Re: [LAD] Music, Undecidability, and the tiling problem (was Re: update: OT-ish: realtime 2d placement algorithms :-/)
On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 1:33 PM, Chris Cannam wrote: > I think the point Neils has is just that the outcome of your noodling > is somewhat independent of your explicit intention. Notes that sound > satisfying together are probably going to sound satisfying largely > because of some intrinsic mathematical relationship, or at least > something that is probably open to analysis to some extent but that > you don't yourself understand or plan. testify(wordUp); /*Chris, thanks for clarifying my point!*/ Consider how the snowflake, the mountain, coastlines, leaves and trees, whose shapes "put the cart before the horse" of the mathematics of fractals: http://www.ams.org/notices/201001/rtx100100010p.pdf (the most mind-blowing AMS paper i've read so far: is DNA and life itself "shaped" fractally in the same way time and erosion sculpts a mountain?). nature "put the cart before the horse" of analog synthesizers/computers when it made the sounds in the link below, without ever conceiving of operational-amplifiers: http://boingboing.net/2010/01/17/cracking-ice-sheets.html Last time I was thinking about this in public, I said: > The other thing that would be interesting is to explore the > intersection between fractal self-similarities and rhythm/melody. Is > music, and that which sounds musical "fractal" in nature, much like > when we see something and instantly identify "tree" or "mountain" or > "coastline" because of their fractal nature? Do we appreciate when > music is more fractal, versus being a kind of latticework, infinite > pattern, or just a random potpourri of sounds strung together for no > purpose? Niels http://nielsmayer.com ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Music, Undecidability, and the tiling problem (was Re: update: OT-ish: realtime 2d placement algorithms :-/)
On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 03:46:23PM -0400, Paul Davis wrote: > On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 3:31 PM, Niels Mayer wrote: > > > > > Ultimately, it doesn't matter what musicians "recognize"... what > > matters is what music *is* > > > i believe it was lord kelvin who once said "don't mistake your models for > reality". > > anyone who thinks that there is a single way to adequately describe music > clearly hasn't listened to enough of it yet. True. After probably more than half of the time I'll have to understand how music works and why we are so sensitive to it, I'm nowhere at all. It's way too complicated. The 'math' relation can't be ignored. Clearly our brain loves to discover and decode patterns, and see expectations based on them either first contrasted and then confirmed. I'm not a big Arvo Part fan, but I do like some his works. One of the best known ones, 'Fratres' [*] is very 'mathematical', you can describe it by 3 or 4 nested for() loops with very little code inside. But it has this haunting beauty that works even if you don't consciously discover the structure. Ciao, [*] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4UecUwdalI -- FA O tu, che porte, correndo si ? E guerra e morte ! ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Music, Undecidability, and the tiling problem (was Re: update: OT-ish: realtime 2d placement algorithms :-/)
On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 9:07 PM, Folderol wrote: > On Tue, 25 May 2010 12:31:57 -0700 > Niels Mayer wrote: >> Mathematics is fundamental to music -- everything from the >> relationship of notes to frequency, to what people consider musical, >> or rhythmic... has to do with math, group theory, etc. > > This is putting the cart before the horse. People were making music > long before there was any remotest concept of mathematics. Many of us > still work on the basis of just noodling about and 'ooo, that sounds > nice' without the slightest thought of relationships etc. I think the point Neils has is just that the outcome of your noodling is somewhat independent of your explicit intention. Notes that sound satisfying together are probably going to sound satisfying largely because of some intrinsic mathematical relationship, or at least something that is probably open to analysis to some extent but that you don't yourself understand or plan. Quite an interesting philosophical avenue here, and one that's fairly well trodden in other fields (ask an English theory student about Wimsatt and Beardsley). As an angle for compositional software, this suggests that if you can begin to model what "actually happens", you may be able to help to short-circuit your limited understanding of your own work. The problem with that (as I think Paul was saying?) is that as long as the model can be comprehended, the departures from it will continue to be more interesting than the model itself. Excuse me, I've probably had a glass of interesting Croatian red too many. Chris ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Announcing: ecaedl.pl Edit Decision List Capable Audio Playing
On May 25, 2010, at 8:02 PM, Niels Mayer wrote: > What is the particular advantage of EDL, versus something more standard: > http://www.w3.org/TR/SMIL/ > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronized_Multimedia_Integration_Language ?? "more standard" is relative and depends on the point of view. EDL (as in formats such as CMX3600) is certainly dated, but still common in Film-production (it can be read by a human with a scissor & tape). Basically that's why I asked about the use-cases or the goal of this 'exercise'. >From what I can tell about looking at Drew's perl script he's not trying to >interpret 'classic' EDL; and just used the term to get the idea across. SMIL >would certainly be the better option, though it may be overkill as well.. > Mplayer (and thus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-Multimedia_Player , > smplayer, and gnome-mplayer) supports SMIL although the support is > rudimentary. SMIL and other means of setting clips&playlists is > available in the flash-based 'jwplayer' http://www.longtailvideo.com > "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported" ( in action: > http://nielsmayer.com/xwiki/bin/view/Macros/JWPlayerJSPL_Test and > http://nielsmayer.com/xwiki/bin/view/Exhibit/NPRpods3 (work in progress) ). > > The other issue w/ doing it "in the player" is how well do the given > players handle a playlist. Most of them, even if accessing the same > media in different cue-locations, do not do a very good job with going > through "clips" with seamless transitions between the clips. However, > it's readily possible , with a bit of pre-buffering and pre-fetching > that allows seamless synchronized playback just a small matter of > programming... been there, done that and using libsndfile this just works and is pretty straight-forward. However other decoder libraries are not very predictable when it comes to accurate seeking. In particular ffmpeg's av_seek_frame() and libqt's quicktime_set_audio_position() are not very precise. The only reliable way to do this correctly with said libs would be to always start decoding from the beginning or to stick to a limited set of codecs. OTOH you may or may not care about +-1920 audio-samples. > (i waste way too much time abusing my own software for > unintended purpose -- "internet sampler and looper" > --http://nielsmayer.com/ts-episode-timeline.png ) > > Niels > http://nielsmayer.com > ___ > Linux-audio-dev mailing list > Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org > http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Music, Undecidability, and the tiling problem (was Re: update: OT-ish: realtime 2d placement algorithms :-/)
On Tue, 25 May 2010 12:31:57 -0700 Niels Mayer wrote: > Paul Davis : > > this might be how users of ableton live think about making music, and more > > generally, users of computer software aimed at pattern-based music > > composition/creation. > > > > but i would submit that if you offered this description of making music to > > musicians who play instruments or sing, they would find it unrecognizable. > > > Mathematics is fundamental to music -- everything from the > relationship of notes to frequency, to what people consider musical, > or rhythmic... has to do with math, group theory, etc. This is putting the cart before the horse. People were making music long before there was any remotest concept of mathematics. Many of us still work on the basis of just noodling about and 'ooo, that sounds nice' without the slightest thought of relationships etc. The only time I ever think about chords, progressions, is when I've more-or-less finished a composition and/or want to collaborate with someone else. When I was a child, I put together a construction of timber and waxed string. To this day I don't have the faintest idea what the string tunings were. I just know it produced some lovely sound combinations. Group/orchestral instrument & synth makers are no doubt deeply involved in the mathematics of their designs, but the players don't necessarily have any concept of this. A friend of mine is a member of a local choral group. He can't read music, just uses the dots as a vague reminder of when bits go up, down speed up or slow down. He seems quite happy like that. There may be incredible mathematical 'truths' in music, but I think it will be a very sad day when people concentrate on these rather than just having fun. -- Will J Godfrey http://www.musically.me.uk Say you have a poem and I have a tune. Exchange them and we can both have a poem, a tune, and a song. ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Music, Undecidability, and the tiling problem (was Re: update: OT-ish: realtime 2d placement algorithms :-/)
On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 3:31 PM, Niels Mayer wrote: > > Ultimately, it doesn't matter what musicians "recognize"... what > matters is what music *is* i believe it was lord kelvin who once said "don't mistake your models for reality". anyone who thinks that there is a single way to adequately describe music clearly hasn't listened to enough of it yet. ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Music, Undecidability, and the tiling problem (was Re: update: OT-ish: realtime 2d placement algorithms :-/)
Paul Davis : > this might be how users of ableton live think about making music, and more > generally, users of computer software aimed at pattern-based music > composition/creation. > > but i would submit that if you offered this description of making music to > musicians who play instruments or sing, they would find it unrecognizable. Mathematics is fundamental to music -- everything from the relationship of notes to frequency, to what people consider musical, or rhythmic... has to do with math, group theory, etc. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what musicians "recognize"... what matters is what music *is* -- and when that *is* causes an audience to cheer, be moved emotionally, get up and dance, etc. Chances are, anybody too close to their own subject will be unable to actually recognize it's true shape and meaning -- due to "can't see the forest for the trees syndrome."... Computer tools, pattern-based or not, are there to help us see that forest, (but usually lead us down the garden path instead). Sources: Book: David Wright's "Mathematics and Music" Book: J. Fauvel, R. Flood, and R. Wilson (eds.), Music and Mathematics: From Pythagoras to Fractals, Oxford, New York, 2003. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/313/5783/72/DC1 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/data/313/5783/72/DC1/1 "The Geometry of Musical Chords by Dmitri Tymoczko" http://www.ams.org/notices/201001/rtx100100030p.pdf "Music: Broken Symmetry, Geometry, and Complexity" ( http://www.uwec.edu/walkerjs/MBSGC/ ) excerpt . Example 15 (Melody and rhythm in “Unsquare Dance”). In the 1961 Dave Brubeck Quartet’s recording of “Unsquare Dance” [94], there is an amazing performance involving hand claps, piano notes, and bass notes all played in the unusual time signature of 7 . In Figure 16 we show our analysis of the melody and rhythm in a passage from “Unsquare Dance”. We used three different frequency ranges from the spectrogram to isolate the different instruments from the passage. The passage begins with a transition from rapid drum- stick strikings to hand clappings when the piano enters. The rhythm of the hand clappings plus piano notes has a 7 time signature. Notice that the bass notes are playing with a simple repetition of 4 beats that helps the other musicians play within this unusual time signature. In sum, the analysis shown in Figure 16 provides quantitative evidence for the “tightness” (rhythmic coherence) with which these musicians are performing. Niels http://nielsmayer.com ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Looking for an introduction to rt programming with a gui
On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 07:24:20AM +0200, torbenh wrote: > > This IDE with all this syntax checking and refactoring tools (and I might > > call > > them bells and whistles sometimes..) produces a real "added value". > > > > That makes me think that the development environment can really completely > > change the way you perceive a language or framework. There must be > > something to > > do for C lovers too, be it in Eclipse or not. > > it will probably work similarly if you use eclipse cdt. > but i prefer to have a real buildsystem with C++ > and then eclipse doesnt know about your c files. Knowing what a huge productivity boost Eclipse gives for Java, I was a bit underwhelmed by CDT - but perhaps I just somehow hadn't configured it completely. (Java 'haters' would argue that Java is just such a bad/verbose language that you need the IDE, and IDE's are useless for proper languages. There's *some* grain of truth there, but on the whole I don't buy it :) ) Arnout ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Music, Undecidability, and the tiling problem (was Re: update: OT-ish: realtime 2d placement algorithms :-/)
On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 11:59:45AM -0400, Paul Davis wrote: > On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 11:48 AM, Niels Mayer wrote: > > music making involves fitting together "tiles" (musical passages, > > patterns, etc) that are highly constrained in terms of "geometry" > > (pitch, key, time-signature, BPM, starting and ending pitches or > > chords). > > but i would submit that if you offered this description of making music to > musicians who play instruments or sing, they would find it unrecognizable. Actually, I think most musicians would recognise this concept (though perhaps not when explained with too technical nomenclature), especially those who ever dabbled in composition, improvisation or even just playing together with someone else. Generally, a 'pleasing' piece contains enough 'structure' (chord progressions, chorus/verse/chorus, melody line vs counter-melody, even 'genre' in a way, etc) for the structure to be recognisable (instead of dissonant and random), yet not so much that it'd get predictable/boring. It doesn't seem far-fetched to use a computer to recognise (impro-visor) and/or apply (sibelius/finale plugins etc) those structures - at least to some extent. How far this envelope can be pushed and integrated into a composers' workflow - well - that's just interesting :). Arnout ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Announcing: ecaedl.pl Edit Decision List Capable Audio Playing
What is the particular advantage of EDL, versus something more standard: http://www.w3.org/TR/SMIL/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronized_Multimedia_Integration_Language ?? Mplayer (and thus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-Multimedia_Player , smplayer, and gnome-mplayer) supports SMIL although the support is rudimentary. SMIL and other means of setting clips&playlists is available in the flash-based 'jwplayer' http://www.longtailvideo.com "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported" ( in action: http://nielsmayer.com/xwiki/bin/view/Macros/JWPlayerJSPL_Test and http://nielsmayer.com/xwiki/bin/view/Exhibit/NPRpods3 (work in progress) ). The other issue w/ doing it "in the player" is how well do the given players handle a playlist. Most of them, even if accessing the same media in different cue-locations, do not do a very good job with going through "clips" with seamless transitions between the clips. However, it's readily possible , with a bit of pre-buffering and pre-fetching that allows seamless synchronized playback just a small matter of programming... (i waste way too much time abusing my own software for unintended purpose -- "internet sampler and looper" --http://nielsmayer.com/ts-episode-timeline.png ) Niels http://nielsmayer.com ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Announcing: ecaedl.pl Edit Decision List Capable Audio Playing
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 drew Roberts wrote: > I have been looking for an EDL capable audio player for a while now but have > not found one. I don't think there's an open-source audio player that does. Mplayer has support for EDL but is using it's own homebrew EDL format; May I ask what you are trying to accomplish? > So I hacked together ecaedl.pl which work but is very rough. > > More info here: > > http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/2010/05/edl-edit-decision-list-audio-player.html thanks for sharing. > pastebin link here: > > http://pastebin.com/esXJwv84 A while ago I went down a very similar road: http://rg42.org/gitweb/?p=sodankyla.git;a=blob;f=scripts/vsession.pl parses EDL (CMX, CMX3600, Final-Cut-Pro format and 3.0.0) into a sqlite database; which can then be used to generate fi. an ardour session. The workflow there is offline; meaning there's no real-time playback of the actual EDL. I got a few [filmsound] projects done using these scripts to generate an initial ardour-session where the original sound is synced according to EDL provided by the film (not video) editor, but I did not have the time to go back and clean up the software [yet]. > Right now this needs ecaplay from ecasound and perl. mplayer is useful to > create the edl files but they can be created by hand. > > Would any cross playform audio player group be willing to add edl playing > (and > creating) functionality to their player? It would make things much simpler. It's not as easy as it may sound. You'll need to be able to perform reliable sample-accurate seeking over multiple files and play them back without gap. If you want to support encoded formats (such as mp3) this can become non-trivial very quickly; it can get even worse if the files mentioned in the EDL have different sample-rates (that's very unusual, but hey) I hazard a guess those are basically the reasons why mplayer does not support EDL for audio. mplayer's playlist & video-EDL feature allows you to mix all kind of codecs/formats: seeking to video-frames (with video-frame accuracy is easier). ciao, robin > (I guess I really need to add in a GPL license section to the file... soonest. > > all the best, > > drew -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkv79nIACgkQeVUk8U+VK0K02wCdF9iJxrbn2uEFE1vIkLSh7PTB UMgAn3Y/XpGfSs2itL0RFLwsOvjLU2nD =ze1n -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Music, Undecidability, and the tiling problem (was Re: update: OT-ish: realtime 2d placement algorithms :-/)
On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 11:48 AM, Niels Mayer wrote: > > PS: I think the "tiling problem" is actually a direct analogy to music > making... which involves fitting together "tiles" (musical passages, > patterns, etc) that are highly constrained in terms of "geometry" > (pitch, key, time-signature, BPM, starting and ending pitches or > chords). Music making is clearly an "undecidable" problem, which is > where human creativity comes in. Can computers help us "tile" music > more easily and therefore augment our musical creativity?? > this might be how users of ableton live think about making music, and more generally, users of computer software aimed at pattern-based music composition/creation. but i would submit that if you offered this description of making music to musicians who play instruments or sing, they would find it unrecognizable. ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
[LAD] Music, Undecidability, and the tiling problem (was Re: update: OT-ish: realtime 2d placement algorithms :-/)
Related to my last reply to your question about "the tiling problem" vs undecidability... Ever since they started putting out relevant articles for computer scientists (in the last year), the American Math Society monthly "Notices" has gone from dull to fascinating; in the spirit of open-source, all the articles are available free and online. The latest ( http://www.ams.org/notices/201003/ ), focusing on Cryptography issues, has an excellent article that goes into the tiling problem in great detail -- and yet is a very clear explanation (IMHO) that isn't predicated on incomprehensible (to the general public) mathematical formalisms. http://www.ams.org/notices/201003/rtx100300343p.pdf Can't Decide? Undecide! by Chaim Goodman-Strauss See also: http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~jsm28/tiling/ I've posted previously about other excellent articles in a previous issue "Mathematics and the Arts" ( http://www.ams.org/notices/201001/ ) with a though-provoking introductory essay by Sir Michael Atiyah : > In the broad light of day mathemati- > cians check their equations and their > proofs, leaving no stone unturned in > their search for rigour. But, at night, > under the full moon, they dream, they > float among the stars and wonder at > the miracle of the heavens. They are > inspired. Without dreams there is no > art, no mathematics, no life. Niels http://nielsmayer.com PS: I think the "tiling problem" is actually a direct analogy to music making... which involves fitting together "tiles" (musical passages, patterns, etc) that are highly constrained in terms of "geometry" (pitch, key, time-signature, BPM, starting and ending pitches or chords). Music making is clearly an "undecidable" problem, which is where human creativity comes in. Can computers help us "tile" music more easily and therefore augment our musical creativity?? ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Jack slower than realtime/debug mode
On Sat, May 22, 2010 at 9:44 PM, Jeremy wrote: > Hi, > I'm working on an lv2 plugin, and I'm having some difficulties debugging it. > > What I would do is start up lv2_jack_host hosting my plugin, and then > connect it to an input. However, my plugin isn't returning in time (like, > *every single period*), so I get a flood of errors from jack. When I > connect it to my microphone, my system actually grinds to a halt, and I have > to sysrq in order to get it to respond at all. I also tried loading it as a > plugin within qtractor, which causes it to crash qtractor instantly when > connected to audio, with no trace. > Basically, my plugin right now is completely horrible, and I want to be able > to step through it handling one period. Normally I would just fire up gdb, > but with jack running in the background, it won't work. Within a few > milliseconds of gdb tripping a breakpoint, jack gets mad, and (I believe) > stops my plugin from processing to begin the next period. So basically, gdb > can't freeze the state, because as soon as I try to, it will unleash a flood > of jack errors. > What I am hoping for (and it doesn't look like I can find it) is some way to > make jack not run in real time, i.e. let it wait indefinitely for clients to > process. Obviously the audio output would probably not work, but at least > software wise, it seems like this could be viable. Alternatively, a similar > setup but on the lv2 plugin level would work, i.e. it could feed in audio > data and let the plugin process at whatever speed it wants. > Any other suggestions that would allow me to debug my plugin would be > welcome (well, besides "code better") > Thank You, > Jeremy Salwen Take jack and hardware out of the picture entirely. For LADSPA (version 1), there is a command line tool called applyplugin the reads a WAV file, runs it through the specified plugin, and outputs another WAV file. I'm not sure such a thing exists for LV2, but it should. It probably wouldn't be hard to write. It's even easier if you just read and write text files with floating point values in them (like sox's dat file format). Using such a tool, you would be able to step through your plugin code in gdb as normal. You would also be able to use other development tools like valgrind, etc. ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Re: [LAD] Looking for an introduction to rt programming with a gui
On 05/25/2010 07:24 AM, torbenh wrote: > On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 11:37:32PM +0200, Olivier Guilyardi wrote: [...] >> That makes me think that the development environment can really completely >> change the way you perceive a language or framework. There must be something >> to >> do for C lovers too, be it in Eclipse or not. Maybe that's Eclim, or a lot of >> Vim scripting (patching ?) that awaits me ;-) > > eclim does a lint upon every :w > you instantly get marks to errors. > it pretty much does all the error hiliting that eclipse does too. > its basically just a different frontend to eclipse. > > eclipse is running inside a nailgun server and vim communicates with > it via nailgun invocations. > > it will probably work similarly if you use eclipse cdt. > but i prefer to have a real buildsystem with C++ > and then eclipse doesnt know about your c files. That's a problem. But vim (7.2) omni completion may be the way to go for C: :help ft-c-omni "When using CTRL-X CTRL-O after something that has "." or "->" Vim will attempt to recognize the type of the variable and figure out what members it has. This means only members valid for the variable will be listed." That needs investigation. Thanks for all ideas and resources :-) -- Olivier ___ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
