16 ms·

I'm not really sure what you would use this for. I'm a musician and I can't possibly find any use for this. It would take forever to write a song in this and th

by DonnyV 15y ago

I'm not really sure what you would use this for. I'm a musician and I can't possibly find any use for this. It would take forever to write a song in this and then you would have to mess with the timings just to make it not sound like a programmed piece of music and give it some feel.

muraiki 15y ago
Generative / algorithmic music is its own world. I'm a musician too and I can't imagine being very expressive (and musical) with this compared to my shakuhachi or doumbek. I have a hard time imagining how this could be used in live improvisation vs something like Ableton. But this type of music is really its own thing, and I don't presume to understand it. Something that I found interesting, a video game approach to music: http://kotaku.com/5847212/compose-your-own-musical-villages-in-the-lovely-isle-of-tune-hd http://kotaku.com/5847212/compose-your-own-musical-villages-...
- muraiki 15y ago
  Ok, I just saw the link someone posted to "This Binary Universe." I stand corrected: you can make some pretty amazing music this way. :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve8WaGmyhfI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve8WaGmyhfI
rosejn 15y ago
Actually, one of the initial motivations for creating Overtone was to experiment with automating "feel". I was getting into electronic music, and it seemed to me that many of the painful aspects of EQing and adjusting instruments and timing so they don't interfere with each other could be automated. We haven't really gotten to this point yet, but I tend to believe that this is yet another area in life where people will argue forever that software will never compete with humans, up until the point where many of the top tracks are being generated by software. It also opens the door to all kinds of interesting things, like live composition of multiple instruments, or meta-composing, where you modify parameters along axis like tension, emotion, drive, and vibe, rather than figuring out how to modulate to the next key. For now I agree with you though, most of what I create in Overtone still has a robotic feel. Hopefully that won't be the case for long. We'd love to have more musicians joining the discussion though, so if you have ideas join the mailing list.
kragen 15y ago
> I'm not really sure what you would use this for. "Live coding" means you go to a nightclub, hook your laptop up to the sound system and a big projector, and start programming, while everybody is watching you program and listening to the sounds your program is making.
- palish 15y ago
  Almost like... a synth.
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    Implying that this isn't a synth?
    - palish 15y ago
      Mm, I didn't mean to come off as a dick. Overtone is cool as hell, and is worthy of a lot of respect. My point was, there's a reason why musicians often use "a box with a bigass row of large physical keys" to do this sort of thing. That said, a synth costs thousands of dollars; so I love the idea of Overtone making live music more accessible to "dabblers" like me. ( Unfortunately, a MacBook also costs thousands of dollars, and I've given up hoping people still care about Windows. =) )
      - kragen 15y ago
        I don't think live coding makes live music more accessible to dabblers. Making live music that people enjoy listening to only takes a few dozen to a few hundred hours of instruction and practice, with either voice or instruments, and beyond the obvious a capella modalities, there's the harmonica, the borrowed friend's guitar, the recorder, the pan pipes, and so on, which together mean you can make pretty excellent music without spending much or any money. And it'll take you quite a lot of practice to outgrow a US$100 synth from Radio Shack. (Or wherever you buy them these days.) By contrast, I have the impression that livecoding requires a great deal more knowledge to do in an entertaining way, and it can go wrong in many more ways.
troyal7562 15y ago
I am a musician but I can see how this is useful given much practice and a creative, well practiced ear. One can, and people have, make music out of much less inspiring media. I agree that the piano and sine sounds utilized leave much to be desired. I can, rather, see this driving well crafted, masses of sound that can be later arranged by in logic or protools. You don't have to sound like a machine ( though you are certainly free to, and there is nothing wrong with it.) It might require hacking, but that is usually required for anything new, music included.
inopinatus 15y ago
I'm also a musician, but ... The process looks more like that of jazz to me - finding/inventing structure & theme, reconceptualising both, collaboratively developing derived forms and then riffing on those for performance. Unlike songwriting, that's a musical process that's always come naturally to me and I use almost exactly the same mindset when I'm on form as a developer too. I don't know if this a common experience.
dbattaglia 15y ago
From the traditional perspective of composing/songwriting or performance using acoustic instruments, this would probably seem useless. But there is a whole world of folks obsessed with coding music and instruments, check out Chuck, CSound, Max/MSP or Supercollider (which this uses as it's audio backend). I like to think of projects like this as experimentation in technology-as-art. Even if the sound itself isn't what I would use to write songs, I still find it very satisfying to watch someone write out Lisp/Clojure code and hear organized sound come back. And I'm sure that is amplified by a million for the person who actually created this themselves!

by DonnyV 15y ago

muraiki 15y ago

Generative / algorithmic music is its own world. I'm a musician too and I can't imagine being very expressive (and musical) with this compared to my shakuhachi or doumbek. I have a hard time imagining how this could be used in live improvisation vs something like Ableton. But this type of music is really its own thing, and I don't presume to understand it. Something that I found interesting, a video game approach to music: http://kotaku.com/5847212/compose-your-own-musical-villages-in-the-lovely-isle-of-tune-hd http://kotaku.com/5847212/compose-your-own-musical-villages-...

muraiki 15y ago
Ok, I just saw the link someone posted to "This Binary Universe." I stand corrected: you can make some pretty amazing music this way. :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve8WaGmyhfI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve8WaGmyhfI

rosejn 15y ago

Actually, one of the initial motivations for creating Overtone was to experiment with automating "feel". I was getting into electronic music, and it seemed to me that many of the painful aspects of EQing and adjusting instruments and timing so they don't interfere with each other could be automated. We haven't really gotten to this point yet, but I tend to believe that this is yet another area in life where people will argue forever that software will never compete with humans, up until the point where many of the top tracks are being generated by software. It also opens the door to all kinds of interesting things, like live composition of multiple instruments, or meta-composing, where you modify parameters along axis like tension, emotion, drive, and vibe, rather than figuring out how to modulate to the next key. For now I agree with you though, most of what I create in Overtone still has a robotic feel. Hopefully that won't be the case for long. We'd love to have more musicians joining the discussion though, so if you have ideas join the mailing list.

kragen 15y ago

> I'm not really sure what you would use this for. "Live coding" means you go to a nightclub, hook your laptop up to the sound system and a big projector, and start programming, while everybody is watching you program and listening to the sounds your program is making.

palish 15y ago
Almost like... a synth.
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  Implying that this isn't a synth?
  - palish 15y ago
    Mm, I didn't mean to come off as a dick. Overtone is cool as hell, and is worthy of a lot of respect. My point was, there's a reason why musicians often use "a box with a bigass row of large physical keys" to do this sort of thing. That said, a synth costs thousands of dollars; so I love the idea of Overtone making live music more accessible to "dabblers" like me. ( Unfortunately, a MacBook also costs thousands of dollars, and I've given up hoping people still care about Windows. =) )
    - kragen 15y ago
      I don't think live coding makes live music more accessible to dabblers. Making live music that people enjoy listening to only takes a few dozen to a few hundred hours of instruction and practice, with either voice or instruments, and beyond the obvious a capella modalities, there's the harmonica, the borrowed friend's guitar, the recorder, the pan pipes, and so on, which together mean you can make pretty excellent music without spending much or any money. And it'll take you quite a lot of practice to outgrow a US$100 synth from Radio Shack. (Or wherever you buy them these days.) By contrast, I have the impression that livecoding requires a great deal more knowledge to do in an entertaining way, and it can go wrong in many more ways.

troyal7562 15y ago

I am a musician but I can see how this is useful given much practice and a creative, well practiced ear. One can, and people have, make music out of much less inspiring media. I agree that the piano and sine sounds utilized leave much to be desired. I can, rather, see this driving well crafted, masses of sound that can be later arranged by in logic or protools. You don't have to sound like a machine ( though you are certainly free to, and there is nothing wrong with it.) It might require hacking, but that is usually required for anything new, music included.

inopinatus 15y ago

I'm also a musician, but ... The process looks more like that of jazz to me - finding/inventing structure & theme, reconceptualising both, collaboratively developing derived forms and then riffing on those for performance. Unlike songwriting, that's a musical process that's always come naturally to me and I use almost exactly the same mindset when I'm on form as a developer too. I don't know if this a common experience.

dbattaglia 15y ago

From the traditional perspective of composing/songwriting or performance using acoustic instruments, this would probably seem useless. But there is a whole world of folks obsessed with coding music and instruments, check out Chuck, CSound, Max/MSP or Supercollider (which this uses as it's audio backend). I like to think of projects like this as experimentation in technology-as-art. Even if the sound itself isn't what I would use to write songs, I still find it very satisfying to watch someone write out Lisp/Clojure code and hear organized sound come back. And I'm sure that is amplified by a million for the person who actually created this themselves!