Realtime Concert Program Notes on a PDA

PoisonousPhat writes "NPR has an article on a new idea for concertgoers at the Aspen Music Festival. Dubbed the 'Concert Companion', the concept used a PDA (a Sony Clie PEG-NX73V for those of you that MUST know) as a 'listener's guide...that updates you with information about what you're hearing, in real time.' The concept seems similar to the audio headsets available in museum tours. Read the bleeping article here."

Comments

Whatever happened...

[Black Parrot]

...to the Good Old Days, when you went to a concert to hear the music instead of playing with your electronic toys.

This will help?

[slimak]

orchestras are looking for new audiences, and considering new ways to attract those audiences. One possibility is a high tech device called the "Concert Companion."

Are there really that many people thinking "Man, the orchestra would be worth going to if it only had some gadget to play with." It seems like this could possibily strengthen current audience interest, but draw new audiences?

I like it, but maybe not for concerts?

[dspyder]

I do think real-time data delivery to some sort of handheld device is a very good piece of functionality. They [maybe used to] do it at Giants games at PacBell (SBC?) park. You could get stats on the current batter and pitcher as well as scores from other games around the league on your Palm. Very nice service.

The other day I was at the ALMS race at Laguna Seca and was craving a real-time view of the leader-board and lap times since we were too far away from the screens they have there to be able to see things. Turns out ALMS does offer a product that uses the Gameboy Advance to give you that information over radio-waves. Why not just send the same data over WiFi or GPRS?

The thing they use is icardus. Sorry for the plug. Never used it, and no affiliation.

--D

PDAs vs. Projector

[Starlet Monroe]

I work at the Colorado Music Festival, and this year we implemented a similar concept. Our conductor was aware of the Aspen system, but hadn't been impressed with it. He felt that it distracted from the musical experience to have that much going on... I suspect it also had a little to do with people looking down instead of up at the orchestra.

At any rate, we elected to use a subtle projected numbering system that corresponded to each movement or theme. In the paper program for the concert, these themes/comments/history were listed. We called it "Keeping Score". (Yeah, I know...)

It was a brilliant success, however. The festival saw something like a 10% attendance/revenue increase this season. For a Colorado arts organization, that's huge: Our governor removed all funding for the arts this year, including blocking millions of dollars in matching funds from the National Endowment. Arts orgs in the state have been collapsing left and right.

I think that having a cheap solution like Aspen implemented is fantastic for smaller orchestras. Don't get me wrong, CMF is pretty big, but it's no Aspen. I'd love to see both options next season though -- a subtle projector *and* a handheld option. We had a few pieces this year that had opera or spoken parts which we were able to project English translations for; I'd love to be able to push different languages to our international attendees.

Sports arenas is a better application

[ianscot]

Personally I like to read the program notes before the orchestra starts to play, and somehow I'm thinking there's not much you need to add on-the-fly to your notes about the Symphonie Fantastique. What's the breaking news?

This sort of thing would make tons more sense for sports events, where drilling down to see someone's stats against this pitcher (or whatever) would add to your experience without detracting from others'. For concerts? We're replacing rustling paper with the chit chits of styluses scrabbling over PDAs, but what did we gain, again?

Re:This might...

[gatzke]

At the met in NYC they already have a little unobtrusive LCD display on the back of each chair in front of you for line by line translation in real time.

It was nice to be able to follow along the text or just listen without too much technical trouble (like a PDA)

Symptomatic of the decline of classical music

[ziriyab]

Music is supposed to be a form of communication. The most expressive music simulates the cadences of emotional speech (bluesy wails, wah wahs, even a fast frantic solo). With western classical music we saw the organization of these concepts into rules for intervals and chord sequences, but somewhere along the line it all got too bloated for a lay understanding. It became so that you needed to know all these things to truly appreciate what the composer was trying to express.

This isn't bad by itself, of course. Poetry with a 300 word vocabulary is pretty crappy (think nursey rhymes or bad rap). The development of this new vocabulary for music helps make it more expressive, but at the same time less accessible.

People can still respond to the purely emotional parts of a piece like Beethoven's 9th, the majority sit there twidling their tumbs waiting for the "Ode to Joy" part to start. Why spend years listening to classical music and reading music theory when you can just pop in the latest nursery rhyme (e.g. Brittany) and get instant gratification?

I guess, the PDAs just treat the symptom and gives yuppies something to say at cocktail parties to make themselves look sophisticated, but the solution is better (maybe mandatory) music education in school.

Professor Schickele did it first

[Chelloveck]

Frankly, I prefer Professor Peter Schickele's New Horizons in Music Appreciation as a way of distributing performance notes during a concert.

Making mobile devices more powerful.

[Greg@RageNet]

I think we will see a lot more of this type of technology in the future, where PDA's and other personal devices can provide more information on your surroundings. I think we'll see more of this sort of thing perhaps with sporting events. Imagine being able to look up a players stats at a football game; or recieving evacuation instructions on your cellphone when hurricane warnings go into effect.

I really like this idea and I've been implementing it myself with California traffic Information. It makes you PDA or cellphone much more useful to get you context'ed information in real-time.

-- Greg