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Ways of Hearing

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Ways of Hearing is a fine study of digital music. Probably the finest I've heard to date:

Says the description: "Each episode looks at a different way that the switch from analog to digital audio is influencing our perceptions, changing our ideas of Time, Space, Love, Money, Power and Noise."

I am quite familiar with the analogue experience of music - not just as technology, but as a culture - the process of discovery, of studying an artist in more detail, of exchanging music, information, and good feels about good music.

But they address something one only experiences deeply as an author: "Our voices carry further than they ever did before, thanks to digital media. But how are they being heard?"

As someone who's been through this transition as both an author and listener, and from the popular start (say let's pin it to extracting CDs), I found little new or surprising material, in this series, but instead a giant feeling of clarity and wholeness. It is kept accessible at all times. To even the most informed of ears, Ways of Hearing will amount to more than the sum of its six episodes - painting a picture of modern music on a very large canvas, ending up very far from merely a recap.

Can't recommend this series enough!

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