Jump to main navigation


Posts Tagged ‘music’

Rocket Suit en el Curtin Bandroom, #2

Ayer volvimos a tocar en el Curtin Bandroom, esta vez con The Moroccan Kings y Xenograft. Jane no estaba, así que no hay fotos ni vídeos. El concierto fue bien, los temas salen más sólidos cada vez, y yo personalmente me voy habituando al papel de bajista. Estrenamos tema nuevo, Sideshow, si consigo una grabación ya la subiré.

Próximo concierto: Curtin Bandroom, 9/07/10

El próximo día 9 volvemos a tocar en el Curtin Bandroom, acompañando a The Moroccan Kings y Xenograft.

Rocket Suit en el Curtin Bandroom

El viernes Rocket Suit tocamos en el Curtin Bandroom, en Lygon street. El local es chulo, el sonido estuvo muy bien (dentro y fuera del escenario), y nos divertimos mucho. Ahí va un vídeo, de muy poquita calidad eso sí (os recomiendo escucharlo con unos aurículares o altavoces decentes).

Es el final de Headache with Pictures seguida de Occupation Ninja.

El grupo está un poco en stand-by (probable próximo cambio de batería), pero si nos salen conciertos decentes los haremos. Espero que sí, porque el viernes estuvo genial. Por cierto, los otros dos grupos muy interesantes, Fritzwicky y A Lonely Crowd. En Melbourne hay bastante actividad 'prog' (en sentido amplio). Bueno, en Melbourne hay mucha actividad musical en general, incluso prog :).

Rocket Suit en el Ding Dong Lounge

Ayer fue mi primer concierto con Rocket Suit, mi primer concierto como bajista, y mi primer concierto en un grupo de rock en Australia. Pese a haber hecho sólo dos ensayos, el concierto fue muy bien, a ratos parece que hayamos tocado juntos muchos meses. Ahí va una foto:

Siguientes pasos: comprarme un ampli, continuar explorando el bajo, soltarme un poco :), y seguir disfrutándolo.

Reboot Whole-Play

In the last months the development of Whole-Play has slowed down a lot. Partly because of the lack of time, but mostly because the code has been getting messier and I've been feeling more and more stuck as I tried to fix bugs and implement new behavior. So as I knew I would have to do, it's now time to stop, rethink and restructure Whole-Play.

A friend recommended a book that should help a lot with some of the issues I've been dealing with: "Interactive Music Systems", by Robert Rowe. I think it's out of print, I got it second hand from Amazon. It's really interesting, and it does address many of the problems I've faced (so far) with Whole-Play. Perfect timing then: this book will definitely help with the redesig of Whole-Play, and hopefully will allow me to move faster through the technical issues, and get sooner to the creative phase of Whole-Play. Thanks Lorien for all the help and advice!

Whole-Play update

Still working on Milestone 2. The more I work on Whole-Play, the more I see the need to 'redesign': stop and re-plan the whole thing, and improve the code a lot. Because it keeps growing and growing, and in a rather disorganized fashion, which in turn causes lots of bugs to pop up all over the place.

But sometimes I'm Mr.Stubborn: I have to finish this milestone, and I will! Today I've continued to work on the Harmonizer - the name sounds cool! :) Now W-P can harmonize melodies using different harmonies (e.g. diatonic, pentatonic, whole-tone...). At this stage the harmonizations are rather simple, but I believe they establish a good basis for more sophisticated ones in the future.

Anyway, I'm definitely realizing that either I find much more time to work on W-P or I relax a lot about my expectations to get it ready soon. Or both!

Whole-Play bugs

I'm still working on milestone 2, and it's taking much longer than I thought, because I'm finding quite a few bugs, which often are not easy to fix. The problem is that the code is getting longer and longer, and even though I'm trying to keep things well organized it's still getting complex and parts of it are a bit messy. Logic errors are quite tricky, because they manifest in very abstract ways, like an unexpected chord happening. Then tracking the errors down to the bit of code that's triggering them is a long (but somehow exciting!) process.

So at this stage, what I need to continue developing is: i) Patience, ii) Focus, iii) Enjoy! Just keep going, I'll get there. :)

Whole-Play update

I seem to be a bit stuck on the harmony analysis task, it's been a long time since I started it, and there's still a lot to do. Well, I didn't expect teaching Chuck some harmony would be particularly easy... Read the full text...

Whole-Play update

I haven't updated for a while, partly because I've been too busy with web work. That doesn't mean Whole-Play development has stopped. It's been a bit slower than I would have wanted, but regular nevertheless.

I keep on working on the Harmony Analyser, which is looking better every week. I think I've been trying too hard to be too precise with it - two too's are too many ;) - and I'm not sure that's a good strategy. It might not be possible, and even if it is, I'd better get something practical going, and leave refinement (or re-designing) for further stages of the project. So today I went to have a cappuccino and a lemon & coconut muffin at the Surf Beach cafe (sounds relaxing for a Sunday morning, doesn't it?), and did some brainstorming, trying to get more specific on what I'm trying to achieve in terms of harmony. I think I've got a better direction now, and I'm ready to start trying out its posssibilities. My aim is to meet the deadline for Milestone 2, which is May 13th.

Also I managed to find a very annoying bug I had introduced a few weeks ago that was driving me crazy, so I'm happy. :)

Whole-Play update

I've been a bit slack lately with Whole-Play, but that's going to be an exception, W-P can't wait!

Today I've closed drumGenerator2, and left it as a test program. Now I'm moving on to something much more exciting and challenging: teaching Chuck some harmony! The new test program I'm working on is called harmonyDetector, and I'm not sure how good it will be, but I'm hoping VERY good. This is forcing me to do two things: find ways to process note/chord data to infer harmony properties, but also think about what harmony is. It's easy to collect the data, but what's a key? What's a root? What's a scale? Believe me, when you put that into a programming language, it's quite tricky!

I'm also going to be working on the first milestone, wich is scheduled for Feb 27th, and will be a more interesting version of drumGenerator2. Did I talk about milestones? Well, because the development of Whole-Play is a long term project, I've set up a few milestones along the way, so I can both keep track of the progress made and enjoy the project. This means that whatever the state of the project, at certain points I'll write a commited program trying to make the most of the current possibilities. I ask myself something in the lines of "If I stopped the Whole-Play development now, what would be the best I coud do with it?". I'll post the results of these milestones here, so it's not all words.

Additional content and navigation

Categories

Main navigation menu