I discovered the program Audacity on Sourceforge. I didn’t realize there was such a powerful audio editor available for free. I also found it quite intuitive within a few hours of using it. It handles every audio format I use (“ogg vorbis” causes a lot of trouble wherever I go), and it feels a bit like using Photoshop (maybe it’s the infinite-undo).
One of the exciting things I learned about it today was that it knows “nyquist”. Nyquist is a music synthesis language based on Lisp. Oh boy: I really needed to start learning another computer language - although I did actually spend about seven hours learning Lisp nineteen years ago - I should be okay, huh?
With Nyquist you can define any arbitrary network of wave function generating components to mimic an analog synthesizer. But, it also apparently includes MIDI-like instrument description. And naturally, it includes all the capabilities of any serious computer language - think of all the math you would need to do with waveforms and such. That is all the power of a proprietary setup like Garage Band and Virtual Instruments.
I don’t really like using graphic user interfaces sometimes. Of course, I want to see graphics when the information I’m working with is graphical. But a lot of what I do isn’t graphical at all. I wind up using a lot of programs in a GUI environment that have not provided ways to manipulate the data on screen at all. You pull down a menu, make a selection, and then type numbers into a box. The secret is, I won’t know what numbers go in the box because the program doesn’t list numbers as a result - it draws graphics. I suppose it is the hardest part about programming - and quite tedious, I’m sure: Drawing a figure is easy, but enabling a control in that figure takes a bit more work. This entails closing the loop by allowing the figure to supply the numbers.
Posted in programming, music-synthesis, computer-interface | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Mon, 17 Nov 2008 19:57:00 GMT
I came across a good, cheap wavefile editor called Wavosaur. I haven’t done much with it yet, but the feature set is good, and there are plugins to get for it. I may continue to attempt to write an editor myself - at least this way I get to see somebody else’s idea of how it should be done. I may also figure out how to create plugins for Wavosaur. I remember how excited I was about plugins and scripting for Photoshop, but I never did figure those things out. I thought I would be writing batch files all the time, but with photo editing you really have to eyeball the material and make contingent decisions. The same must be true of audio files. Happily, I had already decided to pursue OpenAL for writing a playback system. Now, with that in mind, I have a better idea of how I would craft those sound files in an editor. We’ve still got some mysteries to solve with the interface. I didn’t see how to work with multiple channels (beyond the typical stereo), and a lot was grayed out - so maybe I have to pay for other features, and maybe I will decide sometime later that it would be worth it.
The comparison between photo and audio editors reminds me of my trouble with the workflow concept. Whenever you run commands in series on a data file, you are bound to find yourself down a dead end. Maybe you have trouble getting good results with the last command, then realize that the command thirteen steps ago should have been run differently. Some of these problems are easy to solve with the ‘mixing board’ or PS’s ‘layer comp’ concept: Keep components separated for as long as possible and commit to a mix at the last minute. In another scenario, versions can coexist as you run each command. Like forks in the road, or a binary search tree, you can retain all results. It may sound great, but it does use up more resources.
Posted in computer-interface, programming, music-synthesis | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Mon, 05 Nov 2007 16:09:00 GMT
Times Change
I watched “If…” one more time looking for clues to the film. Now I’m more puzzled than ever: There is the conspiracy - The misfit clique that increases its membership through the course of the film - but so many scenes are auxiliary to that main story. Much of the film paints a portrait of the place itself, and the ensemble of characters and how they fit into the hierarchy. Some scenes are very particular - crucial to the narrative, but other scenes are just there for atmosphere - fragments of other stories never fully told.
From what I can gather, the film was quite shocking when it came out. It won acclaim at Venice or Cannes. (Can’t find the reference, I’m afraid…) It was rated X, which seems odd nowadays - there was some brief nudity, but of course the most outrageous part is the school shooting bit at the end.
What gets to me more than anything is the difference between this society and that one. The “hair rebels” as the headmaster calls them (and the phrase “You’re hair is too long - get it cut.” occurs often) are quoting writings on liberty from the age of enlightenment. You get the impression from various more recent school shootings in America that the boys (it’s always boys) thought they were playing a video game - on the other hand, the characters in the movie do engage in more properly modern juvenile delinquency: They steal a motorbike at one point. They cover the walls of their study with magazine photos (I noticed Munch’s “The Scream” in there - way before its recent resurgence of popularity) and are nearly caught drinking from a bottle of vodka.
So maybe I just want there to be an important difference.
Bookstore Carolyn
I went to return the movie and found my friend Carolyn presiding over a dull Saturday evening at the bookstore. She told me about her recent stint working at - gasp - another bookstore, that should remain nameless, but I nearly found a job there last fall. We went on to talk about the propriety of blog writing in company sponsored websites (i.e., the difference between what I write here and what my “Fine Stable of Bloggers” write for the bookstore.) The feedback process is a bit flawed here: Carolyn has heard many more complaints than I have about a certain member of that team. I wasn’t unaware of the problem, but these are people who post their comments off-line. Not only did Carolyn think this particular writer makes the company look bad, but she worries about his career prospects with a visible record of his bad attitude in writing. In my opinion, he won’t have trouble - the system does sometimes reward bad attitudes, and I don’t think he’s burning any bridges that he would care to cross anyway. Sorry to be so vague, but that’s the way it has to be.
I shopped for books, and what do you know? - I found a few I liked. “Nothing Is True, Everything Is Permitted” by John Geiger, which is a biograph of the beat-poet Brion Gysin.
There’s also one more economics book: “Knowledge & The Wealth of Nations” by David Warsh.
A Man Of The People
I waited for the bus out by the circle, and man did I have to wait. I must’ve just missed one. I started reading the Econ book - Warsh is a journalist who claims not to understand the math, so I could probably recommend it to a lot of people. He noticed that academics were starting to pay a lot more attention to the role of ideas in economic growth, and decided to track that story as most representative of the changes taking place in the academic world of economics. Fascinating!
Some kid snuck up on me while I was reading at the bus stop - he wanted money, but not for the reasons I assumed. He had flyers about the ‘Jena 6’ business, which I can’t even figure out, but he said something about teenagers who were shot by the police in DC. I think I might have heard about that one too. The kid was easy to blow off. Then, his mentor snuck up behind me. (Argh! We just went through this!) I talked a little more at length with the older guy, but I had to claim poverty. He didn’t give up right away - but I had lost interest already. As I stared off into the middle distance, I saw the Saturday night revelers passing by the bus stop on their way to the clubs, and my mind loosed its moorings and started to float above us. It hurts me a little not to know… Not to know what action makes sense in this moment. Will I be hurting or helping? Will I give in sympathy only to be hustled? I often think “I want to help, but this isn’t the way.”
As I sat on the bus that eventually came, I mulled it over in my mind. I’m not blowing them off to go party with the oblivious, but I am blowing them off to go brood over the troubles of the world I can’t figure out how to solve.
I tried to read the econ book, but I kept watching the people who walked by or sat near me on the bus. Two young women sat down opposite me and started talking on their cell phones, so reading was an uphill struggle. As I regarded these two, a smelly homeless guy with a gray beard and a lot of luggage sat down between them. I hope nobody heard my muffled laughter at their discontent. I instinctively buried my face in the book, even if I couldn’t focus on it. Then the bearded gentleman asked me what I was reading.
This my friends, is the state of the world I live in: Scruffy homeless guys are much more likely to talk to me about economics than pretty young (obviously intelligent) women, who I have the audacity to think should be interested. But no matter - I showed him the cover, and told him what I thought it would be like - having only read three pages so far with all the distractions. And this is when my neighbor Mitch sat in the seat next to me. I see him in Dupont Saturday nights sometimes. He collects the discarded bread from Firehook bakery and passes it to the wayward alcoholics in our neighborhood. I doubt the cell phone girls ever do anything like that. Zing!
There are two lives. I guess. Go out among the people and you might seem connected, but you’re not necessarily any less self-absorbed and narcissistic than you were by yourself. And when I see the partygoers stroll down the block in fancy hair, clothes and makeup, I wonder what it’s all for. As if all that togetherness is a sham. And we’re headed in the wrong direction.
Mitch tossed me a loaf of bread from his bag. I didn’t want to deprive the needy, but I was looking to get more bread at the store, and this would save me a trip. I’ll have to remember to see the bread as more than just a gift from my neighbor, but a reminder of what I owe in kindness to the people around me. It was a tasty moment of street theater. A few people would have wondered - “Did I just see somebody toss a loaf of bread from the bus to that guy?”
Against my better judgment, I decided to go visit Asylum, where I know at least the one bartender who appreciates my company. The Saturday night crowd would be too overwhelming for me, so I was sure to have quick drink, say hello and beat a path back home. But it wasn’t quite like that…
Roller Derby Girls
I walked in to a rock band doing their sound-check in the front window. The bass player was working out to a funky riff that got me more than a little interested. Something was different thought - it wasn’t nearly as crowded as it usually is. I heard somebody call my name really loud from the bar. Good old Carina. I ordered strange drinks because I have eclectic tastes, and it keeps my bartender friends guessing. I had some Red Bull because I thought I would be at home getting things done around midnight. It was a plausible assumption.
By coincidence, it was Roller Derby night again. I’d been to Asylum before, but the first time Carina convinced me to visit her there, it was Roller Derby night too. Shall I tell you what it’s like to be in a room with a bunch of amazon women in team uniforms? Maybe I’d rather not. Some of them would definitely rip my head off and eat it after mating. (Wow - did I just say that?)
In other news, remind me never to get the french fries there again. I’ve only got two data points in the series, but that’s enough for me. Two nights I drank moderately, ate the fries and felt like crap later. So it must be the fries. Sometimes a particular vegetable oil will make me ill, so it doesn’t bode well for any of the deep fried menu items.
The crowd got so thin as the night wore on. One of the bands had a group of people show up looking like zombies. They had frighteningly evocative makeup, and Carina let them apply a couple blood-drips on her face and neck. It’s not even Halloween yet!
Late Night Keyboarding On Red Bull Afterglow
The music was cool from time to time, and that kept me around longer than I intended. I had more than enough caffeine to go on, but eventually the french fries crept up on me and I wanted to go lie down. I finished the night at my keyboard listening back to a short segment I had recorded on the sequencer. I had put a lot of thought into the note times, but almost none into the note values, and I decided to listen to that segment repeat while I tweaked one value at a time. In short, I’m getting much better at operating it in real time, and hearing the results of each little experiment right away.
Posted in DC-roaming, bar-scene, film-and-TV, music-synthesis, olssons, books | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sun, 23 Sep 2007 12:14:00 GMT
Iced Coffee
I’m in Dupont Circle at a coffeeshop. The heatwave continues, so I look for the coolest places I can find. Otherwise, it’s too difficult to concentrate. If I can work for a while in a meat-locker like environment, I actually appreciate the heat much more. I’m looking forward to the kind of weather that allows me to wear a jacket.
Books
I just picked up a couple of books at Olsson’s. Gregory Clark’s “A Farewell To Alms” - a new explanation of the industrial revolution - and Edward Luce’s “In Spite Of The Gods” - yet another book about modern India.
I hardly need new books. The books I already have are already threatening the structural integrity of my dwelling. Maybe they’ll collapse in on themselves and create a black hole first.
But new books seem important. I like to keep current, even if it’s just a book here and there. This gets back to my last post, where I implicitly lament that I don’t flex my book review muscles on the job - because I tend to read books we don’t sell.
As a counterpoint, I’m trying to re-read John Seely Brown & Paul Duguid’s “The Social Life Of Information”. I read it a while back, and the warm glow of its ideas was in the back of my mind when I read “The Future And Its Enemies”.
Futurism
Although I see some of the subtleties a little better now, it is still very tempting to see the primary struggle as between Futurists and Luddites. What’s the fuss? Individuals who feel threatened by change will fight it. Arguments that the change will be good for everybody (or that murkier - “better in the aggregate” - since that doesn’t even appeal to the self-interest of the threatened, but to a nebulous altruism) don’t usually cut it, and power tends to triumph. If I saved the world from some rampaging robot invention, would I still be charged with destruction of property (“machine-breaking”)? What exactly is the legal precedent there?
I’m not doing nearly enough of the things I say I want to do. I don’t have any real excuse for this, even though it is tempting to blame the heat. I barricade myself in my one little air-conditioned room, and then I have trouble staying awake, because I’m not active. I don’t have any drugs that will help - caffeine and sugar don’t do much. I saw this funny picture of the stack of empty soda cans accumulated by the guy who hacked the iPhone, and I was envious: if I drank all that, I would be too jittery to do anything.
XP-80 Keyboard
I had a breakthrough with my Roland XP-80 keyboard. I finally formulated a question just the right way, and looked at the manual. Probably the fundamental problem with learning anything is: You can’t usually make sense of the new information. It’s like a sugar you don’t have the right enzyme to digest. No matter how much you swallow, you’re just going to get sick - not metabolize any of it. In the same fashion, new information can just wear you out, until you find the precise bit you needed all along. This is what gives me hope that learning can be properly organized - and makes me flabbergasted that it so often isn’t.
Well, I don’t know how much use you’re going to get out of the keyboard description, but here goes: In a “Performance”, you can assign sixteen instruments (“Patches”) to the MIDI channels and the keyboard. You’re not going to choose to have them all ON at once - you need control over when different instruments will sound. One way to control this is to create a recording of one instrument, and play another instrument on the keyboard to accompany it, but I find the whole process for doing it a bit counterintuitive. Every time you change the arrangement of which instruments can be played of which keys, the Performance data is altered and needs to be saved (or if you’re happy going back to where you had it - don’t save, but will that make you happy?). After all the time spent with PCs, the design choices of this embedded device seem really weird. I want to organize it all differently, but that’s not my prerogative - I’m stuck with the manufacturer’s design choices. It’s a permissive framework in many ways - just not any of the ways I care about.
There is one setting that toggles back and forth and doesn’t affect any of the other Performance settings: “Single Mode” vs. “Layer Mode”. By changing to Single Mode, you can override all the key-to-instrument mapping and pick out one instrument to play with one of the sixteen channel buttons that usually give you another form of patch selector. I personally find the data-wheel and the keypad more than sufficient, and if I didn’t there’s a sound-list menu that shows a batch of ten consecutively numbered sounds on the little screen.
Now maybe I can keep more of it in my head at once. To do anything mildly complicated, I have to have pencil and paper ready: There isn’t enough screen space to show all the instruments associated with a performance, so I have to plan it out on paper, then spend a considerable amount of time keying it in.
Programming Languages
I’m feeling pressed for time now, especially if I’m going to try to read several hundred pages of books later, but I thought I would mention my continuing struggle with computer programming.
My decision is to concentrate my efforts on Ruby and C++. Ruby is still fascinating after a long time: It has many interesting didactic qualities, and it in fact can be shaken down to its C roots, where it will admit to object extensions. Being able to write objects and methods in short order is very helpful to me as guideposts to doing it more slowly in C++. I’m not ready for the full array of containers and templates in C++ yet, but the main reason is that I haven’t done enough with the basics. Writing programs with the Windows API is still very confusing - it makes writing your own objects that much more complicated.
Posted in books, programming, music-synthesis | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sat, 08 Sep 2007 16:41:00 GMT
If you’re registered with New York Times, you can read this article on record producer Rick Rubin.
I haven’t read the whole thing yet, and partly because I felt there was too much going on at once - or at every turn it was pushing my buttons.
What is music for? If it is a product to be exploited on the global marketplace, then much of the article makes sense in a very boring way. Ho hum. Yes, of course, there are executive-level tastemakers at large record labels, and although they are worshiped for their skills in identifying music that will sell, they are attempting to capture some kind of average taste.
That doesn’t sound like a recipe for good music to me. Music - like all ideas, should be a conversation. But we are becoming an audience culture. Surely, somebody will argue this point with me - I believe that even if we nurture a DIY spirit it won’t matter in the aggregate: we’ll still be overwhelmingly audience oriented - the typical individual will not be a creator.
One thing that struck me was Rubin’s emphasis on song form. He demanded of music acts that they structure their songs in what I would call “traditional form” - which must have something to do with 45 records on a juke box.
And then I was reminded of digital music services (like iTunes) that charge a fixed rate per song. So hitting upon a business model, whether it’s 50’s juke boxes or Apple iTunes has a feedback effect on what can be considered music. I can’t help feeling a little sad about this. Music should be freed from these constraints - even if not everybody is ready for it. But, I’m back to another recurring form of “Future & It’s Enemies” analysis: demanding that music remain fixed in trite four minute singles will only cause problems in the long run.
Is it true that only this single format can be marketed? Not that I haven’t heard plenty of good examples. I just think that we add to the discussion with other possibilities. You could listen to symphonies, opera, and some rather particular forms of chamber orchestra long before rock and roll came along. Jazz had already forced itself into the pop song envelope for the sake of recordings, but live it was an all night jam - not too different from rave DJs later on. I was always amused that one particular coworker of mine - and we all took turns listening to CDs in the office - would bristle when I referred to the ‘songs’ I would play. “Those aren’t ‘songs’ - maybe they’re ‘tracks’.” I guess she’s probably right about Autechre or Aphex Twin - they’re certainly not Rick Rubin Picks.
I see even further - although it’s murky out there: Computers in theory allow you to compose/synthesize ‘music’ on the fly. With the advent of mp3 players, and the computer chip & hard disk in your pocket, the assistive role of software can go anywhere. Even though most people will settle for shuffling through canned playlists.
What space do you want your music to fit into? A packed hip-hop club? A daily commute? An afternoon sipping tea and reading a book?
I think of people like Rick Rubin as talented but largely irrelevant. They can tell us a lot about our culture, but too often it’s something I find embarrassing. The fact that other people spend millions of dollars and make musician’s careers (or don’t) based on his predictions doesn’t say much about the average listener. ‘Predictable’ comes to mind.
Strangely, a lot of what I want a digital music player for is to surprise me with things I didn’t know about. And sometimes that means unlikely juxtapositions of things I did know. Push me to see the relationship between styles - quirky pairings I wouldn’t think of myself. Random, yes - but with some measure of linking.
I’m listening to WinAmp right now. It gives me the choice to shuffle or not. The longer your playlist, the less likely you are to hear a song that you particularly enjoy next. It doesn’t offer much in the way of sequencing. I either painstakingly program an order, or leave it up to the pseudorandom microchip demons.
One idea I had recently was to have the song database (I don’t have this, but iTunes does, right?) record and adjust neural network style weights associating which tracks are more or less likely to follow which. But then, allow me to rely more or less on those weights on the fly - so I can exert more or less control as needed.
But murkier still are my notions of collaborative work environments, and interfaces that require engagement. In other words, how can you distribute control over how the music plays by requiring participation or cooperation - like what I hear about Wii games. What does it sound like when a group of disparate individuals have to cooperate to produce a musical environment? I’m hoping for something more exciting that taking turns on the CD player.
Posted in computer-interface, music-synthesis | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Mon, 03 Sep 2007 23:38:00 GMT
Most days I would like to build my own music sampler & synthesizer - but this would take months of dedicated work! That’s not exactly my style ;-)
I have collected a few OpenAL resources. The libraries snap right into my C++ compiler, but I’ve been at a loss to figure out how to use the libraries. One big problem - if you follow that sort of thing - is that they’re not Object Oriented! What’s that all about? Instead of calling all these miscellaneous functions in an order that I can’t explain and have trouble discovering, why aren’t the libraries written as objects that I can create, destroy, and manipulate?
On the plus side, most of the frills and complexity of the library are related to the sounds you would hear as you and your opponents move around in a role playing game. I’m pretty sure Flight Gear uses it to generate the cockpit sound. For my purposes, I can forget about moving listeners and probably moving sources, too - although I can add that capability later if I’m up to it.
Wikipedia entry on OpenAL
DevMaster.net OpenAL Lesson 1
So now that I’ve given it a hard look, I see that this is a sophisticated playback library. I can’t edit the sounds themselves, so there’s a major portion that I would have to do myself. I was interested in taking wave files, chopping into bits and reassembling them. This at least makes the reassembling easier…
Posted in programming, music-synthesis | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Mon, 20 Aug 2007 23:05:00 GMT
Take a look at Why music really is getting louder
My first major objection: What is the context of this ‘music’? As much as I like good jazz or chamber music, it’s not well suited for driving in a car, or listening on laptop speakers.
I can simultaneously maintain a “who cares” with a “music is dead to me anyway”
attitude. If they’re going to keep putting out crap, why do I care how it’s produced?
So many people I know are wallowing in music history, not following the exciting new, over-compressed releases. They search for old music from their formative years, and develop iPod playlists from before the digital age.
I don’t even have and iPod. I practically stopped carrying my discman around, too. I love music, and I want to listen to it in a place where I can pay attention. When I am out running around, I like the sounds of the environment better. I started to feel guilty about blocking out those sounds.
“Sound levels are being artificially enhanced so that the music punches through when it competes against background noise in pubs or cars.”
This is fine by me - but that music will no longer be appropriate for other situations where I have the quiet I need to appreciate dynamic range.
I think I would prefer we select our compression level on the player. That way, we could decide for ourselves how compressed we need it to be - like high for the pub, but lower for headphones and a good stereo system. But, this clashes with the desire to compress the data for digital downloads. Compressed sound means better data compression and faster downloads. I was also hoping rising speed of Internet connections and larger storage capacities would lessen our concern with file size.
Whoa! - This bit turns out to be wrong, and I know better than that: The article I linked insinuates that compressed music would be preferred for quick downloading, but data compression on sound files takes advantage of psychoacoustics, and compressed music without as much dynamic range is usually harder to compress. The algorithms keep finding significant signals that must be represented. So there is this confusion based on using the same word for different ideas. Many people have read both forms of ‘compress’ without a full technical understanding (and who could blame them). But when you pretend to be knowledgeable on a subject where few people in your audience could correct you, then your audience will start to talk like you do. And the circle of ignorance expands…
I promised myself that I would write a sound editor program in Windows. My first step is to write a library of analysis code - a quick battery of statistics on the sound file. When I read about this problem - Music is too loud - I start to rethink what sort of things I should be measuring in these files.
Posted in programming, music-synthesis | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sat, 09 Jun 2007 18:23:00 GMT
I was reading on the bus this afternoon when I suddenly had some very good ideas about that music editor/synthesis program I’ve been meaning to write in C++.
First I was meditating on beat analysis - extracting symbolic information from an existing music file as a kind of template. It reminds me of file compression - but think about overcompressing a sound file until you are left with merely a bare description of the sound, and then perform a kind of transformation on that description - like adding stylesheets to markup files (sorry - that’s the kind of thing I think about these days. I could have said: “applying an XST to an XML file”. So now you know that they’re close to the same thing…)
Although that might be a fruitful idea to pursue later, my thoughts turned quickly to creating a mapping of sampled envelopes from wave files, and using it to generate a sound output. Make a ‘note’ or ‘envelope’ object that has an envelope shape and marks a cue point within one or another sound file input, then create a container of these ‘notes’ by manipulating symbols or icons in the interface. Maybe even define kinds of transition that generate a sequence of ‘notes’ automatically. Then once this schema is mapped out on the screen, send the note container a play message with a destination sound file, and voila!
I got home and started drawing out UML diagrams and object inheritance hierarchies. I think I know all the pieces, so now it’s just a matter of fitting them all together. If I’m feeling up to it, I could try a mock up in Ruby first, or just start grinding out the object definitions in C++.
Unfortunately, I’m going to keep manipulating my site and blog for a little while, then go watch TV and fall asleep - but at least I’ve got these notes as a reminder!
Posted in music-synthesis, programming | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Tue, 08 May 2007 23:39:00 GMT
