Curiouser and Curiouser! on music

John Zorn

Thu, 24 Apr 2003 21:15:46 +0100

Bill Frisell working with John Zorn again. For us who've enjoyed the occasional blast of Zorn's band Naked City and the post Ornette freedoms of Masada, Masada Guitars is an intriguing prospect. Mark Saleski's review makes the album sound gentler than I'd have anticipated. Blogcritics: John Zorn:... [Dangerous thinking]

John Zorn, yeah!

What on earth are you listening to?

Fri, 02 May 2003 07:04:10 +0100

¡Ay caramba! Clear Channel goes latino

In an insightful and scary article on Salon.com, Eric Boehlert recently discussed a plan now before the FCC to dominate the US Latino airwaves. The proposed merger is one between the Hispanic Broadcasting Company (HBC), the leading Spanish-language radio network in the United States with 63 stations, and Univision Communications, the leading Spanish-language television broadcast company and a major Latino music label. The combined company would control almost 70% of the Spanish language advertising in the United States. Since Hispanics represent 14% of the US population and growing, you do the math.

[Oligopoly Watch]

Good grief! Does anybody still turn the Radio on in America? How can you bear it? I got used to taking a whole bunch of CD's whenever I was there.

Abusing Bach

Sun, 17 Aug 2003 20:28:21 +0100

Via a recent Tech Tip i've learned a little bit about Java's sound capabilites and, in particular, using Java to play MIDI. It was fun typing in a little java program and hearing piano's playing a few notes. Something to while away a few minutes on a hot afternoon.

Then I started thinking about algorithmically generating music. I am deuced unmusical (lacking both rhythmn and a good pitch ear) which has lead, in the past, to some frustrating attempts to use professional software to make compositions. I can program Java though.

I have a program which I use to generate random pronounceable passwords. Although it's hit rate for generating memorable words is about 1 in 40, I can remember the good passwords some 6 years after first using them. It works by analysing a body of text and calculating the frequency of each 3 letter combination that appears. Then it uses some simple rules to combine these 3 letter combinations into words.

So I started to wonder if the same thing could be done with music. Could you stitch together 3 note combinations into something resembling music? (for the moment let's set aside the question of why on earth would you do this?)

Java has a very simple call:

MidiSystem.getSequence( file )

which loads a MIDI file into an array of Track objects from which you can access the events which play the various notes of the piece. There are equivalent calls for creating & playing tracks (which use your sound card like a synthesizer).

I started with some Bach that I found on the net. My aim was to do a frequency analysis of the 3-note combinations. Somewhat to my surprise though I discovered there weren't any repetitions. That is, no exact 3 note combination was ever repeated. At least, unless I got my program wrong. The resulting noise led my housemates to question whether I was safe to be left home alone.

Not to be discouraged I tried a second approach, analysing, for each note played the range of notes which could follow and probability of each. This, coupled with some simple selection logic, allows me to play something that sounds almost totally unlike music (and certainly unlike Bach's music). Mostly it has taught me that music is vastly more complex in structure than words.

Still, it's been a diverting way to spend an afternoon AND i've learned something.

Some other notes. My development environment is IDEA by Intellij. I've tried pretty much every Java IDE going and this one is the best by far. If you haven't tried Intention actions yet, well... The GUI was built using Peter Eastman's Buoy widget set. Peter is also responsible for the Java based 3D rendering suite ArtOfIllusion.

The structure of music

Sun, 24 Aug 2003 20:24:55 +0100

I would be grateful for any pointers that anyone can give me on analysing the structure of music. I've become fascinated by the subject and trying to teach myself a little musical theory with which to try and better understand it.

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It's like some kind of weird DNA. Maybe you can play DNA too?

MIDI question

Sun, 24 Aug 2003 22:20:10 +0100

On the off-chance that someone reading this understands MIDI here is a question I need to answer:

Q: When you recieve two successive NOTE_ON events for a particular note, followed by a NOTE_OFF. Which NOTE_ON is being cancelled?

Where is all the music?

Fri, 14 Nov 2003 09:01:09 +0000

Something that has surprised me travelling in and out of London twice a week is how few people listen to music. I mean, there are quite a few people with walkmans, but my lazy observation is that it is less than 20% overall. I find this surprising. Do these people not listen to music at all? Not at home? Where is all the music?

Support your local file-sharers

Tue, 30 Mar 2004 12:50:35 +0100

Kazaa and co. 'not cause of music biz woes' say Profs. Statistical analysis supports file-sharers [The Register]

I have not bought a CD in over 6 months. It will be interesting to see whether the recording industry can respond to this or whether they will ignore, or spin it..

GetScrobbled

Tue, 20 Apr 2004 21:10:46 +0100

Euan put me on to two cool services tonight. The first is AudioScrobbler which is kind of like Amazon's people who bought X also bought Y except for the music you listen to. It works using a plugin to your player which streams titles of tracks you play to their servers for matching. The second is AllConsuming which does a similar job with books and even adds Amazon associate urls for you (I never remember).

Find me on AudioScrobbler

Tue, 20 Apr 2004 21:20:06 +0100

Here.

Beware SonicStage

Tue, 04 May 2004 21:39:36 +0100

Sony opens US music download store. Connect to MiniDisc By Tony Smith . [The Register]

Even if this weren't totally a brain dead idea (as Marc observed earlier) SonicStage sucks ass. I may not like iTMS but at least the iTunes software is smooth.

Dinosaur thinking at work

Mon, 10 May 2004 10:39:33 +0100

Sony US music service an 'embarrassment'. Too many wrongs, too few rights By Tony Smith . [The Register]

Bwaahahahahahahahahahaha!

Music biz flips out

Thu, 22 Jul 2004 10:29:52 +0100

Listen to the flip side. Finally, my article for The Guardian sees the light of day! W00t!! Thanks to everyone who helped me out with it, particularly Jaime, whom I owe a really big drink next time I am in London.

Right, better go out and buy up all the copies from the local newsagent then! [Chocolate and Vodka]

Congratulations to Suw for getting her piece on the impact of file sharing on CD sales published in the Guardian.

Needle music

Wed, 14 Dec 2005 22:53:35 +0000

A slightly odd request I know, but is there anyone out there who knows where I can download some Estonian Folk music? If possible I'm looking for a piece that goes by the name of... well I think it's something like the dance of the lost needle. But really any Estonian folk music would be great. It's to go with a slideshow of pictures my aunt and uncle took while travelling around Europe and they were particularly taken with Estonia. I want to set the slideshow to the right music.

Great flow

Sun, 05 Mar 2006 11:54:24 +0000

Despite being very money conscious right now I shelled out $20 on Friday for Flow. I can't remember where I got the link from but I'm damned grateful because it's great.

According to author Karlheinz Essl, Flow:

Generates an ever-changing and never repeating soundscape in real time that fills the space with flooding sounds that resemble - metaphorically - the timbres of water, fire, earth, and air.

I now tend to leave it running while I work and I find it really helps me to get into flow state and ignore distractions. I also find it quite restful in the evening before bed.

Definitely recommended.

Gods

Sun, 02 Jul 2006 21:15:38 +0100

Well the mind is a funny thing. For about 3 years (on and off) I have been trying to remember the name of a band I really used to like. A chance remark in the RailsMachine campfire chat-room gave me the breakthrough:

The Young Gods

Anyone have any idea where I can pick up some of their albums? I think TV Sky was the last thing I heard by them.

It also reminded me that it's been a long time since I've listened to The Swans, Big Black, or KMFDM. All bands I used to enjoy back in the 90's but haven't heard since I gave away my record collection a long while ago.