7 ms·

This is so fun! Spent 10 minutes just jamming out. I think the scale and time quantizations are what make it truly fun to use, because it's almost hard to make

by mkaic 4y ago

This is so fun! Spent 10 minutes just jamming out. I think the scale and time quantizations are what make it truly fun to use, because it's almost hard to make anything sound bad! Love it.

stemlord 4y ago
Am I the only one who thinks it's lame that nothing sounds bad? Makes me feel like I'm playing with a children's toy. I don't feel like I've done something interesting by playing in tune with others since it's all in tune... it restricts possibilities drastically
- meowface 4y ago
  I agree with you, but, pitch-stuff aside, the time issue is an inescapable constraint. You can't have perfectly live simultaneous collaborative playing over the internet; things will inevitably be out-of-time for many. Due to the speed of light, you actually can never reasonably achieve this for two people maximally separated across Earth, even with hypothetical perfect technology and latency at its theoretical minimum. If the participants are both very close in physical space, like on a LAN or something close to it, latency could potentially be minimized enough to make it acceptable, but that's pretty much it. If your goal is to make something as accessible as possible to as many global internet users as possible, you either need a) some degree of time quantization (which makes it more rigid and less musical and creative) or b) some kind of buffering and/or turn-taking system (basically, overdubbing, which makes it less "live-collaborative" / "jam-like" and potentially less enjoyable to participate in compared to something more live). At least, this is my understanding of the problem. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
  - xnorswap 4y ago
    In a large orchestra, you can have people sitting 10m away from each other which given the slow speed of sound is 30ms between them. A 60ms round-trip means that if they were to each try to play in time with the other by sound it would get horrendously out of sync quickly. Which is why the conductor is so important. I'd guess concert players must have to train themselves to "tune out" what they're hearing and focus on the conductor because the whole thing is set up for the benefit of the audience.
Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago
Can anyone versed in music explain in simple terms why it always sounds good, while real instruments sound terrible if you don't know how to play them, even in isolation (let alone if there are several clueless musicians playing)? I understand that what you call "time quantization" means that the time is discrete and notes are played in the next "beat" rather than when you press them. But what did they do with scale exactly? If you just play random notes in a piano it sounds awful, here it sounds good.
- _nivlac_ 4y ago
  I think the main reason is that it uses the pentatonic scale - there are only 5 notes in it (repeating every octave), and these notes generally sound good together. On a piano, this would be all of the black keys. It's a common starting scale for beginners learning to improvise, particularly on the guitar.
  - 4gotunameagain 4y ago
    Minor nitpick, it is only the F# major pentatonic scale that only uses the black keys of the piano Every scale has a pentatonic version, it just means that you skip some notes basically. Apart from that, I think that the sampled sounds in Plink fit together more easily as well because of the synchronised Staccato, where there are gaps between the notes and the timing is done automatically. Great thing !

by mkaic 4y ago

This is so fun! Spent 10 minutes just jamming out. I think the scale and time quantizations are what make it truly fun to use, because it's almost hard to make anything sound bad! Love it.

stemlord 4y ago

Am I the only one who thinks it's lame that nothing sounds bad? Makes me feel like I'm playing with a children's toy. I don't feel like I've done something interesting by playing in tune with others since it's all in tune... it restricts possibilities drastically

meowface 4y ago
I agree with you, but, pitch-stuff aside, the time issue is an inescapable constraint. You can't have perfectly live simultaneous collaborative playing over the internet; things will inevitably be out-of-time for many. Due to the speed of light, you actually can never reasonably achieve this for two people maximally separated across Earth, even with hypothetical perfect technology and latency at its theoretical minimum. If the participants are both very close in physical space, like on a LAN or something close to it, latency could potentially be minimized enough to make it acceptable, but that's pretty much it. If your goal is to make something as accessible as possible to as many global internet users as possible, you either need a) some degree of time quantization (which makes it more rigid and less musical and creative) or b) some kind of buffering and/or turn-taking system (basically, overdubbing, which makes it less "live-collaborative" / "jam-like" and potentially less enjoyable to participate in compared to something more live). At least, this is my understanding of the problem. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
- xnorswap 4y ago
  In a large orchestra, you can have people sitting 10m away from each other which given the slow speed of sound is 30ms between them. A 60ms round-trip means that if they were to each try to play in time with the other by sound it would get horrendously out of sync quickly. Which is why the conductor is so important. I'd guess concert players must have to train themselves to "tune out" what they're hearing and focus on the conductor because the whole thing is set up for the benefit of the audience.

Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago

Can anyone versed in music explain in simple terms why it always sounds good, while real instruments sound terrible if you don't know how to play them, even in isolation (let alone if there are several clueless musicians playing)? I understand that what you call "time quantization" means that the time is discrete and notes are played in the next "beat" rather than when you press them. But what did they do with scale exactly? If you just play random notes in a piano it sounds awful, here it sounds good.

_nivlac_ 4y ago
I think the main reason is that it uses the pentatonic scale - there are only 5 notes in it (repeating every octave), and these notes generally sound good together. On a piano, this would be all of the black keys. It's a common starting scale for beginners learning to improvise, particularly on the guitar.
- 4gotunameagain 4y ago
  Minor nitpick, it is only the F# major pentatonic scale that only uses the black keys of the piano Every scale has a pentatonic version, it just means that you skip some notes basically. Apart from that, I think that the sampled sounds in Plink fit together more easily as well because of the synchronised Staccato, where there are gaps between the notes and the timing is done automatically. Great thing !