The original seems to have been made by creating a feedback loop between one of the outputs and the filter input of an analog synthesizer. The examples I've seen were done on a Yamaha CS-15 but a lot of monophonic old analogs allow you to do that, like a MiniMoog. However the filters on a CS-15 are quite unique, don't think you can even do this exact patch on an MS-20.
Feedback loop normally called overdrive. Broke my Voyager improperly using the headphone output for that, haha. I've only ever heard of the MS20 being the source for the lead in the track though. Random Youtube demos seem to get it close enough.
Wow, really? That shouldn't happen, lots of people do that! I do it with every synth that allows me to loop back into the filter.
I don't think it's the MS-20 as it does come close but the MS-20 is slightly more nasal. Lots of moments I play with it and I think "this sounds ALMOST like The Funk" because with a big resonance on two filters it distorts pretty bad/good :). But perhaps if I try it with the same feedback technique it might get fuller.
Well that's opened up a fascinating new world to me. Is there a name for that regular logarithmic by linear music notation in the first image? I suddenly feel like a whole lifetime of musical enjoyment has been denied to me by the utterly utterly ridiculous staff notation system.
It's a representation of a midi step sequencer. It's pretty standard in all DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) software. Staff notation is way more nuanced than this. In order to represent all the details on the midi ui it requires layers (like photoshop) for all the different parameters. On staff notation it's all there on one page. Staff notation might be a bigger learning curve but it's also a far superior way of communicating musical pieces on paper.
I recall some composers notes such as 'with great vigor' or 'like raindrops' on sheet music. Midi step sequences would have a hard time representing the "emotion" some composers are looking for.
I disagree, at least as far as rhythm and pitch are concerned. For classical music, staff notation is great — but once you get into syncopation, soloing, and the general fluidity that comes with practically all popular music from the past century, it becomes untenable. Seriously, writing down guitar solos in staff notation is just gross. (I've previously written a little about it here: http://beta-blog.archagon.net/2016/02/05/composers-sketchpad...)
Quite an on point explanation; I'd also contend though that modern DAWs like Ableton Live 9 have quite nuanced sequencing and MIDI controls/notation for professionals (and can go deeper with MAX).
What I wish was explained to me at a younger age is the fact that there's nothing "special" about the black keys on a piano.
Musical keys are "mathematically" interchangeable. The physical keys that correspond to notes not in the key of C major (alternatively, A minor) are colored black for practical reasons. That is, for knowing one's place while playing the piano.
Fortunately I sorted this out in college, and I've enjoyed making music for my own enjoyment since.
OK, here is yet another musical representation method that you may find interesting (especially if you have a modern bent):
Take a tune, and now arrange some graph paper like the "note pattern view" in a sequencer, with one difference. Instead of arranging the pitches in the normal way, arrange them by the order they come in the tune. (so the first note of the tune will be the "lowest" pitch, second note the second "lowest" and so on.
You might see some interesting things that you didn't hear!
Probably Mozart would be a good target to do this with, and pop music would not, but I could be wrong on that. Possibly this is over your head, but possibly not.
Then if you want to add a ton more formalism, read a little about serialism, and apply this technique to a twelve tone piece. You will be rewarded for your efforts, as a previously difficult to follow piece makes much more sense. Doesn't mean you'll find it pleasing to listen to though.
Never seen that site before, very useful indeed! Whenever I see something like this I realise there's a world of sites out on the 'net that I'm missing out on, and a whole load of new ways to learn and demonstrate information like this.
If you have an iPad lying around, I recently made an app called Composer's Sketchpad that uses this sort of notation to its fullest. You "draw" notes directly onto a logarithmic pitch grid, and instead of having to snap to the usual array of discrete piano-key pitches (ABCDEFG), you can start your notes at any point on the y-axis and arbitrarily pitch-bend them as you draw. I've found this to be the perfect interface for playing around with musical ideas, and particularly useful for writing out expressive solos — something staff notation is just terrible for!
If you like the idea of making music by "drawing" it like this, and you have access to a Windows Machine, I'd recommend playing with FLStudio. With other DAWs I've found that it is more difficult to make music with just a mouse, not requiring real instruments, microphones and (maybe multiple) MIDI controllers.
I've been a Mac user for almost ten years now, but the lack of FLStudio for OSX makes me question that decision every six months or so.
Actually FLStudio has a beta of version 12 that can run on OS X (natively -- not a port based on Wine, although it had that too previously). It will be released sometime soon they say, mid-late 2016 or early 2017 is my guess.
But apart from that, you can do the same things (although less builtin tooling for electronic music, but still enough) with Garageband, and, if you don't have invested in VSTs/AUs, Reason.
In other words, you haven't yet spent the time learning to read music, so you'd rather trash the system that evolved over several centuries and pretend that it's ridiculous.
Nothing has been "denied to you". You just haven't spent the time it takes to learn. Have foreign languages been "denied to you", too?
What, precisely, is ridiculous about music notation? It represents time, on the x axis, and pitch, on the y axis (on a basic level). Seems reasonably logical, to me.
Where is this coming from? It's pretty clearly G minor to me. The bass is playing G. The main phrase starts and ends on a G.
> This 1.334 is a ratio of adding 5 semitones in hertz. This should sound like this.
This harmonic overtone kills it for me. I know there are some overtones in the original, but not like this. 5 semi-tones is an interval of a perfect fourth. I think maybe a perfect fifth would work (7 semi-tones) but this overtone pretty much destroys it for me.
Sonic Pi is another on of the new Live Music Programming Languages. Sonic Pi has a nicer GUI presently.
Right now it is the early stages of these kind of musical tools for live music coding. I really look forward to the near future for these new tools. I know that we have had programming for music for decades but this is a different genre at least to me.
Not knowing about Leipzig[0], I've been trying to come up with my own representation of music in JS to work with the Web Audio API. My biggest puzzle so far is how to a) keep a rhythm and b) allow musical "blocks", which are indeterminate in length, to fit into this rhythm. I was thinking that these blocks would be pre-defined functions which represent different aspects of music (bassline, riff, etc.) which could be repeated and inserted at arbitrary time in the composition.
If anyone is interested on working on this drop me a pm/comment (it's just for fun)
I hacked on this a while ago, and the best libraries I found were one called Wad for playing notes and applying effects, and another called Teoria for building chords and intervals and so on.
I was hindered by not having any idea what I was doing but here's what I came up with:
Readit News
https://youtu.be/W4PEAKNtbVw?t=184
A good explanation how it works
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdN43xfwV2U
Slightly better played
I don't think it's the MS-20 as it does come close but the MS-20 is slightly more nasal. Lots of moments I play with it and I think "this sounds ALMOST like The Funk" because with a big resonance on two filters it distorts pretty bad/good :). But perhaps if I try it with the same feedback technique it might get fuller.
I think you mean "dense and efficient".
Musical keys are "mathematically" interchangeable. The physical keys that correspond to notes not in the key of C major (alternatively, A minor) are colored black for practical reasons. That is, for knowing one's place while playing the piano.
Fortunately I sorted this out in college, and I've enjoyed making music for my own enjoyment since.
I wish we had pianos with slightly thinner keys (to allow for the same reach) but with same-level black and white keys.
It would make piano playing normalized (like e.g. bass playing is), and make learning scales, transposing, etc childs play.
It would probably still need some color or small "bump" on C to know where our hands are, but that would be it.
Of course there are also several hexagonal etc keyboards with similar normalized layouts, but they also haven't caught on.
Take a tune, and now arrange some graph paper like the "note pattern view" in a sequencer, with one difference. Instead of arranging the pitches in the normal way, arrange them by the order they come in the tune. (so the first note of the tune will be the "lowest" pitch, second note the second "lowest" and so on.
You might see some interesting things that you didn't hear!
Probably Mozart would be a good target to do this with, and pop music would not, but I could be wrong on that. Possibly this is over your head, but possibly not.
Then if you want to add a ton more formalism, read a little about serialism, and apply this technique to a twelve tone piece. You will be rewarded for your efforts, as a previously difficult to follow piece makes much more sense. Doesn't mean you'll find it pleasing to listen to though.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Soundtracker
Homepage: http://composerssketchpad.com
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypsLgTY8NXs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_roll
I've been a Mac user for almost ten years now, but the lack of FLStudio for OSX makes me question that decision every six months or so.
But apart from that, you can do the same things (although less builtin tooling for electronic music, but still enough) with Garageband, and, if you don't have invested in VSTs/AUs, Reason.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablature
Nothing has been "denied to you". You just haven't spent the time it takes to learn. Have foreign languages been "denied to you", too?
What, precisely, is ridiculous about music notation? It represents time, on the x axis, and pitch, on the y axis (on a basic level). Seems reasonably logical, to me.
Where is this coming from? It's pretty clearly G minor to me. The bass is playing G. The main phrase starts and ends on a G.
> This 1.334 is a ratio of adding 5 semitones in hertz. This should sound like this.
This harmonic overtone kills it for me. I know there are some overtones in the original, but not like this. 5 semi-tones is an interval of a perfect fourth. I think maybe a perfect fifth would work (7 semi-tones) but this overtone pretty much destroys it for me.
I know it's wrong and working on these improvements:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/4dl454/recreating_...
Right now it is the early stages of these kind of musical tools for live music coding. I really look forward to the near future for these new tools. I know that we have had programming for music for decades but this is a different genre at least to me.
Here is a video of Overture going over live coding from 3 years ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imoWGsipe4k&nohtml5=False
https://twitter.com/samaaron
He has set up a Patreaon page [0] for those interested in contributing his live coding, development of Sonic Pi and Overtone.
[0] https://www.patreon.com/samaaron
If anyone is interested on working on this drop me a pm/comment (it's just for fun)
[0]https://github.com/ctford/leipzig
I was hindered by not having any idea what I was doing but here's what I came up with:
http://www.aphall.com/random/audio-test/ (clicks weirdly in firefox, no idea why.)
Libraries:
Wad: https://github.com/rserota/wad
Teoria: https://github.com/saebekassebil/teoria