http://www.pitchformula.com/
An interesting project in which pop music and critical reviews of said music were processed by a computer formula in an attempt to create resultant music that was in "good" critical taste. Interesting results(mp3s provided), but it doesn't look like the rise of the machines is here quite yet.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Assist Tech
Seeing the video demonstrating Soundbeam and reading about the effects this and other musical experiences have had on children, I found myself asking a question: what is it about music that makes it such a powerful experience even for those who, because of their circumstances, have usual difficulty experiencing or being involved in creating music? And why do certain types of music seem more influential in this regard?
Anyone with hearing can choose to experience 4:33 without aid. Anyone capable of movement can probably create percussive effects and hear and/or feel vibrations, thus creating music. Almost everyone should be capable of perceiving the sounds of their environment and creating and organizing some sort of sound of their own creation(and if they are not, Soundbeam won't do a whole lot to help them): thus music.
Still, it seems these experiences are either less powerful or at least less ballyhooed than having small children listen to Mozart or Soundbeam. Is there some aspect of the way in which Mozart and Bach are organized that resonates with the human mind? Does cultural indoctrination through the music we hear in our early lives make music that fits our organizational sensibilities more influential to us?
These questions are important when thinking about something like Soundbeam. Sure, it's cool, but it may not really be necessary. If someone can understand, on any level, the concept of organizing sound, then there is basically no way they can fail to create and experience music if they so choose and are guided, even with extreme limitations. If they cannot, then Soundbeam is just a really fancy toy that makes interesting noises.
Unfortunately, Soundbeam may not be available or a budget option for some educational settings. I think in this case, it is the task of the educator to find a way to involve students in music regardless. Taking away Josh Smith's flute does not cause him to stop being a musician. Soundbeam is just one instrument, and really, anything that can create sound and vibrations is an instrument. That's a lot of possibilities.
Anyone with hearing can choose to experience 4:33 without aid. Anyone capable of movement can probably create percussive effects and hear and/or feel vibrations, thus creating music. Almost everyone should be capable of perceiving the sounds of their environment and creating and organizing some sort of sound of their own creation(and if they are not, Soundbeam won't do a whole lot to help them): thus music.
Still, it seems these experiences are either less powerful or at least less ballyhooed than having small children listen to Mozart or Soundbeam. Is there some aspect of the way in which Mozart and Bach are organized that resonates with the human mind? Does cultural indoctrination through the music we hear in our early lives make music that fits our organizational sensibilities more influential to us?
These questions are important when thinking about something like Soundbeam. Sure, it's cool, but it may not really be necessary. If someone can understand, on any level, the concept of organizing sound, then there is basically no way they can fail to create and experience music if they so choose and are guided, even with extreme limitations. If they cannot, then Soundbeam is just a really fancy toy that makes interesting noises.
Unfortunately, Soundbeam may not be available or a budget option for some educational settings. I think in this case, it is the task of the educator to find a way to involve students in music regardless. Taking away Josh Smith's flute does not cause him to stop being a musician. Soundbeam is just one instrument, and really, anything that can create sound and vibrations is an instrument. That's a lot of possibilities.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Digital Photographs
Digital photography is a massively huge development that we now tend to take for granted. As someone who went to a tiny cash strapped elementary school and experienced some of the old technology and alternatives, I can say that digital photos make education much easier and more flexible. Traditional photos are fragile, easily misplaced, and only editable by physically altering them. Digital photos make it easy to take all or part of a photograph or digital graphic and quickly clip and edit it for a specific use. In music history these days, every lesson is accompanied by pictures of people, buildings, the artwork and architecture of the times, and so forth. It really adds to the lesson, especially comparing music with the art and architecture of the period.
While instrumental music has often tended towards just rehearsing and performance, images certainly have application. We spend all this time talking about visual analogies, but would it not be effective for visual learners especially to show images? Impressionist art and impressionist music, for example, compliment each other nicely in terms of teaching style.
Of course, one has to watch out for copyright, but digital images are easily accessible, customizable, and usable in the classroom.
While instrumental music has often tended towards just rehearsing and performance, images certainly have application. We spend all this time talking about visual analogies, but would it not be effective for visual learners especially to show images? Impressionist art and impressionist music, for example, compliment each other nicely in terms of teaching style.
Of course, one has to watch out for copyright, but digital images are easily accessible, customizable, and usable in the classroom.
PLN Addition - Jeffrey Quick's Blog
http://blog.case.edu/jeffrey.quick/
Our own music librarian and Cleveland Composers' Guild member Jeffrey Quick keeps a blog that features postings of performances and recordings of his own music, as well as witty and insightful analysis of the music of others. Those familiar with Mr. Quick will recognize his distinct wit and humor in the writing.
Our own music librarian and Cleveland Composers' Guild member Jeffrey Quick keeps a blog that features postings of performances and recordings of his own music, as well as witty and insightful analysis of the music of others. Those familiar with Mr. Quick will recognize his distinct wit and humor in the writing.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
PLN Addition - Recorder Resources
http://diteggiature-flauto-dolce.it/en/index.php
A massive index of fingerings and techniques for one of the most common general music instrument: the recorder. However, the recorder is more than just a headache inducing piece of plastic played by 3rd graders: the site includes historical resources, fingerings and alternate fingersing for different regions, makers, and time periods. Form a consort and have your students use recorders the way they were used back in their glory days! After it, it can't be worse than playing Hot Cross Buns for the hundredth time.
A massive index of fingerings and techniques for one of the most common general music instrument: the recorder. However, the recorder is more than just a headache inducing piece of plastic played by 3rd graders: the site includes historical resources, fingerings and alternate fingersing for different regions, makers, and time periods. Form a consort and have your students use recorders the way they were used back in their glory days! After it, it can't be worse than playing Hot Cross Buns for the hundredth time.
Digital Natives
Prensky's article on digital natives has a lot of very good points. Younger people and many students today are digital natives in the sense that they are willing to pick up new technology and learn it quickly through use and trial and error. I know I function in this manner when learning to use new programs.
Even during the Sibelius unit of music tech class, I experienced some of the frustrations that Prensky notes. The detailed and laborious step by step instructions provided by the textbook took a long time to read, were slow, and were overly thorough. The program is designed to be as intuitive as possible, and so for me, the best way to learn was simply by looking at the desired products on the first page of each chapter and replicating them as exactly as possible using what I could immediately understand about the program from looking at the interface. For the things that I couldn't immediately figure out, the necessary resource was not a step by step guide but rather a searchable index. In this case, it was the index of the textbook, though a digital index would have been better due to ease of searching. Thinking about it, I learned programming for my Java class in basically the same way: starting with a goal and whatever understanding I already had and adding to it in small pieces from an index as needed, not going through commands in a systematic step by step order.
Prensky also makes another good point: educators often make a grand show of using the latest and greatest technology to simply teach the same material in the same traditional manner, while they neglect small and simple things that would aid digital natives. For math, posting linked examples, homework sets, and theorems online would be a huge boon. It would allow students to sift through a network and quickly find and focus on the exact material they need instead of wasting time and energy slogging through a traditional systematic textbook.
I'm not sure that I agree with Prensky though that all the burden of change is on digital immigrants. There are many old ideas and works presented in traditional manners that still have value. In history and classic literature, one is dealing with old source material, and no matter what supplementary materials are used, one can't understand a book without reading it or history without examining the documents and artifacts. The same goes for Prensky's idea of creating a game about classical philosophy. It's all well and good, but at some point, the students have to read the words of the philosophers themselves, who generally present their ideas in a traditional manner.
The new ideas are worth embracing, but many old ideas will continue to have value(even Euclidean Geometry, that one was a real head scratcher) and shouldn't simply be thrown away because they don't immediate conform to the sensibilities of digital natives.
Even during the Sibelius unit of music tech class, I experienced some of the frustrations that Prensky notes. The detailed and laborious step by step instructions provided by the textbook took a long time to read, were slow, and were overly thorough. The program is designed to be as intuitive as possible, and so for me, the best way to learn was simply by looking at the desired products on the first page of each chapter and replicating them as exactly as possible using what I could immediately understand about the program from looking at the interface. For the things that I couldn't immediately figure out, the necessary resource was not a step by step guide but rather a searchable index. In this case, it was the index of the textbook, though a digital index would have been better due to ease of searching. Thinking about it, I learned programming for my Java class in basically the same way: starting with a goal and whatever understanding I already had and adding to it in small pieces from an index as needed, not going through commands in a systematic step by step order.
Prensky also makes another good point: educators often make a grand show of using the latest and greatest technology to simply teach the same material in the same traditional manner, while they neglect small and simple things that would aid digital natives. For math, posting linked examples, homework sets, and theorems online would be a huge boon. It would allow students to sift through a network and quickly find and focus on the exact material they need instead of wasting time and energy slogging through a traditional systematic textbook.
I'm not sure that I agree with Prensky though that all the burden of change is on digital immigrants. There are many old ideas and works presented in traditional manners that still have value. In history and classic literature, one is dealing with old source material, and no matter what supplementary materials are used, one can't understand a book without reading it or history without examining the documents and artifacts. The same goes for Prensky's idea of creating a game about classical philosophy. It's all well and good, but at some point, the students have to read the words of the philosophers themselves, who generally present their ideas in a traditional manner.
The new ideas are worth embracing, but many old ideas will continue to have value(even Euclidean Geometry, that one was a real head scratcher) and shouldn't simply be thrown away because they don't immediate conform to the sensibilities of digital natives.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Readings - Multimedia and Audio Compression
A lot of this stuff was already familiar to me. Pictures, oddly enough, were something that I studied in the context of binary in math and computer programming. Sound files likewise I had previously learned about when I had had to make recordings for various auditions. The section on text had some interesting an useful tidbits, especially for making things line up, an annoying problem that makes many websites look stupid and unprofessional.
However, the article on sound suffered from one of the usual problems: it sounded quite outdated. Broadband connections are pretty much standard today, which is why YouTube is so popular. Audio files are almost a nonissue now, in a day when anyone can host videos for free on the internet with someone else picking up the bandwidth. Admittedly, YouTube has problems with profitability, but I personally don't see it going away. The same goes for audio. All sorts of people host all sorts of stuff on myspace, social networking sites, their personal sites.
MP3 compression has actually been going the opposite direction recently. Apple recently rolled out new higher quality MP3 download options for iTunes because even with the higher bitrate, connections are so fast that the downloads don't take long at all. BitTorrent as well has made sharing files on networks easier, though this is not applicable for personal websites. MIDI is still useful because it is a set of instructions and such for notation purposes, but size of files is less and less of an issue. Hulu even streams entire episodes of TV shows, and sunday night football can be watched via a live stream.
Anyways, the point is that while understanding audio is useful, compression will continue to become less and less important as computers and networks get faster and faster.
However, the article on sound suffered from one of the usual problems: it sounded quite outdated. Broadband connections are pretty much standard today, which is why YouTube is so popular. Audio files are almost a nonissue now, in a day when anyone can host videos for free on the internet with someone else picking up the bandwidth. Admittedly, YouTube has problems with profitability, but I personally don't see it going away. The same goes for audio. All sorts of people host all sorts of stuff on myspace, social networking sites, their personal sites.
MP3 compression has actually been going the opposite direction recently. Apple recently rolled out new higher quality MP3 download options for iTunes because even with the higher bitrate, connections are so fast that the downloads don't take long at all. BitTorrent as well has made sharing files on networks easier, though this is not applicable for personal websites. MIDI is still useful because it is a set of instructions and such for notation purposes, but size of files is less and less of an issue. Hulu even streams entire episodes of TV shows, and sunday night football can be watched via a live stream.
Anyways, the point is that while understanding audio is useful, compression will continue to become less and less important as computers and networks get faster and faster.
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