Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

A Tale of Two CD'S

1994; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 101; Issue: 7 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00029890.1994.11997002

1930-0972

Dan Kennedy,

Music Technology and Sound Studies

These are indeed exciting times in the world of Mathematics. Stirred by the NCTM Standards, the winds of change are blowing through every level of the K-12 curriculum. At the same time, in colleges and universities the finest minds of our profession are turning their attention to the forging of a Calculus for a New Century. Earlier this year, we even saw the unexpected verification of Fermat's Last Theorem, something which surely none of us thought we would see in this lifetime. There is so much to talk about when mathematicians get together these days, yet, because we are teachers, we have so little time for talking. That is why I have chosen to write this article about none of these things. Instead, I would like to write about records. I have collected records since I was in grade school. By the time I was in graduate school, I owned more than two thousand 45's, three hundred albums, and miscellaneous 78's and EP's. I shared my hobby with friends, including some memorable years as music director and station manager of the college radio station at Holy Cross. I was one of those guys who could, upon hearing a golden oldie on the radio, quote the title, artist, and year of the song, and quite often the label and songwriter as well. My interest in the music of the moment naturally declined about the time disco music became popular, but by that time I had accumulated enough vinyl classics to keep myself and my party guests entertained forever. For example, one of my favorite ways to pass an evening with friends is to stage a nostalgia playoff between two guests, playing alternately the hit songs from their respective high school graduation years, until the quality of one year's hits is clearly unable to keep up with the quality of the other's. (In case you are interested, no guest has ever gone up against a graduate of 1957 without conceding after the 15th round or so.) As a student of the recording industry, I would always sit up and take notice when some new product emerged which the prophets predicted would change the way people listened to music. first big pretender to the vinyl throne was the 8-track tape. The 8-track tape, they predicted, will redefine the recording industry. It required no threading onto a spool, it did not scratch or shatter, it did not collect dust, it required no needle, it produced high fidelity sound for multiple speakers, and you could play it an your cart I was momentarily impressed, but I continued to buy records, and so did apparently a lot of other people. Today if you want to buy an 8-track tape you have to go to an antique show. Then came the cassette tape. The cassette tape, they predicted, will refine the recording industry. It was smaller than the clumsy 8-track, but it had all its same advantages, including that of being playable in your automobile. Moreover, you could actually stick a few into your glove compartment. You could also buy a portable tape player which would play your cassettes on an arbitrary street corner at an arbitrary volume level. I myself continued to buy records, although I