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Thursday, March 25, 2010
Score Animations Rendered in a few seconds by a new SongTrellis Animation Service
I'm working on an Animation Service that any visitor to SongTrellis can use to generate an animation that shows precisely how a musical score they specify should be interpreted at any tempo. If you don't know how to read music, these animations will precisely demonstrate for you how a score is performed, show how music notation is translated into audible musical sound.
The process of rendering the animation as a QuickTime movie for small scores usually completes in less than 20 seconds. Frequently it completes before 5 seconds have elapsed. Rendering large scores can take a minute or two.
Since the animation rendering process does not complete instantaneously, animation requests can stack up during busy periods, so requests are queued and a progress report is returned so that users can anticipate when their animation will be ready to watch.
I believe that early users of the service will find that animations render quite quickly.
Initially, you'll be able to use this facility even if you are not signed in a member of the SongTrellis site, in the interest of getting folks to kick the tires on this new feature of the site.
What does a score animation look like?
When a score animation begins to play, a blank music staff is displayed onscreen in the animation video's display area as its soundtrack starts to sound. At the instant each new note or chord sounds in the score or when a rest initiates a period of silence in a score voice, those score elements are added to the staff, showing a visual equivalent of each musical sensation that you hear in the performance.
As a piece plays, you see a traveling wave of notation that grows to the right. When staff real estate is exhausted on the bottom right of the score image , the page is turned, and a blank staff is drawn for the next measures of the composition to play onto. The animation continues in this manner until the performance of the music ends.
Here are several animations I created while I tested and debugged the Animation Server:
Click on the links to play them. You'll see a download progress indication shade the animation's scroll bar from left to right as the animation downloads to your computer. On most web browsers, the performance of the animation will stutter until the download completes. If you decide to press the play button on the movie controller early to experience the stutter, you can restart the animation after download completion by pressing play a second time or slide the scroll bar thumb to the left to experience it properly without playback hesitations.
Luebbert, why are you working on this?
I originally implemented this animation facility in my music editor thinking that viewing scores properly animated would help me in my musical studies and would give me better feedback and help develop better intuition as I composed new music.
Animated scores have proved to extremely useful to me in my own musical development, so I want to see if they make a difference for visitors to the SongTrellis site when I deliver them via a commonly used video format.
Besides that, I have some pride that perhaps I've created something before anyone else in the world has thought to do it. So far as I can tell, no one has tried to provide such a service on the Internet before now.
Can I claim the prize? Eventually I'll find out. If I'm not the first, I'll be one of the first.
You can make score animations for yourself using the SongTrellis site right now
Here's a newly composed score presented by Tunetext service that's available on SongTrellis: 
Click on music to play
If you mouse click once on top of this music, this music will play and a Tunetext page will launch.
A Tunetext Service response page is a kind of factory for building music examples that you can publish on your own websites. In a second or two's time, the service builds a MIDI sequence and score image for a piece of music encoded within a music description that's recorded inside a URL, whenever such a URL is submitted to the SongTrellis site. The server decodes Tunetext URL score descriptions and builds the score that was specified in the URL.
To respond to a Tunetext request, the service builds a page that performs the music as a background sound and displays the score image for the music, both of which you can download to your own computer.
Below the score image on that page, several sets of links are listed that generate HTML code so that you can present this newly created music on your own websites in a number of different formats. There's a link included with each set to email the HTML to your email mailbox.
It's also easy to submit your music to SongTrellis so that you show up in our SongTrellis Composer listing, if you care to present your work here.
Watch for the "Create an animation" link on Tunetext pages
Immediately below the Tunetext score image I've included a new link titled "Create an animation for this tunetext". If you click on that link an animation corresponding to that score will be built by the site's Animation Server. As soon as the animation is added to the service's rendering queue, a web page is shown that shows you the link that you'll use to access your animation when it's ready to play.
While the animation is being rendered, if you click on that link you'll see a progress message that reports its position in the queue if it needs to wait for rendering or the number of seconds since rendering started if the rendering process has started. You refresh the progress page to get a new progress report.
When the animation is ready to ship to your web browser, the progress report is replaced by the actual animation which will start to render in your browser, if the browser is set up to play QuickTIme movies. If you like what you saw and heard, you can press that Back button on your browser and use your browser's download process to save your own copy of the animation on your machine.
You can customize a score a great deal by tweaking Tunetext parameters before you send it to be animated.
If you press the "Edit Tunetext Parameters' button on a Tunetext page, a page will launch that will contain many different parameter settings that you can change. You can change instrumentation or the score tempo. You can choose how many staff systems should be visible in the animation and the width of the animation. You can choose to play the score with a click track that metronomically marks the beat in your piece. You can color pitches in the score differently to help you identify the melodic or harmonic meaning of a particular note in the score.
Any other easy ways to get hold of a Tunetext page so we can start an animation?
A high percentage of the tune pages in "The Changes" department of SongTrellis, include a link towards the bottom to the SongTrellis Excerpt Service. This provides a form that lets you take a slice out of score that has been posted on SongTrellis and play it, loop it or customize it for yourself.
Once you set the bounds of your excerpt and press the Play button in the Excerpt Service form, a link will be displayed on the line immediately below the Play button ithat's titled "Launch tunetext page for this excerpt". Clicking that link will launch a Tunetext page, which will include the "Create an animation for this tunetext" link that you can use to request generation of a new animation.
Can I animate an existing musical composition that I have music for?
If you have sheet music for it, it can be a pretty fast operation to transcribe that into a tunetext stream that describes your music. You can type the tunetext description directly into Tunetext Entry form that you can access via the URL http://www.songtrellis.com/tunetext.
Once you press the "Submit" button on the entry form, the music specified by the tunetext will be synthesized and displayed as a score image. The "Create an animation for this tunetext" link will be provided below the score image.
Can I animate a score that I've composed using SongTrellis Workscore Composer page?
Sure. Right above the image of your score in your composer window, there's a link titled "Create Tunetext URL for Workscore". Follow that, and you'll see the "Create an animation for this tunetext" link on the tunetext page that launches.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
New Public Ideas Department
SongTrellis now has a Public Ideas department. If you follow the link, you'll see a list of the days on which new ideas have been submitted.
If you click on the link for a particular day, like this one for August 8th, you'll see a list of tunetext buttons.
When you click on one of the score images, the music specified by that chord image will be launched into a tunetext window and will begin to play. If you press he "Edit This Tunetext" button, the tunetext specification will be loaded into an editing form, along with a set of controls that can be used to customize the score specification.
There are controls to change the score tempo, instrumentation, display format, color code the notes in the score in different ways, among others.
If you change the settings of these controls. the score will play with the changes you've requested once you press the "Submit" button.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
New hardware and software for the SongTrellis site
I'm upgrading the MacMini that handles music editing requests on SongTrellis.
If you use the Excerpt Service, the Chord Grid, Tunetext, or any of the Workscore editing pages (Workscore Composer, Workscore Chord Entry, or Chord Entry By Grid), all of those functions now execute on that Mac Mini. As a result, you should notice that just about any operation you execute on those pages will respond a quarter second to a half second faster.
If I've done my job right, that's really all you should notice about this change. If you find any feature of the site that's not working the way you expect, let me know, and I'll see if it's happening because of the changes I've made to the server setup. I should be able to fix such problems pronto.
I'm also right on the verge (tomorrow, if all goes well) of making a big change to the way SongTrellis is hosted. Ever since I opened the site, the site's server software has run on Dell Power Edge servers that run a Microsoft Small Business operating system.
That new MacMini is powerful enough to do everything the Dell servers did, and will be much less of a hassle to maintain and less costly to run.
Unless I hear of terrible problems, tomorrow I'll make the change that will cause SongTrellis to be entirely hosted on the new MacMini. This means that I'll change the site's configuration so that when a user asks to see a page on songtrellis.com, that request will be directed to IP address 216.168.47.12, the address of the Mac Mini, rather than 216.168.60.220, the IP address of the Dell server.
This configuration change will be noticed by all of the name server computers in the world over a 24 hour period. When the name server that provides your web browser with the IP address for songtrelis.com finally notices this change, your web requests will begin to be handled by the new MacMini server.
Earlier this afternoon, I copied every member Workscore from the Dell server to the Mac Mini. Around 4pm PST, I changed all of the music editing links on the SongTrellis linkbar to use URL's that run on the MacMini server.
If for example, you followed the "Workscore Composer" link, you would find that it now loads a URL that reads as http://216.168.47.12/workscoreComposer2 rather than http://www.songtrellis.com/workscoreComposer2. That way when I change the name service record for the site, there will be no possibility that you'll make edits to your workscore that will be forgotten when all processing shifts over to the MacMini.
24 hours after I make the name service change, I'll change the music editing URLs on the site again so that they all point to www.songtrellis.com.
This whole website migration process should be complete sometime late on Saturday.
If you run across any problems, let me know via email at davidlu at songtrellis.com. You can also call me via Skype. My Skype ID is daveluebbert.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Sonny Rollins' 78th Birthday Page
It's here. When you follow the link and press the play button, you'll see a Flash animation that I contributed to the celebration.
Kudos to Bret Primack, the Jazz Video Guy, for doing such great work on this presentation. I was honored to have been a part of it.
This is the first public presentation of software technology for score animations that I've worked on since early July .If you visit here often, I'm sure you noticed I didn't post much this summer. This was why.
The solo transcription that's animated for the Birthday celebration page, "The Everywhere Calypso", shows how one of Sonny's greatest solos goes. My friend Jack, who recommended this to me in 1977 five years after it was first released, told me it was like hearing Bach improvise a calypso, and that Sonny was playing with immense authority.
Since I've heard it, I've always thought that the A side of Sonny Rollins' Next Album with The Everywhere Calypso , Keep Hold Of Yourself and Skylark was a perfect jazz album side, like Coltrane's Crescent album, with Crescent , Wise One and Bessie's Blues .
The coolest thing about this is that the animation doesn't use a synthesized MIDI track to perform the solo. Instead, I used the MIDI synthesis to verify that the transcription was correct, threw that away, and then used the original recording of Sonny's solo as the animation soundtrack.
Here's the high level description for Sonny's guests that tells how it was made.
And here are the gritty production details if you'd like to see the actual production recipe.
Transcriptions always leave so much out. Everything's in this animation.
A transcription is an abstraction that necessarily leaves out an incredible information about a piece of music. In this animation, all of Sonny's expression is there to be heard, so whatever the notation leaves out is still there in the recording. The notated solo becomes an index that lets you reach into the piece and find any part of the music that you'd like to listen to.
If you are fanatical to learn about music as I am, you might enjoy this and discover its value. I'd love to see many other great pieces of music get this treatment.
Such animations can graphically present information that students find is difficult to derive for themselves. The notes in this solo animation are color coded to show why each note sounds the way it does against the tune's chord accompaniment.
Using the SongTrellis Music Editor, it's very easy to produce other kinds of animations that color code the kinds of melodic jumps a soloist or composer uses moment-by-moment in a piece, or that color code exactly what pitch is supposed to play for each note.
If a student's notation reading is shaky, as mine was for years after I started to try to read scores, having these kinds of thing available would have increased my reading proficiency tremendously. I was mostly self-taught. It took a lot of time to figure out how accidental marks added to notes interacted with the notation's key signature.
Monday, August 25, 2008
John Coltrane's famous "Giant Steps" solo has been animated
A few months ago, as I was Youtubing I saw that a young video producer at Emerson College, Dan Cohen, had done a hand-made animation of John Coltrane's saxophone solo "Giant Steps".
The video animates a sheet music transcription of the "Giant Steps" solo. The notation that describes each sound Coltrane produces appears in the video frame at the instant he plays it.
Cohen keeps the animation focus on the measures of the score where Coltrane's jet of notes will next appear. It gives the impression that the notation representation of each new saxophone sound flashes into existence on a blank musical staff at the instant it sounds. The staff scrolls briskly to the left to carry away what we've already heard and continues to drift right whenever a long duration note sounds to give a sensation of forward motion.
I love to watch it. Seeing the notation animated this way seems to make my hearing more acute, and increases my appreciation for what I'm listening to.
You can start to latch on to elements of Coltrane's style by watching this. He liked to do runs that rush from low on the horn up to hits highest range to loft a pitch that hangs there for a moment before gravity pulls the line back down. You can easily see and feel the many launches that hurl those long notes up to float on high during the course of the solo.
Amazing YouTube Stats
The YouTube stats for this vid amazed me. At this moment, YouTube shows 350,000 views for it, 900 comments with someone making a positive comment nearly every day for more than a year. It has a 5-star (best) rating and was rated by 1376 viewers.
Why amazed?
A decade or so ago when I tracked such things, I remember hearing that the "Giant Steps" album usually sold around 10,000 copies a year. So this video is exposing 35 times more people to Coltrane's music in a year than has been the typical experience for Atlantic Records jazz music business despite its promotional efforts.
(Actually, Atlantic rarely does anything to promote its back catalog and waits for word of mouth to bring another customer to the door. The word of mouth can lead to profitability years or decades after release. I wonder why Atlantic doesn't place ads for the album with this video).
Other thing is, with this recording you're hearing a real early manifestation of an important part of Trane's style showing itself for the very first time. Art Taylor, a wonderful drummer, plays less conversationally than usual because of the tempo and Tommy Flanagan, an equally wonderful pianist, sounds like like he's scuffling and uncomfortable with the tune. They learned what the music was and how they were going to play it when they showed up at the studio.
Flanagan didn't have the benefit of a year's practice to get in shape for the performance. He must have gotten a cold sweat when he realized it would be played at that tempo.
When he formed his own band and it became possible to play every night with drummer Elvin Jones and pianist McCoy Tyner, the music got much looser and much more enjoyable to listen to. My point is, "Giant Steps" is not Coltrane's most powerful , most important or best work by any means. Still, 35000 viewers in a year, 5 star rating, 1376 raters, 900 comments.
Young jazz students do like to geek out and focus inordinately on this solo. Why the obsession?
Coltrane, according to his friends testimony, practiced for longer than a year so that he could improvise fluidly over the "Giant Steps" chord sequence that he invented. At first he didn't even have a definite melody to play over it.
The chords change very frequently in this tune, mostly twice per measure, and move in unusual directions. To make it harder, it's usually played at a blazing tempo. (Doesn't have to be though, Phineas Newborn played it slowly on piano, and it's beautiful). it's a great challenge for a soloist to invent music that makes sense in this setting when they take on these constraints.
Over the years since 1959, musicians have wanted to study Coltrane's improvised ideas in order to see how he solved his "Giant Steps" problems. Musicians with highly devloped ears, to satisfy their compatriots curiosity, have produced transcriptions, which are sheet music representations of Coltrane's solo. A lot of times folks who do this work make use of technological assistance when they encounter music that travels as fast as Trane's does. There are tape recorders and now software that can slow a track down to half or quarter speed.
I saw my first "Giant Steps" transcription in DownBeat magazine in 1971. Trombonist and educator David Baker did that one. Andrew White, who has transcribed virtually every Coltrane solo recorded (almost 700 last I checked), has done it also.
How Cohen did it
Dan Cohen found a copy of the transcription book "John Coltrane Plays Giant Steps", published by Hal Leonard, that provides transcriptions for the eight different solos Coltrane recorded for Atlantic Records before they chose the one that they wanted to present on the "Giant Steps" album. (It's another mystery why Hal Leonard doesn't advertise alongside this video. A lot of the comments ask, where did the notation come from? Where can I get the sheet music?)
Cohen took progressive photos of each measure of the solo, showing how the flow of notes filled out empty music staves as the performance progressed. He inserted Coltrane's mp3 recording of the solo as his video soundtrack. He stitched these photos into his movie by flashing the image that reveals the proper new note at exactly the instant it starts to play in Coltrane's solo.
The production cost is extremely high
Cohen reports in one of the early comments of the YouTube posting that it took him 10 days to produce hs video. When I saw this I realized that despite the fact I liked the animation so much I wouldn't be seeing many other efforts that would be created using this production technique because of the tedium and time expense that is involved. I'd guess that once you had done of these, you wouldn't be keen to repeat the experience. And there won't be many folks around with the musical knowledge and video production skills to do this work well.
And it's too bad too, Because there are literally thousands of recorded solos that listeners might enjoy watching in this fashion.
I thought, "Without much of a stretch, I can do that in software much less expensively, no self-torture required"
I realized once I saw Cohen's animation though, that I was pretty close to being able to do something similar using I software I've written. My SongTrellis Music Editor (still beta) has used a different animation technique for a very long time.
When a user plays a score, each note played is colored red during the instants that it sounds during playback. When the next note in a voice sounds, the one that goes silent is redrawn in black and the new one turns red.
This technique produces a band of reddened, vertically aligned notes which demonstrates how the notation is performed, really showing what the notation means. The problem I always had with it was that experienced musicians could follow the flow of red across the score pretty easily but that neophytes were not used to tracking along this way and would get lost. Also, because it was hard to track, it wasn't involving enough.
About six weeks ago, I figured out how to clear an entire score to bare music staves when a user plays an entire score and to clear selected notes when they ask to play a selection, in a way that makes sense with the way the editor already operates. This would let me emulate the part Cohen's technique that reveals a note the instant that it sounds.
I got that scheme to work two weeks later. A month ago, I was able to capture my Play animations and record those in a QuickTime movie.
Three videos that use reveal-as-played animation
Animations tightly synchronized to origial performance
Previous work I did made it possible to tightly synchronize transcription score animations to the original transcribed performance during playbacks within the editor. About ten days ago, I finally adapted the code that produces the synchronized transcriptions to record THESE as QuickTime movies using the reveal-as-played technique.
I can produce animations now that, to my eye and ear, produce most of the impact of Cohen's anaimation. I'm anxious to hear others opinions.
The question is, how much coolness is contributed by making the newly played notes appear at one point in the frame, and scrolling the score left to make room for the next notes?
I can scroll if folks feel too much coolness is lost. I think that the reveal-as-played technique is providing most of the value though. I value your feedback on this issue.
How I produce tight synced animations
I've typed in a faiirly large number of transcription scores for my editor for my own music study. To do tight synchronization, I measure the beginning times for the beginning and end of a solo and a sprinkling of notes throughout the solo performance. I label those notes in the score with my editor to tell it when those notes should begin to play in a performance, and from this the editor interpolates to calculate beginning times for all of the notes in the score.
When I've recorded enough in between notes, the editor flashes new notes onscreen at close enough time to when they sound in the score, that a viewer gets the impression that the played score performs the solo and causes it to sound just the way it was originally recorded.
What transcription animations have been produced in synchronized format?
I have six of these in hand now that are synchronized to their mp3 performance. I have tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter playing "Crisis" from Freddie Hubbard's Bluenote Records album "Ready For Freddie", Sonny Rollins playing "The Everywhere Calypso" from "Sonny Rollins Next Album" on Milestone Records, John Coltrane playing the "Resolution" section that is Part II of "A Love Supreme" and "Dear Old Stockholm", both recorded by Impulse! Records, Charlie Parker playing "Yardbird Suite", trumpeter Lee Morgan playing "The Joker" from his "Search For The New Land" album, another Blue Note recording,
Oy! I need clearances!
I don't violate copyright ever. I need to get clearances from the copyright holders to publish these so that the public can view these. This will be a new experience for me. I fear I won't enjoy it. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.
I'll be approaching Concord Music Group for clearances for Rollins "The Everywhere Calypso", EMI for Shorter's "Crisis" solo and Lee Morgan's "The Joker " solo, Universal Music Group for Coltrane's "Resolution" and "Dear Old Stockholm" solos, and Criterion Music Group for Charlie Parker's "Yardbird Suite".
If anyone has experience or lore that would help me to deal with these monoliths, please talk to me.
The goal was to do produce animations easier and faster than Cohen. How did you do?
It takes me 20 minutes or so to enter a page of fairly dense notation with several hundred notes on it. I can type in a jazz or rock score that plays for three or four minutes in two or three hours.
If the soloist's tempo in a performance is steady, I sometimes can achieve tight synchronization by simply measuring the intial attack of the first note and the final decay of the last note in the score I'm animating. Most frequently I have to do 8 or 10 measurements of notes in-between down to thousandths of seconds using Audacity, and then enter the measurements into the score. This can take two or three hours, especially when attempting the synchronization reveals brings to light errors in the transcription that need to be fixed.
When notes are labelled with their start time, I'm currently asking for the elapsed time for the note pitch to start, measured from the begining of the solo. This forces the producer to calculate that interval for every measurement. I should just record the time from beginning of track which can be read directly off of the Audacity window. This would streamline the process considerably.
Compared to the production costs of the original recordings, it costs very little time to produce tightly animated transcription scores provided a transcription already exists. If you don't transcribe yourself, you're dependent upon someone who can do this heavy lifting. Someone able to do this should be generously compensated for their efforts, because it is extremely hard work.
Can you do anything that Cohen couldn't?
It's super easy to vary how much of the score to reveal at a time during animations, by changing its frame size. It takes about a minute to render a new score and about five minutes more to get it in shape to post online.
I can verify that a transcription is correct by playing tight synced MIDI synthesis over the top of the original performance. If the MIDI instrumental sounds closely match the pitches and durations of what the soloists play, I can be certain that I'm using an accurate transcription.
I can easily render animations at arbitrarily slower or faster tempos than the original performance. I do have to fall back to producing a soundtrack by using MIDI synthesis. Slowing down the original score sounds too ugly. If you want to learn to perform or memorize a very fast piece of music, you might wish to have a version available at half or quarter speed or some other slowed down tempo.
I can color code the pitches of notes to help the viewer understand what musical materials the composer is using. Harmonic interval coloring marks the pitches of melody notes and notes within chords to signify the distance of that pitch from the root of the accompanying chord. This harmonic interval size measurement can explain to the knowledgeable why a particular pitch has the harmonic effect that it does in a score (how closely it fits the harmony or clashes with it). Melodic interval coloring measures the distance between two succeeding pitches in a melody. These can explain the emotional complexion produced by a melody when it's played without accompaniment.
I can easily produce scores for transposing instruments. Transposing instruments cannot play music written for piano or guitar (concert key instruments). Every pitch in a concert score has to move up or down a certain number of steps in the chromatic scale, so that a transposing instrument can play in unison with other instruments. I can change the score for a transposing instrument in an instant and then re-render an animation.
I can easily raise or lower the pitches in a score by a uniform amount so that it can be performed by a band in a new key.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
New Posting to "The Changes"
John-Erik, a new visitor to the site, asked if I could post a chord progression arrangement of Monk's "Skippy".
He's practicing his cycle of fifths and thought this one would provide a good workout. He's right, Monk is carpet bombing the cycle idea with this tune.
The hard part was finding which fakebook or sheet music collection around my office had the tune. End's up it was the "Jazz Ltd." fakebook. It took about 5 minutes using Tunetext to type the chord sequence in.
Screencast video demo of creating a harmony accompaniment using SongTrellis Tunetext
I did this demo this morning to show how quickly it's possible to create a harmony accompaniment for practicing using Tunetext.
New Video Demonstrations department
Look on the link bar above towards the end between "Search" and "Playlists". That's a pointer to the 9 screencasts I've posted so far on Revver, that demonstrate how to do cool things using services on the SongTrellis site. Every time I do a new one, it shows up there. I'll also be adding links to relevant videos on pages that use a demoed service.
You can see links to the first ones I did toward the bottom of the Playlists index page.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Google video index points + the OPML Editor = Video Index Outlines
When videos are served from Google's video.google.com website, it is possible to craft URLs that start a video at a particular time index inside of a video. Google introduced this feature a two years ago but I just recently caught on to what they had done.
. Dave Winer's OPML Editor application, whiich runs on Macintosh and Windows machines, is an outline processor. Documents that are created by the OPML Editor are in a outline document format called the Outline Processor Markup Language, abbreviated OPML, and are given a .opml tag on computer file systems.
I helped Dave produce the first Mac version of this application. I was very interested in the music applications that Dave's project could enable, and decided to lend a hand.
The SongTrellis Excerpt Service is able to create OPML indexes that point to musical events that occur in an excerpt. The work I did with Dave made it possible to create this feature of the SongTrellis site.
When text is recorded at the lowest level of an outline (ie. has no text recorded below It at a lower outline level), it is possible to attach links to that text. A special link icon is shown in front of such linked subheadings within the editor.
Clicking on the link icon in from of linked text causes that link's URL to be sent to a web browser, with a browser being launched if one is not active.
Using the Google Video and OPML Editor capabilities together, it's possible to write an outline using the OPML Editor, whose subheadings describe interesting moments within a video performance. By attaching appropriate video playing llinks to those subheadings, we can create an OMPL index outline that allows us to navigate precisely within a long video to all the moments described by our index.
The link creation process goes like this: first, by scrolling around in the video player provided by video.google.com, we find and record the start times where the interesting moments referred to begin within the video.
Following that, for each subheading description, we select a subheading, execute a command to Add Link, paste the URL text that launches the video into the Add Link text edit field and add the time specification that corresponds the subheading to the end of the video URL within the text field. Finally we complete the link creation task for that subhead. If for example you wished to start the video at the moment that plays 7 min. 14 sec. past the beginning of the video, you would add the text "#7m14s" to the end of the URL.
If you later clicked on the subheading which is storing this URL, the video we are asking to play will be loaded into the Google video player and will be pre-scrolled to the 7 minute 14 second mark.
I've published a screencast that demos how to use this kind of media index outline. In this screencast, I click on linked outline subheadings in an OPML document that I prepared to launch windows that play a music video starting at different interesting moments within a performance. The subheading text I've typed describes the video scene that will be launched when you click on the subheading.
The screencast URL is: http://www.revver.com/video/814822/googles-video-time-index-points-and-the-opml-editor/
Later today, I hope to make a new screencast which demonstrates how to download and setup a new copy of the OPML Editor on a computer, and then show how to use that to create an OPML Media Index Outline document.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
New SongTrellis Playlist Department
There's a new department of SongTrellis that I've worked on recently: Playlists. Playlists are named sequences of musical tracks that can be performed on your computer by issuing one Play command to start the playlist.
Playlists are really great ways to present new music for the listening pleasure of others. It can be like having a friend over to your house so you can play your latest musical discoveries for them.
Anyone who knew me as a young man, knew that I took a lot of pleasure in doing this kind of thing. That behavior eventually lead me to join the effort to found and run the KZUM-FM radio station in Lincoln, Nebraska, a listener supported station, in the late 1970's.
I did jazz programs for the station because I knew a lot about that musical form, but made use of the station music libary to do programs that played world music, especially music from India, Africa, the Caribean and Brazil, the blues and bluegrass. We had amazing classical programmers on the station and after I learned what I liked by listening to their work, I could be a substitute broadcaster for their programs also.
When I started work on SongTrellis, I hoped that technology and copyright law for the web would develop in a way that would allow me to do those kinds of things again on my site. after my forays into hardcore software development (13 years developing Microsoft Word) had interfered with my radio work.
Unfortunately, royalty rates for broadcasting music on websites were set impossibly high by the Library of Congress, which made it too costly to do the experiments I wanted to do.
Waiting for a workaround
The Internet seems to eventually work around blockages that hamstring new creative technology development efforts. After 10 years time waiting, there's nearly an equivalent to my own personal music library, and the library KZUM provied for me that is available to the entire World Wide Web. Better still, it is not a violation of copyright law to use it.
The Rhapsody music site has a music library that has grown to more than 2.5 million tracks. Rhapsody prefers to serve folks who subscribe to their service (for around $12 per month for folks in the US), but they allow any particular computer connected to the web to play 25 complete tracks per month for free. If you've exhausted your monthly quota, or live outside of the US, the service plays 30 second excerpts of tracks.
When you run a Windows system in a virtual machine on a Mac, that looks to Rhapsody's accounting routines as two separate machines so you are allowed 25 complete track plays on each system.
Rhapsody does this free sampling of their library as a way for you to gain enough favorable experience with the site, so that someday you'll subscribe to their service, I have subscribed because I've found that it's a great way to audition music I haven't heard before. For the cost of downloading one entire album, online, I can listen to as much music as I can find and decide whether I want to buy it.
There actually is an incentive to buy tracks online or buy CD and rip them yourself because the streaming audio Rhapsody provides is a little degraded in sound quality. It seems similar ro the sound quality of FM radio, but not as good as playing a CD on your home stereo system.
Rhapsody responds to links that specify a particular track in their library. If you click on a link to one of their tracks, they ask permission to load a Rhapsody Player app that your web browser can start to play a track. The download for this takes about 30 seconds. I've found that the Player app behaves well on both Windows and Mac systems.
Have added Rhapsody performance links to pages in The Changes
I've started to add Rhapsody links to pages listed in The Changes section of SongTrellis, so that vistors can click on a link and hear one or more great performances of a particular tune. About 10% of the tunes listed have these links now and I'll add 50 or so more each week as I have time to do the work.
Rhapsody Playlists are easy to create but hard to find
Rhapsody also allowed its subscribers to prepare Playlists for their own use that are recorded in their own personal profile. The site also has a department called Playlist Central where users can share their better playlists.
Rhapsody's online tools for creating Playlists are very good. Playlist Central,though, works in an odd way so that it's hard to discover a subscriber's playlists when they're first submitted.
To begin with, you can't do a Playlist Central submission directly from the Rhapsody website. You have to have a special Rhapsody application running on a Windows system to do that.
A new submission is recorded in the bowels of the Rhapsody system that is accessible only via this standalone application. The submission has to endure an incubation period of some unspecified length of time before a URL is created for it, that makes it accessible via the Rhapsody website.
It took that system several weeks to create a web accessible repository of my submissions, which listed them under my Rhapsody ID, DLuebbert.
It has taken as much as three weeks for Rhapsody Online to assign URLs to playlists that I've submitted. It would be fascinating to know how it's possible that publicizing a link to the web can be such a time consuming operation in the way that Rhapsody runs it site.
Rob Glaser, you've got to ask your developers what they're doing here and get them to improve this. Something that instantaneously produces a playlist URL would be the correct solution, I'd think.
I despaired that my lists were going to fall into a black hole on Rhapsody, since they only seemed to be registered on a list of the most recent 100 submissions in a genre category. It looked as though my submissions would fall off of this list in a few week's time, as new lists were added to it by other subscribers.
I was suprised to find that a few days before my lists would be expected to disappear, my submissions started to appear on pages linked to the profiles for artists whose work I played in my playlists.
Deficiencies with Playlist Central made recognize a need for a separate playlist index
Rhapsody's playlist publication scheme is glacial by Web standards. Playlists need to be run over like an Iceman by the Rhapsody glacier and then be melted out later so they can be seen on the web.
Since I wanted to point at new Playlists as soon as I've posted them and also as soon as I discover good work that others have done, I created this new Playlist department. I hope SongTrellis members will make submissions also to document their own discoveries.
Playlist department demoed by Screencasts
I've created screencasts that explain how the SongTrellis Playlist Index works and how you can submit your own Playlists and submit good lists that you've found to the index. You can find links to the screencasts I've done at the bottom of the Playllist index page.
Google videos and index outline documents
The screencasts I'm doing now, are recorded and produced by a great Mac app called ScreenFlow. Along with my screencasts to explain how the Playlist department can work, I created one that describes a new feature that Google has introduced on their video.google.com website and shows how its possible to create index documents in an outline format that allow you to navigate through a long video performance.
In the screen cast, I demonstrate an index outline document that points to the individual solos played during the tune "Dat Dere" which is one tune in a music video performance by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. "Dat Dere" is recorded between minutes 6 and 13 of the 48 minute long performance video. I show that clicking on an subheading in my index document takes you directly to the moment in the performance that is described by the subheading.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Newest postings in The Changes
Dave's most recent contributions to Mog.com
Sunday, January 6, 2008
More Mogging
I frequently develop writer's blocks when I try to write about music. I've been trying to work through the latest blockage by writing a bunch of intros for music tracks and videos over on the MOG website.
Here are links to the new postings I've done since the turn of the New Year.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Here are the postings I've done recently on the MOG music site. These are all intros and commentaries for music videos I've found on YouTube and Daily Motion. See the Video Links for a much larger list without much commentary.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Having fun on Mog.com
I've been working with the MOG website, mog.com, recently. That's a social
networking site devoted to music. They speak of mogging all over the site, which I think is a contraction of the phrase "music blogging".
The site considers all of the music posted on Rhapsody, several million pieces, and all of the videos available on YouTube and other video sites as topics for musical discussion. When
you create a new discussion topic there, it asks you which musician, album and track you wish to discuss, and when your message is posted, a play button appears which launches a Rhapsody player to
play that track. Inside of your message posts you can also insert the video-playing HTML code supplied that is supplied for videos on YouTube, DailyMotion or other depositories of music videos. Once you've made a video posting, the play controller for that video appears in your posted message.
Your postings about particular music are linked to pages on the site that are maintained for every artist mentioned by users, every one of their albums that are discussed, and every track mentioned. Your post is also presented to members who are looking for tracks to listen to and videos to watch.
You can do searches by type of musical genre and can search for tags that authors can attach to their posts.
Every MOG member on signup is given a profile page which is searchable and visible to all of the other members. If you wish, you can install a widget there which displays play buttons for the music that you've recently listened to, one which lists music that you'd especially like others to know about, and another which lists the music in your personal collection on your computer.
When it displays your personal music collection list, MOG
discovers the tunes that you own which are also listed on Rhapsody. If Rhapsody, can play the tune, a Play icon appears immediately to the left of the tune name in that list.
You can find my profile at:
http://mog.com/DLuebbert
If you've found another member whose music choices and recommendations are useful for you,
you can subscribe to their profile page, which causes MOG to list a button to their profile
on your profile.
These personal profile pages with Play buttons attached end up being a way to share music
with others without running afoul of copyright restrictions. Real Networks, which owns Rhapsody, makes payments to the copyright owners to
compensate for the tracks that are played. To encourage usage of the Rhapsody, any person
can play up to 50 tracks per month using the Rhapsody player software that launches in a
web browser window when they press a Play button. If you'd like to listen to more tracks than
the promotional limit allows, you may decide to become a Rhapsody subscriber, which allows you
access to the service's entire library for $9.95 per month in the U.S.
If you don't wish to subscribe to Rhapsody , you can wait out the month and use your 50 track
allotment next month. If you have access to multiple computers, you can transfer your Mog
and Rhapsody browsing to a new machine and use up the 50 track allowance for that machine.
Rhapsody allows anonymous access, so seems they enforce the 50 track Play limit by keeping
track of the unique Mac address which is assigned to any computer's Internt access card.
Even if you are not a Rhapsody subscriber and have used up your Rhapsody allotment, you
might find the video listings on the site to be interesting, since these are open to all.
I've collected a few hundred music links in the Video Links section of SongTrellis. Since most
of the things I've found haven't been noticed yet by other MOG members, I did 8 postings
there on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I wrote intros and commentaries for some of the more important videos I've found. You can see these by scrolling down through the middle column of my profile page on MOG.
Also great fun in the Amazon Jazz Discussions
Amazon has a set of discussion groups buried in the understructure of their site. Someone asked for comments on Wayne Shorter's music in their Jazz group.
I have a very high opinion of Wayne as a composer and improvisor, so I took the bait, and contributed this response.
Later, Joel, who started this thread, asked if I would write something
about the harmonies that Wayne used in his work, so I wrote this about Shorter's harmonies.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
What's the key of a song? A SongTrellis visitor sent me an email that said "I'm confused by the key of a song, the reason it exists and what it means". He also asked "Is it - the scale that works with all the chords in the song? Example : CDEFGABC as the Song key, Then I would create a progression like I IV V I = C F G C. This article combines the two emails I sent him to explain the concept. Newly added to The Changes
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Chas testifies on behalf of the Excerpt Service
There's a link to the Excerpt Service towards the bottom most music pages on SongTrellis. If you follow that link, you land on a form that will let you produce an excerpt of the published score (or rework the entire thing) to your order depending on how you set the First Bar and Last Bar parameters in the form. Changing Tempo field value in the form lets you perform your excerpt in a different tempo. The "Display:" popup menu lets you produce parts for transposed instruments. The "Transpose Original Score" popup lets you play the score in a new key.
There's a link to a Tunetext page that appears once the score is played once. That brings you to a page that is a factory for creating music examples for websites. You can also copy an excerpt to your Workscore on the site, one you've played it.
I received this nice thank you from Chas Schoonmaker on Saturday morning.
The cool part for me was to hear this: "Thanks for the tutorial on transposing with the Excerpt Service. I never realised it was so fast and easy! Now no tune will be safe from me in it's original key.."
What Chas needed
He wanted to have a version of It's A Wonderful World transposed into a new key (from F Major to G Major) and he wanted a SongTrellis style chord chart to go with it. Chas is a guitar player and sometimes finds that playing a tune in the published key doesn't feel comfortable or musically right on guitar. He's found keys for tunes that sound and feel much better to him when he transposes.
I told him that I thought the SongTrellis Excerpt Service link would do the job for him and gave him this recipe:
"If you use the SongTrellis Excerpt Link for "What A Wonderful World", set First bar to 1, Last Bar to 32, and choose "Major 2nd up" for Tranpose Original Score: and press Play, the service will generate a new set of voicings for the score every time you play it. Save the printed score and MIDI files, and print the scores after each play attempt. You'll see each arrangement is a bit different. If you do this a dozen times, you may hear an arrangement that will fall right on guitar."
Making transposed parts for your musical group with the Excerpt Service
The Songtrellis site has a giant trove of music stored within it. Most visitors probably don't realize that most of it can be customized for their own needs.
When I first tried to play music with my friends back in Nebraska when I was a young man, I'd try to play scores out of the Real Book and then discover that a Bb tenor sax couldn't play the same score that my guitar playing friends were following. I would have to mentally transpose the music an octave plus a major 2nd higher so that I could play in unison with the guitarists or transpose a Major 2nd higher to double them an octave lower. That's the compensation that's necessary because tenor saxes play concert key scores a major 9th below the written pitches in those score.
Actually I did not do mental transposition easily, so I frequently had to prepare my own transposed score and write it down in a music notebook by hand, which took a lot of time.
Even in this day with music software available that can easily transpose a score, when you play in a musical group whose instrument's transpose differently it's always a hassle to gather all of the transposed scores necessary so that everyone can play together easily.
Transposing for other instruments is very easy if you follow the SongTrellis Excerpt Service links that appear for nearly every tune listed in The Changes. Following a link launches a Play Excerpt form with a popup menu named "Display" whose default setting is "in concert key". If I choose the "transposed for Bb instruments" menu option, when I play my excerpt, the score for the excerpt will be rewritten so that it is "Displayed transposed for Bb instruments". The synthesized MIDI track will not be changed at all by this operation, but if I follow the transposed score with my tenor sax, I'll play the pitches specified by a concert key score.
An Eb alto saxophonist would choose the "transposed for Eb instruments" option and a violinist would choose the "transposed for A instruments" option to produce the scores they would need to play along with the track.
Knowing the size of a chorus
The chord progression sequences provided by The Changes are recorded so that a visitor can download and play along with the sequence. This means that we usually include 8 to 10 choruses of music in the sequences we publish. That practice leaves users of the Excerpt Service in the dark because it's not necessarily easy to know where the first repetition of the music in the score ends in the published sequence. .
Until two days ago the tune database recorded for SongTrellis didn't have any record any information that described the number of measures recorded in each repetition of a tune.
I've just started to add that information now. If you check the early tunes in The Changes listing (from 245 to A Night In Tunisia) and follow their excerpt link, you'll see that the Last Bar parameter in the Play Excerpt form is filled in so that pressing Play, plays the tune's intro plus one complete chorus of the chord progression performance.
That way everything is premeasured so that it's easy to prepare a score for a transposing instrument and to change the entire key of the score if you wish to do that.
Since I have another 1202 tunes to size, setting the sizes for all of the music in the database may take another month or two. When this work is done, I think a lot of work that folks might want to do with the Excerpt Service will be much easier to accomplish.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Last month I did some experiments with the video services at Kyte.tv. Kyte allows anyone who wishes to open a channel on their site to present videos under a name of their choosing. I chose to create a channel called the SongTrellis Workshop.
Kyte provides producers with a set of highly evolved video production widgets on their "Produce Show" webpage. I use their web Webcam widget to record videos directly from my Mac Book Pro.
Here's what's been posted so far:
Intro to the SongTrellis Workshop (8/1/2007) duration 1 min 23 sec
I introduce the SongTrellis Workshop channel and make the first public mention of SongTrellis Tunetext URLs during this short clip. The tunetext
URL I mention during the video is here
Harmony Tour #1 (8-1-2007) Duration: 8 min 10 sec
I start off showing the harmony playing capability of the SongTrellis Chord Grid, a useful facility to have available in a talk about harmony.
I try to explain the idea of a chord progression in two minutes, and explain that for any chord you choose, it has two very close neighbors of the same type. Since there's two of them, you could think of them as the neighbor on the left and the neighbor on the right, and this is how they are represented in the Chord Grid.
I then present five extremely simple four chord progressions, all built on the same plan. Each starts with a home chord of some type, visits the neighbor on the right, visits the neighbor on the left and then comes home again. I demo this on a Major triad, a minor triad, a MA7(#11), and a mi9th chord
A Harmonic Palette for 7th chords (8/2/2007) 13 min 34 sec.
I talk about the idea of a palette of harmonic intervals. I play a C7th chord to introduce its sound, and then use the rest of the video to present the sound of and discuss the quality of each of the 12 harmonic intervals you can build on top of a 7th chord.
After I did this video, I thought it might be useful to create a web page on SongTrellis that can demonstrate the sound of the twelve possible harmonic intervals above any chosen chord. In a few days time, I had the Harmonic Interval Palette web page working. I decided it would be good to do a screencast on Kyte that shows how to use this new feature of the site.
Screencast demo of the Harmonic Interval Palette (8/7/2007) 5 min 50 sec
The last two videos are just for fun. In the first, I vocally introduce a rhumba part and then spin a vocal improvisation around that part. It's the same game in the second, except I use a relative of one of the Kpanlogo parts as my starting point.
Vocal improv on a Rhumba pattern (8/2/07) 2 min 24 secs
Vocal improv on the Kpanlogo rhythm (8/2/07) 1 min 26 secs
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Using the family connections
Here's the chord progression for Labor Days.
When I invented this sequence I started out with two different motions between mi7(b5) chords and a fixed 7sus4, in this case Eb7sus. I tried them out and discovered that when I played them back to back they made a pleasing sounding oscillation around Eb7sus. An oscillation because we appoach E7sus from one root direction and then approach it from the opposite root direction.
I tried the idea that I would transpose this four bar pattern up a minor 2nd and then a major 2nd and liked what I heard when I played them in sequence after the original sequence.
Finally, I tried going back to the original sequence and thought that was fine, except that repeating the idea seemed a bit too mathematical, so I broke the symmetry by rasing the last chord by a half step, thereby throwing a curve ball for the ear's pleasure.
After I played it all, I was pretty sure I could build an interesting melody on top of it all.
I'm going through the play by play here as an antidote to the view that building harmony is a heavily rule driven activity. In this case, I was rubbing different kinds of chord sounds together trying to find a combination that threw off pretty sparks.
A family introduction
Here's a family of chords that I like a lot that I want to introduce you to. This example runs down all of the possible root motions between mi7(b5) chords built on different roots and a C7sus chord.
My newly submitted tune Labor Days got its start because I was familiar with how these types of chord motions sound.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Blowing on a spark, to see if I can get fire
Here's my response to Daniel's new submission. It's a recipe that shows how to find yourself a melody when once you have an attractive sounding chord sequence in hand.
Works for one, works for all
Nearly all of the postings in The Changes and most of my compositions posted under my listing in Our Composers have links to the "SongTrellis Excerpt Service". This means you can use any part of them as a source of harmonic material for your own compositions. That recipe I gave Daniel works in thousands of situations on SongTrellis.
Chas says...
That would be Charles Schoonmaker. He listened to Bernie Chinn's newly posted Musical Moment and said "Bernie, this lovely little number just goes to underscore that there is no substitute for the grace and beauty that can eventually emerge from considerable real instrument practice and live performance experience. Once again, my hat is off to you and I hope other trellis members share my sentiments !!"
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
First, click on this music. I built this in 20 seconds. 
Click on music to play
You could do something similar...
using this
It's been hard to produce musical examples for webpages
If you've ever tried to present music examples in web pages, as I've done for many postings on the SongTrellis site, you've discovered that preparing such examples is quite a time-consuming hassle.
If you're starting from scratch, you need access to a music editing or sequencing program that runs on your computer. And then you need to master a sufficent proportion of that program's user interface, in order to create your example scores.
Even with a good score production tool available, the creation of a single example is fairly arduous. If you are writing a music article for a general audience, most of your readers won't be able to read music notation. However, they can understand what you are writing about if they can hear a performance of your example.
Fortunately, web browsers are able to synthesize music recorded in MIDI format and can perform MP3 sequences. You can create your example score with your editor or sequencer, and use that to produce a MIDI s or MP3 rendering of your score. After that, you must copy this rendered performance file to your webserver and create the HTML code necessary to perform that rendering on your new example web page.
Many music editors and sequencers allow you to save a score in MIDI format. MIDI files for a small example might be less than 5 to 10 Kb in size.
If you want to present the example as an mp3 clip, you would have to run the MIDI file through a translator, which will result in a sample that is many times larger than the original MIDI sample.
If your readers are musicians, they'll appreciate a MIDI sequence, which they can load into an editor for their own projects, but they will also want to see a printed score for the the music, so they can understand what's going on in the music and evaluate how dificult it would be to perform. To satisfy this audience you'll want to render your score as a sequence of graphic images in a popular graphic format (JPG, GIF, TIFF, PDF, etc); And then you need to craft the HTML to display this graphic sequence, so that you can add this to your webpage. Unfortunately most music editors are set up to print a score on paper, and are not able to paginate a score into a sequence of graphics images suitable for display in a web browser.
If your editor suffers from this limitation, you may have to take screen shots of your music editor window to produce each graphical image and manually scroll the score to the boundary of the last music displayed so that you image the entire stream of notation recorded in your score. This process is very time consuming and error prone.
Using my old, best method, I could do the job in 7 or 8 minutes. Your time would probably be worse.
In my case, when I created chord progression scores for The Changes section of the SongTrellis site, I used the SongTrellis Music Editor for Macintosh to produce a MIDI sequence and a matching sequence of JPG or GIF format graphical images.
I can produce one small example in about 7 minute's tume, which depends upon the SongTrellis Editor's ability to create voicings for chords in a score that are specified only by a chord symbol which provides a chord's root pitch and type and upon the SongTrellis webserver's ability to create the proper HTML constructs to play music sequences and display score images for a webpage when a music article is requested by a visitor to the site.
Using most other tools would likely lengthen the time to produce an example.
I've wanted to reduce the production time for music samples to a few second's time. SongTrellis Tunetext URLs make this posible.
Fast creation of music examples using SongTrellis Tunetext URLs
SongTrellis Tunetext is an extremely simple music description format that describes music scores in a way that allows web browsers to perform them.
I have developed a Tunetext service on the SongTrellis website, which interprets a tunetext specification of a score that is appended to the end of a URL that invokes the service.
When a tunetext URL is loaded into a web browser, the tunetext service running on the SongTrellis server prepares a MIDI performance of the score, which is performed as a background sound, and prepares a matching printable score, which is displayed within a window as the MIDI performance plays. Score preparation and display for a Tunetext URL is usually completed in the fraction of a second after the URL is launched in a web browser.
Tunetext URLs for several small examples:
1) Tunetext for a minor ii-V-i sequence in A minor: (Bmi7(b5),E7(b9),Ami(MA7),Ami6, The chords are played for half note duration. Their voicings are calculated by the service. www.songtrellis.com/tunetext?bpm=120&text=chords:(inst:1,/2,Bmi7(b5),E7(b9),Ami(MA7),Ami6)
After you click on this link, and it loads into your browser, you can change the chord root name or the chord type in the list of chord symbols, and resubmit the changed URL. The SongTrellis server will produce a fresh score so you can hear the change you've made,
If you change the numeral 1 after the "inst:" in the URL to a new integer value between 1 and 127, you will be changing the instrument that will play your score. Resubmitting after making this change will let you hear it.
2) The F mixolydian scale performed ascending from F to F using quarter notes rendered via Tunetext:
www.songtrellis.com/tunetext?bpm=120&text=show:2,voice1:(inst:41,/4,4,f,g,a,bb,5,c,d,eb,f)
If you change or reorder the note names listed in this URL, you change the URL to describe a different melody. Resubmit the URL to hear the change you've made. If you change the 120 after the "bpm=" in the URL to an integer between 1 and 999, you'll be changing the tempo at which your score is performed.
3) An C7 arpeggio played twice in eighth notes with an accompanying C7 whole note chord:
www.songtrellis.com/tunetext?bpm=120&text=show:2, chords:(C7,r),voice1:(/8,4,c,e,g,bb,c,e,g,bb,*8,r)
Now one that tips the Toldeos
Here's a gigantic URL that plays a two voice score with a melody voices and a chord accompaniment voice, a much larger project.
www.songtrellis.com/tunetext?bpm=120&title=As Viewed By Eagles&fShowTitle=1&text=show:2, chords:(inst:1,C7sus,E7sus,Ab7sus,Db7sus,D7sus,F%237sus, Bb7sus,Eb7sus,C7sus,E7sus,Ab7sus,Db7sus,D7sus,F%237sus, Bb7sus,Eb7sus,/2,G%23mi7(b5),Db7sus,G%23mi7(b5),Db7sus, F%237,F%23mi7,*2,Bmi7,/2,Ab7(b5),G7(b5),F%237(b5), Eb7(b5),*2,Bb7(%235),Db7sus,C7sus,E7sus,Ab7sus,Db7sus, D7sus,F%237sus,Bb7sus,Eb7sus),voice1:(inst:41,/4,4, eb,d,c,/3,f,bb,5,c,d,a,*2,r,g,b,f,eb,/2,db,4,eb,gb, ab,bb,b,5,db,4,b,5,gb,db,4,bb,ab,gb,r,r,*3,3,b,/2, 4,db,e,*2,gb,/2,a,5,d,*2,r,/2,4,a,*2,g,/2,a,*2,b,r, /2,3,b,4,db,*2,b,/3,ab,g,f,*3,g,/3,c,3,bb,4,eb,*3, f,/2,ab,5,eb,f,ab,bb,*2,bb,/2,ab,*2,4,eb,d,c,/3,f, bb,5,c,d,a,*2,r,g,b,f,eb,/2,db,4,eb,gb,ab,bb,b,5,db, 4,b,5,gb,db,4,bb,ab,gb,r,r,*3,3,b,/2,4,db,e,*2,gb, /2,a,5,d,*2,r,/2,4,a,*2,g,/2,a,*2,b,r,/2,3,b,4,db, *2,b,*2,/3,bb,ab,g,/2,f,*2,g,f,/2,eb,*2,db,r,*4,r, /4,r,/2,3,b,*2,4,d,e,/2,gb,*2,ab,b,5,gb,/2,d,*2,4, b,ab,/2,db,*2,gb,ab,5,e,/2,db,*2,4,bb,/2,r,*6,r,/3, a,/2,5,d,*2,4,b,/2,r,*6,r,/3,r,/2,5,c,*2,d,gb,/2,f, *2,g,b,6,c,/2,5,bb,*2,gb,/2,r,f,/2,eb,g,*2,f,eb,/2, db,4,a,*2,5,db,4,bb,*2,r,eb,f,/2,g,*2,a,bb,5,ab,/2, b,*2,gb,/2,r,*6,r,/2,4,eb,d,c,/3,f,bb,5,c,d,a,r,r, *2,g,b,f,eb,/2,db,4,eb,gb,ab,bb,b,5,db,4,b,5,gb,db, 4,bb,ab,gb,*2,r,*3,/2,3,b,/2,4,db,e,*2,gb,/2,a,5,d, *2,r,/2,4,a,*2,g,/2,a,*2,b,r,/2,3,b,4,db,*2,b,*2,/3, bb,ab,g,/2,f,*2,g,f,/2,eb,*2,db,r,*4,r)
The TinyURL service boils huge URLs down to something manageable
Enormous URLs are mishandled by a number of email programs although most web browsers will open them correctly.
To package such a URL so that it can easily be transmitted via email, I used the TinyUrl service (http://tinyurl.com), which creates a small URL which can redirect to a much larger URL.
Clicking on this tiny URL causes the entire large tunetext URL to loaded into your web browser and tells the browser to interpret it.: http://tinyurl.com/2e483r
This preview URL (http://preview.tinyurl.com/2e483r ) lets you see what a TinyURL will expand into if you decide to execute it.
Edit the Tunetext URL and you've changed the score
Because the score is entirely described by a list of parameters encoded as string of alphanumeric symbols, once the syntax of Tuntext URLs is understood, it is possible to quickly change the peformance (tempo, instrumentation, volume) and display of the score (type of staff, the selection of voices displayed in the score, score coloring by melodic interval, harmonic interval and pitch class).
The pitches and durations of each note, rest, and chord are visible in a tunetext URL and may be changed by editing their description within the URL.
A tunetext page is a factory for building complex HTML for music examples
Links are also presented within this window which can produce HTML directives, which when copied into a webpage can cause the score to be performed in various ways. Links are provided to produce HTML for four different types of score presentations.
The first presentation plays the score as a background sound as the viewable image of the score is shown as the containing web page is loaded.
The second presentation provides a controller below the score iamge which allows the user to play the score from beginning to end when the controller's play button is pressed.
The third presentation provides a controller below the score image which loops the entire score when the controller's play button is pressed.
The fourth presentation displays the the score image as a button. When the user clicks on the score image, a tunetext panel is launched which performs the score, This presentation allows for a musical idea to be transmitted easily around the web via web pages and via email.
Demonstration links are provided next to each HTML production link to show how each presentation format operates within a webpage.
Email links are also provided to allow a user to email the MIDI sequence, printable score and example HTML to their mailbox, so that the score can be installed on their own webpages.
It can feed music into your Workscore on the SongTrellis site
A link is also included on the bottom Tunetext page, which allows you to copy the generated music to the end of a SongTrellis user's Workscore. SongTrellis Workscore's provide registered users of the SongTrellis site with an environment to compose music using editing controls provided by a Workscore Composer webpage on the site.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Bernard's been busy
Bernard Chinn has been submitting new work in Our Composers that's worth listening to. On the 10th, Fionnula, a piece that features the flute. A week ago yesterday the 15th, Catriona. On Sunday, the 19th, a piano improv on the chord changes of "Here's That Rainy Day".
If you are a vocalist or instrumental improvisor, listen to the improv, and then imagine that that Bernard ran an orchestra that could provide you with accompaniment for many interesting tunes. 121 of Bernard's Backing Track arrangements are already available for purchase in the Bernard Chinn subsite of SongTrellis.
The chord arrangements listed in The Changes on SongTrellis are computer generated and are great for getting a sense of how a tune works and are good to practice with. They are also a great resource for harmony study and for reference when you are composing new music.
Bernard's Backing Tracks for many purposes are a big improvement over the arrangements in "The Changes", especially if you're goal is to perform these pieces in public.
Bernard has hand crafted every voice of his arrangements and has balanced the voices of the arramgement to make sure each track sounds right and has an appropriate feel for performance.
The tracks always include a chord acompaniment, with a bass line and percussion track and usually include orchestral flourishes that Bernard enjoys inventing for you, We provide a MIDI track that you can play on your computer, an MP3 version for your iPod or other MP3 player, and scores in concert key and transposed for Bb and Eb instruments, which document the chord progression Bernard uses for the tracks.
Because these tracks depend so much upon Bernard's musical craftsmanship, we charge a small $2 fee for each separate track. We can sell you his entire collection of 121 tracks for $35.00.
Bernard knows thousands of compositions and is willing to produce custom backing track arrangements for those who need them at very reasonable rates. If you're interested, please inquire here.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
SongTrellisWorkshop on Kyte.tv
I've been experimenting the past few days with Kyte.tv. I've opened a channel there called SongTrellisWorkshop that I'll be using to explain new things I'm working on for this site and with the SongTrellis Music Editor. Below this text, I've embedded the Kyte video player so you can see how it works. In the first show I talked about SongTrellis Tunetext, a way to create web based musical examples extremely quickly. The second posting was a Harmony Tour, where I showed off the idea of visiting a chord of particular type and then visiting it's closest harmonic neighbors before coming back to the original chord. In the third show I run down all 12 of the harmonic intervals of 7th chords.
Shows 4 and 5 are just for fun. I did a vocal improv on a rhumba and another on a subpart of the Kpanlogo rhythm.
If you have a computer with a video camera built in like my MacBook Pro, it takes about a half hour to figure out how to post videos to Kyte. Producing a video, after you've done it once, takes second.
One of the coolest things about Kyte is that each channel has a Live Chat stream attached to it. Using that folks can type text questions, comments, and requests. If a person is logged in to the site, they can post audio or video comments to the chat stream also.
I'm going to make sure that the Kyte player always appear within the last posting on the SongTrellis homepage. I think we SongTrellis folks will be able to do some very interesting things now that we have chat available through the home page.
I use the chat to present additional info related to my video postings. If you hear a chime as you are viewing this page, that's the signal that someone has just posted something to the IM stream.
I'll be on the Kyte IM stream till about 10 AM PST this morning and then will get on again late this evening. We're travelling to Seattle this morning and will not get back till after sundown most likely, if the Washington State Ferries have their usual summertime crush. Link to SongTrellis Workshop Channel on Kyte.tv
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