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“I think speech recognition is really going to upend the current [computer] interface.

“We’re at a transition point where voice and natural-language understanding are suddenly at the forefront,

Jim Glass, a senior research scientist at MIT who has been working on speech interfaces since the 1980s, says today’s smart phones pack as much processing power as the laboratory machines he worked with in the ’90s. Smart phones also have high-bandwidth data connections to the cloud, where servers can do the heavy lifting involved with both voice recognition and understanding spoken queries. “The combination of more data and more computing power means you can do things today that you just couldn’t do before,” says Glass. “You can use more sophisticated statistical models.”

During the colonial, revolutionary, and federal periods (1607-1820) most American songs were strongly tied to the musical traditions of the British isles. Hymn tunes, ballads, theater songs, and drinking songs were imported from England or based closely on English models.

he first uniquely American popular song tradition arose with the minstrel show, beginning in the 1840

Initially, sheet music and pocket songsters were the primary means of circulating songs, since many Americans played and sang music in their own homes.