of time where I have listened to the tracks and formed an honest opinion of them.
The piece of advice that stood out to me the most was from Matt Lemay. He explained that before he critiques music, he has to just listen to it, as he phrases, "in the wild." Basically, he says he has to listen to music as just music first, before he moves on to listen to it objectively and critique it. I think this is incredibly useful as I go on to write my own blogs. Listening to music just to listen first allows you to really take in the whole sound. When you listen to it in a critical manner, you're really only pinpointing and focusing on certain aspects of it. If you listen to music "in the wild" before you critique it, you can have a much broader understanding of the piece, and be able to view it much more than just critically.
I like Michael Azzerad's piece of advice when he says he tries to make everything he writes into some sort of narrative or story. I think this would be helpful for me to follow because I want my blog to be as entertaining as possible for readers. Therefore, if I make my writing into more of a story and less of an essay, it will become more like a blog and less like an english writing assignment. I think it's important to keep this in mind while doing any sort of writing because it's much easier to write a story than to try to start from no where and write a certain piece.
The advice that really stood out to me was to abandon the star rating system. I agree with the idea that this basic rating system creates a bland review and doesn't allow the author to be creative and branch out. When writing my reviews I will stay away from this rating system and challenge myself to critique the music and rate it without any limits or boundaries to hold me back.
A senior contributor to Pitchfork, said that in order to write a music review he first listens to the music as he would "in the wild." He advises that you don't try to listen to the music critically right off the bat. This will be useful to me when writing my review so that I don't lose the essence of the song. By casually listening to the music first I will be able to gain a no-pressure first impression that will aid me with staying true to myself as a writer.
Michael Azerrad suggested writing your review in some form of narrative. I think this will be helpful for me because I have already made my blog very personal. By choosing albums my parents grew up listening to, I have made my blog about more than myself and my own tastes in music. I think if I can include small snippets about why the albums were important to my parents, then the readers will be more interested and likely to read my review.
The advice given by Bruce Eaton to get rid of the star rating system will be useful in writing my review because I completely agree with him. He states that writers will first choose a rating, and then base their entire review off that rating. It condenses a whole album into one number, which doesn't seem to be fair. I also agree with how he states that readers are more likely to read reviews with either one or five star ratings, instead of those in the middle, which leaves a lot of music out.
I think the best piece of advice given was about taking the music "out for a spin." I feel like you can't write a review on something without listening to it in difference environments or through different modes. It's like someone saying they hated pickles but they had never tried a pickle. In order to really be able to critique a song, you should hear it in multiple settings or while you're in different moods. It could bring a whole new perspective to the sound.
I chose Bruce Eaton's advice. His advice basically says that he would get rid of the star system. The star system is a gimmick that encourages writing with no imagination. The star rating system also discourages readers from actually reading the review to see if the writer wrote anyting insightful in the review. The star writing restricts the writer because the review has to match the rating. Readers are more likely to read a review if there is no rating attached. I completely agree with his advice. I find it much easier to read articles and reviews if there is no rating involved. I like to see what the writer thinks about something without attaching numbers. The star rating system has always bothered me since I was a child, so I do not think that i will be rating albums with the star rating system
Bruce Eaton's advice about not giving the album a star rating or anything of that sort stuck out to me the most. He explains his positioning by saying that by giving the album a rating it restricts the writer to only produce a review to exactly match that rating. I agree with Bruce regarding this topic. When, writing my blog, I will not be giving my album a numerical rating because I think the words of the review are more important than the numbers.
The advice to "immerse" yourself in the music before researching it is, I think, most useful for me in writing my reviews because I think a pure and personal experience with music is essential to creating an honest review. Background information and research on the album and artist are important, but there must be a balance between facts and the artist's intentions and personal perceptions of the music, because a review is an opinionated piece of writing. Simply mimicking what others say the album is about or should be about is not conducive to writing a fair and honest album review.
On page 21 and 22 Lindsay Zoladz talks about how she listens to the music. She says there is no magic number for how many times you should listen to something before reviewing it because if you listen for too long you'll second guess yourself, but if you don't listen enough then you won't have fully appreciated the album. She also says that she tries to listen to the album in a variety of contexts because she understands that the audience listens to it in all different settings. That is something that I want to keep in mind for my reviews because some of my readers will just be casual listeners and others will be hardcore fans and I want to appeal to a very broad audience.
The one piece of advice that I found most useful was by Lindsay Zoladz, the associate editor of Pitchfork. She said that she listens to the album in a variety of settings to fully grasp its impact. She’ll listen to it in the background while doing something else, and then with people in the room to see how they respond to it, and then alone. I intend to use this because music feels different in different settings and exploring those settings may impact my opinion of the album.
Both Matt LeMay and Lindsay Zoladz mention listening to the album they are about to review "in the wild" or to "try it out in real life" before approaching it critically. They both explain that this means listening to the music in everyday situations such as going to work, listening to it for background, or listening to it directly with headphones for a significant period of time before writing about it. This will be helpful writing my review because I listen to a lot of music casually on a daily basis and I often absorb and form opinions on music naturally through listening to it in a casual sense. This would be an easy way for me to get a basic idea of how I felt about the album before I listened to it critically and that way listening to it critically would only require me to build on the ideas I already had from listening to it "in the wild."
The piece of advice I found interesting was the one that bashed the star rating system. It said that people often skim over reviews and just look at the star ratings. I know that I have found myself just looking at the stars to look for one with only 1 or all 5 because those will be most interesting. This is important to me because it shows that your review must stand out among other reviews or it will just blend in.
The advice that I found interesting and I felt impacted me the most was the one by Matt LeMay from Pitchfork. He said that he always listens to a song out "in the wild" before criticizing it. I feel that is how reviews on my blog and how any blog should work. The music should be heard just as it normally should be before you go to work and pick it apart and do a review on it. This is the kind of advice I will use when doing my album reviews because the art should be listened to in a very casual way before one listens to it in a very professional and critical way.
The advice I chose to follow was from Mark Richardson, Editor-in-chief of Pitchfork (pg. 23). He said he just listens to the music over and over until whatever he is looking for comes to him. I found this helpful when deciding what to review for this worksheet. I was in-between 2 albums, so I listened to them until I felt like the decision had been made for me. I think this also helps you get a better angle on the music, you may hear something you didn't hear the first time.
ReplyDeleteI throughly enjoyed the advice form Matthew Gastier, "making it illegal to review a record sooner than a month after release", it's impossible to really get the true intentions and the true vibes from a piece after the first time you listen to a song, let alone a week after you listen to it. Opinions change, something once believed classic can easily fade from memory. It'll be useful in my review to really listen to the songs in different settings, not constantly, but repeatedly. To really get the vibe of every aspect of the music and get every opinion I have solidified, before even writing the review itself. Take time with the piece, don't rush into something and review an album released 5 minutes ago.
ReplyDeleteOn page twenty the author says he always listens to the album he is reviewing multiple times because he could always tell when a reviewer had only listened to the album once. I think this will be very useful advice because I also noticed this when I was looking up reviews of the album I am planning on reviewing. I had no idea it would be so obvious to tell that someone only listened to the album once through their writing, but it is. This advice is important to me because I want to make sure I don't give off that impression to my audience.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite advice is from Bruce Eaton. He said he would love to do away with the star rating, as readers of the review would be more likely to just skim over it after seeing a bunch of 3-3.5 star ratings, and also it takes away from the review itself, as an author is more likely to establish a rating and then write their review based upon that rating. This is something that I think I would like to do, as it engages both the reader and the writer, myself, in the album review process.
ReplyDeleteI think the most valuable piece of advice I got from pages 20-23 came from Lindsay Zoladz. The main point I gathered from her excerpt was to listen to the music in many different forms, whether that be in just headphones or in the car or with a group of people. Also, she talks about how once she feels like she is ready or that she can write a review then she just sits down and writes without not really knowing what to write. I find this extremely helpful because it enforces that writing a review doesn't have to be a science. Everyone writes reviews differently, and it's a process for each one of us. I think that knowing that even professionals don't really know what they're going to write before they start a review is really comforting, that sometimes we should just let our ideas flow and see what comes out of it. Then edit and polish the piece into what we were trying to go for.
ReplyDeleteOne piece of advice was to immerse yourself in the music before you start writing about it; listen to the music multiple times, in your daily life, when you're walking places, or just doing work at home. This piece of advice helped me get an authentic vantage point on the album, listening to it in real-life circumstances, rather than just listening to it because I have to for the review. It's useful because it advises to really live in the music, making it a part of your life before actually writing about it.
ReplyDeleteMatt LeMay talks about listening to music first in traditional ways such as on the way to work or just with headphone before thinking about it in a critical way. I thought that this was good advice. I feel like if I just jumped into listening to music and looking at it critically, I could miss the main point or feeling that the song is supposed to give. Listening to the music first casually could give you your first impressions on the songs and get an idea of how the song flows is going to be how I start. Then I am going to look at it more critically as in the meaning of the lyrics of some songs, what the main themes of the songs are, what could have influenced the album to be written and made how it was, ect.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite piece of advice from HTWAM was Matt LeMay's quote about listening to music "in the wild" before listening to it critically. He says that he approaches the album by first listening to it casually, in the car, on the way to work, etc. I think it is very good advice to just listen to music for music's sake. This allows us to really understand and appreciate the music before we become critical and look for things wrong with the album. Sometimes it it easy to get too wrapped up in the technicality of an album, and it is important to take a step back and assess the more emotional side to it. I had been listening to many of the songs on the album I'm reviewing long before this class, which has given me time to make emotional connections to the music. However, I can still approach it critically.
ReplyDeleteI appreciated Matthew Gasteier's advice/statement that albums shouldn't be reviewed sooner than a month after release. His point is that the listeners can't get the proper understanding out of an album in a few weeks, or days for that matter. This is useful because I know that a couple albums are going to be released in the next few months and it would definitely be smarter to review one of these albums after a period of time where I have listened to the tracks and formed an honest opinion of them.
ReplyDeleteThe piece of advice that stood out to me the most was from Matt Lemay. He explained that before he critiques music, he has to just listen to it, as he phrases, "in the wild." Basically, he says he has to listen to music as just music first, before he moves on to listen to it objectively and critique it. I think this is incredibly useful as I go on to write my own blogs. Listening to music just to listen first allows you to really take in the whole sound. When you listen to it in a critical manner, you're really only pinpointing and focusing on certain aspects of it. If you listen to music "in the wild" before you critique it, you can have a much broader understanding of the piece, and be able to view it much more than just critically.
ReplyDeleteI like Michael Azzerad's piece of advice when he says he tries to make everything he writes into some sort of narrative or story. I think this would be helpful for me to follow because I want my blog to be as entertaining as possible for readers. Therefore, if I make my writing into more of a story and less of an essay, it will become more like a blog and less like an english writing assignment. I think it's important to keep this in mind while doing any sort of writing because it's much easier to write a story than to try to start from no where and write a certain piece.
ReplyDeleteThe advice that really stood out to me was to abandon the star rating system. I agree with the idea that this basic rating system creates a bland review and doesn't allow the author to be creative and branch out. When writing my reviews I will stay away from this rating system and challenge myself to critique the music and rate it without any limits or boundaries to hold me back.
ReplyDeleteA senior contributor to Pitchfork, said that in order to write a music review he first listens to the music as he would "in the wild." He advises that you don't try to listen to the music critically right off the bat. This will be useful to me when writing my review so that I don't lose the essence of the song. By casually listening to the music first I will be able to gain a no-pressure first impression that will aid me with staying true to myself as a writer.
ReplyDeleteMichael Azerrad suggested writing your review in some form of narrative. I think this will be helpful for me because I have already made my blog very personal. By choosing albums my parents grew up listening to, I have made my blog about more than myself and my own tastes in music. I think if I can include small snippets about why the albums were important to my parents, then the readers will be more interested and likely to read my review.
ReplyDeleteThe advice given by Bruce Eaton to get rid of the star rating system will be useful in writing my review because I completely agree with him. He states that writers will first choose a rating, and then base their entire review off that rating. It condenses a whole album into one number, which doesn't seem to be fair. I also agree with how he states that readers are more likely to read reviews with either one or five star ratings, instead of those in the middle, which leaves a lot of music out.
ReplyDeleteI think the best piece of advice given was about taking the music "out for a spin." I feel like you can't write a review on something without listening to it in difference environments or through different modes. It's like someone saying they hated pickles but they had never tried a pickle. In order to really be able to critique a song, you should hear it in multiple settings or while you're in different moods. It could bring a whole new perspective to the sound.
ReplyDeleteI chose Bruce Eaton's advice. His advice basically says that he would get rid of the star system. The star system is a gimmick that encourages writing with no imagination. The star rating system also discourages readers from actually reading the review to see if the writer wrote anyting insightful in the review. The star writing restricts the writer because the review has to match the rating. Readers are more likely to read a review if there is no rating attached. I completely agree with his advice. I find it much easier to read articles and reviews if there is no rating involved. I like to see what the writer thinks about something without attaching numbers. The star rating system has always bothered me since I was a child, so I do not think that i will be rating albums with the star rating system
ReplyDeleteBruce Eaton's advice about not giving the album a star rating or anything of that sort stuck out to me the most. He explains his positioning by saying that by giving the album a rating it restricts the writer to only produce a review to exactly match that rating. I agree with Bruce regarding this topic. When, writing my blog, I will not be giving my album a numerical rating because I think the words of the review are more important than the numbers.
ReplyDeleteThe advice to "immerse" yourself in the music before researching it is, I think, most useful for me in writing my reviews because I think a pure and personal experience with music is essential to creating an honest review. Background information and research on the album and artist are important, but there must be a balance between facts and the artist's intentions and personal perceptions of the music, because a review is an opinionated piece of writing. Simply mimicking what others say the album is about or should be about is not conducive to writing a fair and honest album review.
ReplyDeleteOn page 21 and 22 Lindsay Zoladz talks about how she listens to the music. She says there is no magic number for how many times you should listen to something before reviewing it because if you listen for too long you'll second guess yourself, but if you don't listen enough then you won't have fully appreciated the album. She also says that she tries to listen to the album in a variety of contexts because she understands that the audience listens to it in all different settings. That is something that I want to keep in mind for my reviews because some of my readers will just be casual listeners and others will be hardcore fans and I want to appeal to a very broad audience.
ReplyDeleteThe one piece of advice that I found most useful was by Lindsay Zoladz, the associate editor of Pitchfork. She said that she listens to the album in a variety of settings to fully grasp its impact. She’ll listen to it in the background while doing something else, and then with people in the room to see how they respond to it, and then alone. I intend to use this because music feels different in different settings and exploring those settings may impact my opinion of the album.
ReplyDeleteBoth Matt LeMay and Lindsay Zoladz mention listening to the album they are about to review "in the wild" or to "try it out in real life" before approaching it critically. They both explain that this means listening to the music in everyday situations such as going to work, listening to it for background, or listening to it directly with headphones for a significant period of time before writing about it. This will be helpful writing my review because I listen to a lot of music casually on a daily basis and I often absorb and form opinions on music naturally through listening to it in a casual sense. This would be an easy way for me to get a basic idea of how I felt about the album before I listened to it critically and that way listening to it critically would only require me to build on the ideas I already had from listening to it "in the wild."
ReplyDeleteThe piece of advice I found interesting was the one that bashed the star rating system. It said that people often skim over reviews and just look at the star ratings. I know that I have found myself just looking at the stars to look for one with only 1 or all 5 because those will be most interesting. This is important to me because it shows that your review must stand out among other reviews or it will just blend in.
ReplyDeleteThe advice that I found interesting and I felt impacted me the most was the one by Matt LeMay from Pitchfork. He said that he always listens to a song out "in the wild" before criticizing it. I feel that is how reviews on my blog and how any blog should work. The music should be heard just as it normally should be before you go to work and pick it apart and do a review on it. This is the kind of advice I will use when doing my album reviews because the art should be listened to in a very casual way before one listens to it in a very professional and critical way.
ReplyDelete