Anything important missed, or distorted?
These were views of the forum members who participated in the River of Music discussion:
Overall, and regardless of the degree of (un)enthusiasm, people seemed to think it was an interesting idea and worth doing. While some were enthusiastic enough to suggest a regular weekly feature would be welcome, some simply rejected it as ‘background music’ or ‘musical wallpaper’. One or two said they hadn’t tuned in at all as the idea wasn’t appealing.
Those who were happy with the programme as ‘music without words’ were of two sorts: there were those who were content to listen to it as background music and those who deliberately chose to treat it as an ‘Innocent Ear’ journey of unmediated music and welcomed the lack of extraneous information.
A third group was quite put out that, given that there were no announcements, there were no advance playlists to consult either. In other words, the programme missed a happy medium somewhere between no on-air listener contributions and the ‘irrelevant chat’ of presenters (good) but no information at all about the music (bad).
Very few people (I think no one on the forum) was keen on the online commentary, nor wanted to take up the invitation to contribute comments online. I don’t think anyone did more than take a look from time to time and they came away underwhelmed. There was a suggestion that if it offered a way to take all listener input off the regular live broadcasts that would be a very good thing.
Even by consulting the blog from time to time, people were uncertain as to the significance of the sequence to the Radio 3 story and this was felt to detract from the success of the enterprise. They wanted something more than ‘music playing in the background’ and expected a clearer narrative to emerge, even without oral explanation. Some felt archive content from the last 70 years would have been appropriate.
The online digital display didn’t synch particularly well, and as the pieces tended to be fairly short the ‘Now Playing’ display would often be showing the previous piece until nearly the end of the following piece. Consequently, it didn’t substitute for a playlist. I think those who would have welcomed playlists might have been the same ones who also wanted the gaps between the different pieces to be longer. On the other hand, the segue-effect was probably more appreciated by the music-without-words listeners.
Specific criticisms aside, there was at least muted approval among a significant proportion of listeners. This is nertheless an improvement on the 'composer specials' where negative views usually outnumbered the positive.
These were views of the forum members who participated in the River of Music discussion:
Overall, and regardless of the degree of (un)enthusiasm, people seemed to think it was an interesting idea and worth doing. While some were enthusiastic enough to suggest a regular weekly feature would be welcome, some simply rejected it as ‘background music’ or ‘musical wallpaper’. One or two said they hadn’t tuned in at all as the idea wasn’t appealing.
Those who were happy with the programme as ‘music without words’ were of two sorts: there were those who were content to listen to it as background music and those who deliberately chose to treat it as an ‘Innocent Ear’ journey of unmediated music and welcomed the lack of extraneous information.
A third group was quite put out that, given that there were no announcements, there were no advance playlists to consult either. In other words, the programme missed a happy medium somewhere between no on-air listener contributions and the ‘irrelevant chat’ of presenters (good) but no information at all about the music (bad).
Very few people (I think no one on the forum) was keen on the online commentary, nor wanted to take up the invitation to contribute comments online. I don’t think anyone did more than take a look from time to time and they came away underwhelmed. There was a suggestion that if it offered a way to take all listener input off the regular live broadcasts that would be a very good thing.
Even by consulting the blog from time to time, people were uncertain as to the significance of the sequence to the Radio 3 story and this was felt to detract from the success of the enterprise. They wanted something more than ‘music playing in the background’ and expected a clearer narrative to emerge, even without oral explanation. Some felt archive content from the last 70 years would have been appropriate.
The online digital display didn’t synch particularly well, and as the pieces tended to be fairly short the ‘Now Playing’ display would often be showing the previous piece until nearly the end of the following piece. Consequently, it didn’t substitute for a playlist. I think those who would have welcomed playlists might have been the same ones who also wanted the gaps between the different pieces to be longer. On the other hand, the segue-effect was probably more appreciated by the music-without-words listeners.
Specific criticisms aside, there was at least muted approval among a significant proportion of listeners. This is nertheless an improvement on the 'composer specials' where negative views usually outnumbered the positive.
)
)
Comment