01.08.2010 Feynman on piano tuning
This article* (subscription required), from my good buddy Khurram, is a presentation and analysis of a letter from great theoretical physicist Richard Feynman to his piano tuner.
(Read about Feynman here. He's on Bill Gates' "Who I'd Have Dinner With" list— and my list too— and his books Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think? make for the very finest sort of excited-about-science general reading.)
In it, he outlines problems he's intuited about tuning a piano strictly to equal-temperament. As the strings get higher and therefore shorter, the string becomes relatively thicker. This causes its stiffness to play more of a role in its overtone compositions than at longer string lengths. After some calculations— simple once they're worked out, but impressive considering they're in a casually tossed-off note**— he suggests that a piano tuned by ear might sound more "accurate" than one strictly tuned by comparing frequencies.
Like any good scientist, he states the assumptions on which he's basing this hypothesis and asks his tuner for more information about (a) what strings he tunes, in what order, so as to better know the relationships between them, and (b) whether he in fact deviates from the theory to "tune by ear" in order to create a more pleasing result.
(As it turns out, there are several physical phenomena not intuited by Feynman, which means that piano tuners do "stretch" the top and bottom pitches of the piano as our ears start to need proportionally faster and faster vibrations in order to perceive the same rise in pitch.)
*Article (requires subscription/sign-in)
**Feynman did make a few "slips of the pen" in his formulae, which are cleared up in the subsequent analysis.
12.09.2009 Andrew Bird's speakers: Now available!
Rocketing to the top of my Christmas list: These speakers from Specimen Audio, built by the people Andrew Bird contracted to make his larger-than-life stage setup.
The only thing that could possibly, possibly make these any better would be if they rotated with foot pedal control, like Bird's does. Or if it came in an eight-foot-model for us superfans out there.
Then again, looking at the price tag, that might be just as well.
12.01.2009 Rain, Beat Detective and Flex Time
This article talks about the beautiful sloppiness that comes from talented musicians playing in a room together, listening and responding. Lots of Very Commercial Music these days is 100% on-the-grid, and sounds a lot more like a perfect musical robot than like a bunch of humans having fun.
One of the amazing things about the early Jackson 5 recordings, for contrast, is how tight they played together, while still keeping a human groove. Conversely, the first solo MJ albums to have electronically perfect timing bring a punch and sheen that has its own kind of excitement. So, people developed tools like Beat Detective to put a human beat on the grid.
Fixing bad timing? Okay, that'll save you some time. Put everything on the beat? Well, that'll let your skater band go platinum, but it might not make anyone love life more.
(Compare Rihanna's "Umbrella", which I see as a pretty great song with terribly inhuman production.)
...All that said, I try, I really try, to not be all rah-rah-Logic all the time, but. But. Flex Tool/Flex Time in Logic 9 hit me this weekend as a way to fix timings while preserving beautiful imperfection.
Here's my djembe hit. Most of the take was on, but darnit, I just hit that one a bit late. You can see it clearly late after all the other hits, where I was pretty on:
Here, Logic has detected all of my hits. I can use the Flex Tool to just drag one hit earlier, visually lining it up with the musical groove. Note that I'm not moving the whole audio file, and I'm not slicing a region out of the audio file and moving that. I'm just dragging a blob on the waveform, and it's being seamlessly moved-and-stretched (or squished) enough to fill all the gaps and sound natural in a given context:
I'm writing about this because of how impressed I was with the results: This is still a loose groove, but it sounds like a bunch of percussionists who are better than I am. But a couple of beers in, and maybe sitting around a campfire.
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12.01.2009 More cool time-lapse public art from Europe.
This french guy, Arnaud Jourdain, took hi-res photos of a graffiti'd wall for 5 years, and then made this reconstruction of the process. It's possible to separate out layers of graffiti and see how the wall changes over time. Nice.
Via Mental Floss. Video link.
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11.15.2009 Circle of 5ths Clock: Complete!
At long last, a final-ish product of the Circle of 5ths Clock.
The two things I'd still like to do: I'd love to write up a grant to make a giant version. And I would like to find nicer-sounding resonators.
But, this version works, is reliable, has low latency, and does what I set out for it to do. I've left it running most of the day today, and the warped harmonic language of the various wine glasses, bells and metal gets more and more pleasing to my ear as I hear it repeatedly. Unlike version 1.0, where a single chord happened every 15 minutes, in this version the clock strikes only on the hour, but indicates the time by the number of chords in the progression. (Like a regular clock, I suppose, but with harmonic content.) So, 5:00 pm is a 5-chord progression leading to the key of the hour, in this case B Major.
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10.23.2009 Kata FM, otherwise known as the Drive-In Dance piece.
I've been hanging out at the Ragdale Foundation for about a week and a half now, which has been amazing. (More on that, later, surely.)
Tomorrow, though, I'll be having my first rehearsal for a collaboration that's been in the works for almost a year now. The piece with the cars all parked in a circle in a field and the dance happening in the middle. And maybe it's at sunset so that as it gets dark, people have to turn on their headlights to see the dancers. Or maybe it's in some really industrial area and the lights are just a compliment to the sodium vapor lamps (Hideout? What about that weird city lot across the street from you? And, why don't you ever call me anymore?)
Liz Joynt Sandberg is the choreographer, with her Think/Dance Collective.
Anyway, I went through the music tonight to fix some of the parts that I thought weren't working. Then I listened to the whole thing, and while it's not done yet, per se, I'm pretty happy with it as something to listen to. So, here it is. Current version. Hot off the presses. Et cetera.
It's a big ol' 20-minute chunk of music, and I had some good co-writing in working on it with Schmüdde, whose name I can spell in HTML without really thinking that hard about it, and whose new film "Refuge" is really really almost done. (not this one.) And with Chaga, who's not on the internet. Also this includes some violin playing by film composer and lab tech extraordinaire Nate Sandberg (not this one), who's also Liz's baby daddy.
CLICK here if you're on Facebook and don't see the Flash player. Sorry about that.
10.07.2009 Circle of 5ths Clock: demo mode number two
The Circle-of-Fifths clock, in demo mode, playing the theme from "Jurassic Park". Because the clock only has 12 pitches, each note can play only in one octave. Which isn't necessarily the octave it is in the original melody. I'm basically just demonstrating MIDI control of this instrument... Can you hear the theme?
09.27.2009 8mm film project: First draft
Shot on Super 8mm in Bath, UK in January 2009 and edited using a computer process (Max/MSP/Jitter) that analyzes the song in realtime and makes editing decisions based on parameters of the music.
This is more or less Version 1.0. I made some important changes over the weekend that make sections develop over time instead of staying static, and it added a lot of life to the final product.
There are about a billion other things I want to do with this, and I'd love to hear any reactions or comments anyone has to this.
The song is Sorely Missed by the really super fantastic band The Cedar. Their album I'm Always Explaining to Mom How It's Different Here is available on iTunes but of course DRM stinks and you should get it from Amazon or best: a live show!
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09.21.2009 Circle of 5ths Clock: demo mode number one
The structure of the "Circle of 5ths" clock is complete, and all the resonators and strikers are working.
Some need to be tuned (too many F's and Ab's, no C-natural or D-natural) and I need to matrix the pitch requests since the strikers go in order from 1-12 (or 0-11 if you're a programmer or serialist) but the resonators won't fit into the structure in that order, low to high. So when the software outputs a C, the hardware needs to know if that's resonator 7 or 9 or 2 to hit.
My original conception of the striker/resonator pairs was that each striker would be freestanding next to or attached to its resonator, and that they could be arranged in multiple configurations based on the specifics of the space. This proved to be impractical for the first build of this invention, but I hope to make a follow-up, larger, more-planned-out incarnation that uses much larger metal resonators and solenoids to strike them. The current version works well in a home or living room; this larger idea would be more suitable for a museum or outdoor installation.
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09.16.2009 Epigenomics!
Via National DNA Day and Genome.gov, this article talks about the fascinating process by which our environment makes heritable but still mutable changes to the way our genetic material is expressed.
Basically, the DNA story we grew up with (Our genes are your genes. Half from Mom, half from Dad, end of story) isn't the whole picture. While our understanding of genetics wasn't wrong, the big thing that epigenomics adds to the picture is the shape of your DNA in space.
In order to fit into a cell, your genes have to be tightly curled up. At the small scale of DNA, the curling is done by special chemicals that form the DNA. Critically, though, genes that are loosely bound by these chemicals are expressed (or expressed more strongly) whereas tightly bound ones are turned off, suppressed, or expressed very weakly. It's through epigenomics that smoking and diet (and, I theorize, the mental states you carry and habits you set up for yourself, such as exercise or learning to ride your bike with no hands) can actually affect your predisposition to developing certain diseases.
This is a somewhat new-ish field, and it seems like it has loads of potential. Thanks to the folks at National DNA Day for keeping us informed!
Added: This excellent article also has some fascinating information about how our epigenome might be shaped by experience.
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09.12.2009 Michael Pollan in the NYT
"One of the leading products of the American food industry has become patients for the American health care industry." Michael Pollan writes in the NYT Sept 9.
I'm a big fan of this guy, I find him to be very clear and focused on a sometimes very complex issue, and also impresses me with his ability to remain nondogmatic while being at the same time very passionate.
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09.10.2009 Late-night soldering victories
Tonight I hope to conquer the second-to-last step (ha! hopefully) of the Circle-of-Fifths Clock I'm working to build. Over the last couple of days I've mounted the strikers onto the stands and wired them up. A few of the bigger strikers don't want to work if they're at too severe of an angle. Adjustments made.
One glass resonator down, so far. This beer glass survived so many moves and dishwashers and roommates:
On the upside, my martini shaker makes a cool ringing sound. So, I have four of my required 12 pitches accounted for. Hard drive platters ring at F's of varying flatness (I have an in-tune one), my stemless wine glasses are a nice G, and I have a small, cracked splash cymbal that rings a fairly clear B.
So, you wanna do me a favor? Go around gently hitting some things and checking what they sound like. I need six more to complete the project...
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09.02.2009 Critical Mass, August edition
Last Friday, I had a special international guest for Critical Mass. Always a great time when I can make it happen, Critical Mass is a (usually) slow, giant bike ride around the city, so named because when you get enough bikers on the road, they rule the cars instead of vice versa.
Riding, you get a lot of pedestrians asking "What are you riding for?" and probably not understanding the hastily shouted reply as you zip past. I'm hoping they manage to look it up eventually.
I'm fascinated each time, too, by the way the ride seems to bring out extremes in drivers' (and pedestrians'!) personalities. Some people are thrilled at the spectacle. Others are furious at being delayed. The ones I really can't identify with, though, are the ones I stereotype as "River North" types, who seem vaguely pissed that there's something going on that they don't understand, that doesn't fit into the standard boxes of consumerism. (It's a party! Everyone's invited, it doesn't cost anything, no one's in charge.)
There was a really nice, shy-seeming man giving out Oreos on the ride. I wish I'd talked to him more.
Oh, yeah, and the route ran into the scene of a double homicide. That part wasn't as fun. Police everywhere, confusion as we all re-routed, some somber blocks. Then, up MLK drive for a bit, and to the beach!
Then to Danny's, after, for some great chocolate stout and one of the Unibroue variants that I never remember the names of.
(*All images taken on the Android G1. The plate does a funny wobbly thing that sometimes gives the images a bit of a Van Gogh feel. Sometimes enjoyable, occasionally aggravating.)
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09.02.2009 Improvise with an African Fish
A while back I stopped by the ESS Garage Sale, where Experimental Sound Studio (a great place) lets circuit-bender types sell their circuit-bent creations. I got a magnetic contact mic for Emma, which came inside a blue tin with a color-changing LED in it.
I'll probably end up making some more of those.
And I played with loads of circuit-bent Casios, and generally wished I had more lifetimes in which to learn about all this stuff.
Toward the back of the studio, I saw this sign posted (image) which reminded me of a lot of the projects I've been working on lately. Totally wacky!
Contest: Best idea for using an electric fish's pulse for a piece... go!
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08.13.2009 Prototype striker
Built! Many improvements to be made this weekend, in my top-secret laboratory in an undisclosed location in SE Wisconsin.
Anybody have some large glass objects (vases, fishbowls) they want to lend/donate to this project? I'll need 12.
Well, 12 plus the number that I break...
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