mh-z web-log

Pandora needs a “people who like what I like also like…” system, like Amazon’s. Actually Amazon’s is “people who bought this item also bought…”, but the concept is similar.

I find that when I create a new Pandora station seeded with a few specific songs/bands, the station is great for a bit but really doesn’t have much selection after a while — songs I’ve thumbed-up are repeated frequently, and if I listen for too long at a stretch, as the station “runs out” of songs matching the original criteria and starts varying the parameters a bit to introduce a bigger selection of songs it can play, the new songs added really are by and large not all that great. I end up continually using “thumbs-down” on new songs presented, which in turn means that new songs (as we go farther and farther out into the pool of available music) are even more random and dissimilar to the original seeds (with fewer and fewer things I like), and so on. At that point a given Pandora station has been “depleted”, and isn’t worth listening to for a while. (Since when I do listen to it, it’s mostly stuff I’ve heard already.)

On the other hand, I take as an axiom that there are many, many amazing songs out there in the space of all music which I have not heard; songs which may have dimensions and sounds widely or wildly different from those matching the songs I’ve already liked and which I might never get to, otherwise. I want to hear those ones! I want to know what “people whose tastes most match mine” like. The parameters of a specific song, which might look like this, for example, according to Pandora:

a Modern style
a symphony orchestra
harp playing
cello
violin
major key tonality
a singing, mellifluous aesthetic
a tranquil feeling
a well-known composer
a bittersweet sentiment

…are academically interesting and useful for finding similar-sounding pieces, but I don’t truly care about similarity of sound after a point. There’s no magic formula based on categorizable parameters (even if we were to come up with much more abstract ones than the above) for what I’ll like, I’m sure, but I know that my tastes do align very strongly with certain people’s. For example, I tend to like a lot of what I hear on KCRW.

Maybe last.fm or other online radio experiences are better in this respect?

And not to knock Pandora too much; it’s great and I use it frequently (to drown out the Nerf-dart fights and stuff going on around me in the office when I actually have to work), just with frequent use one starts to come up against some limitations.

Nice background music to [http://www.revolutionworkshop.com/ this site] (and good photos). The song is “Fly Me Away” by Goldfrapp. There are two versions you can buy from Amazon, and if you want this song be careful to not get the “Radio Edit” version, which in my opinion is inferior.

That’s my main criticism of Amazon’s download system, by the way. Actually, two criticisms:
# Same criticism I have of the iTunes Music Store: The short (20-second) clip of the song you’re evaluating for potential purchase is very often inadequate when it comes to figuring out whether (a) it’s precise song you’re looking for, and/or (b) it’s any good.
# Once purchased, it’s impossible to “return” a song. This would have to be on the honor system, but I’d happily delete all those wrong versions of songs I’ve accidentally downloaded and get my dollar back for each. And I say “accidentally downloaded” because the 20-second clip is too short to figure out if I’ve found the correct song.

Remember Megaman 2 for Gameboy? It had completely different music from the original game for NES. One of the limitations was that they only had two or three sound channels to work with. Anyway, the Gameboy music used the “noise” function a lot, and FL Studio has a “3X Osc” instrument that allows us to add a noise channel which resulted in something reminiscent of that old Gameboy game. So I started putting in some notes and ended up with this (mp3) little bit. Shows how easy it is to write music in that style? There could actually be a “Bat Man” level, but still the subject’s a bit misleading. Anyway, more when I have more time to kill. …Which I didn’t, really. Just taking a break, you know? I would have loved to compose music for those old NES and Gameboy games, by the way.

A tiny piece of a song I just put together. Getting the chords to sound right was a lot of work. Listen.

This is the old version, where I was just testing out this instrument:

–> Pompous

Quoting what I originally posted on Xanga:

I was experimenting with a nice sounding VST (a standard plug-in architecture for software generated instruments, and the instruments which hook in using it) in FL Studio (music composition program) and this little clip is what resulted. I bet you’re going to listen more than once…

This one has an additional element at the end which provides some counterpoint and has a nice melody:

–> Pompous-2V

The “2V” just signifies a sort of version number of the song.

Half finished. Has some flaws. I couldn’t think of a better name.

–> Electronic-3

None of these tracks is complete, but given the rate at which I finish the old and start the new (slow and fast, respectively) I wanted to share what I’d done so far, going in a few different musical directions. I’m interested in feedback, if anyone out there is inclined to write, since as I compose, in general, when I like what I’ve written I often make the mistake of listening to it too many times, to the point that my mind accustoms itself to the music and anticipates every note, becoming unable to experience or appreciate what the music sounds like as something fresh. When that happens it’s hard to go forward, because the inspiration that led to creation of the original melody has also had that melody burned in to the point that it’s gotten tired and gone somewhere else. It’s most effective to compose something in one sitting, as quickly as possible, I believe, and to only flesh out the instrumentation later; however I hypocritically have never been able to fully follow this method.

By posting these tunes I’m freeing myself to move on and improve, although I may come back and work on any of these.

006: (download) As-yet-untitled track with a slightly jazzy style. I combined the bassline with the "Reticul8" instrument lead in a single pattern, so those complement each other well. Listen to the piano chord progression when that comes in, it meshes like a charm. (The kind of charm that meshes, or as it is commonly known, a meshing charm.)

006-outtake: (download) Outtake segment from the above tune , where I was playing with the lead and added some notes to form chords. I didn’t even have to customize the drums, as they came from the patterns already made for the above song.

Pompous: (download) I was experimenting with a nice sounding VST (a standard plug-in architecture for software generated instruments, and the instruments which hook in using it) called "Reticul8" (mentioned above) which I’d downloaded, and this clip is what resulted.

Padding-01: (download) Something a bit different from the above. A series of background chords played by electronic strings, with a simple bell-like melody in the foreground.

Square: (download) Square waves, sine waves, maybe some other wave shapes.

010: (download) An electronic progressive track with sparse experimentation in dynamic filter/resonance adjustment.

Third generation (I will write about what I mean by this) music composition software for Windows. I downloaded a demo and it immediately started sucking up my time. The limitation of the demo is that you cannot save your work, however, you can render it to a Wav or MP3 file.

So I kept spending lots of time putting together a nice drum track and adding a few instruments, then arranging that into the rough beginnings of some little piece of music, just because it was fun. Then I would have to close the program and lose everything I’d done, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to save my work going in. This program is addicting. Here are a couple small exports of test segments I threw together in testing out the program:

FL-Test 04
FL-Test 09

A little silly, but presented anyway for your amusement. The point of these was to test out the sound quality capabilities of the program, and here’s where it excels. You’ll notice that each instrument has a separate chain of effects being applied to it (delay, equalizer, reverb, etc.) and the nice thing is that you can control this at so many points within the program, which gives the composer a great deal of expressive freedom in that regard.

I personally have seen at least 10 remixes of this song (“Clocks” by Coldplay). So I thought I’d write one of my own. It’s short, and different in that I don’t use any samples from the original, just the notes of the piano progression. The drums need a lot of work, but I’m going to leave this be.

Over-Clocked (mp3)

Right-click, choose “Save Target As” for best results.

I finished this today:

MH – Coherent

As usual, the style is undefinable. You’ll certainly recognize the “tracker” influence (if you’re familiar with what that means), since that’s almost impossible to hide. (Nor is it always desirable to hide, though.) Pretty flawed, but I wanted to get something finished. The more things I make, the better new ones will get with time.