Monday, July 2, 2012

Blog Comments

When I started this blog I had a couple of models. I didn't see the music blogs as being ideal models so I thought of a couple of non-music blogs that I read from time to time: Instapundit and Ann Althouse. The former is a blog by a law professor with a libertarian orientation who was one of the first bloggers and currently has something like seven or eight hundred thousand viewers a day. A link from him, of which I have had one, generates so much traffic that it is known far and wide as an "Instalaunch". Ann Althouse is also a law professor, but politically neutral. She posts a variety of different things. Instapundit, Glenn Harlan Reynolds, allows no comments, but the comment section at Althouse is very active. I was originally hoping, with some provocative posts, to spark some lively discussions, but that hasn't happened. Occasionally there are comments and even more occasionally they lead to a debate in the comments, but not often. At Althouse everyone has an opinion they want to share. But here, I have the impression that mostly people just read the posts and enjoy the music. If someone thinks I'm off base, they leave a comment as Joel Lo Observador did on this post: http://themusicsalon.blogspot.mx/2012/06/this-is-your-brain-on-avant-garde-music.html

I suppose this means that most readers are either more or less in agreement or don't quite feel qualified to question my observations. Perhaps this is because music can be a rather technical field and certainly is the way I blog about it. I usually want to get into the nuts and bolts a bit, just as a contrast to the excessively rhapsodic discussion you usually find in the mass media.

But let me encourage everyone to leave a comment if you feel moved. I find that they are very helpful. After Joel's comment I stepped up to modify and expand my original thoughts.

That's all for this morning as I have other things to get to. I'm working on a post on Music and Plato with special reference to Bach that may have, it if comes together correctly, some original thoughts. In the meantime, to get you prepped, have a listen to this:


4 comments:

Nathan Shirley said...

Most blogs stoop to provocation- politics, gossip, sex, pop culture, etc in order to drum up interest, and thus comments.

This blog does a nice job of keeping posts intelligent and on subject. Though I'm generally less interested in the posts on pop music, there are sometimes interesting pop music references or parallel phenomenons that are brought up. At the same time I'm less interested in pre-Baroque music, so maybe it's just me (the Four Kinds of Chant post was fascinating however).

Maybe it all just comes down to needing some kind of critical mass?

Nathan Shirley said...

And while I'm commenting...

I really like the blog title picture, but maybe it is a bit too big as you have to scroll down past it in order to read any of the posts?

Bryan Townsend said...

Hi Nathan,

Always great to get your comments. It might just be that the number of people who are opinionated about music is a lot smaller than the number of people who are opinionated about politics.

Maybe I can scale that image down smaller.

studious_gal said...

i have joined your feed and i'm going to stay tuned. keep it going!

www.n8fan.net