Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 12:00 AM, Graham Percival gra...@percival-music.ca wrote: Yes, there's a short one on the main Vivi page: http://percival-music.ca/vivi.html Erm, I'm pretty sure you don't care about video encoding but if you ever do, please note that using video HTML tags with WebM compression is pretty awesome. and a longer one on the conference webpage: http://percival-music.ca/smc2011.html Your website looks strangely familiar (in spite of some questionable color choices ;) BTW, you're missing a ../ in the toc-Teaching-1 element of your blog's #tocframe. It produces a dead link: http://percival-music.ca/blog/teaching.html Cheers, V. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On Fri, Apr 08, 2011 at 11:46:34AM +0200, Valentin Villenave wrote: On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 12:00 AM, Graham Percival gra...@percival-music.ca wrote: Yes, there's a short one on the main Vivi page: http://percival-music.ca/vivi.html Erm, I'm pretty sure you don't care about video encoding but if you ever do, please note that using video HTML tags with WebM compression is pretty awesome. I'll consider it when my mother can view videos that way. and a longer one on the conference webpage: http://percival-music.ca/smc2011.html Your website looks strangely familiar (in spite of some questionable color choices ;) Yes, I have a file called lilypond-texi2html.init in my personal git repository. I just changed it enough to produce the website. You can see the texi2html marks in the html source. BTW, you're missing a ../ in the toc-Teaching-1 element of your blog's #tocframe. It produces a dead link: Thanks, fixed. Cheers, - Graham ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 02:58:39AM -0300, Pato Press wrote: And, if you want to, I have a not so good violin made in Blender, nearly with all it's pieces. I have never completely finish it. In case anybody is wondering about this, the blender model is absolutely awesome, and it's now part of Artifastring. You can get it here: https://github.com/gperciva/artifastring Artifastring (artificial fast string) produces a not-very-good .wav file and an visually amazing .mpeg or .avi file, based on a series of physical actions stored in an .actions file. I've just submitted a patch to extract music events from from lilypond -- the goal[1] is to produce sound and video from a .ly file automatically. [1] well, I already have this goal working... so rather, I should say that the goal is to make this work on other people's computers, and to make the code meet lilypond's standards. If you check out Artifastring right now, treat it more like a technology preview -- you can't easily produce anything other than the unit test video. The other bits and pieces will be coming over the next week or two. Cheers, - Graham ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
How do I get the video? I just got a wave file from ../build/src/actions2wav unit.actions Nils On Thu, 7 Apr 2011 11:07:28 +0100 Graham Percival gra...@percival-music.ca wrote: On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 02:58:39AM -0300, Pato Press wrote: And, if you want to, I have a not so good violin made in Blender, nearly with all it's pieces. I have never completely finish it. In case anybody is wondering about this, the blender model is absolutely awesome, and it's now part of Artifastring. You can get it here: https://github.com/gperciva/artifastring Artifastring (artificial fast string) produces a not-very-good .wav file and an visually amazing .mpeg or .avi file, based on a series of physical actions stored in an .actions file. I've just submitted a patch to extract music events from from lilypond -- the goal[1] is to produce sound and video from a .ly file automatically. [1] well, I already have this goal working... so rather, I should say that the goal is to make this work on other people's computers, and to make the code meet lilypond's standards. If you check out Artifastring right now, treat it more like a technology preview -- you can't easily produce anything other than the unit test video. The other bits and pieces will be coming over the next week or two. Cheers, - Graham ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Hi Nils 2011/4/7 Nils Hammerfest n...@hammerfeste.com How do I get the video? I just got a wave file from ../build/src/actions2wav unit.actions Nils Just cd blender make test # first do the test. These should give you 3 violin bow img in the /tmp/vivi-movie/ that you could verify with your prefer soft. make mpeg # rest a couple of minutes. While it renders the movie and there you'll have a ./unit.mpeg It should work fine. You need blender in your system. Or at your home/ or any other. If its the last, you should edit the blender/Makefile and follow the instructions of the first paragraph. And you should have mencoder too. Luck! Marcos. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Hi Marcos (etc.) Just cd blender make test # first do the test. These should give you 3 violin bow img in the /tmp/vivi-movie/ that you could verify with your prefer soft. make mpeg # rest a couple of minutes. While it renders the movie and there you'll have a ./unit.mpeg Any preview movies that can be put up anywhere? Christ van Willegen ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
2011/4/7 Christ van Willegen cvwille...@gmail.com: Hi Marcos (etc.) Just cd blender make test # first do the test. These should give you 3 violin bow img in the /tmp/vivi-movie/ that you could verify with your prefer soft. make mpeg # rest a couple of minutes. While it renders the movie and there you'll have a ./unit.mpeg Any preview movies that can be put up anywhere? I will appreciate them too :) cheers, Janek ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On Thu, Apr 07, 2011 at 11:16:10PM +0200, Christ van Willegen wrote: Any preview movies that can be put up anywhere? Yes, there's a short one on the main Vivi page: http://percival-music.ca/vivi.html and a longer one on the conference webpage: http://percival-music.ca/smc2011.html I still need to write a better black-box testing composition; the current piece demonstrates all technical aspects and is vaguely musical, but it's not very inspiring. Cheers, - Graham ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Marc Mouries m...@mouries.net writes: On 3/25/2011 5:17 PM, Kieren MacMillan wrote: David, Again: staring into the sun is not overstimulation since it is not overloading the sensors with content but rather blocking them. Looking into the sun can't be characterized as I am seeing too much. There's clearly a semantic misunderstanding here, and it doesn't look like it's clearing up. Regardless of the word used -- or who's using it backwards -- the point is that kids today are apparently less sensitive to stimulus than they used to be. Kieren. Of course. We are overstimulated so it becomes the norm. Then to get stimulated the level of stimulation has to be raised. That is sort of mixing up medium and content. People crank up the medium because there is no content. That drowns out the sensors but does not deliver actual stimulus. Just think about a subject like nudity where the level of stimulation raised from seeing an ankle to a knee, ... or a neck, and shorten the length of skirts over time ;-) We are talking about a nude beach here. Nudity is merely the backdrop, not something which you let shine through in various degrees. -- David Kastrup ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On Friday 18 Mar 2011 08:14:48 Dmytro O. Redchuk wrote: Let's say, i love J. S. Bach very much (well, let's say), as much as my father and grandfather (etc). So, can i really be sure that i understand his music as good as my grandfather?.. I mean that every Beethoven's symphony contains a piece of information -- can i be sure that i can recognize it as good as my grandfather? Yes, i know this can not be measured at all. I'm not sure you can't measure that. You should see what MRI scanners can measure these days. Get yourself scanned now, then perhaps your great grandchildren really will be able to see if they respond in the same way (using the same mechanisms) as you. On Friday 18 Mar 2011 13:15:56 James Lowe wrote: Hello, ... When you are a 'grandfather' you will know the answer because the 'good' stuff of today will still be around or known and the 'bad' stuff will not (or rather it will be 'somewhere' but everyone will have forgotten about it). I am sure there are some exceptions but they won't be the rule, and of course things like distribution 'back in your grandfather's day' would have made some differences, but this frankly is not a consideration in our linked world today. We are exposed to more good and bad stuff than ever before. Hmmm, I'm not sure. The point you make about distribution may be the more significant. You might find there are petabyte disks in your watch with the whole of human culture on them, or else your phone will be quantum-entangled with the whole of the web giving instant access to absolutely everything :) The real problem will be categorising it. Two ways: what do people who listen to the stuff I like also listen to; and (this is another reason why work like Graham's is important) What is there that is played in the same manner as the the stuff I like. The second, I believe, is beyond the state of the art, because we don't know what in the same manner means. On Friday 18 Mar 2011 11:15:02 Kieren MacMillan wrote: Graham, ... I *do* think so -- and recent studies on youth support my belief with evidence. On the music side, consider the fact that recent studies have shown a majority of young people prefer the sound of compressed audio (e.g., low- to medium-bitrate MP3s) to uncompressed audio. [Pause here to fully appreciate the horror of that statement.] Independent of the content of the music itself -- the debate about which is far more subjective -- many listeners can no longer appreciate what music is physically supposed to sound like. Let's not confuse music with audio or sound. Everybody's hijacking the word Music these days. Music Industry (record industry), Music player (audio player). Music is a process and we make music. How do we make it? Let's experiment... reaches for source code A lower barrier of entry by definition allows people to get into the field with less experience, less training, less discipline, less persistence, and so on. Are there some benefits to this? Sure. Does it increase the amount of crap we have to wade through. Absolutely. I have yet to see any field -- athletics, art, construction, law, comedy, whatever -- where a lower barrier of entry doesn't increase the amount of crap. And, unfortunately, I also see in the audience for that field a concomitant decrease in discriminatory powers. True, I'm sure, but more disturbing is that hardly anybody (in the UK at least) benefits from a general musical education in the state sector. You have to buy your lessons privately pretty much everywhere. What goes on in schools is music appreciation or, worse, free improvisation (except that it's not, except in the literal sense). Lowering the barrier to making music might be a good thing. It's very different from lowering the barrier to people imposing their compositions on you in the local lift/supermarket/train etc etc. Perhaps exposing people to the process of making music might be a good defence against waning discrimination? Thank you, everybody, for a great thread! Nick/. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Dmytro O. Redchuk brownian@gmail.com writes: On Thu 17 Mar 2011, 18:08 Kieren MacMillan wrote: Unfortunately, lower barrier of entry almost always means more crap to sift through. The more crap -- the lower criteria barrier for what is `crap'?. The more crap will become normal and even good thing. Since the sieving is done in a distributed manner with manpower proportional to the manpower producing the crap, even mostly linear sieving will achieve letting the crap fall through. Ask Darwin. Let's say, i *love* J. S. Bach very much (well, let's say), as much as my father and grandfather (etc). So, can i really be sure that i understand his music as good as my grandfather?.. There is little to understand, like there is little to understand about why it hurts if you break your arm. The important thing is that it does, and the hurt is yours. Not your grandfather's. You can sympathize with your grandfather, but comparing the qualities and substance of your response seems a bit far-stretched. -- David Kastrup ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Hi David, You can sympathize with your grandfather, but comparing the qualities and substance of your response seems a bit far-stretched. Not at all, I think… and very useful. Oliver Sacks, for one example, measures and reports on [extreme] sensory perceptive (dis)abilities -- and books like Musicophilia make for a very interesting read. it would be *very* informative to have a [very] long-term study of average perceptive functioning. Based on my intuition and experience (i.e., anecdotal at best, and fatally biased at worst), I predict such a study would prove a general dulling of the human perceptive senses -- hence the ever-accelerating need to overstimulate each successive generation. Cheers, Kieren. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Kieren MacMillan kieren_macmil...@sympatico.ca writes: Hi David, You can sympathize with your grandfather, but comparing the qualities and substance of your response seems a bit far-stretched. Not at all, I think… and very useful. Obviously I disagree. Oliver Sacks, for one example, measures and reports on [extreme] sensory perceptive (dis)abilities -- and books like Musicophilia make for a very interesting read. it would be *very* informative to have a [very] long-term study of average perceptive functioning. Based on my intuition and experience (i.e., anecdotal at best, and fatally biased at worst), I predict such a study would prove a general dulling of the human perceptive senses -- hence the ever-accelerating need to overstimulate each successive generation. I can't claim that popular music appears to me as exhibiting much of a trend to overstimulate harmonic receptors. Even in the rare case of four-part harmony (Beach Boys et al), they are mostly confined to basically homophonic chord progressions rather than complex polyphony. The trend seems more in the direction of understimulation to me. Not necessarily the worst thing considering the trend to have background music playing everywhere. Bach distracts from food and driving. -- David Kastrup ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
RE: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Hello )-Original Message- )From: lilypond-user-bounces+james.lowe=datacore@gnu.org )[mailto:lilypond-user-bounces+james.lowe=datacore@gnu.org] On )Behalf Of David Kastrup )Sent: 25 March 2011 16:31 )To: lilypond-user@gnu.org )Subject: Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music ) )Kieren MacMillan kieren_macmil...@sympatico.ca writes: ) Oliver Sacks, for one example, measures and reports on [extreme] ) sensory perceptive (dis)abilities -- and books like Musicophilia ) make for a very interesting read. it would be *very* informative to ) have a [very] long-term study of average perceptive functioning. ) Based on my intuition and experience (i.e., anecdotal at best, and ) fatally biased at worst), I predict such a study would prove a general ) dulling of the human perceptive senses -- hence the ever-accelerating ) need to overstimulate each successive generation. ) )I can't claim that popular music appears to me as exhibiting much of a )trend to overstimulate harmonic receptors. Even in the rare case of four- )part harmony (Beach Boys et al), they are mostly confined to basically )homophonic chord progressions rather than complex polyphony. ) )The trend seems more in the direction of understimulation to me. Not )necessarily the worst thing considering the trend to have background )music playing everywhere. Bach distracts from food and driving. ) That's funny because most 'classical' music period (esp. Mozart) drives me to distraction! James ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Hi David, Not at all, I think… and very useful. Obviously I disagree. Obviously. =) The trend seems more in the direction of understimulation to me. Obviously, I disagree. =) Twenty (never mind fifty) years ago, we [apparently] didn't need: subwoofers at +10dB, and over-emphasized bass+drum hits, in order to feel the music; a visual cut every 4-5 seconds in a movie in order to stay focussed on the film; high levels of compression and limiting in order to feel like an audio recording was full; etc. etc. etc. These -- and other similar trends -- are a clear rebuke to your understimulation hypothesis. Of course, if you were referring to *mental* stimulation (i.e., higher than the limbic brain), I agree with you 100%. But I'm talking about sensory stimulation -- and the trend is clearly towards overstimulation. Cheers, Kieren. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Kieren MacMillan kieren_macmil...@sympatico.ca writes: Hi David, Not at all, I think… and very useful. Obviously I disagree. Obviously. =) The trend seems more in the direction of understimulation to me. Obviously, I disagree. =) Twenty (never mind fifty) years ago, we [apparently] didn't need: subwoofers at +10dB, and over-emphasized bass+drum hits, in order to feel the music; a visual cut every 4-5 seconds in a movie in order to stay focussed on the film; high levels of compression and limiting in order to feel like an audio recording was full; etc. etc. etc. Well, doesn't that speak towards understimulation to you? If you need to turn up the light, it is more a sign of too little than too much to see. Of course, if you were referring to *mental* stimulation (i.e., higher than the limbic brain), I agree with you 100%. But I'm talking about sensory stimulation -- and the trend is clearly towards overstimulation. Background is not stimulation. It is not taken into account by perception much. -- David Kastrup ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Hi David, Well, doesn't that speak towards understimulation to you? Absolutely not: relative to past generations, today's youth apparently need to be overstimulated (*not* understimulated) in order to feel the same amount. In other words, more sensory stimulation needs to be present for them = overstimulation. Kieren. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Am Freitag, 25. März 2011, um 19:03:20 schrieb David Kastrup: Kieren MacMillan kieren_macmil...@sympatico.ca writes: Twenty (never mind fifty) years ago, we [apparently] didn't need: subwoofers at +10dB, and over-emphasized bass+drum hits, in order to feel the music; a visual cut every 4-5 seconds in a movie in order to stay focussed on the film; high levels of compression and limiting in order to feel like an audio recording was full; etc. etc. etc. Well, doesn't that speak towards understimulation to you? If you need to turn up the light, it is more a sign of too little than too much to see. Or it simply means that you have stared into the sun / spotlight a bit too long, so now everything appears dark to you, no matter how bright it actually is... Cheers, Reinhold -- -- Reinhold Kainhofer, reinh...@kainhofer.com, http://reinhold.kainhofer.com/ * Financial Actuarial Math., Vienna Univ. of Technology, Austria * http://www.fam.tuwien.ac.at/, DVR: 0005886 * LilyPond, Music typesetting, http://www.lilypond.org ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Hi Reinhold, Or it simply means that you have stared into the sun / spotlight a bit too long, so now everything appears dark to you, no matter how bright it actually is... +1 I'm glad *someone* gets me. ;) Kieren. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Reinhold Kainhofer reinh...@kainhofer.com writes: Am Freitag, 25. März 2011, um 19:03:20 schrieb David Kastrup: Kieren MacMillan kieren_macmil...@sympatico.ca writes: Twenty (never mind fifty) years ago, we [apparently] didn't need: subwoofers at +10dB, and over-emphasized bass+drum hits, in order to feel the music; a visual cut every 4-5 seconds in a movie in order to stay focussed on the film; high levels of compression and limiting in order to feel like an audio recording was full; etc. etc. etc. Well, doesn't that speak towards understimulation to you? If you need to turn up the light, it is more a sign of too little than too much to see. Or it simply means that you have stared into the sun / spotlight a bit too long, so now everything appears dark to you, no matter how bright it actually is... Again: staring into the sun is not overstimulation since it is not overloading the sensors with content but rather blocking them. Looking into the sun can't be characterized as I am seeing too much. -- David Kastrup ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
David, Again: staring into the sun is not overstimulation since it is not overloading the sensors with content but rather blocking them. Looking into the sun can't be characterized as I am seeing too much. There's clearly a semantic misunderstanding here, and it doesn't look like it's clearing up. Regardless of the word used -- or who's using it backwards -- the point is that kids today are apparently less sensitive to stimulus than they used to be. Kieren. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On 3/25/2011 5:17 PM, Kieren MacMillan wrote: David, Again: staring into the sun is not overstimulation since it is not overloading the sensors with content but rather blocking them. Looking into the sun can't be characterized as I am seeing too much. There's clearly a semantic misunderstanding here, and it doesn't look like it's clearing up. Regardless of the word used -- or who's using it backwards -- the point is that kids today are apparently less sensitive to stimulus than they used to be. Kieren. Of course. We are overstimulated so it becomes the norm. Then to get stimulated the level of stimulation has to be raised. Just think about a subject like nudity where the level of stimulation raised from seeing an ankle to a knee, ... or a neck, and shorten the length of skirts over time ;-) To come back to music, there is ton of crap music (rich internet sensation?) and Lilypond can help compose and interpret great music. I hope we can all agree on that one ;-) -Marc ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 02:58:39AM -0300, Pato Press wrote: And, if you want to, I have a not so good violin made in Blender, nearly with all it's pieces. I have never completely finish it. I make it just to start learning how to use Blender. but if you want it, I can sent it to you. Obviously absolutely for free :) Wow, that would be awesome! Are you willing to officially place it under GPLv3? It would be totally fantastic to render movies with something more than 4 cylinders + a rectangular prism + 1 moving cylinder. (that's my level of Blender skill :) Do you have a bow model as well? The paper deadline was extended by one week (it was going to be today), so I now have a chance to re-render the movies and include a nice-looking screenshot (with credit to your work on the model, of course!). Cheers, - Graham ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
I've seen these threat when it was just an 8 mails threat!!! It grows BIG JAJAA!! Indeed. This thread becomes a threat because it's so big... Werner ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On Wed 23 Mar 2011, 01:57 Graham Percival wrote: If you look at an opera from a certain time period and certain country, the bass singer is always the bad guy, the tenor is always the good guy, the soprano is always the love interest, etc. Ha-ha :-) Pop music (and thus a lot of Vocaloid stuff) gets a bad rap for using the I IV V I chord progression a lot, but I don't see that amount of predictability to be any worse than classical music's predictability of beat strength in 4/4 time (strong-weak-medium-weak). Well, yes, i see: 1342 is not too bad; but really creative engine should fire it's pistons in unpredictive sequence ! Sorry, i was too boring; thank you .) ps. refrain: and sorry for my english! -- at least to fire pistons looks ugly for me, but i don't know how this should be said. pps. well... once more :O) Clown Would you have a love-song, or a song of good life? SIR TOBY BELCH A love-song, a love-song. SIR ANDREW Ay, ay: I care not for good life. -- Dmytro O. Redchuk Bug Squad ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Graham Percival gra...@percival-music.ca writes: Pop music (and thus a lot of Vocaloid stuff) gets a bad rap for using the I IV V I chord progression a lot, but I don't see that amount of predictability to be any worse than classical music's predictability of beat strength in 4/4 time (strong-weak-medium-weak). You mean, halfwit performers' predictability. Things like hemioles, stretto, syncopation, augmentation and a lot of other elements you'll find in classic composition don't work with hard-wired beat predictability. In fact, Renaissance music is hampered so much by predictability in beat strength that one usually does not place bars in the systems, one reason being that one can omit the use of ties across bars which distort note coherency. Modern notation uses ties pretty much for every note crossing a minuscule beat. I'll not be surprised all too much when I start seeing c4 c4~ c4 c4 instead of c4 c2 c4. It's for the sake of polished-white-teeth-smile-snarling mothers accompanying their violin playing kids with a robust, dependable, supportive accompaniment that renders music school presentations even less enj... Uhm. You get my drift. Be glad if you don't. Check out something like Dowland's White as Lilies was her face. If all four voices try adhering to beat strength, you get a rigid mess instead of the playful interchange composed into it. -- David Kastrup ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 01:03:55PM +0200, Dmytro O. Redchuk wrote: On Sun 20 Mar 2011, 18:27 Graham Percival wrote: On an objective level, it's allowed many people to create music. On a subjective level, listening (and watching) Vocaloid music has brought me more pleasure than *any* academic music composition We can not control others and their creativity; we even can not be sure that our creativity will make others to be more creative. What's bad with American Idol, by the way?-) As I understand it, american idol is a show where people sing pop songs? For the people participating -- nothing. I mean, it might be nice if people wrote their own music, but american idol is certainly no worse than a concert of Mozart music in that respect. For the people merely watching -- they're only passively consuming the show; they're not creating anything. So I'm not impressed. Of course, that applies to my interaction with Vocaloid. I haven't created any vocaloid music myself. I played with utau for long enough to get it working a bit iffily under wine, but that's it. The UI was flakey enough (within wine) that I wanted to get a lilypond-utau script working, but then I stopped working on that so I could get Vivi up to the current milestone. Mmm... Can we measure the creativity factor we give to other people by our creativity?.. Well, in that respect, I suppose that we could evaluate American Idol in terms of (maybe?) inspiring people to sing or perform more music? Yes, i am rather pessimistic about Vocaloid's creativity factor, regardless of how many people will be able to produce music with these technologies. Well, Vocaloid is highly influential for me changing my phd from computer-assisted music education to... well... Vivi. ppps. :-) Just imagined a picture: somewhere in the future a teacher gave a task to produce some music. All kids made good pieces using vocaloidal-boxes in 5-15 minutes; but one, who killed me with her creativity, spent an hour to type in lilypond what she produced breathing in panpipe, crazy and crappy pitches .) That scene isn't anything new; there's already software like band in a box which can automatically fill in patterns. (chord patterns, drum patterns, etc) The art of making music with such software is a question of which patterns go together (for the background layers), and then making up a melody to go with it. *shrug* Some forms of music frown on repetitive / predicatable patterns. Other forms don't mind it. I mean, if you look at the harmonic structure of the exposition of a Mozart sonata, you're probably not going to see any surprising harmonic progressions. If you look at a Baroque minuet, you'll see a highly structured piece of music whose names I've forgotten. If you look at an opera from a certain time period and certain country, the bass singer is always the bad guy, the tenor is always the good guy, the soprano is always the love interest, etc. ick, those two examples would make a lot more sense if I could remember any details from second-year history... Pop music (and thus a lot of Vocaloid stuff) gets a bad rap for using the I IV V I chord progression a lot, but I don't see that amount of predictability to be any worse than classical music's predictability of beat strength in 4/4 time (strong-weak-medium-weak). Cheers, - Graham ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On 3/22/2011 9:57 PM, Graham Percival wrote: Pop music (and thus a lot of Vocaloid stuff) gets a bad rap for using the I IV V I chord progression a lot, but I don't see that amount of predictability to be any worse than classical music's predictability of beat strength in 4/4 time (strong-weak-medium-weak). Cheers, - Graham Generalizing is always a bad idea. Listen to J.S. Bach's sonatas and you will be hard pressed to find predictability in the beat strength. Even the harmony is hard to predict. These are ones of the hardest piece to remember for that. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On 11-03-22 07:57 PM, Graham Percival wrote: Pop music (and thus a lot of Vocaloid stuff) gets a bad rap for using the I IV V I chord progression a lot, but I don't see that amount of predictability to be any worse than classical music's predictability of beat strength in 4/4 time (strong-weak-medium-weak). Cheers, 1 4 5 1?? I thought that's the number of basses it takes to change a light bulb. Colin how low can you go Campbell -- The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. -Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd US President (1882-1945) ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Kieren MacMillan kieren_macmil...@sympatico.ca writes: In the 1940s, a barometer of popular taste was Frank Sinatra (who could sing/croon/perform, but not really write lyrics or music) singing/performing/crooning songs written by others (who *could* write lyrics and/or music, but not sing/croon/perform). In the 1960s, the barometer was Bob Dylan (who can write great lyrics, and good music, but can't sing to save his life) singing his own songs. Today, the barometer is people who can do none of the above, doing *all* of the above -- heavily assisted by AutoTune™, AutoCorrect™, and all the other AutoCrutches™ creators have come to rely on, and (more unfortunately) consumers have come to accept (or even prefer). You mean, like frets? Or keyboards when one could pick or hammer the strings directly? The manual inadequacies of keyboard players even sacrifice bowing! -- David Kastrup ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On Sun 20 Mar 2011, 18:27 Graham Percival wrote: I really, honestly, love Vocaloid (that waste of time). ;) That was an attempt to direct myself to better wording; i am not sure i succeeded, sorry .) I appreciate your tastes, of course. On an objective level, it's allowed many people to create music. On a subjective level, listening (and watching) Vocaloid music has brought me more pleasure than *any* academic music composition We can not control others and their creativity; we even can not be sure that our creativity will make others to be more creative. What's bad with American Idol, by the way?-) Mmm... Can we measure the creativity factor we give to other people by our creativity?.. Yes, i am rather pessimistic about Vocaloid's creativity factor, regardless of how many people will be able to produce music with these technologies. Surely, we can not compare our music with grandfather's, our tastes with grandfather's, our creativity with grand^^10-father's, because we can not find (can we?-) a fulcrum to stay confidently. ps. The entropy of an isolated system... In short, things get worse. pps. Vocaloid has no any trouble with creativity; _we_ can have some, surely. ppps. :-) Just imagined a picture: somewhere in the future a teacher gave a task to produce some music. All kids made good pieces using vocaloidal-boxes in 5-15 minutes; but one, who killed me with her creativity, spent an hour to type in lilypond what she produced breathing in panpipe, crazy and crappy pitches .) -- Dmytro O. Redchuk Bug Squad ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Hi James, and so we're back to Graham's point. Anyone can now make 'music' without having to spend years learning a 'real' instrument etc. It's not so much some 'musicians' can no longer play an instrument or read music but that some extra 'musicians' can now create music without having to play an instrument or read music etc. That is a good thing. Certainly if we said a similar thing about 'medicine', we'd have to question whether that is a good thing. ;) Admittedly, the creative arts are less critical than medicine in a you might die kind of way… But as someone who cares deeply and passionately about the continuing musical arts, I offer that spending years learning a 'real' instrument -- that being just one example of commitment, but hardly the only one -- is not too much to ask of you before you foist your masterpiece on the world. Note that I don't think the current music education system is the best way to train musicians. In fact, I'm quite convinced of the opposite: beyond encouraging/demanding the discipline required to technically master a traditional instrument (the conservatory aspect), I think the current music education system *actively hampers* creativity and true musicianship. And of course many of the greatest musicians of our time (e.g., Louis Armstrong) didn't go through The System -- one could even argue that *most* of the greatest musicians of our time learned more outside of The System than inside it. But they sure spent years learning a 'real' instrument. The idea that you can create meaningful music without having to exert any music-related effort -- such as learning an instrument, or learning to read/write the symbols -- is yet another manifestation of our current I want something for nothing culture, which lionizes Jersey Shore participants and accepts (nay, embraces) Paris Hilton as an actress. Cheers, Kieren. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Hello, Yes very good question. One thing that comes to mind is that I don't want to arrive at a point where musician will be teaching computers to play instead of learning to play themselves. We're long past that point. Many many pop and rock and hip hop keyboardists can't really play, i.e. if you asked them to play some sheet music or reproduce a particular song, they couldn't do it, but they can program loops and effects and assign them to keys and produce some excellent music. Their instrument is the programming and their creativity and imagination. and so we're back to Graham's point. Anyone can now make 'music' without having to spend years learning a 'real' instrument etc. It's not so much some 'musicians' can no longer play an instrument or read music but that some extra 'musicians' can now create music without having to play an instrument or read music etc. That is a good thing. James ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 11:35:37AM -0400, Kieren MacMillan wrote: Hi Trevor, Of course, we can't know about good stuff that vanished and has not been rediscovered :) Have you ever heard Mozart's son's piano music? There are some pieces (especially the Mazurkas) which are clearly superior in construction and emotional depth to many of the more popular -- and thus, by Graham's definition, better -- pieces of other composers. Hmm. Seeing it put that way (what way? you mean, accurately? ... yes.), I'd like to retract part of it. IMO, the world would be a better place if we were more precise in our musical judgements. If you want to make a subjective judgement (such as clearly superior in construction and emotional depth), then that's fine; just make it clear that this is your personal opinion. If you don't specify that something is a personal opinion, then go objective or go home. The easiest objective judgement is popularity -- or rather, amount of CDs sold, amount of tracks downloaded from a legal free music site, or even amount of tracks downloaded from any source, including quasi-legal (i.e. not legal) and not-even-quasi-legal sources. Judgements like harmonic complexity or melodic construction can be objective, but you need to specify which algorithm you're using to determine the harmonies (or melodic stuff). And then use that algorithm strictly. Which, for practical purposes, means using computer score analysis. Since we don't even have widespread use of things as (relatively) simple as harmonic analysis, let alone having a good way of weighing individual components (like rhythm, melody, structure, etc)., I think that the only objective judgement we can make is popularity. That's why I linked popularity to quality so strongly. However, I'm hoping that over the next 5-10 years, musicologists will see the light and start working with tools like David Huron's stuff, and then we'll see widespread use of automatic melodic/harmonic/etc analysis. Once that happens, then we really might be able to say Mozart's music is better than Madonna's music because xyz, where xyz is rooted in completely objective algorithms. (or at least, in objective algorithms, using some constants that were derived from collecting listening data from hundreds of people in music psychology experiment -- that would be a good balance between completely subjective judgements of musicologists, and completely mathematical analyses) Cheers, - Graham ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 04:50:04PM +0200, Dmytro O. Redchuk wrote: Can't imagine how many issues they could fix instead of that waste of time... That goes for *anything* we do for entertainment -- including academic music / musicology / history / lilypond work / etc. Any one of us could have devoted our lives to researching ways of creating clean water, or researching how to reducing pollution from energy sources (or making more energy-efficient appliances), or simply volunteering to teach basic mathematics and literacy to the illiterate (either in our own countries, or in other countries). I really, honestly, love Vocaloid (that waste of time). On an objective level, it's allowed many people to create music. On a subjective level, listening (and watching) Vocaloid music has brought me more pleasure than *any* academic music composition (going back as far as the Rite of Spring, which may or may not be considered to be academic, but it was covered in my second-year music theory course, so there). Cheers, - Graham ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 11:26:40AM -0400, Kieren MacMillan wrote: Rather, I'm railing against the following [possibly inevitable, but still disheartening] reality: In the 1940s, a barometer of popular taste was Frank Sinatra ... In the 1960s, the barometer was Bob Dylan (who can write great ... Today, the barometer is people who can do none of the above, doing *all* of the above -- heavily assisted by AutoTune™, AutoCorrect™, and all the other AutoCrutches™ creators have come to rely on, and (more unfortunately) consumers have come to accept (or even prefer). I don't find this disheartening -- I consider this a triumph of science. Leaving aside the effects of marketing (which are substantial, and defrays my popular = good claim from a few days ago), we've (apparently) reached the point where the combined efforts of a singer, sound engineers, computer programmers, composers, arrangers, sound sample recordings, and the generic term producers, produces more popular music than a single singer (or a single singer/piano/guitar player / poet/composer). Granted, in many (most?) ways, a produced musical recording is *not* the same art form as a live music concert. I somewhat consider produced music recordings to be in a category like theatre or movies -- they might involve live music at some point (as background), but the final product involves a huge number of components (and people) other than live musicians playing music. *shrug* Perhaps in a few years, the live music recordings vs. produced music division will be more clear in people's minds. Cheers, - Graham ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Hi Graham, IMO, the world would be a better place if we were more precise in our musical judgements. Fair enough. If you don't specify that something is a personal opinion, then go objective or go home. Some philosophers would say that every statement is subjective, even The sun rose today or I'm currently typing on a computer -- it's just that it's easier to convince other people that such subjective statements are truth. ;) The easiest objective judgement is popularity -- or rather, amount of CDs sold, amount of tracks downloaded from a legal free music site, or even amount of tracks downloaded from any source, including quasi-legal (i.e. not legal) and not-even-quasi-legal sources. Yes, quantitative data is more objective than qualitative data. Judgements like harmonic complexity or melodic construction can be objective, but you need to specify which algorithm you're using to determine the harmonies (or melodic stuff). And then use that algorithm strictly. Which, for practical purposes, means using computer score analysis. I like it! I think that the only objective judgement we can make is popularity. Well, it's the easiest anyway. (or at least, in objective algorithms, using some constants that were derived from collecting listening data from hundreds of people in music psychology experiment -- that would be a good balance between completely subjective judgements of musicologists, and completely mathematical analyses) +1. Kieren. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Hi Graham, On a subjective level, listening (and watching) Vocaloid music has brought me more pleasure than *any* academic music composition (going back as far as the Rite of Spring I couldn't even make it through one 3-minute Vocaloid song, but have listened with great pleasure to the Rite of Spring perhaps 100 times... so our taste in music clearly differs. =) Cheers, Kieren. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
I don't find this disheartening -- I consider this a triumph of science. As Patton Oswald once said, We're Science: all about 'coulda', not about 'shoulda'! =) I somewhat consider produced music recordings to be in a category like theatre or movies -- they might involve live music at some point (as background), but the final product involves a huge number of components (and people) other than live musicians playing music. Now *that* is an interesting point of discussion… where's my Glen Grant? Cheers, Kieren. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On 03/17/2011 07:15 AM, Marc Mouries wrote: This is intellectually interesting but the question is not who deserves to create good music? but rather who wants to listen to music made by someone that does not practice? and who wants to listen to music played by a computer? Sure many times, nowadays, the rendition of a computer playing is quite good but who cares? Art conveys emotions which are the one thing that make us human and thus should be played by human. What's the end goal of such system? Can you describe in what is that helpful? Are we one day going to only listen to robots playing music? Where *will* the limits be, or where *should* the limits be? Yes very good question. One thing that comes to mind is that I don't want to arrive at a point where musician will be teaching computers to play instead of learning to play themselves. We're long past that point. Many many pop and rock and hip hop keyboardists can't really play, i.e. if you asked them to play some sheet music or reproduce a particular song, they couldn't do it, but they can program loops and effects and assign them to keys and produce some excellent music. Their instrument is the programming and their creativity and imagination. Patrick ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Hi Michael, The reason most musicians despise the Pachelbel Canon has nothing to do with the quality of the composition. They're just sick of it, largely because it became so popular in the late '70s And beyond: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM Enjoy! Kieren. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On Thu 17 Mar 2011, 18:08 Kieren MacMillan wrote: Unfortunately, lower barrier of entry almost always means more crap to sift through. The more crap -- the lower criteria barrier for what is `crap'?. The more crap will become normal and even good thing. And at some point in the future we all will agree that is it quite good music; why? not `crap', it's great!. And we will be unable to distinguish as great as classical (in modern sense of classical) from as ugly as crap (i don't know what i mean crap, let's say). Well... This is my english... Stanisław Lem in his Summa Technologiae says (i hope i am not too much wrong) that the information *is* the information if and only if here is somebody who can recognize it as such, can accept and understand. Let's say, i *love* J. S. Bach very much (well, let's say), as much as my father and grandfather (etc). So, can i really be sure that i understand his music as good as my grandfather?.. I mean that every Beethoven's symphony contains a piece of information -- can i be sure that i can recognize it as good as my grandfather? Yes, i know this can not be measured at all. Anyway. I mean that at some point in the future people will like our classical music as much as their modern, no problem, they will! -- but the level of understanding will be lower. Because of because of more crap; because of lower barrier of entry. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-B4sjUve3E Isn't it rather computer-generated? Regardless of emotions on the face?.. (My friend sent this link as a great performance example or like that.) Sorry, i may be wrong, easily. Oh well... 42. Yes, i know the answer; i don't know what's the question .) -- Dmytro O. Redchuk Bug Squad ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 10:14:48AM +0200, Dmytro O. Redchuk wrote: On Thu 17 Mar 2011, 18:08 Kieren MacMillan wrote: Unfortunately, lower barrier of entry almost always means more crap to sift through. The more crap -- the lower criteria barrier for what is `crap'?. The more crap will become normal and even good thing. Has that happened with books? Have stories become total crap over the past 10/50/200 years? I mean, (almost) everybody [in certain countries] can write text. 500 years ago, only priests and the very rich could read and write. 10 years ago, (almost) everybody [in certain countries] has access to computers and the internet. With computers in public libraries, if not their own homes. Does the amount of webfiction (including fanfics and original material) available on the internet mean that we can no longer distinguish between good writing and bad writing? I don't think so. But there's essentially no barrier to entry -- you can get a free blogspot or something account, and start posting your stories immediately. Cheers, - Graham ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Graham Percival gra...@percival-music.ca writes: On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 10:14:48AM +0200, Dmytro O. Redchuk wrote: On Thu 17 Mar 2011, 18:08 Kieren MacMillan wrote: Unfortunately, lower barrier of entry almost always means more crap to sift through. The more crap -- the lower criteria barrier for what is `crap'?. The more crap will become normal and even good thing. Has that happened with books? Have stories become total crap over the past 10/50/200 years? The average Usenet flame is less edifying to read than, say, Old French fabliaux, or equivalent verbiage like The Miller's Tale in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Mind you, those _are_ actually examples for unbelievably crude trash. -- David Kastrup ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On Fri 18 Mar 2011, 10:44 Graham Percival wrote: On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 10:14:48AM +0200, Dmytro O. Redchuk wrote: On Thu 17 Mar 2011, 18:08 Kieren MacMillan wrote: Unfortunately, lower barrier of entry almost always means more crap to sift through. The more crap -- the lower criteria barrier for what is `crap'?. The more crap will become normal and even good thing. Has that happened with books? Have stories become total crap over the past 10/50/200 years? :-) I don't know. We can't measure this. Do we have the same sensitivity as our grandfathers? I mean, (almost) everybody [in certain countries] can write text. 500 years ago, only priests and the very rich could read and write. 10 years ago, (almost) everybody [in certain countries] has access to computers and the internet. With computers in public libraries, if not their own homes. Good example! And (almost) everybody makes a huge amount of mistakes (which are not considered as mistakes by those who makes them, of course), which (mistakes) change language(s) (almost) completely! ;O) Ze drem vil finali kum tru! (sorry for my English though) Does the amount of webfiction (including fanfics and original material) available on the internet mean that we can no longer distinguish between good writing and bad writing? I don't think so. Can we measure? Yes, we can distinguish between (relatively) good and (relatively) bad. But can we measure this, indeed? Can we be sure, that our good literature is as good as our grandfather's good literature? And the same for our bad? We can't. But there's essentially no barrier to entry -- you can get a free blogspot or something account, and start posting your stories immediately. And i believe that lowering the barrier makes us believe that our good literature is as good as... but it actually isn't. Augean stables. Everything smells quite good. .O) yes, i agree, we can't measure. This is my assumption only. -- Dmytro O. Redchuk Bug Squad ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Graham, Has that happened with books? Have stories become total crap over the past 10/50/200 years? Actually, yes: no author made a million dollars writing a Harlequin Romance novel in the 1500s. :) To be clear, I'm not saying -- as many, many music lovers do -- that good music stopped being written when Brahms died. Anyone who knows me well knows it's quite the opposite: 99% of the time, I would rather listen to music of my time than of some past era. What I *am* saying is that just because my neighbour can now write and perform a symphony (quoted for a reason) in his garage does not make it good music. Does the amount of webfiction (including fanfics and original material) available on the internet mean that we can no longer distinguish between good writing and bad writing? I don't think so. I *do* think so -- and recent studies on youth support my belief with evidence. On the music side, consider the fact that recent studies have shown a majority of young people prefer the sound of compressed audio (e.g., low- to medium-bitrate MP3s) to uncompressed audio. [Pause here to fully appreciate the horror of that statement.] Independent of the content of the music itself -- the debate about which is far more subjective -- many listeners can no longer appreciate what music is physically supposed to sound like. A lower barrier of entry by definition allows people to get into the field with less experience, less training, less discipline, less persistence, and so on. Are there some benefits to this? Sure. Does it increase the amount of crap we have to wade through. Absolutely. I have yet to see any field -- athletics, art, construction, law, comedy, whatever -- where a lower barrier of entry doesn't increase the amount of crap. And, unfortunately, I also see in the audience for that field a concomitant decrease in discriminatory powers. C'est la vie, I suppose… But saying it isn't so doesn't MAKE it not so. Cheers, Kieren. p.s. I know I'm generalizing here... but that's what this kind of thread encourages, so if you don't like it, you can take your ball and go home. :) ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
David, The average Usenet flame is less edifying to read than, say, Old French fabliaux, or equivalent verbiage like The Miller's Tale in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. That may be the understatement of the year. =) Kieren. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Hi Dmytro, I don't know. We can't measure this. Do we have the same sensitivity as our grandfathers? We *can* measure this, and we don't. Studies have been done in visual perception, auditory perception, rate of data absorption, and detail extraction -- and all of them point to a decrease in sensitivity in the past half-century. (Unfortunately, there's no data from before that to compare it to -- but most of these studies agree that the curve has likely continued for a lot longer.) Cheers, Kieren. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
RE: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Hello, )-Original Message- )From: lilypond-user-bounces+james.lowe=datacore@gnu.org )[mailto:lilypond-user-bounces+james.lowe=datacore@gnu.org] On )Behalf Of Kieren MacMillan )Sent: 18 March 2011 11:15 )To: Graham Percival )Cc: lilypond-user@gnu.org )Subject: Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music ) ) ... -- and recent studies on youth support my belief with )evidence. On the music side, consider the fact that recent studies have )shown a majority of young people prefer the sound of compressed audio )(e.g., low- to medium-bitrate MP3s) to uncompressed audio. [Pause here )to fully appreciate the horror of that statement.] do you have any reference to those recent studies? Not being inflammatory but am genuinely interested. My own anecdotal evidence is that it depends on the 'depth' and how much you 'study' music as a profession or significant hobby (i.e. amateur conductor/composer) about the quality of the output vs the construction of the melody/music itself. That is it doesn't matter if the music is buzzing out of a tinny radio or £5,000 pound speakers to them, let alone worry about bit rates./compression and whatever it is they do to make everything loud (equalize?). Anyway my point is that I think psychologically in this case it DOES matter what the content is and the fact is some types of music suffer far less with compression than others - to generalise, music that has a lot of quiet parts 'suffers' far more from the music that has a constant volume where overall volume/dynamics are less important. Also I expect that you'd notice less compression in a piece of music if you were very familiar with it simply because your brain would 'fill in' the 'gaps' and compensate for the compression 'failings'. James ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On 18/03/11 22:32, James Lowe wrote: Hello, )-Original Message- )From: lilypond-user-bounces+james.lowe=datacore@gnu.org )[mailto:lilypond-user-bounces+james.lowe=datacore@gnu.org] On )Behalf Of Kieren MacMillan )Sent: 18 March 2011 11:15 )To: Graham Percival )Cc: lilypond-user@gnu.org )Subject: Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music ) ) ... -- and recent studies on youth support my belief with )evidence. On the music side, consider the fact that recent studies have )shown a majority of young people prefer the sound of compressed audio )(e.g., low- to medium-bitrate MP3s) to uncompressed audio. [Pause here )to fully appreciate the horror of that statement.] do you have any reference to those recent studies? Not being inflammatory but am genuinely interested. My own anecdotal evidence is that it depends on the 'depth' and how much you 'study' music as a profession or significant hobby (i.e. amateur conductor/composer) about the quality of the output vs the construction of the melody/music itself. That is it doesn't matter if the music is buzzing out of a tinny radio or £5,000 pound speakers to them, let alone worry about bit rates./compression and whatever it is they do to make everything loud (equalize?). My observation, from having worked in a recording studio and at an University FM station in my youth, is that there is usually an inverse relationship between people's interest in hifi and how much live music they participate in, whether as performer or listener. In other words, the biggest hifi zealots are usually those who don't listen to much live music, and, except for the mastering of a recording they've just made, musicians aren't too fussed about getting absolute fidelity of reproduction when listening to recordings. Nick ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
2011/3/18 Dmytro O. Redchuk brownian@gmail.com On Fri 18 Mar 2011, 10:44 Graham Percival wrote: Has that happened with books? Have stories become total crap over the past 10/50/200 years? :-) I don't know. We can't measure this. Do we have the same sensitivity as our grandfathers? [...] Can we be sure, that our good literature is as good as our grandfather's good literature? And the same for our bad? These are exactly the questions that should be asked! cheers, Janek ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Hi James, do you have any reference to those recent studies? Search Google for study prefer mp3s berger and you'll find the MP3 study. My own anecdotal evidence is that it depends on the 'depth' and how much you 'study' music as a profession or significant hobby Definitely. And -- a propos to this thread -- the average person in, say, 1850, who made it through the sieve into a musical career had a greater depth and more study than the average person today who does the same, because the sieve has larger holes (lower barrier of entry) and is more localized (q.v., the waning influence of AR reps). I think psychologically in this case it DOES matter what the content is and the fact is some types of music suffer far less with compression than others - to generalise, music that has a lot of quiet parts 'suffers' far more from the music that has a constant volume where overall volume/dynamics are less important. True... Furthermore music which is less compressed and/or normalized in mastering suffers less from audio compression, due to its inherently more narrow dynamic and timbral range. I'm not saying that isn't a factor (nor was Berger, for example) -- I'm simply pointing out that the study attempted to control for content. Also I expect that you'd notice less compression in a piece of music if you were very familiar with it simply because your brain would 'fill in' the 'gaps' and compensate for the compression 'failings'. Interesting idea… Berger definitely suggests that students who are more comfortable with compressed audio tend[ed] to prefer it more, e.g., over time the preference grew. Furthermore, there is evidence that many producers are now mastering music to ear buds, which obviously changes the sound versus other options. Cheers, Kieren. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Hi Nick, My observation, from having worked in a recording studio and at an University FM station in my youth, is that there is usually an inverse relationship between people's interest in hifi and how much live music they participate in, whether as performer or listener. In other words, the biggest hifi zealots are usually those who don't listen to much live music, and, except for the mastering of a recording they've just made, musicians aren't too fussed about getting absolute fidelity of reproduction when listening to recordings. My experience as composer and CD editor/producer (all anecdotal of course) is the opposite, at least from the classical perspective: people who listen to and/or perform more live music (solos, chamber music, choirs, symphonies, etc.) prefer their recordings to have higher fidelity. I myself have experienced a related effect: the longer I go without hearing live music, the less I appear to be bothered by the digital artifacts in modern recordings. Cheers, Kieren. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
RE: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Hello, )-Original Message- )From: lilypond-user-bounces+james.lowe=datacore@gnu.org )[mailto:lilypond-user-bounces+james.lowe=datacore@gnu.org] On )Behalf Of Janek Warchol )Sent: 18 March 2011 12:43 )To: Dmytro O. Redchuk; Graham Percival; Kieren MacMillan; lilypond- )u...@gnu.org )Subject: Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music ) )2011/3/18 Dmytro O. Redchuk brownian@gmail.com ) ) On Fri 18 Mar 2011, 10:44 Graham Percival wrote: ) Has that happened with books? Have stories become total crap over ) the past 10/50/200 years? ) :-) ) ) I don't know. We can't measure this. Do we have the same sensitivity ) as our grandfathers? [...] Can we be sure, that our good literature ) is as good as our grandfather's good literature? And the same for )our bad? ) )These are exactly the questions that should be asked! ) And they are, just not as explicitly as some would like here. When you are a 'grandfather' you will know the answer because the 'good' stuff of today will still be around or known and the 'bad' stuff will not (or rather it will be 'somewhere' but everyone will have forgotten about it). I am sure there are some exceptions but they won't be the rule, and of course things like distribution 'back in your grandfather's day' would have made some differences, but this frankly is not a consideration in our linked world today. We are exposed to more good and bad stuff than ever before. That's not to say that I think that all the classical literature (for example) that is still available and didn't die and disappear after its first publication, is 'good' but I do believe it is 'probably, more than likely' better than the stuff that didn't survive or is no longer available. James ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Hi James, When you are a 'grandfather' you will know the answer because the 'good' stuff of today will still be around or known and the 'bad' stuff will not (or rather it will be 'somewhere' but everyone will have forgotten about it). Yes, the Sieve of Time is a powerful arbiter of taste. =) We are exposed to more good and bad stuff than ever before. Agreed. And I think this increased exposure is a good thing, in and of itself. That's not to say that I think that all the classical literature (for example) that is still available and didn't die and disappear after its first publication, is 'good' but I do believe it is 'probably, more than likely' better than the stuff that didn't survive or is no longer available. There must be examples in both directions, of course: bad stuff surviving (even thriving!), and good stuff disappearing. Cheers, Kieren. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On 3/18/11, Kieren MacMillan kieren_macmil...@sympatico.ca wrote: Graham, Has that happened with books? Have stories become total crap over the past 10/50/200 years? Actually, yes: no author made a million dollars writing a Harlequin Romance novel in the 1500s. :) Hmm. I'll admit that penny dreadfuls were in the 1800s, not 1500s... but I'm certain that the 1500s still had raunchy, low-class theatrical plays and songs. I don't believe that everybody sat around in their castles writing Nobel-quality poetry to each other. What I *am* saying is that just because my neighbour can now write and perform a symphony (quoted for a reason) in his garage does not make it good music. Of course not! But regardless of quality, it *is* music. It's a human being active, instead of watching American Idol. It's a human being creative. I don't care about the profession of music, be it performers or composers. I don't care about Music, with a capital 'M', being the history and academic study of good music. I consider jazz music to be the most important musical invention in the 20th century; far outweighing 12-tone music, Cage, minimalism, or any innovation in academic music. (the second-most important would be rock/pop music, even though I don't know what the difference between the two -- and note that I don't even like Jazz music, and can't stand most rock and pop music) I care about human creativity. A bunch of teenagers in a grungy basement in Seattle in the 1980s writing songs about how emo they are, using nothing but power chords, is more creative than somebody sitting in their living room listening to a CD or Mozart string quartets. A middle-aged housewife writing homoerotic star trek fan fiction is more creative than somebody listening to a CD of Debussy piano music. I'm not saying that we need to be creative all the time -- sometimes it's good to relax, and of course it's good to listen/read/view a lot of art to get ideas to use in your own works. But I think that creating new art (of any quality) is more creative than looking at existing works. Classical music is no guarantee of high art. I used to play cello in quartets for weddings and dinner banquets. When we played Pachelbel's Canon, I spent most of my time glancing at the neck-lines of women's dresses. Ditto for Mozart divertimento 136. They're both great crowd-favourites, they both have easy cello parts (I memorized them without trying to), and they require virtually no creativity from the cello player. At least, not for the venue of providing background music while people mingle and drink wine. I *do* think so -- and recent studies on youth support my belief with evidence. On the music side, consider the fact that recent studies have shown a majority of young people prefer the sound of compressed audio (e.g., low- to medium-bitrate MP3s) to uncompressed audio. [Pause here to fully appreciate the horror of that statement.] What am I supposed to be horrified by? Listening to music produces a subjective feeling in humans. Suppose I receive the most aural pleasure by listening to Shostakovich music, passed through a low-pass filter at 50 Hz. (for non-engineers: this means I can hear some muffled boom noises, and no chance at melody or anything like that). So what? Tastes change, trends change. Am I supposed to be horrified by the clothing fashion in the 1960s and 1970s? They look ridiculous now, but (presumably) back then people thought they were trendy. Maybe 30 years from now, real audio (i.e. not compressed, not lossy) recordings will be all the rage. Maybe not. I don't see either one as a problem. A lower barrier of entry by definition allows people to get into the field with less experience, less training, less discipline, less persistence, and so on. Are there some benefits to this? Sure. Does it increase the amount of crap we have to wade through. Absolutely. Of course! That's why reviewers -- be they humans, or computer recommendation systems (which is a big area of research) -- are becoming more important. The most famous computer recommendation system is google, of course. Given 1234 trillion websites (or whatever), you ask it ubuntu pulseaudio not working, and it recommends a list of 10 websites it thinks you want to see. It's not perfect, of course... but given the number of websites out there, and how certain people try to 'game' the ranking... I think that google is pretty fantastic at this particular recommendation task. Other people are working on music recommendation. If you like music A, B, and C, then which tracks out of all 297,814 tracks on Jamendo (free and legal downloads) will appeal to you? In the grand scheme of things, 300,000 pieces of music is only a drop in the bucket of all music recordings... but it's a useful place to work on such recommendation systems. Other people do this with youtube, doing the machine learning on audio and video signals. (some of these systems
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On 3/18/11, Kieren MacMillan kieren_macmil...@sympatico.ca wrote: Yes, the Sieve of Time is a powerful arbiter of taste. =) IMO, it is the *only* arbiter of (general population) taste. While the *only* arbiter of your personal taste is you. There must be examples in both directions, of course: bad stuff surviving (even thriving!), and good stuff disappearing. WTM does it mean for bad stuff to thrive? IMO, If something thrives, then it's good stuff. I might not personally like it (I wouldn't shed a tear if all rap music vanished), but I don't have any reason or evidence to call it bad stuff. (unless I'm going for a post-modern ironic yeah, gangsta rap is bad, dude! It's so bad it's, like, nasty and gnarly!) We've inevitably reached this point: do you have an objective definition of good music? If so, share it. If not, then accept that Elvis[1] produced better music than John Cage. [1] NB: by Elvis, I mean the collection of people who wrote/composed/arranged the music that Elvis sang, which quite possibly include German folk songs from four centuries ago. I'm quite aware that (unfortunately) modern pop music ignores the work of almost everybody other than the main star, or possibly stars in a rock band. Cheers, - Graham ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Kieren MacMillan wrote Friday, March 18, 2011 1:23 PM There must be examples in both directions, of course: bad stuff surviving (even thriving!), and good stuff disappearing. Didn't Bach's compositions vanish from the wider public for c. 100 years until Mendelssohn discovered and revived his St Matthew Passion? Of course, we can't know about good stuff that vanished and has not been rediscovered :) Trevor ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
2011/3/18 Graham Percival gra...@percival-music.ca: On 3/18/11, Kieren MacMillan kieren_macmil...@sympatico.ca wrote: Graham, Has that happened with books? Have stories become total crap over the past 10/50/200 years? Actually, yes: no author made a million dollars writing a Harlequin Romance novel in the 1500s. :) Hmm. I'll admit that penny dreadfuls were in the 1800s, not 1500s... but I'm certain that the 1500s still had raunchy, low-class theatrical plays and songs. I don't believe that everybody sat around in their castles writing Nobel-quality poetry to each other. On the other hand, those people (watching low-class plays and singing low-class songs) usually had no choice nor opportunities to learn how to sing or act better. I mean, the problem is that today the good stuff isn't much more expensive than crap (i mean good art, not musical instruments for example), so people are not restricted to crap because of money problems, but still they choose crap. 200 years ago if you wanted to watch beautiful paintings, you had to be rich and buy some. Today you can buy a decent reproduction almost for free. I care about human creativity. A bunch of teenagers in a grungy basement in Seattle in the 1980s writing songs about how emo they are, using nothing but power chords, is more creative than somebody sitting in their living room listening to a CD or Mozart string quartets. A middle-aged housewife writing homoerotic star trek fan fiction is more creative than somebody listening to a CD of Debussy piano music. I'm not saying that we need to be creative all the time -- sometimes it's good to relax, and of course it's good to listen/read/view a lot of art to get ideas to use in your own works. But I think that creating new art (of any quality) is more creative than looking at existing works. As long as you don't say that creativity is the most important aspect of human existence, i think i agree. Classical music is no guarantee of high art. I used to play cello in quartets for weddings and dinner banquets. When we played Pachelbel's Canon, I spent most of my time glancing at the neck-lines of women's dresses. Ditto for Mozart divertimento 136. They're both great crowd-favourites, they both have easy cello parts (I memorized them without trying to), and they require virtually no creativity from the cello player. At least, not for the venue of providing background music while people mingle and drink wine. I remember! You wrote a Revenge-Of-Cellist-Bored-By-Playing-Pachelbel's-Canon! Unfortunately it's not available on your webpage now... I *do* think so -- and recent studies on youth support my belief with evidence. On the music side, consider the fact that recent studies have shown a majority of young people prefer the sound of compressed audio (e.g., low- to medium-bitrate MP3s) to uncompressed audio. [Pause here to fully appreciate the horror of that statement.] What am I supposed to be horrified by? Listening to music produces a subjective feeling in humans. Suppose I receive the most aural pleasure by listening to Shostakovich music, passed through a low-pass filter at 50 Hz. (for non-engineers: this means I can hear some muffled boom noises, and no chance at melody or anything like that). So what? I think the problem is what exactly were they questioned about? Was is which one do you like better listening to? (a question about taste, to which your above example correspons good) or which one is better quality/is more similar to 'live audio'? (a technical question about perception and hearing abilities). A lower barrier of entry by definition allows people to get into the field with less experience, less training, less discipline, less persistence, and so on. Are there some benefits to this? Sure. Does it increase the amount of crap we have to wade through. Absolutely. Of course! That's why reviewers -- be they humans, or computer recommendation systems (which is a big area of research) -- are becoming more important. +1 cheers, Janek ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On Fri 18 Mar 2011, 13:31 Graham Percival wrote: But regardless of quality, it *is* music. It's a human being active, instead of watching American Idol. It's a human being creative. :-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_RVLOsUW6U Those who programmed it, are *very* creative. They did it for money, they did it just for fun --- doesn't matter. They've got a lot of fun, i guess. Those musicians are creative, too, of course. What about those, who are listening and watching this just another idol? Isn't it just the same fun (as if watching Americal Idol)? Can't imagine how many issues they could fix instead of that waste of time... =:O] Seriously --- our creativity can make other people more active or make them watching just another idol. The lower the barrier --- the more crap. The more crap --- the more just another idols and the less of creativity. I think so. It is not a bad thing. It is the law :O) Seriously --- we can not change this. -- Dmytro O. Redchuk Bug Squad ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Graham (et al.), I'll admit that penny dreadfuls were in the 1800s, not 1500s Actually, some of those penny dreadfuls were far from it! =) but I'm certain that the 1500s still had raunchy, low-class theatrical plays and songs. I don't believe that everybody sat around in their castles writing Nobel-quality poetry to each other. True -- I've never argued that. I don't care about the profession of music, be it performers or composers. I don't care about Music, with a capital 'M', being the history and academic study of good music. I care [quite deeply] about Music, as distinct from 'the history and academic study of good music'. I consider jazz music to be the most important musical invention in the 20th century I do, too -- but there was (and is) better and worse jazz, judged from all sorts of standards: historical importance, technical significance, popular appeal, etc. I don't even like Jazz music, and can't stand most rock and pop music I love good music of all genres. I care about human creativity. As do I. For example, to me, the most important to note about the Bible (full disclosure: I'm a devout a-theist) is that the first and most important sentence is about an act of creation. Everything after that is downhill, in my opinion. And, when I painfully stretch the analogy, I always argue that God created us in his own image is code for We are built to create. A bunch of teenagers in a grungy basement in Seattle in the 1980s writing songs about how emo they are, using nothing but power chords, is more creative than somebody sitting in their living room listening to a CD or Mozart string quartets. A middle-aged housewife writing homoerotic star trek fan fiction is more creative than somebody listening to a CD of Debussy piano music. [...] But I think that creating new art (of any quality) is more creative than looking at existing works. I'm baffled how you turned this thread into a comparison of active creation versus passive consumption... I would never in a million years argue that consumption is more important or valid or useful than creation -- I'm pretty sure most sane people would agree. Rather, I'm railing against the following [possibly inevitable, but still disheartening] reality: In the 1940s, a barometer of popular taste was Frank Sinatra (who could sing/croon/perform, but not really write lyrics or music) singing/performing/crooning songs written by others (who *could* write lyrics and/or music, but not sing/croon/perform). In the 1960s, the barometer was Bob Dylan (who can write great lyrics, and good music, but can't sing to save his life) singing his own songs. Today, the barometer is people who can do none of the above, doing *all* of the above -- heavily assisted by AutoTune™, AutoCorrect™, and all the other AutoCrutches™ creators have come to rely on, and (more unfortunately) consumers have come to accept (or even prefer). Classical music is no guarantee of high art. I never said it was. (Aside: Kramer's Why Classical Music Still Matters is an interesting and worthwhile read, even if I don't agree with everything he writes.) What am I supposed to be horrified by? You can choose to be (or not be) horrified by whatever you want. I continue to be horrified by the creative apathy which (IMO) feeds the drive towards consumptive apathy you claim to dislike. Cheers, Kieren. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Hi Graham, IMO, it is the *only* arbiter of (general population) taste. Not true -- like it or not, there are forces beyond general population taste which apply to the Sieve of Time. While the *only* arbiter of your personal taste is you. Agreed. IMO, If something thrives, then it's good stuff. You and I have very different philosophies on persistence. do you have an objective definition of good music? If so, share it. I have a definition which includes non-subjective criteria. But purely objective? Of course not -- I can't imagine there could ever be such a thing. accept that Elvis[1] produced better music than John Cage. Elvis's best music *is* better than Cage's best music -- what's your point? =) Cheers, Kieren. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Janek: I think the problem is what exactly were they questioned about? Was is which one do you like better listening to? (a question about taste, to which your above example correspons good) or which one is better quality/is more similar to 'live audio'? (a technical question about perception and hearing abilities). +1 We are [continuously] losing our ability to fully perform the very task we claim to be doing (i.e., listening to music) -- or even be aware of the fact that we're losing that ability. Cheers, Kieren. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Hi Trevor, There must be examples in both directions, of course: bad stuff surviving (even thriving!), and good stuff disappearing. Didn't Bach's compositions vanish from the wider public for c. 100 years until Mendelssohn discovered and revived his St Matthew Passion? Yes. Of course, we can't know about good stuff that vanished and has not been rediscovered :) Have you ever heard Mozart's son's piano music? There are some pieces (especially the Mazurkas) which are clearly superior in construction and emotional depth to many of the more popular -- and thus, by Graham's definition, better -- pieces of other composers. Cheers, Kieren. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Dmytro, our creativity can make other people more active or make them watching just another idol. The lower the barrier --- the more crap. The more crap --- the more just another idols and the less of creativity. I couldn't have put it better myself. It is not a bad thing. It is the law Also true. =) Cheers, Kieren. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 11:42 AM, Kieren MacMillan kieren_macmil...@sympatico.ca wrote: Dmytro, our creativity can make other people more active or make them watching just another idol. The lower the barrier --- the more crap. The more crap --- the more just another idols and the less of creativity. I couldn't have put it better myself. The crap that disturbs me the most is when great art is put to petty ends to sell product. The reason most musicians despise the Pachelbel Canon has nothing to do with the quality of the composition. They're just sick of it, largely because it became so popular in the late '70s that it was the background of choice for commercials selling everything from luxury cars to baby powder. In a similar vein, I really love Carmina Burana but if I hear one more football or monster truck ad blaring O Fortuna I may be put off of it forever. Cheers, Mike ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 04:16:35PM -0400, Shane Brandes wrote: I suppose since I have spent so much of my life attempting to master keyboard instruments and having watch so many students progress in their own studies that it seems to me that one cold never hope to replicate a human at an instrument. You underestimate the power of the Dark Side (aka machine learning). I can't give a good argument, other than download marsyas and weka, and try doing some audio classification. Look at academic projects over the past 10 years. Look at the amazing amount of progress we've made. Machine learning is *incredibly* powerful. There are all sorts of odd philosophical ramifications of trying and already certain deficits are occurring especially in the film industry on account of such efforts. The philosophical ramification is this: who *deserves* to create good music? A) only people who are healthy and atheletic (in terms of fine muscle control), have spent 10,000 hours practicing, and still practice for 2 hours a day. B) only people who have spent 1,000 hours practicing, but do not practice daily any more, and might not be healthy. C) only people who have spent 100 hours learning their instrument, and might not have any physical ability at all. D) only people who have spent 10 hours learning, and might not have any physical ability at all. E) everybody. I believe that the answer is E. Everybody deserves to create good music. Consider this: Stephen Hawking has advanced ALS. It is physically impossible for him to lift a violin or press piano keys. So does he not deserve to create violin music? I think he does. Now, at the moment, Vivi doesn't create good music, and probably requires about 10 hours of learning. I mean, you have to write a lilypond file (that could be between 1 and 5 hours, for simple music at least), and then if you know nothing about violin, you'd need to experiment a bit with slurs and articulations to hear how they sound. But she's only 4 months old, and I'd put her in a competition against 4-month-old human players any day. As a tool and a method of rationalizing musical praxis it is certainly useful and convenient, but where will the limits be? Where *will* the limits be, or where *should* the limits be? One of my favorite examples is that of vibrato. It never would have occurred to me that it is possible or even relevant to piano until it was demonstrated to me, but yet at the same time it can be achieved simply by the action of your fingers upon the keys after they have been struck. The difference in tone is of course not terribly obvious but yet it can yield a completely different character to the chords thus being treated. There are certainly other examples, but that is the one that I find least likely to ever be replicated. - can we measure this post-stike finger action? I mean, can we build devices which digitize those actions? (yes) - can we describe the actions of a string with mathematics? (yes) - can we describe the actions of a piano key - level - hammer - felt - string, with mathematics? (yes-ish; I've only seen two academic papers about the effect of different types of felt on the piano hammers, so a bit more research might be needed here) Other than the slight quibble in the last point, it's done. We can replicate this electronically. I completely agree with David's description of this as an obscure physical phenomena -- just think of Wendy Carlos' switched-on Bach. Is that expressive? If so, then clearly you don't need a real piano to create expressive keyboard music! But if piano vibrato _was_ necessary for creating expressive music, then we could certainly synthesize that, too. Cheers, - Graham ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
This is intellectually interesting but the question is not who deserves to create good music? but rather who wants to listen to music made by someone that does not practice? and who wants to listen to music played by a computer? Sure many times, nowadays, the rendition of a computer playing is quite good but who cares? Art conveys emotions which are the one thing that make us human and thus should be played by human. What's the end goal of such system? Can you describe in what is that helpful? Are we one day going to only listen to robots playing music? Where *will* the limits be, or where *should* the limits be? Yes very good question. One thing that comes to mind is that I don't want to arrive at a point where musician will be teaching computers to play instead of learning to play themselves. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Graham Percival gra...@percival-music.ca writes: Now, at the moment, Vivi doesn't create good music, and probably requires about 10 hours of learning. I mean, you have to write a lilypond file (that could be between 1 and 5 hours, for simple music at least), and then if you know nothing about violin, you'd need to experiment a bit with slurs and articulations to hear how they sound. But she's only 4 months old, and I'd put her in a competition against 4-month-old human players any day. 4-month-old meaning 4 months of training. And after that amount of training, the competitions are for the fun of the players and the pride of the parents (and nobody else actually bothers). Vivi won't be having fun, and the other parents won't at least find her adorable. One of the reasons I used to sing in mixed choirs is that you get the best place for listening to the music, and the best access to music. I have participated in quite more choir concerts than I have been listening to. Vivi will provide you with the joy and pride of a parent, not of a performer. And it will not feel that joy itself. It will be equally happy to play, and not to play. I don't understand why it is an issue whether it plays better or worse than humans, like I don't understand why it is an issue whether a computer can be made to play better or worse than a human. Or a car can be made to run faster than a human. The whole point is that a computer, left to its own devices, would never think of playing the violin or chess. It would sit in a corner and rust. -- David Kastrup ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Hello all, At first, I wasn't really interested in this thread… however, it's now gotten quite interesting. This is intellectually interesting but the question is not who deserves to create good music? but rather who wants to listen to music made by someone that does not practice? and who wants to listen to music played by a computer? [...] Are we one day going to only listen to robots playing music? This, I believe, cuts to the central problem of our time, at least with respect to classical or concert music: What is the correct (i.e., relevant and necessary) role of live music performance, and how should it be presented? In other words, why do we always use the word listen, when -- at least in live performance -- we are almost necessarily WATCHING music being played? Art conveys emotions which are the one thing that make us human and thus should be played by human. 1. I don't believe that emotions are the one thing that make us human. But that's fodder for another thread… :) 2. I believe that one day fairly soon computers -- in forms robotic and otherwise -- will be able to generate (i.e., play) music which is either *actually* as emotionally rich as human performers, or at the very least the difference will be indistinguishable for the majority of audience members. But I also believe that it will be a great while longer before *watching* a robot (or audio speaker) will be as compelling as watching a human performer. One thing that comes to mind is that I don't want to arrive at a point where musician will be teaching computers to play instead of learning to play themselves. I hate to break the news, but we're already at that point -- as evidenced by this thread. =) Cheers, Kieren. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Marc Mouries m...@mouries.net writes: This is intellectually interesting but the question is not who deserves to create good music? but rather who wants to listen to music made by someone that does not practice? and who wants to listen to music played by a computer? Sure many times, nowadays, the rendition of a computer playing is quite good but who cares? Art conveys emotions which are the one thing that make us human and thus should be played by human. Uh, you never heard of the concept of an actor or play, I suppose? Emotions don't need to exist at the sender's side in order to be conveyed to a receiver. And anyway, for most of the music I hear, I am more interested in the emotions of the composer rather than the performer. There is hardly something more aggravating than a romanticizing performer distracting from good Bach, for example. -- David Kastrup ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
At 10:15 on 17 Mar 2011, Marc Mouries wrote: This is intellectually interesting but the question is not who deserves to create good music? but rather who wants to listen to music made by someone that does not practice? and who wants to listen to music played by a computer? I don't really see the difference between a computer in this instance and an instrument. Any instrument, other than the voice, is a degree or more removed from the musician playing (==programming) it. The question could be, and perhaps was when the harpsichord was invented, asked: who wants to listen to music played by a machine? And if your argument is that the musical decisions are not taken in real-time by the performer/programmer, then what of recordings? They convey the emotions of the performer at the time the recording was made. Where *will* the limits be, or where *should* the limits be? Yes very good question. One thing that comes to mind is that I don't want to arrive at a point where musician will be teaching computers to play instead of learning to play themselves. Of course physical knowledge of the instrument and experience affects performance and interpretation of music, but is that always necessarily a good thing? Is it not, at the very least, an interesting idea to see how an interpretation might develop with _different_ technical obstacles? Vivi's player doesn't have to worry about nailing that shift up to fis and so can think about it's musical placement without the constraints that are necessitated by that physical problem. -- Mark Knoop ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On 3/17/2011 10:57 AM, David Kastrup wrote: Marc Mouriesm...@mouries.net writes: This is intellectually interesting but the question is not who deserves to create good music? but rather who wants to listen to music made by someone that does not practice? and who wants to listen to music played by a computer? Sure many times, nowadays, the rendition of a computer playing is quite good but who cares? Art conveys emotions which are the one thing that make us human and thus should be played by human. Uh, you never heard of the concept of an actor or play, I suppose? Emotions don't need to exist at the sender's side in order to be conveyed to a receiver. yep but it's much easier to believe a person acting or playing than a robot. If i see a robot or computer playing and it's nice, you will think nice programming but i don't think it can bring tears or joy. And anyway, for most of the music I hear, I am more interested in the emotions of the composer rather than the performer. There is hardly something more aggravating than a romanticizing performer distracting from good Bach, for example. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 10:15:46AM -0400, Marc Mouries wrote: This is intellectually interesting but the question is not who deserves to create good music? but rather who wants to listen to music made by someone that does not practice? and who wants to listen to music played by a computer? The thousands of people who listen to music created with Vocaloid? I listen -- for pleasure, not for academia -- to music created by computers almost exclusively. That doesn't mean that I think that everybody should! I mean, I don't think that David would argue that everybody has a moral obligation to enjoy accordian music. I don't think that Trevor would argue that everybody has a moral obligation to enjoy Gilbert and Sullivan musicals. I'm trying to give people more tools for musical creativity. The number of people who like music produced with this tool is just as relevant as the number of people who like music performed with a trumpet or bagpipe. I think the world is big enough to include people who play trombone or bass drum, even though I personally dislike those instruments. Art conveys emotions which are the one thing that make us human and thus should be played by human. should be? Hmm. Art conveys emotions, and thus sheet music should be engraved by a human. Fiction conveys emotions, and thus all novels should be hand-written by a human. Is LilyPond a good thing? It lets composers produce high-quality output -- but with a computer. Does the sheet music lose anything from automatic algorithmic placement of noteheads? I don't think so... in fact, I'd argue that LilyPond produces better output than 99% of humans could create on their own. Same thing with computer-performed music, although of course right now the better than 99% of humans is something like Vivi produces violin music that is better than 1% of humans. I'm not claiming that Vivi is the end of the road, nor am I suggesting that anybody throw away their violin CDs! As for *good* computer-performed music... it's not my favorite Miku work, but can you honestly say that you feel no emotion when watching this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1Dqb6uJ8WY (maybe you _can_ say that you feel nothing, but I can't -- the way her voice catches on certain notes seems heartbreaking to me) I mean, I get a *totally* different feeling from that work than I get from this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3YOqUbhOQc But the audio in both works was computer-generated. Now, you might accuse me of cheating by giving links to vidoes (rather than just audio), but I still pick up a different emotion from each work even without the video. What's the end goal of such system? Can you describe in what is that helpful? It's helpful because it gives content creators (being a generic term for composers and performers) another tool to create music. I don't have a string quartet at my disposal. I have friends who play string instuments, but I can't have them instantly perform a composition that I'm working on at 2am. And if I wanted to record my friends and release the audio under a permissive license, I'd need to warn them, get their permission, and then they might want to practice their parts more (if it's going to be available to everybody over the internet), etc. Guess why I don't have audio recordings of my compositions on my website? Are we one day going to only listen to robots playing music? It depends. What do you *want* to listen to? Go listen to that! Nobody's going to legislate that humans are not allowed to play, record, and listen to themselves! Where *will* the limits be, or where *should* the limits be? Yes very good question. One thing that comes to mind is that I don't want to arrive at a point where musician will be teaching computers to play instead of learning to play themselves. Then I guess you don't want to look at the roadmap. :) Win the Chopin competition by 2050! http://renconmusic.org/about.htm It comes down to this: - new tool for composers. - if you can notice a difference, and prefer human recordings, then go listen to human recordings. - if you can't notice a difference [say, 10 or 20 years from now], then why complain? Cheers, - Graham ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 11:02:59AM -0400, Kieren MacMillan wrote: But I also believe that it will be a great while longer before *watching* a robot (or audio speaker) will be as compelling as watching a human performer. BS. Watching musical robots is *incredibly* interesting, and way way way more interesting than a human! ... hmm, maybe I've been more affected from working in a Department of Electrical Engineering than I thought. :) Cheers, - Graham (seriously! I mean, you can wonder how much power it uses, and whether they use wired or wireless transmission, or how many degrees of freedom each of the joints offers, or... ok, I'll shut up now. :) ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Kieren MacMillan kieren_macmil...@sympatico.ca writes: [...] One thing that comes to mind is that I don't want to arrive at a point where musician will be teaching computers to play instead of learning to play themselves. I hate to break the news, but we're already at that point -- as evidenced by this thread. =) You are confusing teaching, training, and programming. Computers are programmed, and some programs may require training to deliver proper results. Teaching, however, _conveys_ meaning. You don't teach an encyclopedia or an expert system, even though you may use them as a tool for teaching. -- David Kastrup ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Hi David, Excellent rebuttal! The whole point is that a computer, left to its own devices, would never think of playing the violin or chess. It would sit in a corner and rust. With all due respect, I don't even think that's the point -- for at some future date, there will undoubtedly be a computer which, left to its own devices, *would* think of playing the violin or chess rather than sitting in a corner and rusting. Rather, I think the point is: Why would the mere existence of such a computer stop any human from wanting to continue making music (or playing chess) at his or her highest possible level? To reuse your [excellent] analogy: Just because cars are faster than humans doesn't mean we should stop trying to run our fastest. Best, Kieren. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Hi, On Thu, 17 Mar 2011 11:02:59 -0400 Kieren MacMillan kieren_macmil...@sympatico.ca wrote: Hello all, At first, I wasn't really interested in this thread… however, it's now gotten quite interesting. Same here ... This is intellectually interesting but the question is not who deserves to create good music? but rather who wants to listen to music made by someone that does not practice? and who wants to listen to music played by a computer? [...] Are we one day going to only listen to robots playing music? This, I believe, cuts to the central problem of our time, at least with respect to classical or concert music: What is the correct (i.e., relevant and necessary) role of live music performance, and how should it be presented? In other words, why do we always use the word listen, when -- at least in live performance -- we are almost necessarily WATCHING music being played? exactly. Going to a concert to watch a loud speaker simply won't fly -- at least not with me. Art conveys emotions which are the one thing that make us human and thus should be played by human. 1. I don't believe that emotions are the one thing that make us human. But that's fodder for another thread… :) 2. I believe that one day fairly soon computers -- in forms robotic and otherwise -- will be able to generate (i.e., play) music which is either *actually* as emotionally rich as human performers, or at the very least the difference will be indistinguishable for the majority of audience members. But I also believe that it will be a great while longer before *watching* a robot (or audio speaker) will be as compelling as watching a human performer. This day has more-or-less arrived. Whether we like it or not, most of the music we hear in our daily lives, e.g., radio spots, commercials, tv-shows and ever-increasingly, major motion pictures are filled with music generated by computers, albeit mostly through samples generated by humans, but nevertheless, they are rendered by a computer. One thing that comes to mind is that I don't want to arrive at a point where musician will be teaching computers to play instead of learning to play themselves. I hate to break the news, but we're already at that point -- as evidenced by this thread. =) One thing a robot, or any type of computer generated music will never replace is the simple gratification of actually playing -- from a players perspective. Some may think having a bunch of people getting together and pulling out their robots for a musical social hour fun, but I don't and won't for the foreseeable future. This isn't because I don't think it wouldn't sound nice -- it would, and to be honest with my rusty skills (and usually too much wine before the music making begins) it would probably sound better, but for me, physically making music with other humans is an extremely powerful feeling. ... but that's me. As evidenced by computer gaming, the notion of social interaction with a computer has long since been upon us. I understand also from a composer/arranger/orchestrator perspective that computers are an invaluable aspect of my every-day life. I couldn't conceive of mastering all the instruments I write for besides understanding fundamental technique, ranges and articulations (at the least). But we should always understand that these are tools. As someone else in this thread mentioned, without humans, the computer (or robot) would rust in the corner. David -- What is full of redundancy or formula is predictably boring. What is free of all structure or discipline is randomly boring. In between lies art. -- David Siu ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
RE: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
hello )-Original Message- )From: lilypond-user-bounces+james.lowe=datacore@gnu.org )[mailto:lilypond-user-bounces+james.lowe=datacore@gnu.org] On )Behalf Of David Kastrup )Sent: 17 March 2011 14:57 )To: lilypond-user@gnu.org )Subject: Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music ) )Marc Mouries m...@mouries.net writes: ) ) )There is hardly something more aggravating than a romanticizing )performer distracting from good Bach, for example. ) Humming Pianists? but anyway... +1 and actually David's link to that chap playing the Bandoneón was rather ridiculous (for me) to 'watch' even if the music was very well played - I had to stop watching and just listen to the music his twitching was so distracting. However...there is (was) something rather compelling watching the (very young) Royal Academy Soloists play Shostakovich's Op110a recently. Sat in the front row I had a great view of the players struggling/fighting/enjoying/anticipating/worrying along with the interplay between the principle violin player and the rest of the strings, there was much twitching and jostling and body movement (they were standing while playing) the music while not incidental, was just a (very large) part of the whole. I know the piece very well, I've heard it played 'more accomplishedly (?)' both on recorded music and live, but this was probably one of the most enjoyable performance I have seen of it that I doubt a set of Speakers or 'robotic' performers on stage would give quite the same experience. James ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On Thu 17 Mar 2011, 15:31 Graham Percival wrote: As for *good* computer-performed music... it's not my favorite Miku work, but can you honestly say that you feel no emotion when watching this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1Dqb6uJ8WY (maybe you _can_ say that you feel nothing, but I can't -- the way her voice catches on certain notes seems heartbreaking to me) Because it's actually a sketch? We can see a line or two --- and feel something special about that (different feelings for different people sometimes). It's good. ps. I choose really good music to feel something special usually. But really good music is a different thing for differnet people, too. In short -- 42 (Answer to the Ultimate Question ...), exactly. -- Dmytro O. Redchuk Bug Squad ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Marc Mouries m...@mouries.net writes: On 3/17/2011 10:57 AM, David Kastrup wrote: Marc Mouriesm...@mouries.net writes: This is intellectually interesting but the question is not who deserves to create good music? but rather who wants to listen to music made by someone that does not practice? and who wants to listen to music played by a computer? Sure many times, nowadays, the rendition of a computer playing is quite good but who cares? Art conveys emotions which are the one thing that make us human and thus should be played by human. Uh, you never heard of the concept of an actor or play, I suppose? Emotions don't need to exist at the sender's side in order to be conveyed to a receiver. yep but it's much easier to believe a person acting or playing than a robot. Huh? You believe actors are for _real_? If i see a robot or computer playing and it's nice, you will think nice programming but i don't think it can bring tears or joy. Because it does not act? That's sort of ridiculous. Compare, say, the Bach solo partitas played by Jascha Heifetz and Gideon Kremer and try looking at their acting. Kremer plays brutal and expressive, Heifetz rather nonchalantly and straightforwardly. Kremer sounds like he is really working hard at butchering Bach. Heifetz lets the music run. Much less distracting, and leaves much more of a chance to let _Bach_ move you to tears. That Bach that died so many centuries ago and left us only unfeeling black dots on paper. -- David Kastrup ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On 3/17/2011 11:31 AM, Graham Percival wrote: Art conveys emotions which are the one thing that make us human and thus should be played by human. should be? Hmm. Art conveys emotions, and thus sheet music should be engraved by a human. You are mixing unrelated things. The analogy is about getting emotion from listening or watching the artifact produced. While i find electronic engraving useful, people find ancient manual engraving much nicer. Fiction conveys emotions, and thus all novels should be hand-written by a human. Is LilyPond a good thing? It lets composers produce high-quality output -- but with a computer. Does the sheet music lose anything from automatic algorithmic placement of noteheads? I don't think so... in fact, I'd argue that LilyPond produces better output than 99% of humans could create on their own. Same thing with computer-performed music, although of course right now the better than 99% of humans is something like Vivi produces violin music that is better than 1% of humans. I'm not claiming that Vivi is the end of the road, nor am I suggesting that anybody throw away their violin CDs! As for *good* computer-performed music... it's not my favorite Miku work, but can you honestly say that you feel no emotion when watching this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1Dqb6uJ8WY (maybe you _can_ say that you feel nothing, but I can't -- the way her voice catches on certain notes seems heartbreaking to me) i just don't like this piece and it's out of tune. One vocaloid generated song I enjoy is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm2IQ0y2J0Q but I much prefer this human version here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN4cLlIKnoA I mean, I get a *totally* different feeling from that work than I get from this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3YOqUbhOQc But the audio in both works was computer-generated. Now, you might accuse me of cheating by giving links to vidoes (rather than just audio), but I still pick up a different emotion from each work even without the video. What's the end goal of such system? Can you describe in what is that helpful? It's helpful because it gives content creators (being a generic term for composers and performers) another tool to create music. I don't have a string quartet at my disposal. I have friends who play string instuments, but I can't have them instantly perform a composition that I'm working on at 2am. And if I wanted to record my friends and release the audio under a permissive license, I'd need to warn them, get their permission, and then they might want to practice their parts more (if it's going to be available to everybody over the internet), etc. Guess why I don't have audio recordings of my compositions on my website? There is a college kid here who is playing in a quartet and started to include his own composition in their recital. You could certainly do the same, create your own quartet and play your own composition. Are we one day going to only listen to robots playing music? It depends. What do you *want* to listen to? Go listen to that! Nobody's going to legislate that humans are not allowed to play, record, and listen to themselves! Where *will* the limits be, or where *should* the limits be? Yes very good question. One thing that comes to mind is that I don't want to arrive at a point where musician will be teaching computers to play instead of learning to play themselves. Then I guess you don't want to look at the roadmap. :) Win the Chopin competition by 2050! http://renconmusic.org/about.htm oh i know we will get there and i can appreciate the technological achievement and if that will help people to play the piano the better. It comes down to this: - new tool for composers. - if you can notice a difference, and prefer human recordings, then go listen to human recordings. - if you can't notice a difference [say, 10 or 20 years from now], then why complain? I complain because it's more than a matter of taste. The impact is bigger than what it seems. It's like people always want to get the lowest price and 10 years later, the manufacture and their job is sent overseas so they can get the lowest price but now they don't have a job to buy anything. In the past you could hire musicians more easily and more frequently. Today people throw a party and they will play mp3 they copied from somebody else and later will wonder why they can't get a career in music. Anyway, all tastes are in nature and we won't agree. So peace, enjoy the music you like and let's come back to making lilypond work. -Marc ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
David Santamauro david.santama...@gmail.com writes: One thing a robot, or any type of computer generated music will never replace is the simple gratification of actually playing -- from a players perspective. What a ridiculous criterion. One thing you or any type of human generated music (sorry for equating you with music, I am just following your sentence structure) will never replace is the simple gratification of actually playing -- from my perspective. So what? Either I am interested in the listener's perspective, and of course I can perfectly well develop that while listening to music produced by arbitrary means, or in the player's perspective, and then I have to play. If my humanity status is different from that of the player, obviously I am not playing myself. If it is the same, it still does not in any way replace my playing itself. -- David Kastrup ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 11:08:53AM -0400, Kieren MacMillan wrote: Hi David, The whole point is that a computer, left to its own devices, would never think of playing the violin or chess. It would sit in a corner and rust. With all due respect, I don't even think that's the point -- for at some future date, there will undoubtedly be a computer which, left to its own devices, *would* think of playing the violin or chess rather than sitting in a corner and rusting. Actually, I doubt that. What I expect is that at some future date (say, 100 years), if you have told your computer to entertain you, it will decide to create a virtual string quartet, performing new music composed in the style of Dvorak. Whereas for me, it might create a virtual jpop singer with invisible backup band (a la Miku videos), and for my best friend in high school, it might create a virtual quake CXI game where he plays against other people over the 'net. The basic point is: I can't imagine a computer just deciding to start playing, but I can totally imagine a computer deciding that you would like it to start playing. The computer may or may not be correct, but I'd guess that if it wasn't at least 99% correct, most people would turn off the automatically select entertainment option. Cheers, - Graham ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Quoting Marc Mouries (m...@mouries.net): This is intellectually interesting but the question is not who deserves to create good music? but rather who wants to listen to music made by someone that does not practice? and who wants to listen to music played by a computer? Sure many times, nowadays, the rendition of a computer playing is quite good but who cares? Art conveys emotions which are the one thing that make us human and thus should be played by human. What's the end goal of such system? Can you describe in what is that helpful? Are we one day going to only listen to robots playing music? Where *will* the limits be, or where *should* the limits be? Yes very good question. One thing that comes to mind is that I don't want to arrive at a point where musician will be teaching computers to play instead of learning to play themselves. I slightly disagree. I see art in computer programs aswell as in playing an instrument. It's just another medium. Both are creative processes. Mind, I'm not talking about having the computer play the music, but about teaching the computer how to do it. And, where's the difference between staring computer-playback of a score and putting a CD into the CD player? Both are non-creative steps (except for choosing the music). And the latter we do all day (or it's done for us in the radio, shops, TV, ...) I can understand the loathing a computer trying to reproduce something perceive as so typically human. I can also understand feeling betrayed if computers do something you spent hours and hours on. I can even more understand musicians hating to be replaced by computers. But isn't that what is happening already? Isn't that a very old development, which always had its good and its bad sides? From the first day music has been written down, this has been a two-edged blade. It made thinking about music easier, allowing for more complex composition. But it made the art of composition less important -- now you could become a famous musician without ever creating a single piece of music yourself. All you had to do is gain a skill at reproduction. Then music recording became possible, so there was no need any more for a musician to play at your dancing lesson or your party. The possibility to record and re-play has greatly improved the quality of music reproduction, allowing for self-correction and for more comparision with other musicians. But it took away work from all the not-so-great artists. Ever asked people to sing where others can hear them? Only very few will dare do so any more. Now (and ever since computers became availlable) computers come into the story, gaining (very very slowly) their place in music creation and reproduction. It's just another step on a path that has begun some centuries ago. It will have its good sides as well as its bad sides, I am quite sure of that. And about the point of emotions -- I think you are wrong if you think you convey emotions with your music. You may have emotions and try to express them while playing music. At least that's what I do when playing music. But those emotions have nothing to do with the emotions of those listening to your music! The emotions of your listeners are not created by your music, they stem from the listener! Your music may be the catalyst, but the emotion is purely the listener's. Just an example. I remember me singing a very sad German song, filled with grief and full of symbols of death, as the start of a story I was telling. I started telling it, then was interrupted. A week later I met with the same people, and was about to resume this story. And I heard one of the listeners tell another: Oh, do not fear for the heroes of the story. I still remember her song. It was so filled with tranquility and unswerving faith, nothing untoward could happen after that. Yes, music is full of emotion. At least for me. But although the composer and performer will have a view what they want to express, the listener's emotions still are purely his. And thus I am sure I can develop emotions when listening to a computer composition too. On the other hand I know the value of psychology. I will enjoy live music, even if I do not much like its style, much more than even the most perfect and beloved music playback. But for that reaction, live recordings have the same effect as studio recordings, and as computer generated music. I do not feel much life in them. So as to the question, who wants to listen to computer played music, I could as well ask who would want to listen to CD playback. For me the background noise in shops -- often called music -- does not have much life, so I do not expect any difference were it replaced by computer played music. Same for the background sounds in most movies. I would pity the musicians who loose their jobs, congratulate the programmers who gain jobs, and most probably not mind the difference, as long as both the musicians and the programmers deserve the word
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Graham Percival gra...@percival-music.ca writes: On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 11:08:53AM -0400, Kieren MacMillan wrote: Hi David, The whole point is that a computer, left to its own devices, would never think of playing the violin or chess. It would sit in a corner and rust. With all due respect, I don't even think that's the point -- for at some future date, there will undoubtedly be a computer which, left to its own devices, *would* think of playing the violin or chess rather than sitting in a corner and rusting. Actually, I doubt that. What I expect is that at some future date (say, 100 years), if you have told your computer to entertain you, it will decide to create a virtual string quartet, performing new music composed in the style of Dvorak. Whereas for me, it might create a virtual jpop singer with invisible backup band (a la Miku videos), and for my best friend in high school, it might create a virtual quake CXI game where he plays against other people over the 'net. For me it will shut itself off. It is pretty good at that already. -- David Kastrup ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 12:38:48PM -0400, Marc Mouries wrote: On 3/17/2011 11:31 AM, Graham Percival wrote: Art conveys emotions which are the one thing that make us human and thus should be played by human. should be? Hmm. Art conveys emotions, and thus sheet music should be engraved by a human. You are mixing unrelated things. The analogy is about getting emotion from listening or watching the artifact produced. While i find electronic engraving useful, people find ancient manual engraving much nicer. But you're not arguing that I should not be allowed to use computer engraving if I want to. i just don't like this piece and it's out of tune. One vocaloid generated song I enjoy is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm2IQ0y2J0Q ick. I consider that to be one of the worst meme videos that people did with Miku. What about a ballad? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cAnspI1C0o Guess why I don't have audio recordings of my compositions on my website? There is a college kid here who is playing in a quartet and started to include his own composition in their recital. You could certainly do the same, create your own quartet and play your own composition. Sure! Each time I move to a new continent (3 times in the past 3 years, and probably a 4th coming up in 18 months), I can make new highly-skilled string-playing friends, become sufficiently friendly so that I can ask them to practice for a few hours and then spend a few hours making recordings. And whenever I want to add a different instrument, I can become friends with another performer, again becoming sufficiently good friends that I can ask them to do about 10 hours of work for no pay. Oh yeah, and since these recordings would be open-source, they of course would get no royalties or anything like that. That's a lot of friendship to impose. Alternatively, I could pay people. Let's see... for my cello trios, I'd need one cellist (with at least 15 years of experience) to practice for about 4 hours, and two more cellists to practice for 2 hours. Then add in a 2-hour recording session. That's... hmm, what's the going rate for cellists with 15-20 years of classical experience? Let's call it CDN $100 ? And renting a recording studio for 2 hours, and a sound technician... I honestly have no idea. $1000? that's probably too low, but whatever. So I'm now looking at CND $2000 to create a recording of one 5-minute piece. Oh, but I probably need to pay the musicians extra to be happy with the no royalties thing. As a composer, I could write one of those every week... but at those prices, I think I'd only write one every year. OR, I could just give the .ly file to Vivi version 9.4, and produce a decent-sounding .wav file in 60 seconds. For free. And (legally) make the result open-source as well. That sounds like a clear win to me. I complain because it's more than a matter of taste. The impact is bigger than what it seems. Yes, but I think the impact of making it easier and better for music *composers* will outweigh any inconvience for music *performers*. Is Vocaloid ruining the market for jpop singers? Maybe... but in exchange, it's created a market for thousands of people to create music where it was previously impossible. I mean, in theory I could learn oboe or piano -- but unless I have a sex change operation and massive throat reconstruction surgery, there's no way that I could ever sing like Miku Hatsune. There's a huge amount of human creativity involved in Vocaloid, Miku Miku Dance, and the like. I think the good of that *far* outweighs any (alleged) harm that Vocaloid is doing to professional pop music in Japan. Cheers, - Graham ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Graham, BS. Watching musical robots is *incredibly* interesting, and way way way more interesting than a human! (seriously! I mean, you can wonder how much power it uses, and whether they use wired or wireless transmission, or how many degrees of freedom each of the joints offers, or... Thank you for proving my point. ;) Cheers, Kieren. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Hi David, You are confusing teaching, training, and programming. No: they are simply three different levels/aspects/stages/manifestations of the same basic task. You don't teach an encyclopedia or an expert system You don't train or program an encyclopedia either -- the closest you can come is to program a computer application to access/manipulate/display data from an encyclopedia. Cheers, Kieren. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Hi Graham, With all due respect, I don't even think that's the point -- for at some future date, there will undoubtedly be a computer which, left to its own devices, *would* think of playing the violin or chess rather than sitting in a corner and rusting. Actually, I doubt that. Wow, write this down: Kieren MacMillan has a more optimistic view of our technological possibilities. ;) What I expect is that Sure, all that is inevitable -- I just happen to believe we'll eventually get farther than that. I can't imagine a computer just deciding to start playing I can... and I think Kurzweil would agree with me. :) Cheers, Kieren. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Hi David, This day has more-or-less arrived. Whether we like it or not, most of the music we hear in our daily lives, e.g., radio spots, commercials, tv-shows and ever-increasingly, major motion pictures are filled with music generated by computers, albeit mostly through samples generated by humans, but nevertheless, they are rendered by a computer. I think that's somewhat different than what I was discussing: I'm talking about WATCHING computers (or robots) PLAY music, not listening to music that was played/generated/rendered [to any degree] by computers. Case in point: my friend Roger created and programmed McBlare, a robotic bagpipe player (see http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~music/mcblare/). Am I intellectually fascinated by Roger's work? Absolutely. Is it stimulating and exciting to watch McBlare play music? Absolutely. Would I rather watch a human (e.g., my dad) play the bagpipes? Absolutely. Will there come a day in my lifetime when I would honestly -- emotionally -- prefer to watch a robot play an instrument rather than a human? I don't believe so. [But I *do* believe there is a chance that such a day will come eventually.] One thing a robot, or any type of computer generated music will never replace is the simple gratification of actually playing I would go one step further: I constantly -- and happily -- use computers/robots/programs to do certain things [almost always faster, and quite often better] than I can, in part so that I am free to spend more time and energy doing certain other things [which may or may not be things computers to do faster or better than I]. To wit: I use a boiling-water dispenser, in part so that I am free to spend more time drinking and enjoying my tea; I use email for 99% of my correspondence, in part so that I am free to spend more time using a pen and stationery to write meaningful long-hand letters to my close friends; and I engrave my music with Lilypond, in part so that I am free to spend more time at the piano with a pencil and manuscript paper rather than being forced to have a computer compose for me. Other people make other choices, obviously. I just think it's unfortunate if you stop doing something you love simply because there's a computer or robot or program that does it better or faster than you do. ... but that's me. As evidenced by computer gaming, the notion of social interaction with a computer has long since been upon us. +1 Cheers, Kieren. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords. -- Ken Jennings :-, Mike ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords. -- Ken Jennings =) ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Graham == Graham Percival gra...@percival-music.ca writes: Graham Percival gra...@percival-music.ca writes: It comes down to this: - new tool for composers. It's also a tool for music teachers. And I'd argue that that is as important if not more so.Human students do an awful lot of interpretation of what they're told. Robots can't. So you have to be explicit about more of your assumptions when teachign a robot to play. Our robotic clarinet was designed so that we could understand what was going on in the mouthpiece, the fingers, the vocal cavity, and the interaction of all those with the reed, so that we could reproduce not only beautiful music (which we managed I think) but also beginners' mistakes. When we can say what makes a particular combination of lip pressure, tonguing and fingering `squeak' in that annoying way that beginner (and some semi-pro) clarinettists have, we can work out how to teach them not to. Peter C -- Dr Peter Chubb http://www.gelato.unsw.edu.au peterc AT gelato.unsw.edu.au http://www.ertos.nicta.com.au ERTOS within National ICT Australia ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Graham, I think the impact of making it easier and better for music *composers* will outweigh any inconvience for music *performers*. [...] it's created a market for thousands of people to create music where it was previously impossible. Unfortunately, lower barrier of entry almost always means more crap to sift through. Remember the flood of horrible design that the Mac unleashed on the world? It persists to this day. =) Cheers, Kieren. ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Shane Brandes sh...@grayskies.net writes: As a random aside on the whole electronic music effort. On the one hand the technology and science is very interesting, but on the other it is somehow disturbing. I suppose since I have spent so much of my life attempting to master keyboard instruments and having watch so many students progress in their own studies that it seems to me that one cold never hope to replicate a human at an instrument. Where is the difference to other manual endeavours? There are all sorts of odd philosophical ramifications of trying and already certain deficits are occurring especially in the film industry on account of such efforts. If computer-generated animations do a reasonable job of supplanting the God-awful embarrassing musician pantomimes of typical actors, they have my vote. I really have little sympathy for people with that sort of salary not investing one day of time for a role in order just to know how to _hold_ their instrument. If actors don't take their job seriously, I can't blame the film industry for outsorcing that aspect. As a tool and a method of rationalizing musical praxis it is certainly useful and convenient, but where will the limits be? And no this not a forum for such discussion, but we should all be conscious of these questions. Film music is happening in small circles. For example, there are about three accordionists (usually responsible for their own compositions) in all of Hollywood. Film orchestras and composers are similarly specialized and confined circles. You can't actually expect to have them appear on-stage because they look totally fossilized compared to the constant influx of young faces. And people would get annoyed if they see the same old faces in every motion picture, anyway. An example of the limits of our technological advance might be supplied by the following technical issue. The piano which is my primary instrument, if not the primary performance vehicle, (church organist) is an instrument that I have studied in depth, not that I have or ever will realize any sort of mastery over it, but being exposed to some of the great teachers on the planet has really altered my view of what is possible. I once heard someone say that with the advent of touch sensitive keyboards pianos were obsolete, and perhaps years ago I might have agreed, but the mechanics of that instrument are such that I find it doubtful that it will be ever replicated by a electronic device for a whole host of reasons. One of my favorite examples is that of vibrato. It never would have occurred to me that it is possible or even relevant to piano until it was demonstrated to me, but yet at the same time it can be achieved simply by the action of your fingers upon the keys after they have been struck. The difference in tone is of course not terribly obvious but yet it can yield a completely different character to the chords thus being treated. There are certainly other examples, but that is the one that I find least likely to ever be replicated. It is a marginal effect. I have an accordion with basic Midi equipment without any velocity or pressure sensitivity. Just notes on and off. Hook this up with a reasonable Midi Expander (using a Ketron MS40), and this is fun to play with most instrument simulations, and feels quite lively. You _know_ certain forms of feedback (most of them, actually) are not possible with that setup. But it does not feel like that. In a different vein, there is this old Atari800 game called Ball Blazer from Lucas Logic (the same that were making Star Wars etc). The control you use for playing it is a joystick. A digital one: either you push it forward or not. There is nothing to be gained by pushing it stronger. This rationale does not survive longer than about 10 seconds into the game. You'll find that you are straining your wrist by then, trying to force the max out of that joystick. Never mind that you know better. As is the simple fact that no two people ever draw the same tone from the same instrument and that can be startlingly different. People play expressively on organs equipped with electric keyboards. URL:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_AwZKNtSEc plays a Scarlatti sonata on accordion solo. All voices have a common dynamic control, the bellows. Still you'd be inclined to believe that their dynamic lines are developing reasonably independently. Which is physically nonsensical; perceptually however, masking effects may combine into that expression. A similar phenomenon on a bandonion: URL:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdNvtsq6P70 for a Bach fantasia. So I am rather wary with prescribing too much musical importance to obscure physical phenomena. It is more than likely that those don't really count significantly in practice for the perceived musicality of the result. -- David Kastrup ___ lilypond-user mailing list
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 12:42:45AM -0300, Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote: On Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 8:17 AM, Mike Blackstock blackstock.m...@gmail.com wrote: This is F*G great! Especially the Bach BWV 1006 - I could have sworn it really was a kid playing. http://percival-music.ca/audio/bwv-1006_1.wav.mp3 To my ears, the rhythm sounded eerily exact - don't kids slow down their tempo when it gets difficult? Many do, and Vivi doesn't do that yet. That comes under the topic of expressive music performance, which is a few steps down the road. There's a few examples of variable skill (including applying a normal distribution to the timing) at the bottom of this page: http://percival-music.ca/favorites.html Most research on expressive music performance uses piano or perhaps guitars -- for those instruments, the sound of a note is pretty much determined by the initial pitch, time, and velocity. (leaving aside quibbles like guitar glissando, piano pedaling, etc) Cheers, - Graham ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
RE: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Han-wen, )-Original Message- )From: lilypond-user-bounces+james.lowe=datacore@gnu.org )[mailto:lilypond-user-bounces+james.lowe=datacore@gnu.org] On )Behalf Of Han-Wen Nienhuys )Sent: 14 March 2011 03:43 )To: Mike Blackstock )Cc: lilypond-user@gnu.org )Subject: Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music ) )On Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 8:17 AM, Mike Blackstock )blackstock.m...@gmail.com wrote: ) This is F*G great! Especially the Bach BWV 1006 - I could have ) sworn it really was a kid playing. ) http://percival-music.ca/audio/bwv-1006_1.wav.mp3 ) )To my ears, the rhythm sounded eerily exact - don't kids slow down their )tempo when it gets difficult? These are obviously the Children from Midwich ;) Actually Graham covered that in his last email and which I had also taken him up on... --snip-- So far, Vivi doesn't do any expressive music peformance. I'm aware that it's an active research area, especially with Rencon: http://renconmusic.org/ ... --snip-- James ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
Han-Wen Nienhuys hanw...@gmail.com writes: On Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 8:17 AM, Mike Blackstock blackstock.m...@gmail.com wrote: This is F*G great! Especially the Bach BWV 1006 - I could have sworn it really was a kid playing. http://percival-music.ca/audio/bwv-1006_1.wav.mp3 To my ears, the rhythm sounded eerily exact - don't kids slow down their tempo when it gets difficult? No. They practice until they can pick their nose while playing. When was the last time you heard a child prodigy? One problem is that they practice until the listeners can pick their nose while playing, too. Everything is there, but you find it hard to care. I get this sort of double-take when practising accordion rather often: focusing on playing fast enough that the listener does not get bored. Of course, the proper approach (and basically my only realistic chance) is to play it _well_ enough that the listener does not get bored. With percussive instruments like a piano or harpsichord, the options for that are limited. With a manually sustained instrument like string instruments, wind instruments, accordions and their directly controlled ilk (harmoniums only so-so, organs not really), you have what it takes to fill long notes with musical sense. -- David Kastrup ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
Re: [OT] Vivi, the Virtual Violinist, plays LilyPond music
As a random aside on the whole electronic music effort. On the one hand the technology and science is very interesting, but on the other it is somehow disturbing. I suppose since I have spent so much of my life attempting to master keyboard instruments and having watch so many students progress in their own studies that it seems to me that one cold never hope to replicate a human at an instrument. There are all sorts of odd philosophical ramifications of trying and already certain deficits are occurring especially in the film industry on account of such efforts. As a tool and a method of rationalizing musical praxis it is certainly useful and convenient, but where will the limits be? And no this not a forum for such discussion, but we should all be conscious of these questions. An example of the limits of our technological advance might be supplied by the following technical issue. The piano which is my primary instrument, if not the primary performance vehicle, (church organist) is an instrument that I have studied in depth, not that I have or ever will realize any sort of mastery over it, but being exposed to some of the great teachers on the planet has really altered my view of what is possible. I once heard someone say that with the advent of touch sensitive keyboards pianos were obsolete, and perhaps years ago I might have agreed, but the mechanics of that instrument are such that I find it doubtful that it will be ever replicated by a electronic device for a whole host of reasons. One of my favorite examples is that of vibrato. It never would have occurred to me that it is possible or even relevant to piano until it was demonstrated to me, but yet at the same time it can be achieved simply by the action of your fingers upon the keys after they have been struck. The difference in tone is of course not terribly obvious but yet it can yield a completely different character to the chords thus being treated. There are certainly other examples, but that is the one that I find least likely to ever be replicated. As is the simple fact that no two people ever draw the same tone from the same instrument and that can be startlingly different. Anyway sorry about the wasted bandwidth, but I really needed to do something aimlessly constructive. And have been following this thread all week. regards, Shane Brandes On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 7:41 AM, David Kastrup d...@gnu.org wrote: Han-Wen Nienhuys hanw...@gmail.com writes: On Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 8:17 AM, Mike Blackstock blackstock.m...@gmail.com wrote: This is F*G great! Especially the Bach BWV 1006 - I could have sworn it really was a kid playing. http://percival-music.ca/audio/bwv-1006_1.wav.mp3 To my ears, the rhythm sounded eerily exact - don't kids slow down their tempo when it gets difficult? No. They practice until they can pick their nose while playing. When was the last time you heard a child prodigy? One problem is that they practice until the listeners can pick their nose while playing, too. Everything is there, but you find it hard to care. I get this sort of double-take when practising accordion rather often: focusing on playing fast enough that the listener does not get bored. Of course, the proper approach (and basically my only realistic chance) is to play it _well_ enough that the listener does not get bored. With percussive instruments like a piano or harpsichord, the options for that are limited. With a manually sustained instrument like string instruments, wind instruments, accordions and their directly controlled ilk (harmoniums only so-so, organs not really), you have what it takes to fill long notes with musical sense. -- David Kastrup ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user ___ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
