The esteemed cognitive scientist Roger Schank always used the quirkiest examples to describe natural language. The characters of his world (typically John, Mary or Bob) were always shooting up herion or smuggling marijuana across the border. One day, someone at a talk probed him about his choices:
“So Roger, why do you always use such weird and offensive examples in your books?”
“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.. what examples exactly?”
“John shoots up heroin. Bob strikes Mary. Sally kills her mother… the list is endless!”
“Well, they must be good examples if you can remember them all…”
Members of the Washington University band Science Groove are using a similar technique to preach their research. In their own words, they “have something to prove: science and music can be integrated in a manner that can get right-brained individuals excited about science and shake scientific types out of their left brain and onto the dance floor.”
When I found this page, I lauged endlessly at the silly science lyrics. Afer a few minutes, I found myself humming along. Then it hit me: OMG! I’m singing a research presentation! Here’s a little sample:
The title of my talk is
“Distribution theory
For the sibling recurrence risk ratio.”
My name is Do Peterson.
I hope you understand me
While I explain the recurrence risk ratio.
Now I can’t get the damned Sibling Recurrence Risk Ratio out of my head. I’d love to show up to a talk with the opening line, “I hope no one minds if I bust a flow during my talk this afternoon…” [via b3ta]
I finally saw 24 Hour Party People last night, after weeks of anxious distractions. I lived with a a friend who experienced that musical period firsthand (from Chicago, not Manchester), and he piqued my interest. After seeing the movie, I’m even more hungry for information.
Given, 24HPP focuses on one first hand account of the period. But this one perspective contains much more that 2 hours worth of raw information. As the movie suggests, I’m sure there will be an inordinant amount of source material on the DVD (which according to the movie website should already be released). But the Factory Records biography is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg: what about The Smiths, The Stone Roses, 808 State, The Charlatans, Inspiral Carpets, The Buzzcocks, James…
It’s odd how certain places are inundated with innovation, while others struggle to be placed on the map. Manchester and Detroit both stand out as cities not exactly in the center of the cultural universe, but somehow produce music revolution after music revolution. Something about their social and economic chemistry inspires generation after generation to push the envelope in some way or another. I just hope I be there for the next wave.
Virtual Manchester: History of Manchester Pop
Manchester Online: Manchester Bands
Allmusic: Artists and Groups from Manchester
Discogs: Factory Records Discography
James Stinson of the enigmatic and influential Detroit electro act Drexciya passed away Tuesday. An email from Mike Clark shot around electronic music lists yesterday shocking unexpected fans (including me).
This past two years were quite prolific for the duo, releasing three singles and a full-length album, all hailing highest respects in reviews (even those outside the techno scene). It makes me wonder whether James was aware of his malady, and was driven to create the most polished and well received work of his life, or not. I’ve always been moved by their dark and beautiful universe under the sea, and currently have Neptune’s Lair and Harnessed the Storm in exclusive rotation.
It’s a sad day in the world of techno.
Standard coding environments are fairly regular in their approach to the process of debugging, relying heavily on a programmer’s visual representation of the computational process. Research at Loughborough University suggests that using other parts of the perceptual apparatus can help coders identify and repair code in considerably less time.
Paul Vickers and James Alty have been developing a system which visualizes Pascal programs as music, and have shown considerable performance gains in bug identification. Subject’s musical knowledge did not seem to affect their results, which suggests that their aural representation takes advantage of a universally untapped cognitive resource all coders posess.
New Scientist: Musical approach helps programmers catch bugs
Research results (PDF): Musical Program Auralisation: Epirical Studies
Vicker’s PhD Thesis: A Musical Program Auralisation System…
Late last night, inspired by my favorite Pavement anthem, I traded some of my music gear to a friend for his skateboard, and hit the streets trying to regain a piece of my childhood. In the words of the great Stephen Malkmus:
Out on my skateboard the night is just hummin
and the gumsmacks are the pulse I’ll follow
If my walkman fades then I got
Absolutely no one
No one but myself to blame
don’t worry
We’re in no hurry
School’s out,
what did you expect?
I’d want a range life
If I could settle down
If I could settle down
Then I would settle down
Of course my range life was given some prompt closure when I sprained my ankle after about 30 minutes of raising hell in my neighborhood. As the old skateboarding addage goes, whatever doesn’t break your ankle only makes it hurt like hell for a week.
The PS1 Gallery of Long Island City is starting up it’s ultra fresh Warm Up Series this weekend by hosting S.F. samplophile Twerk. For those that missed this series last year, it’s a perfect combination of art and ambience, drawing great talent for an alternative electronic music experience (at an exceptional price).
Apple announced today that it has acquired Emagic, makers of the ever-popular Logic, SoundDiver and USB Audio devices. This will affect the Windows users by.. umm.. making them disappear. As a musician, I’m not particularly fond of Logic, but it has provided cross-platform support for industry professionals for decades.
Not anymore. In an industry where standardization is necessary, I’d expect to see a huge decline in the number of Logic users. Well, 70,000 for starters.
One of the most clever hacks in music technology has become a product, as Stanton just released a commercial version of FinalScratch. Originally the work of three Amsterdamn software engineers, the technique is simple:
Two special records, containing only a single tone are placed on regular turntables. These records have an expected output (something like a saw-tooth wave at 1000 Hz), which is affected by the turntable speed and the hand motion of the DJ. Their special little box takes the difference between the expected output, and the actual output, and uses this to drive the play of an MP3 file. With only 12ms latency, you can mix, scratch, or do just about anything possible with real records, while the sound you hear is the digital music file of your choice.
Richie Hawtin and John Acquaviva (of Plus-8 records fame) have jumped online as spokespeople. I’ve seen Richie twice since he started using the system, and the difference is imperceptable, except when his laptop breaks the day before the show and is forced to play records that he could find in Boston in an afternoon.
Given the rich suburban kid price (MSRP $799), I won’t be retrofitting my turntables anytime soon. But with their special records on the market, I’m sure someone will reverse engineer the hardware/software rig and rip the system wide open. Until then, I’ll just look at photos and drool.
Last night at our weekly electronic music gig (the appliance of science) in Cambridge, we featured guests Keith Fullerton Whitman (aka Hrvatski) and Greg Davis in duo form, just back from an extended US tour. They played a set of positively nerve-racking noise, full of baby giggles and monstorous groans (someone likened them to Legend). Since the last time I had seen them together, they had somehow lost all interest in melody, song and structure. At the same time, something more striking: they had both grown bushy, unkempt beards.
So I posed the question: is there an inverse correlation between the length of a man’s beard and his melodiousness? To which I received the quick retort: “Dude, Jerry Garcia had one mother of a beard, and all he did was spew melody.” But this only adds to my nascent theory: after years of melodic oppression at medium beard length, it makes sense that one reaches a certain threshold, and it starts to pour from every part of your body. There’s no way to know really, except through experimentation. Tomorrow, I stop shaving.
Oooohhh… *tremble*: the 3rd annual Detroit Electronic Music Festival released its schedule today. After the first two, I wasn’t too sure that I would be coming back, but how can I resist? There’s something about finishing classes and driving 18 hours to listen to bangin’ techno.
Artists that are provoking me: Dave Angel, Juan Atkins, the Mad Professor, DeepChord, Jon Tejada, Drexciya, Green Velvet, the Advent, Stewart Walker, T-1000, Dave Clark, Marco Carolla, not to mention the rest of the techno regality that comes out of the woodwork for afterhours events. All in beautifully surreal, bombed-out downtown Detroit. I can’t wait.
