Black MIDI is a thing. A thing of cacophony and madness, of multi-million note MIDI songs, played on MIDI pianos as visual art and audio maelstrom.
Does anybody going to Norwescon do this? If so, talk to me. If there’s a panel to be had here, I’d like to have it. music at norwescon dot org.
VCON asked me to host a songwriter workshop, which is kind of amazing, and I said okay, which is even more amazing. So, Vancouver, if you want to workshop a song with a supervillain? Now is your opportunity. Details below, but move fast, deadlines are kind of now. Or the 30th. One of those.
VCON 38, Song Writers’ Workshop
Instructor: Dara Korra’ti
Date: Saturday, October 5
Start Time: 2 PM
Duration: 2 hr
Max participants: 4Singer songwriter Dara Korra’ti will meet with workshop participants for a collaborative review of songs-in-progress. The focus will be on general feedback and constructive criticisms for improvement from both her and other participants.
Participants must submit the work-in-progress they wish to have workshopped no later than September 30. To submit, send the lyrics you have written so far and a recording (or a link to a recording) of the song or the music your lyrics are for via email to programming@vcon.ca.
Any quality recording is fine – even a phone recording – though obviously higher quality is better within the constraints of sending a file by email. If your lyrics are written to go with an existing, popular song you can just provide the title name of the artist. If you have written your own music, you may also submit the score but, at Dara’s request, the deadline for a submission with a musical score is a week earlier (September 23) to give her more time to review it.
While not required, participants are encouraged to bring their favourite, portable musical instrument to the workshop.
NOTE: Online registration for VCON hands-on workshops are normally restricted to those who have pre-registered with those who purchase a membership on site only being allowed to register if there are open spaces available the day of the workshop. However, given the nature of this particular workshop (that is, material needs to be pre-submitted), and the fact that pre-registration ended on Sep 15, anyone who would like to participate in this workshop but who has not pre-registered for VCON is invited to contact the VCON Director of Programming atprogramming@vcon.ca to discuss possible options regarding their participation.
While a song is not a documentary, all of these variations actually happened, the first one repeatedly. In none of those moments some people call “ironic” but actually contains no actual irony, I was at a party this weekend hosted by the Agora featuring the Attoparsec Cocktail Engine, and while it was not capable of making a true kamikaze, it was capable of making one of these terrifying variants.
I labelled the programme card for it, “PAIN.”
Enjoy:
You can’t get a good kamikaze in Vancouver
2013 Crime and the Forces of Evil
or maybe Mary Kaye and the Cosmetics, it’s that kind of songShould probably be played with banjo or possibly ukelele
Also tuba. BOMP bomp BOMP bomp BOMP bomp BOMP bompChorus:
You can’t get a good kamikaze in Vancouver
It doesn’t matter where you buy your drinks
You can’t get a good kamikaze in Vancouver
Gods know I’ve tried and every one just stinksVerse 1:
[on beat] Sometimes they’ll swap out the lime for orange
A trick they learned while serving in the Navy
I should be glad at least it is a citrus
But something I could rhyme would be nice maybeOh
[chorus]Verse 2:
The Sheraton Vancouver’s pretty pleasant
Although it’s really really really really really really really really really really far away
The kamikazi served was phosphorescent
That kaiju flavour sticks with you all dayRAR!
[chorus]Verse 3:
Le Vent du Nord was playing in Coquitlam
Spoken: Yeah, I’m gonna rhyme something with Coquitlam. Watch me.
Le Festival du Bois’s a panacea
The drinking at the restaurant left my face numb
A kamikazi’s not a margarita!SALT?!
[chorus]Verse 4:
Davie during Pride is made of glitter
Commercial is a starker raving zoo
The kami that they served me was so bitter
The other girls around me bit ‘er tooar ar ar
[chorus]
But still I tryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy…
I played more with the panorama function on iOS 7 last night. It appeared to assume that you’d stand in place and turn, which is how most people do it, but I wanted to see how it would work if you didn’t do that, but instead scooched along in a straight line, to the side.
It really doesn’t expect you to be doing that. Check these out and click for larger:
The above looks pretty much right. I’m not practiced with it and the light could’ve been brighter, but you get the idea. Items look the correct size and shape, really, and the seaming is handled very well.
Now check it when you don’t do what they expect and slide from left to right:
Look how wibbly and bent things get! Particularly the compost bin – that’s the silver cylinder on the countertop. Is that cool or what? I suspect there’s some insight into their algorithmic assumptions here.
So, yeah. Not built for this purpose.
Oh, the stand-in-place version is cropped, because it came out to a higher total vertical resolution for some reason – 2468 pixels high. The slide version used I think the whole width, or close to it, and came out to 8627 horizontal. That’s a pretty high resolution pan. It is kind of noisy, tho’; I’d like to see how it does in good light. I suspect it’s optimised for outdoors.
Playing with a waveform rectifier. It’s external hardware, so to bounce stuff through it, I have to route out through analogue and back in, old-school. That’s fine, but kind of slow.
The odd part is, to me, the difference is substantial – at least, when the drums are thrown at it, not so much with the zouk and vox – but Anna doesn’t hear much of a difference. I wonder which is more typical?
Trying to throw an entire drum mix through it and using that in place of the separates Does Not Work, though. If I want to use this even as an incremental change tool, I should use it live (as recommended by maker, actually) or bounce per-instrument. That’s also suggested as reasonable in the manual.
Either way, it’s not showing up that hugely in the mix, even to me, and a lot of what this is doing is reminding me how much better the headphone amp in my workstation is than the headphone amp in my Macbook. By which I mean damn.
But at least I get to say “I have a waveform rectifier.” That’s cool.
The new iOS 7 panorama UI is perhaps the best I’ve ever seen, and it works great. You start, you pan slowly right, you tell it when you’re done, and there’s a UI to show you if you’re moving up and down or if you’re going too fast.
But since it works by knitting together new slices of images as you turn/move, you can screw with it by walking around. 😀
Those were taken with Paul’s iPhone 4. My iPad Mini doesn’t support this feature. I may need a new phone now. Goddammit.
THIS HAS BEEN CLAIMED. I’m getting some abandoned projects out the door. This is a big one: a Sansui 500A combination vacuum-tube amplifier and receiver. THIS HAS BEEN CLAIMED.
It’s collectable, it’s audiophile, all that. Unrebuilt but in good condition – like this one, which is all-original – these seem to go for about $150-180ish plus $100ish shipping. I got it for a lot less because nobody cared at the time. So if you are a fan, promise you mean to rebuild it, and can pick it up, I will give it to you, because I hate seeing things like this go to waste.
Last I fiddled with it (which was, um, six or seven years ago? Aheh) it actually powered up and tested pretty okay. BUT: those large-can capacitors are well past end of life and should be replaced before trying again. SERIOUSLY, THESE ANCIENT CAPS CAN EXPLODE, so re-cap it before powering it up. Also, any smaller electrolytic caps should get the same treatment.
It would make a really good first serious tube restoration project for somebody, particularly since I’m including an aftermarket service manual. It’s in very good cosmetic shape, as you can see. They have a really good reputation as project amps on Audiokarma, too – generally considered well worth restoring for personal use.
Also, honestly – you want to know how people could listen to AM radio? Listen to it on a machine actually built for that sometime, and meaning it. I do this demonstration occasionally, on vintage kit I’ve rebuilt, and people go, “…that’s radio? That’s AM radio?!” AM only sounds like garbage because nobody bothers making decent AM kit.
But for most purposes, it’d be a really nice serious starter vacuum tube project and amplifier for somebody. It has phono input, general-AUX input, and a tape monitor input, so you have some options. It’s not a small project, but it’s not a particularly brutal one, either, and – from all reports – well worth it.
I can say from my memory of tests that it had a really nice sound to it, even unrestored.
I WILL NOT SHIP THIS. If a bunch of people want it, I’ll pick at random. Otherwise, I’ll… eBay it, I guess. There’s a vacuum tube community out there; someone will want it.
GameSpot gave Grand Theft Auto V an Editor’s Choice and 9/10 review. The comment stream is a firehose of misogynist hate for not giving it 10/10 and for talking about the deep, vicious misogyny in the game.
But what’s interesting about the flood, really, isn’t the hate stream itself, and the obviously and intentionally misogynist comments. The more interesting part is the group who are saying that none of this belongs in the review, because it isn’t about the game; it’s “political activism” and “PC oppression” and such.
Now, of course, major thematic components of an immersive free-choice world-style game are relevant. And the other comments the reviewer made about the environment aren’t getting the h8, which, I think, verifies that they are, in fact, relevant.
No, the only way a player can really think the deep, systemic misogyny isn’t relevant in a review of a game is if you think it’s normal. It’s “not part of the game” and comments on it “aren’t relevant” and are “political activism” if and only if it matches and part of the world as you see it.
Which, frankly, the comment stream shows.
Unlike a lot of my posts, I don’t have an action call here. Well, I mean, I still have my post on Things Introverted Guys Can Do About This In General, of course, but in this specific case, I don’t even think it applies. I think it’s just an interesting look into how deep this runs, cause it runs deep, and mean.
Several people I know spin poi – some of them are really good! A few of them are fire performers, and that shit is epic. I have photos of a bunch of that up on my Flickr account.
But I haven’t seen people spin LED poi before. This is awesome in a different way entirely:
Somebody commenting on it said the spinner is using those bike LEDs. BEST USE EVAR.
I want to see this added to the Main Street Electrical Parade. I love that show. 😀
Let’s play everybody’s favourite new game, “what the hell is this noise?”!
It’s captured on a live mic in a quiet recording studio; the sound is not audible in the room itself. I’m really curious if it sounds familiar to anyone, and reminds them of anything other than ground loop:
This was picked up on AKG200 microphones, across multiple mics (All AKG200s) and cables, so it’s not am individual microphone or cable problem.
It starts at about 450hz and goes all the way through the floor. There’s something to amplify throughout that signal range. I put a sweep equaliser and found tones to boost throughout that range. Nothing above that, though.
I realise it sounds like a ground loop, but it’s not; I chased the 60hz question for a while, but it’s far wider than that. I have a workaround that reduces it to inaudibility that involves changing nothing connected to any of the equipment – at least, as long as I’m recording other people. That would not be true for a ground loop.
I posted about this a couple of places last night; the link goes to the Facebook link that got a bunch of comments.
Also, if I change out the mic to an Octava 012, it goes away. Also, a Shure SM57. No cable change fixes any part of it.
Whatcha got?
THE NEW SINGLE
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