FB_init

Friday, December 15, 2006

On modeling rhythm (Holy cow! These guys just don't know how to model music!)

It’s amazing how the research community in Computer Science misunderstands music and music modeling. They come up with non-discrete models! Holy cow! Even Elaine Chew’s spiral is a bad model that fails to capture the discrete nature of music theory. And all these other guys looking at statistics and Markov chains. Holy cow! They really don’t grasp music theory. These guys should take a close look at abstract algebra and topology abandoning everything that is continuous. Mainly the Computer Science research community. It should really abandon all this continuous thinking and get serious with discrete Math. Given that computers count more 'naturally' it would be natural for folks in Computer Science to make better use of Discrete Math. Maybe it's the engineers that just contaminate Computer Science with their continuous Euclidean view of the world.

Given the rhythmic fragment



I model it as the following:

0 mod 2 = 0
1 mod 2 = 1
(0 + 2) mod 2 = 0
(1 + 2) mod 2 = 1
(3 + 4) mod 4 = 3

In 0 mod 2 why do I chose 2? It’s because given C = 4/4, I get 4 in the upper part and I factorize 4 into 2^p1*3^p2*5^p3... I get p1 > 0. That’s enough to select 2 as the only prime in this case. I could begin trying to fit the numbers into n mod 1 but that’s not interesting. It would only capture the first notes of the bars. The main reason is that the half-note is the maximum subdivision of the example. So I begin modeling it as n mod 1 * 2 (remember that p1 > 0). Then I try n mod 2 * 2 and I stop there because the quarter note is the finest quantization I can get for the segment. And there you go! I just modeled the rhythmic fragment in a discrete way.

Now we can group the notes according to their congruence. Now things get interesting! Mr Thomas Noll, Andreatta Moreno and Mazzola, why didn’t you model it this way? Why come up with functions for meter that are too procedural in nature? Peraí um pouquinho, tchê! It’s much better to model rhythm using algebra! And you guys are the math gods. I remember reading one paper by Noll and another by Elaine Chew that just create a procedural function to model meter. This is much closer to how a musician sees rhythm in a purer mathematical form.

If we group the notes above according to sharing modules we get

( 0 mod 2, 1 mod 2, (0 + 2), (1 + 2) ) mod 2 which are the 4 notes, fitting into the half-note quantization.

Then we get (3 + 4) mod 4 for the last note.

In the next post, congruence will help us correlate these notes.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Atirei o pau no gato - Falcão

"... Então agora eu peguei uma música em Inglês e passei para o Português
Só que aconteceu o seguinte:
É uma música de um conjunto Pink Floyd
Mas tem um corno lá, um tal do Roger Walter,
Que proibiu de eu gravar essa música
Foi a maior confusão
E eu fiquei com tanta raiva
Que agora eu também não deixo o Pink Floyd
Gravar nenhuma música minha.
Então vou cantar essa música
Que é "Another brick in the wall part two" que ficou
"Amorda um bicho na parede parte dois"

Atirei o pau no gato
Mas o gato não morreu
Dona Xica admirou-se
Do berro que o gato deu

Hey, Xica, deixe o gato em paz
Não vamos traumatizar o coitado do animal
Eu só joguei o pau no bicho pra ouvir o miau

- Falcão

Saturday, December 09, 2006

wines and ratings

Here's a wine list and some of my ratings. The scale is from 0 to 10. Bitterness is in an inverse scale: the higher the number the less bitter it is (the better).

Little Penguin Merlot Australian bitterness: 8 rating: 9
Sangloves di Tusdano, Dievole bitterness: 7 rating: 7
Peller Cabernet Sauvignon bitterness: 7 rating: 8
Chardonnay Brancott Classic bitterness: 8 rating: 9
Serras de Azeitão Merlot bitterness: 8 rating: 9
Pinot Noir Estancia Pinnacles bitterness: 6 rating: 6
Redwood Creek Merlot bitterness: 8 rating: 8
Copper Merlot bitterness: 8 rating: 8
... Shiraz bitterness: 8 rating: 8
Pinot Grigio bitterness: 7 rating: 6
Cabernet Merlot Australian bitterness: 8 rating: 5

I couldn't find a reference to this Copper Merlot anywhere. It's too soon to draw conclusions. I need a larger database! Who knows - perhaps later on I can create an ontology to classify the wines.

Saturday, December 02, 2006

Orleans -> Hull - commute times



I finally calculated the average commute time driving to work in Hull from Orleans. The result: Nicholas is the best route averaging 28 minutes. Rockliffe is the 2nd best route averaging 29 minutes. Vanier Parkway is the worst route, averaging 36 minutes. Interestingly, Rockliffe's standard deviation (4.15) is smaller than Nichola's (7.05), probably because of the traffic jams near Blair and the 417 junction that I cut in the former. I haven't consolidated the times, but it looks like that if I leave home during rush hours it's best to take Rockliffe, whereas if I leave home not during rush hours the Nicholas route is the best.



(Hey, this blogging software is bad. It doesn't let me upload a picture in IE 7. That's after I 'upgraded' the blog... that's why computers have a terrible reputation: because of bad software. Firefox saved the day)

Zune software is bad

This Zune software is terrible. I can't buy one song from the Zune marketplace. I'm asked to sign in 500 times, even though I tell Microsoft to remember me. And then when I think I'll get to the page I want (buy this song, or account management), I'm taken to the support page. The support page is not what I wanted. I wanted to buy one song (yes, I clicked on the song). Since the support page was there, I went on to see how to buy a song. I can't read it! The background is black and the font is... black too! Wonderful, beautiful. But I can't do anything with this software. I have to create software and it has to be good. Why can't Microsoft do better?