Jim Regan - Site Reviews
The Beat of Manhattan and Carnegie Hall
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"Practice. Practice. Practice."
...and it doesn't hurt to have generated some public recognition as well -- which, for some musicians means finding your first audience on the street. This week's sites look at both ends of the 'venue spectrum,' from The Beat of Manhattan, as heard from its streets, to the refined acoustics and cushioned seats of Carnegie Hall.
The Beat of Manhattan is a product of the "Viewseum," which, despite the institutional sound of the name, is itself a production of Hitachi electronics, and was created as much to promote its technology (in this case the "M2 Multimedia Recorder") as to promote culture -- but there's nothing that says you can't do both at the same time.
After an original opening animation (you'll need Java and Flash), the visitor is taken to an index page of sorts, with an unusual use of a pair 'moving stills' to add interest to an otherwise static page. Four other images link to, information 'About' the site, a 'Comments' page, and the 'Entry' to the exhibition itself. (Unfortunately, every attempt to return to the index from the About page takes the visitor back through the opening animation -- there's a 'skip intro' link, but it's still an aggravation.) The fourth intro link, 'MPEG Info,' opens into its own window, but rather than taking the visitor to general information and relevant links about MPEG technology, it simply loads Hitachi's own sales page for the M2 ("...buy M2 now!").
Choose the Enter link, and you're taken to a rearrangement of the icons on the index page, with the addition of a Featured Artist link, and pull-down menu of all 16 documented acts -- acts using instruments that range from, well ... nothing, (there's one a cappella group in the collection) through such 'traditional' street instruments as guitars and saxophones, to West African Djembe drums, musical saws and cowbells. Choose an act, and things get interesting.
Each artist or group is given their own 'home page' - each with it's own unique design. This system has both advantages and drawbacks. The individuality afforded to each act is obviously a plus, but some designs are more legible than others, and some are better suited to smaller screens. (Truth be told, one 'subsite' won't even fit on an 800x600 screen.) Add to that the fact that some -- but not all -- pages have an 'auto-forwarding' splash screens, and some -- but not all -- include direct links back to the exhibit home page, and one is torn between an appreciation of variety and a desire for a less confusing and more functional standardization.
What all subsites do have in common is a collection of still images, audio and video clips, and a 'feature' article profiling the performer(s). The videos include both small (1 or 2 MB) preview clips as well as full-length (up to 20MB) mini-movies.
Clearly, a visitor will need either a high-speed connection or admirable patience to extensively explore the full-length videos, but even the casual browser can enjoy the other multimedia offerings, as well as profiles that include a trumpet player who 'saved woman's life' with his music, the Daily News' choice as "New York's Best Known Street Musician," (who breaks the rule that classical musicians never smile) and a 71 year-old accordion player from Russia. When possible the bios also include contact information and street 'performance schedules.'
Of course, in terms of performance schedules, for many artists the ultimate goal is Carnegie Hall, and the first impression on downloading the Carnegie Hall homepage is one of how well these two featured sites reflect their environments. While the Beat of Manhattan's front door is spare, and free of any adornment, Carnegie Hall opens with a page that is rich, warm and elegant. (Although, in a departure from most sites, Carnegie Hall's pages actually suffer when filling too large a screen -- as background images repeat themselves to the window's extreme right. Still, it's much easier to downsize a browser window than to constantly commute between scrollbars.)
Much of the offerings here (such as the concert calendar) are only of use to those who can make it to 57th Street, but anyone can sample the history and atmosphere of the Hall itself through an interactive Timeline, a 360-degree panorama (requires the "PhotoBubble" plug-in), and a "walkthrough tour," complete with RealAudio narration by Carnegie Hall's archivist. The tour benefits greatly from the audio component and is more engaging than most.
Its design, though, is less than ideal for systematic exploration, and you'll frequently find yourself at 'the end of the line' with no way to move to another area other than backtracking to the start. (A complete tour index, or interactive map would be immensely helpful.)
Visitors looking for a concrete souvenir of their virtual visit will find that, like Hitachi, Carnegie Hall is not above the temptations of filthy lucre. An online store offers the typical selection of posters and coffee mugs, as well as $9 notepads, and the somewhat incongruous "official" Carnegie Hall baseball cap, in "great looking dyed denim" -- perhaps it's for the Carnegie hopefuls still playing on the streets.
The Beat of Manhattan can be found at http://www.viewseum.com/theater/beat_manhattan/. Carnegie Hall's homepage can be found at http://www.carnegiehall.org/.
Jim Regan provides 'Today's Links' to the e-Monitor. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.