wget http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/g3/carrot.swf
emerge -av swftools
swfextract -s 31 carrot.swf -o carrot.mp3
mplayer -loop 0 carrot.mp3

Or replace with any other Orisinal song :)

Note: -s 31 depends on the sound index number, which may be different – do swfextract foo.swf to check.

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One of the reasons I developed WIPUP was to be used as a long-term infrastructure for myself – a way to log and see my progress through time. A phrase I like to use here is insight through hindsight. This of course means that since this is the first so-called stable release of WIPUP, I’m going to take a break from developing it (desktop clients, APIs and the such will have to wait) and resume my personal, more creative projects.

I’ve spent the past week porting over the remains of The ThoughtScore Project’s original thread on BlenderArtists to the WIPUP Project. I shall spend my time over the next week to pick up all those Blender save files that have spread across my hard disk and get ready to resume work on ThoughtScore.

I’m also starting a new composition. After every composing session I shall snapshot the score and perhaps a short clip of me playing what I’ve got so far. You can check out the WIPUP project for it.

Also if you need a webdev job, you can ask the folks at the company I’m now working for, OmniStudios.

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Everything is done CLI for obvious reasons – we don’t want any interface for them to turn off our song. So we need a command line music player. mplayer is also available as a command line player on Windows, and so it was my first choice. A quick download of a build without an interface and we were ready to play any song with a *.bat file containing `mplayer "music.mp3"`

The next step is to make it run without the prompt opening up. This is again easily done by executing the bat file via a vbs file with the following content. Creating a shortcut to this vbs file and dumping it in your startup folder is the simplest and most obvious way to make it play on login. Here’s the code:

Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WshShell.Run chr(34) & "C:\path\to\my\bat\file.bat" & Chr(34), 0
Set WshShell = Nothing

Now I wanted to be able to change this song whenever I wanted from a central server. Basically it would check whether or not it needs to update the song, and if it does, delete the existing song and download the new song. This is useful to give a little variety in our fun little player. Some things didn’t work quite as I wanted it to so I have probably used the most horrendous of hacks based on what I could garner from various online references.

First I needed a way to download files akin to wget. I found a small program called url2file which did just the thing. I wanted it to check whether or not a song existed on the server, and if it did, download it. However the url2file program didn’t quite play nice with that idea (it would download a 404 page instead of allowing me to tell it not to do anything), and I didn’t know how to check whether or not a file existed on a remote server. So instead I had to make do with a second "notifier" file which, if it contained a certain string, would mean that a new song was available to be downloaded.

It would download that plaintext file’s contents to a tmp file, search in that tmp file for the string we were looking for, and if successful, would delete the existing music file and download the new one to take its place. Unfortunately doing a simple `if %getnew%==yes` didn’t work (explanations welcome!), so I made do with checking the first 3 characters, which did work. Here’s the final code, with the getnew.txt file including just the single word "yes".

del tmp
URL2FILE.EXE http://foobar.com/getnew.txt > tmp
set /p getnew= < tmp
set _part_name=%getnew:~0,3%
if %_part_name%==yes del music.mp3
if %_part_name%==yes URL2FILE.EXE http://foobar.com/music.mp3 music.mp3

Tada, and worked flawlessly. Not bad for a couple hours work from scratch and not knowing anything about DOS at all.

In unrelated news, I’m looking for good bagpipe music.

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The reason is partly because I didn’t finish composing it. I slapped on a makeshift ending to wrap it up, became utterly disgusted at the formulaic tonic and then slapped on another note right after because that’s what felt right. It was exactly what the piece was about. But was the piece itself finished? In a sense, yes – the main ideas were there – but they were undeveloped little mud puddles that tried to jump from one puddle to the next. All in all – a hard piece to perform.

It’s not hard just because it has a few technical areas and a heavy chordal passage – it’s hard because it rushes the performer into a frenzy. The piece is divided into two clear sections both of what would first seem like distinctly different characters, but further study of the piece’s theme would reveal that they are not – in fact, they are one single, continuous development. In a way, it’s not the change in emotion that makes this piece interesting (though most would easily say that it is), it’s more of the restraint in emotion the performer has to show.

This restraint must be shown to let the various smaller melodies creep through the heavy banging in the middle. Simple dexterity is not enough. The performer has to understand what exactly the hurry is all about – is it an anger? Is it a frustration? Is it simple mischeviousness? One climax after another – or should they be climaxes?

Many of the melodies are admittedly not for the piano. The main theme itself in one such interpretation is much more fit for violin – long, slurred bows with the piano peeking through with light droplets to add contrast. It will end hanging – with a slight yearning, a slight sadness – or another much grander interpretation: a confident, full sound with a nimble backdrop to emphasise its majesty.

The only clearly interpreted section is the last – one of stillness. A slight murmur – a few sharp breaks of light – a heavy, determined, and resolute ending.

So a while back I had to record Evan to send off with my portfolio – obviously having not played it for 8 months and the piano untouched for a while due to other responsibilities, I will readily admit that my playing – and resulting recording, was an abomination. It was crap. An insult. There was a brief section played just right – but the rest was just note after note – a disgusting sequence of sound that didn’t deserve the 5.5 minutes of MP3 I sent off. As a result I’m not going to show the recording here until it’s redone properly.

However the score itself is another matter. As you might’ve garnered from the description above – I didn’t explain the emotion of the piece – not my emotion with it, at least – but I did give suggestions. The score is unmarked and completely interpretive. I invite anybody who wants to to play it – and yes, it is unfinished. It will probably stay that way for a while. I would appreciate any recordings of people playing it!

Click here to download it (second attachment) in PDF format.

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No. I lied. I stumbled upon it a good several months ago. However it has recaptured my attention. Libre.FM is, like the name suggests, similar to Last.FM. Libre.FM, like the name also suggests, has something to do with freedom (libre means `free` in French).

Libre.FM is a tag-based online radio with support for scrobbling. For those sticking with the to-be-deprecated traditional radio, this means that the music being played corresponds to keywords similar to the workings of a search engine, and data about song preferences and listening statistics are synchronised with the music provider, supposedly to provide a better service. The result is that you get an ad-free, customisable playlist where you can constantly discover new songs. Oh, and all for free.

This isn’t a new thing. As mentioned this is not unlike Last.FM, which works on the same principles except for the nature of the music. The difference is that Libre.FM’s music is all free, indie music. Each song is under a free license, and you are free to download and share everything legally. Their privacy policy ensures your anonymity and freedom online, and supports those artists who would otherwise be facing obscurity.

You won’t find your celebrities here nor your greatest hits album – but you will be exposed to a lot more music that represents the freedom, creativity and simple efforts of many people. True, some of those songs sound like absolute bollocks and probably deserve their obscurity but that’s to be expected. From a critical website UI point of view it’s pretty terrible as well compared to its proprietary alternatives. Despite these major flaws it’s definitely something to keep a lookout for in the future.

So – go and discover something new today: listen to Libre.FM.

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As you’ve probably guessed already, Lilypond is a markup language, just like LaTeX. You don’t use a graphical user interface to insert your notes, rests, and whatnot, but instead just code it into a plain text file and convert it to a, let’s say PDF format when you’re ready to view it.

Music scores are complex. Much, much more complex than your word documents. You might have a good deal of fun formatting wizardry going around with LaTeX, but with music, you have notes, you have staffs, bars, stems, different symbols, different types of annotations, clusters, rests, expression markings, decoration (stuff like trills etc), and don’t even get me started on modern music. A score of a modern music piece is probably a piece of art in itself, my stemless notes, dotted barlines and lack of a time signature in my previous post being nothing compared to what’s out there. All of this has to be pieced together in a readable format, whilst still giving the composer flexibility to modify the score to put whatever they wants.

If anybody here has used the famous notation softwares out there such as Sibelius or Finale, it’s quick and easy to learn but a pain when you get to decently complex scores. You also quickly realise that the stuff you produce on there definitely looks nothing professional and mediocre at best. If you consider creating a score, for, let’s say an orchestral piece, you’d not want to continue using these traditional programs.

Take for example that score above. It’s of decent complexity and created using lilypond. Attempt something like that in other programs and you’d fail horribly.

Lilypond is like LaTeX. You tell it what your score will contain, and Lilypond will work out the best way to format it. That’s the best thing - it ensures readability, something vital in any score and a real pain to do manually. Here is a simple example, as a picture speaks a thousand words:

Lilypond is flexible. It allows you to notate very modern pieces with weird artifacts such as, in my own piece missing stems. Of course you may even have missing notes, or even stems that branch out or waving lines to symbolise a direction. (please, don’t just add these for the fun of it, you need to know why and when they should be used and more importantly how to use them)

It’s also fast. Don’t believe me if you want to, but I would honestly say that creating a score in Lilypond is faster than other software (well, LaTeX in my opinion is also faster than Word Processors). Not only can you chunk in notes as fast as you can possibly type them (and you get used to how to input notes very quickly), you can also use variables. If you have a repeating section of a piece, you can just assign it to a variable, just like in math you can say x = 5, and whenever you want to use that section, or in math, the number 5, you just dump the variable and it does it all automatically.

One other feature some might consider a plus point is that it can output the score in midi format. My personal view is that midi should be marked illegal and anybody who uses it be sent straight to prison, because it sounds like crap and effectively slaughters the beauty of the piece, but – well, it does it anyway if you tell it to.

It’s hard to fully appreciate the capabilities that Lilypond provides but I’d like to stress one: readability. Lilypond takes this very seriously. Just as music has evolved through the ages so has scorewriting, and Lilypond really adds that professional feel to whatever score you produce. If you create scores, I would recommend it.

All well and good, but how do I start using Lilypond?

Just like LaTeX it doesn’t matter if you’re on Windows, Mac or Linux. Lilypond works cross-platform and doesn’t charge a buck. First you’d want to hop over to their website, and proceed to the download page. Their website looks as though somebody ate the stylesheet, but nevertheless I can assure you that the program definitely has style. You’d then want to start reading the documentation.

You’d want to read that documentation carefully and ensure you understand what’s going on especially if you’re new to markup languages. Go through step by step – it contains many cross-links but I would recommend just doing it in the order it presents itself in. I cannot say the first score you ever produce with Lilypond will be up and running within 5 minutes, but you’ll get used to it, and when you do, you’ll be really glad you did.

Note (no pun intended): the images were shamelessly ripped off various parts of their site, but all with good promotional intention.

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My cousin is going to have a wedding. I am very happy for him and he’s asked me to perform a little something during the wedding. What could be a better opportunity to compose a new piece? My past three compositions were very rushed on time and so I hope this one could be of somewhat decent quality. (that’s not to say I’m completely free to spend all my time on this, of course!)

I’m quite traditional when it comes to composition. I cannot believe people who use all these technologies and digital whatnot and hi-tech recordings during composition. When it comes to piano the computer pretty much plays no part at all. I sit there with a sheet of music paper and a pencil. Then I just mess around. Or something like that.

I only touch the computer when that sheet becomes too messy to read or I need to clarify some ideas. This obviously means that the computer-typeset score is most of the time miles behind the scribbles. Nevertheless, I have made a decent start. It’s without annotations and still needs polishing. Here is the start of it, and if any of you are musically inclined I would love to hear a recording of your interpretation on how to play it!

Of course, it’s still very much a work in progress, needs polishing and development. More soon! Oh, and if you are so musically inclined feel free to improvise and send suggestions too :)

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What is an MP3 and how does it work?

An MP3 is a file specifically designed for storing music. The term MP3 stands for MPEG layer 3 audio, the compression algorithm that is the basis of MP3. This algorithm is what encodes music and makes it possible to put it in a file such as the MP3 format. Real music is smooth analog wave forms that come directly from an instrument. When music is stored on a CD, however, it must be in a digital format or ones and zeros. Digital formats do not tend toward the accurate presentation of wave forms, so they must be approximated by using a sample rate. A CD samples the pure analog music about 44100 times a second and uses that to create a wave that is not purely smooth, but rather like stair steps. However, the human ear can’t really hear the difference without listening very carefully and training your ear. This sample rate is a type of compression, because analog music, on an LP for example, holds an infinite amount of data in each finite time period. CD sampling reduces this “infinite” file size to a mere 10mb a minute. However, that is still much too large for ordinary purposes.

MP3 is the next level of compression, able to store music data at approximately 1mb per minute. The way it does this is by simplifying the music by purposely losing some of the sounds. For one thing most humans can only hear a specific range of frequencies, in the 20 Hz to 20 kHz range. Some animals can hear sounds higher or lower than this but humans in general can’t. By cutting out sounds outside of this narrow range MP3 can greatly reduce file size.

Secondly MP3 reduces the sampling rate so that the wave approximations in the music have even more sharp “steps.” This, however, simplifies the wave forms by removing small variations. Then the music is encoded by using mathematical formulas to pull out data about the basic shape of the wave forms that make up the music.

Every kind of wave form can be approximated by a mathematical formula. Calculus and other math techniques can be used to fit math formulas to wave shapes. The math formulas have specific formulas that require much less storage space than a complex sample of music. The MP3 software algorithm uses code called a CODEC to handle this part of the MP3 compression. The CODEC uses statistical information about the shape of the wave forms to recreate them. It is sort of like graphing a complex calculus math problem. The problem might have only a few factors in it but the shape it creates can be quite complex. In this way MP3 is able to store the complex wave forms of music very efficiently.

Of course this is a very lossy technique. Not only is the frequency limited, and the sample rate reduced, but the music sounds itself are merely a mathematical approximation. However, most people can’t really hear the difference between MP3 music and CD music, or even pure analog music of an LP.

MP3 Software

There are a plethora of different MP3 players on the market. As far as free software for computers goes the very best are VLC player, a very light player that is easy on computer resources, and WinAMP, another free MP3 player that has been around for a long time.

Note from Dion Moult: I would also like to recommend “mplayer”.

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Ok. Here’s the thing. I want to compose something grand and epic for the ThoughtScore. This’ll become the official film music for it. It’ll be orchestral, grand, epic, awesome, *checks thesaurus (of sorts)*, great, fantastic, awe-inspiring, fabulous, superlative, magnificent, incredible, so on and so forth.

Here’s where you come in.

I want you to give me four notes. Four notes that you feel like. Notes like C, D, E, F. You’re allowed to give sharps and flats. And from those four notes, I shall create, little by little, (and update you on it), this film music. I shall record my piano brainstorming session for you to check out.

Leave your notes as a comment to this thread. I will choose one to start off with, then other suggestion I will likely use for other themes.

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I would suggest you pile up the volume for your bass otherwise that double bassist is going to be quieter than that bloke in my math class I never knew until graduation. Also please excuse the double bassist not-so-jazzy-sounding-playing as he is actually a classical player and isn’t used to Jazzy pieces. (Yes, classical and jazz D.B players are very different).

Full of fun and ad-libbing in this piece! Lots of jumping octaves for the piano, lots of chromatic scales to brighten up the day (for both piano and DB), and this piece contains some nice chord combinations that would frighten some pianists. Syncopation is seen throughout, yet the piece maintains a classical jazz feel to it nonetheless.

A nice break sometime in the middle where the DB player gets to touch his bow (he’s plucking the rest of the time), and I get to rest my hands from jumping around all the time.

CLICK: “The Spice of Life” Music Composition

You know you want to hear it.

Of course, there is a lot of potential development, extended melodies, more variation, etc. However, this being my first for a double bassist and also note that this was the very first rehearsal with the bassist: it was a go there, show score, play, record – so on the whole I think it turned out pretty well. This piece in fact I had a lot of trouble due to a brain block being unable to decide how to extend it in a way that would have a nice solo for the piano and the bassist, so also due to time restraints (examination), this was scrapped and instead the instruments tend to complement each other a bit more than I intended to.

Again, my music analysis goes back to this being a very fun piece to play (though quite challenging – I might release the score later) – as in, really fun. Lots of jumping around, and it also gives areas where you can change it to whatever you want, as is the custom in most jazz pieces.

A final reminder to turn up your volume and especially bass speaker (or equivalent) as if you don’t hear the bass it might sound like somebody’s plucking a rubber band instead. (not a very nice sound). Of course, the usual note: yes, I composed this piece myself and I’m playing the piano.

…and if you missed the two previous compositions, you might be interested in hearing “Surprises“, a very modern and abstract piano solo, and “From Midnight Until Dawn“, a very lyrical and emotional piece featuring a violin.

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