Derren Brown's series "Trick of the Mind" and "Mind Control" are fascinating entertainment as well. He's the UK's version of David Blaine, but with much more of an intellectual twist (perhaps too smart for American audiences). He has always revealed his methods (a combination of misdirection, neurolinguistic programming and showmanship) of "mind reading". All his programmes are well worth the search....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derren_Brown
Its common practice to "cheat" on these laws in order to maintain the audience's attention and keep them hooked on the storyline. Ironically though, depending on how savvy the audience is, some things do exactly the opposite. For example, as an effect, thunder and lightning coincide in in order to maximize its effectiveness. In contrast, some "real world" rules, when broken, completely break this suspension of disbelief because its so commonly done on screen -- ie. how all telephone numbers have 555 in them; or how everyone still uses those old fashion mini cassette answering machines; or how rain always appears to fall straight down and in torrents.
The problem here lies in how hollywood has become so damn lazy and pathetically uncreative. But the sad thing is that they need not be imaginative -- the audience is much too naive to even care. "....that's entertainment" indeed.
It looks like Drama was selling these Cds in large quantities.
The is a huge difference between making a "promotional" CD and handing them out as a demo of your DJing skills and making a mixed CD and selling them to the public. Mixed DJ sets are very popular in the underground electronic music scene as well (house, techno etc.), where most of the artists are independent and will NEVER be available via the normal big record label channels. The problem with what Drama was doing is that the hip hop genre is mainstream, and the major labels notice.
I pray that this will never happen in the electronic dance music scene.
...or the !Phone for that matter.
But i believe there is a distinction between having a trademarked name and a trademarked logo. The former is just the word, and the latter is the actual unique graphic.
I took an interesting course at York Univerisity called History of Popular Music 1945-Present. The thesis was that all music that is popular to the American and European mainstream has specific characteristics. What we did in the course was to compare (arrangement, notes) the versions of popular "rock and roll" songs and the original "rhythm and blues" version (ie. Elvis' "Hound Dog" originally sang by Willie Thornton).
The differences were consistent. It was obvious that mainstream versions had african musical characteristics (rhythm based) whereas the popular versions were more european influenced (melody and harmony).
If you listen to what is mainstream music today, the same patterns emerge. Virtually all pop songs follow the same template. The chorus and verses are always in the same places, the breaks are always at the 3/4 mark etc...
The beats are also important. Pop music relies heavily on the 4/4 beat, with the accent on the downbeat. African influenced musics have a lot of syncopation (accent on the off beat). Syncopation is what makes something "funky".
Just follow this to the T and they guarantee you a hit. Its really just a matter of following certain rules and watering down to the least common denominator.
If one could detect exactly how the numbers looked like, I wonder if it would be possible to make a custom printer driver to add-on/alter to the existing numbers so that they would read differently?
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Derren Brown's series "Trick of the Mind" and "Mind Control" are fascinating entertainment as well. He's the UK's version of David Blaine, but with much more of an intellectual twist (perhaps too smart for American audiences). He has always revealed his methods (a combination of misdirection, neurolinguistic programming and showmanship) of "mind reading". All his programmes are well worth the search.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derren_Brown
Its common practice to "cheat" on these laws in order to maintain the audience's attention and keep them hooked on the storyline. Ironically though, depending on how savvy the audience is, some things do exactly the opposite. For example, as an effect, thunder and lightning coincide in in order to maximize its effectiveness. In contrast, some "real world" rules, when broken, completely break this suspension of disbelief because its so commonly done on screen -- ie. how all telephone numbers have 555 in them; or how everyone still uses those old fashion mini cassette answering machines; or how rain always appears to fall straight down and in torrents. The problem here lies in how hollywood has become so damn lazy and pathetically uncreative. But the sad thing is that they need not be imaginative -- the audience is much too naive to even care. "....that's entertainment" indeed.
It looks like Drama was selling these Cds in large quantities. The is a huge difference between making a "promotional" CD and handing them out as a demo of your DJing skills and making a mixed CD and selling them to the public. Mixed DJ sets are very popular in the underground electronic music scene as well (house, techno etc.), where most of the artists are independent and will NEVER be available via the normal big record label channels. The problem with what Drama was doing is that the hip hop genre is mainstream, and the major labels notice. I pray that this will never happen in the electronic dance music scene.
...or the !Phone for that matter. But i believe there is a distinction between having a trademarked name and a trademarked logo. The former is just the word, and the latter is the actual unique graphic.
The differences were consistent. It was obvious that mainstream versions had african musical characteristics (rhythm based) whereas the popular versions were more european influenced (melody and harmony).
If you listen to what is mainstream music today, the same patterns emerge. Virtually all pop songs follow the same template. The chorus and verses are always in the same places, the breaks are always at the 3/4 mark etc...
The beats are also important. Pop music relies heavily on the 4/4 beat, with the accent on the downbeat. African influenced musics have a lot of syncopation (accent on the off beat). Syncopation is what makes something "funky".
Lastly, there is a great book called "How to Have a Number One The Easy Way" by the KLF. Its online here: http://www.tomrobinson.com/work/klf.htm
Just follow this to the T and they guarantee you a hit. Its really just a matter of following certain rules and watering down to the least common denominator.
If one could detect exactly how the numbers looked like, I wonder if it would be possible to make a custom printer driver to add-on/alter to the existing numbers so that they would read differently?