Scientific music writing

I've just read the handful of music-related articles in the latest New Scientist, and I am in the middle of reading "Musicophilia" by Oliver Sacks. The New Scientist articles were trite and hollow, and Musicophilia is a nothing more than a tangle of anecdotes and footnotes. It seems that these scientific writers think that simply by using a lot of medical terms for parts of the brain they are somehow explaining anything about music.



My friend was telling me on Sunday about a CV he saw where the candidate had talked about his PhD in Music. Apparently his conclusion was the bland statement 'there is something innate about humans that makes them like music'. A somewhat feeble conclusion, but no less helpful than anything else that any other purported expert is yammering about.

Perhaps I am too hard on these people but frankly I'm frustrated that nobody is getting anywhere with any of this thinking.

Matt Ridley has done the best job so far . He talks about how singing or chanting unifies a crowd -- clearly a very powerful force in warfare, religion, politics, sports and any other competitive or social situation you could name. Game theory tells us that co-operation is a powerful thing so it would make sense that a 'glue' like music would emerge in a species. But is music always a social experience? It's hard to be sure in this young age of recorded music. In the past, music always required participation - you could watch somebody sing or play, or you could go to church and sing with the parish; you could sing on your own but that was always a smaller experience than joining a crowd.

In writing this short post I appear to have reached a conclusion. Music is a 'tribal glue'. Music binds individuals to make them part of a larger whole. I will happily leave it to neurologists (neurographists??) to figure out the details of the implementation - that's the boring part.

New MP3 Player

And here it is. It might break your browser and the pictures are a bit crappy in places (I'll sort that out in time.. possibly..)

Observe the Papervision 3D glory teaming up with some Ruby on Rails backend muscle all coming together to make something.. well.... okay... not too bad...

new mp3 player

I've been working all day on this new music player for my site. I'm drawing lots of little pictures for each track which is taking quite some time. But it should be pretty cute when it's finished!

Day 1

I'm up and dressed and been out to get a coffee and done some recording already and it's only just nine am. Treating my job as a artist the same way I'd treat any other job. "I think you'd do well to give half as much to yourself as you give to someone else".

Pictures of last gig

Here are some pictures my brother ('FOZ') took at my last gig. My other brother Beatmasta Bill was DJing. I think some of them are ace.

I have left!

Here's my leaving card from LBi - isn't it brilliant - especially the back :)




Today I am recovering from the obligatory binge drinking that accompanies leaving a job, and enjoying the fact I now have internet at home.

I may find time to do some programming but my head might be too fuzzy..

I have high hopes for the coming weeks, I have to say.

Addiction

Look at this bullshit non-journalism covering some bullshit non-research: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7253493.stm

"Some people are very anxious when they don't have their technological gadgets next to them.

"They might get into trouble with their employers as they spend more and more time checking messages."

Boo hoo.....

The word 'addiction' is totally inappropriate here, as it usually implies severe negative consequences to continued use. Compare these 'negative' consequences to those of, say, heroin addiction, and you'll see what I mean.

They don’t call ‘breathing’ an addiction do they. No, this communications technology It’s just another technological augmentation of the human body – it’s how humans work – how they move forward – do you call ‘getting a bus to work’ every day an ‘addiction’? No you don’t. So what’s the difference here? The difference is that things are accelerating. People are scared, and they’re wasting their lives doing meaningless research - “You would be surprised how many people had their PDA or Blackberry next to their bed heads.” No I wouldn’t! Have you seen kids? Have you seen a mobile phone?!

It makes me sick that we need to a fucking ‘warning’ now because some people might ‘wake up in the night’. The technology is not the problem here – it’s the information people are expecting – if it’s something important, why wouldn’t somebody want to know as soon as possible?

A friend of mine contests that "addiction occurs when you have an inability to stop something, even when you want to. " In response I would say "would you want to stop using a mobile phone?" Not really. Partly because loads of stuff would become really inconvenient, but also because everybody else has one and if you didn’t then you’d be socially disadvantaged. It’s the Red Queen. A fact of life. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_queen

Personally I'm pretty excited about the rate of technological change. Maybe I'm angry because so many other people are too scared to embrace it.

Lina!

Did I mention Halina's got her own Grimaceworks space? Go over to http://lina.grimaceworks.com and give her some comments.

AU update

My Audio Unit development exploits went on deep into the night yesterday. But that's how it goes when you're making progress with software development :)

I have managed to make a Cocoa UI work (although there are some vagaries of the event system that I am yet to get my head around - the examples are very inconsistent) and I've actually created the DSP for a passable 'turntable stop' effect - i.e. a progressive slowing down of the sound until it stops. I antialiased the waveform and everything! It's a bit clicky when the buffer loops and needs some work to abstract the effect code into a more dedicated class, and I need to practice up on my C++ a bit more (can I even make small private methods?! Does it even work that way?? Darn it if you can't!). I'm having lots of fun with it though. Even if I'm basically having to work out how to achieve audio effects by.. well - just thinking about how to do it.. because I still need a book, and I have no internet at home (Blackberry Browser notwithstanding) when I'm working :S

Programming plans

I have one more week at LBi. Then I will have time for my own projects.

My current project (that I spent all of yesterday with) is to learn how to program AU plugins for OSX. So I'm doing a LOT of learning. This is mainly because I can't use http://illformed.org/blog/glitch (the best plugin ever made ever by anyone) on the Mac. So I have to work out how to make it myself.

I'm not particularly experienced with audio DSP programming but I think I'll work it out. Just a bit of resampling from a stream and then making it last longer or less long. For..next etc... how hard can it be?? :)

Actually I still haven't managed to a get a Cocoa view working. I've run through a tutorial though - got that working. Refined my workflow too (tip: put killall AU\ Lab && open /Developer/Applications/Audio/AU\ Lab.app and make it restart the AU Lab utility with each build, with a project saved so your plugin comes straight back up). I have a vague idea of how I'll achieve the effects I want but the practice of parsing the buffer contents and transforming stuff that relies on temporal information is going to make my head hurt for a bit. But then I'll know how to make my own plugins!!

Papervision abuse

Just thought I should point you at mister Dave Wiles' lovely 3D Ken Dodd Matrix. While you're there listen to his various songs and then hassle him to start organising them into albums properly.

http://www.interxmedia.com/dewe/music/clowns7.php

Roland

Inciteful Roland criticism on CDM (http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/createdigitalmusic/~3/234592727/): "People love their 303, their 808, even their 909. Yet when these a whole generation of kids desperately wanted you to just re-release these things — or your Jupiter, or Juno, any of your other fantastic keyboards and sound toys of yesteryear — you’ve responded with souped-up, “modernized” versions that mainly share only the name."

Yes, they are a very silly company. Personally I think people get overly lustful over this stuff but yeah - would it really be so difficult just to make something the way you made it before? Give the kids their 909s!

Actually I think a lot of companies are guilty of gratuitously 'improving' their products and breaking them in the process. I suppose they don't realise that what they're achieving is not really the same thing as what they're striving for. A synth conceived as a substitute for a real instrument is never a substitute, and its value is in its idiosyncratic character. Manufacturers seem to forget this too easily.

Bah - I think I'm just spouting* clichés. I'll stop.

Keytar solo!

(NO.)

(*I replaced 'spitting out' with 'spouting'. Etymological relationship perhaps? :) )

Logic

I've got this recording of a Rinse FM grime session - one of the MCs goes 'I use Cubase 'cos I find Logic hard'. Damn straight - Logic's a nightmare. However, I think I'm being a bit optimistic with my hope of going into a studio and mastering everything with Ableton Live 7 (please shout if you know of anywhere that I could do this though!). So I'm gonna go and buy Logic 8 this week. And get to grips with it. I've used it a bit in the past but I don't find it very expressive - it's really fiddly. But Apple are improving the interface bit by bit so I think it should be pretty nice to use before too long. Wish me luck...

Music wants to be free?

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/04/the-inevitable-march-of-recorded-music-towards-free

I read the comments on this post over the Christmas holiday. I thought the most compelling point was made by Tim (#152) - "Maybe the musical stars of the future will earn average incomes in the future, and will live instead as musicians have throughout most of history - on the wonderful intangibles of prestige, sincere compliments, and free dinners."

A compelling, if rather grounding point. Superstar musicians are a very recent invention, and it makes sense that this phenomenon is temporary. With Clear Channel's channel monopoly being progressively eroded by the internet and bands being able to find specific niches in other ways, I can see things becoming a lot more sensible in the future.

Another interesting thread was people saying 'musicians won't make music if they won't get paid' and the various refutations of this idea. I gave up on making money from music a long time ago - I remember when I was trying to charge for the tapes I was making while I was at school that I should have been giving away to anybody who was interested.

I think there are two main reasons that it is still worth producing CDs. The first is to sell at gigs. These are more of a 'souvenir' than a medium through which to necessarily listen to the music. The second is for gifts (nobody brought this up on the linked thread). The only time I ever buy DVDs or CDs these days is at Christmas time when I want to give things to other people. An MP3 is no substitute for a CD in this context.

I'd like to think there's a market for 'premium' editions of recordings with fancy packaging (that's the way Hollywood is going with DVDs lately) but the only reason to have these is (again) for gift giving, and perhaps for those odd freaky collector types who want to revere their favourite artists by purchasing every single edition of everything they have ever released and have an awful lot of shelf-space to spare in their 'den'.

Ah yes- that's the other good thing about CDs - like books they're excellent for decorating your flat (or Facebook profile!) - people like to display their tastes, and while iTunes makes it easy to flick through a lot of stuff it's not really the same as scanning the spines of 6 shelves of CDs.

What else? I always thought vinyl would stick around for DJs, but it's so heavy! If I was DJing I don't think I could be arsed with the weight-lifting angle. I'd go digital. That said, I do seem to take an AWFUL lot of kit when I play live! But that's different.. that's live

I think I'll talk about royalties tomorrow.

Programming aside

Remind me to talk to you about 'bricklaying' code versus proper code some time. People don't appreciate the artistry involved in writing code. I literally get endorphins sometimes when I am making progress - it's fun. Really. And the output is completely objective - if your code doesn't work, it's obvious.

This channels me into talking about inner beauty automatically creating outer beauty. If something is beautifully constructed then it will work better. I believe this principle operates on everything from software to other forms of engineering to music to the attractiveness of a human.

A girl can look nice in the distance but if, when you start talking to her, she is not very bright, the attraction (for me, certainly) fades rapidly. If you do not have consistency or morals or intelligence or humour your face begins to look like a confusion of rubber and I need to go and talk to someone else.

(P.S. I'm loving posting to this blog via the livejournal robot! Finally - pith without having to wait for a browser...)

Switching gears

Thought I should mention that I quit my day job a few weeks ago to honour a 'contract' I made with myself to spend 6 months letting myself make music. I am hitting the ground running in every way I can think of. Didn't plan to quit the day job initially but it was inevitable really! This does mean that I am available to do freelance web development work if you need it, so do get in touch if you need anything. I finish work on the 22nd February. I have secured some initial investment so I plan to go straight into the studio to polish up the tracks I've been posting rough versions of here (http://mf.grimaceworks.com if you're reading this on my LiveJournal page!).

I need visuals. CD artwork, animations - everything. If you know anybody who might want to collaborate, please throw them at me.

My contact email is michael{dot}forrest{AT}gmail{dot}com

This optimistic outlook

Okay, so I've started harping on about how 'great' everything is these days. I've realised that there's a lot of detail to my thinking on this subject so I will now attempt to clarify.

"Things are better than they've ever been in the whole of history" I keep saying.

More of us live, and live longer than ever before. I like to think that the net wisdom of our species is raised as wisdom is allowed to develop and mature in an individual over an increasing number of decades.

However, we are still irresponsible with our approach to extending life. We need to be reminded about the importance of death.

Life needs death. The mechanism of evolution is death's continual weeding process. Creativity requires death. Perhaps I am blasé about dealing with death because of my own experiences - perhaps this is a difficult idea for most people to accept.

I would like to live forever, I'll admit this. Not as a vegetable in a jar, but continually retaining all the strength of my prime years. (I should mention that I have no doubts about science being able to sooner or later accomplish this goal - no law of physics prohibits this.) Could is my inability to casually accept my own death hypocritical? I am not sure. Perhaps the immortal lives through more localised change. He lets parts of himself die as new parts are created. We are fixated on the clumsy type of death required by DNA's replication process, but death can be a far subtler process than the death of a body through decapitation or decay.

Anyway - that's a little part of my view on the first metric I have chosen by which to measure the success of our species. More to come...