The Top 30 Christmas Songs Are All Old

This is the last day for Christmas songs until next year, but here's something worthing thinking about.

With all the great songwriters that are currently in the business, it's a wonder that there hasn't been any new Christmas songs of note in decades. This Washington Post chart shows that the majority of our most popular Christmas songs were penned in the 1940s and 50s, with the most recent Christmas staple coming in the 90s.

The thought is that new Xmas songs haven't been adopted because the songs that are still popular are the ones that baby boomers became familiar with in their youth, but if we keep playing the same songs over and over each year, that becomes a perpetual motion machine with each generation growing up to the same songs.

That said, enjoy the songs for one more day, have a very merry Christmas, and thank you for your continued support of this blog!

The Anatomy of Songs

Here's a rather light-hearted look at the anatomy of songs in different genres. There's actually a lot of truth in it though, as I found when doing research for my Deconstructed Hits series of books. If you analyze the hits of a particular genre (and their eras, which is equally as important), you find that there are numerous similarities.

For instance, in some of the most loved classic rock songs, there was no set song form formula, where sometimes a song took a wild turn in the middle that was totally unexpected ("LA Women," "Magic Man," "Free Bird," and "Don't Fear The Reaper" for example). Today most pop songs are built around the magic triad of verse, chorus and bridge. And today most songs have an ending, since that makes it tend to play better in a digital format, while in previous eras the fade was a lot more common.

That said, there's more than a grain of truth in the following graphic. Enjoy.

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The Vocal Range of the World's Greatest Singers

Concerthotels.com developed this great chart on the vocal ranges of some of the world's most well-known vocalists. It's an interactive chart, so when you hover over a singer, it will tell you the highest and lowest note and attribute it to a song. You can also find who has the highest and lowest range as well by selecting the sort button at the top.

I think it's interesting that Axel Rose holds the record (according to the chart, anyway) for both the highest and lowest note for males, while less surprisingly, Mariah Carey holds it for females.


The Vocal Ranges of the Greatest Singers. From Mariah Carey's ear-piercing whistle to Barry White's deep bassy growl, compare the vocal ranges of today's top artists with the greatest of all time. (via ConcertHotels.com).

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Hearing Loss And Musicians

Loud sound is an environmental byproduct of being a musician - any kind of musician. While everyone always looks to rock bands as the loudest culprits, concert violinists actually have the most hearing loss, thanks to being located directly in front of the brass section in the orchestra.

For guitar players, it used to be that you had to really crank your amp in order to get that nice overdrive distortion and sustain, but those days are mostly over now that it's fairly easy to dial that in on most amps at whatever volume you want. That said, anyone who's ever played with a powerhouse drummer knows that you have to turn it up just to compete onstage, unless of course you're in a situation where you're wearing in-ear monitors.

That's why this infographic is so interesting. It shows just how many people (especially young people) have some hearing loss thanks to their passion. The part of the chart that stick out is the "Signs of hearing loss in humans" which reads:

• Ear pain, itching or irritation
• Muffled hearing
• Pus or fluid leaking from the ear (Ewww)
• Tinnitus (ringing, roaring, hissing or buzzing in the ear)
• Difficulty distinguishing words that people are saying

If any of these are happening to you, go see a doctor as soon as you can.

Remember that everyone around music or a loud environment should consider ear protection. I suggest the Etymotic Research ER20 ETY's. They're inexpensive and cut the level down without changing the frequency response. Since I found them, I won't go anywhere without them.

Otherwise, enjoy the chart.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

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The Evolution Of Headphones

Headphones have become a necessary part of our audio lives, whether we're in the studio or just listening for pleasure. The choices we now have are many and we all have our favorites, but that wasn't always the case. Here's a cool infographic on the evolution of headphones that's bound to bring up some trivia that you weren't aware of. Click on it to make it larger.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

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Should You Quit Your Band?

This is been going around the Internet the last week, and I have to say, it's brilliant. I especially like the fact that it keeps on referring to how well the drummer players. As drum legend Buddy Rich once said, "You can't have a great band without a great drummer!" Truer words have never been spoken.

In the end, the problem with thinking about quitting a band is very similar to thinking about quitting a job. Once the thought gets in your head, you've already committed and it's only a matter of time before it happens. Proceed down that road with caution (especially if the band has a great drummer).

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.


You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.


Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating social media and the new music business.

Facebook's Massive Media Storage

Perhaps you recently bought a few terabyte hard drives and are feeling that you're pretty well covered for storage. A terabyte, of couse, is a 1,000 gigabytes. The next increment is a petabyte, which is 1,000 terabytes.

So consider for a moment just how big a petabyte is.

• Just 1 petabyte equals 20 million 4-drawer filling cabinets filled with text.

• 1 petabyte equals 13.3 years of HD video.

• 20 petabytes was the total hard drive space manufactured in 1995

• 50 petabytes is the equivalent of the entire written works of mankind, from the beginning of recorded history, in all languages.

That's why the recent IPO filing from Facebook is so amazing. In it they state that they already store over 100 petabytes of photos and videos from their 850 million users.

Having trouble wrapping your head around that number? Maybe the following infographic will help.

Obviously technology has moved into the realm of super-storage, and what once seemed quite large is now small. Welcome to the world we now live in.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.


You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.


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The History Of Digital Storage

I remember the first external hard drive that I bought in the 80's. It was huge, held only 5 meg of data, and cost about $4,500. I thought it was so cool.

Now many of us have gone through floppy discs, Zip and Jazz drives, CD's and DVDs, and flash drives for data archival. Still, for any serious audio or video work, every day we depend upon those highly evolved high-speed platters revolving at around 7,200 RPM.

That's why I thought you'd enjoy this infographic on the history of digital storage from Mashable.

First, let me make one prediction that I feel certain will come true. In five years we'll look back at rotating hard disc drives the same way that we look at floppy discs today. Long live SSDs (solid state drives)!

Click on the graphic then click again for a higher-res version or try here.

Click on the graphic for a larger version

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating social media and the new music business.

How Your Father's Music Influences What You Listen To

Here's a Father's Day special post and it's a fun infographic on how your father's favorite music influences the music you listen to today. Have a happy day, all you fathers!

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.


Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating social media and the new music business.