JJiCalc now plays sounds via lattices. This is supossed to be very useful. The code I wrote to do this is ugly ugly ugly. But it works, and as my old boss used to say, “worse is better.” I’ll make it more wonderful soon. But in the mean time, you can download it and it will work, ugly or not. Mac — Everything else.
Just for fun, try entering a pythagoran tuning lattice and watch it draw a long line.
All improvements are mine. all bugs are from the other guys.
Pythagoras really liked threes. A lot. You probably remember this from school. What they don’t tell you in grammer school is that the tuning ratio 3/2 is a perfect fifth. Pythagoras is creditted with discovering that. The story goes that he walked into a shop where metal smithing was going on and the smithing was very consonant and melodic sounding. He ordered the smiths to switch hammers and pieces of metal. In his experiments, he discovered that the tuning was not in the arms of the smiths or in the hammers, but in the strips of metal they were hitting. Somehow, he got from this discovery to 3/2, which is obviously completely perfect because it has a three in it and three is the most perfect of all numbers. Pythagoras really liked threes
Alas, it was downhill from there. You may recall the circle of fiths. It leads around to every note in the scale and is a nifty trick for remembering sharps and flats. So, theoretically, if you really liked fifths, you could tune every fifth from the fifth below it. The fraction for note N = 3/2 * (N-1). So the first note is 1/1. The second is 3/2. the third is 9/8. The fourth is 27/16. The fifth is 81/64. Every note is 3^^x/2^^y. This tuning was invented by Pythagoras and the list of notes you get from it it called a Pythagorean Tuning Lattice.
Not really a very good tuning system, but one used for hundreds of years. Anyway, Kyle Gann wrote a paper on tuning for beginners: http://home.earthlink.net/~kgann/tuning.html. In it, he says, “Equal temperament could be described as the musical equivalent to eating a lot of red meat and processed sugars and watching violent action films.” I knew it!
There have been various improvements made to JJiCalc. I could tell you what they were, but I’d have to go look at CVS logs. Christi says that I’ve been very forgetful lately. This is true. She wants me to go see a doctor. Hrm. Forgetfulness = sign of brain tumor. Has my personality changed? Yes, she says I’m nicer. She says that it’s probably just that I’m distracted by other things. I have very sharp, clear memories of things from several months ago, but yesterday is fuzzier. Polly, of flute band fame, says that memory is linked to emotional engagement. So since I don’t care as strongly about small things as I used to, I’m not remembering them. Maybe I should carry a ntoebook.
The big news around here is that Ellen said yes and will be house sitting starting in October. Christi is apparently planning on staying around here until October, something she says that she told me a while ago. So I will be going by myself out ot the big, scary, new east coast and grad school. How can I be co-dependant when I’m alone. I need to remember to write my address on my person someplaxce everyday so that I’ll be able to find my own way home.
Christi’s dad was in town yesterday, catching defenseless abalone. He gutted three of them in my front yard. The dog was very happy about the proximity of abalone innards, but was ultimately disappointed. Ken is coming back next weekend. He apparently doesn’t approve of Christi’s new tatoo.
While he was here, we went to the Berkeley farmer’s market, where he purchased soap made out of the kind of tree that he just wrote an Enviromental Impact Statement about. He says that the soap is not impacting the tree population and the tree is not endangered. While he and Christi relaxed in the shade, Tiffany and I wandered over to the next block where the psychic faire was going on. We got our auras healed. Afetrwards, I asked the person waiving her arms around if my aura had been badly in need of healing and she said that she hadn’t read it. How do you heal something without looking at it? Anyway, apparently my aura now only contains my energy and nobody else’s. What if you want somebody else’s energy? My aura could do with some energy that can keep track of things better. Tiffany and I told Christi and her daad that we signed up for aura healing classes, but neither beleived us. And then Ken went home.
Gay marriage is apparently legal in Canada, even for Amerikans. Christi and I will be heading there very soon to tie the knot. It’s very exciting. Details will be forthcoming. (I know, you all knew it was legal a few weeks ago, but I forgot…)
I’ve been listening to Polly’s (of flute band fame) three songs over and over. It’s probably why I can’t remember anything. It’s getting tangled in lyrics. Gay marriage is legal no longer rosy fingered dawn.. anyway, it’s helping my ability to play the songs. and remember them. i’m not good at multitasking. i can memorize the songs, or i can be able to find my own way home, but apparently i can’t do both.
I had Tennis Roberts rehersal today. I burned some three song demos and gave ’em to Chand cuz Chand has friends in the music biz. Hopefully, we’ll get some gigs out of this.
And today was fathers day, so Christi and I headed down to Cupertino and had dinner with my dad, my uncle and my brother. I didn’t know what to get my dad, so I got him a small statue of Chairman Mao. I think he likes it, but I’m not sure. He clearly thinks that Mao was a bad guy and is talking about collecting statues of other bad guys like Stalin. Hopefully a joke. My dad says that Donald Rumsfeld talks in haiku. All his short statements break into haiku format. I’m skeptical.
Although many other things may or may not have happened around here, I have nothing else to report that I can recall. If I don’t get better about recalling things, I might make an excellent republican candidate for high public office. Or not. tomorrow is Christi’s birthday. She’s turning 27, but apparently has been telling people that she’s turning 29. Not on purpose. (I’m not the only confused person in my household. Maybe we have ergot poisoning… A witch! A witch!) and I’m starting working on cleaning up the Lattice feature in JJiCalc. I don’t get it at all. I think I might know what a tuning lattice is, but how the program deduces them, maps them, deals with them, etc, I don’t get at all. All I can tell is that it’s mostly illegible and it doesn’t play notes. I think a lattice might be a two dimensional representation of an N-dimension array. This is not a problem that I had ever given thought to before. Maybe I need to read a math book about graphing hypercubes. Anyway, I’m at a point where I should probably go put up a web page and recruit other programmers to come fix these problems that I don’t understand.
BillMoyers Speech against Oligarchy. It’s double-plus good.
Don’t ask me what this subject line is. It has something to do with an angry airplane.
JJiCalc now saves and opens files. It’s very exciting. Right click (or control-click) on the link and select “save link as” or something similar to that: Tar Gzipped or .sit (Mac!!). These links are compiled only. If you want source, you need to go to Source Forge and then sign up to join the project. Ok, you can donload source without joining. but if you want source, then you ought to want to join. There’s no real webpage for the project yet. I need to figure out how to do that. on the one hand, it seems like it’s more useful to fix saving and loading files. on the other hand, nobody can sign up to do thigns and fix other stuff if I don’t make the page.
Speaking of saving and loading files, I was unable to salvage any of the tuning files that came with the original source. I need tunings! Chromaic tunings. Utonal tunings. Otonal tunings! 7-limit tunings! Dorian tunings! Pythagorian tunings! More tunings that you can shake a stick at!
You (yes you!) could be a contributor. Even if you can’t code! Just download the program and then go find some tunings. Eneter the tunings into the program and save them. Then, if you want to join the project, you can check them in. If you don’t want to figure out how to join the project, you can mail your tuning files to me and I’ll add them with a project with a note that you (yes you!) are the fab person who inputted the tuning. I don’t actually have very much tuning knowledge. Very little, actually. Fixing loading and saving files is not increasing my knowledge of tuning, only of file I/O. So, it would be good if people with tuning knowledge did the tuning files part.
tonight is mitch night. I should go practice some bass quitar. reveal yourself to me, i am tacet blue. In the time I spent typing this post, I listened to the evil three songs at least twice, probably three times. How long will it take you to read it?
Hey, the comments look right now. they have the same layout as my blog now.
I put up three tennis roberts mp3s, all recorded at Ian’s party. http://www.berkeleynoise.com/tennisroberts/mp3s.
Spent much of today talking with SBC and Asante about network issues for Other Minds. Their network was hosed. the router was misconfigured. the modem burned out overnight. all of these things are solved (at least for now).
One year ago Monday, my mom finally scheduled my brithday party. My birthday was, of course, in February, but she kept wanting to schedule a party, but forgetting to do it. Every monday, I would call and ask about it, and she would tell me she’d forgotten or someone couldn’t make it and it would get put off until the next Monday. This went from February to June. So I would talk to her at least once a week. She told me a few times that she thought she was getting alzheimers. I had just read an article about it, and so told her that it rarely hit people her age. Ususally it got folks older or younger. When I came down, I brought her a saint candle or a prayer card, I think a card, since she’s been out of sorts and I wanted to do something helpful. She didn’t know quite what to make of it, which was strange.
One year ago today, I went to the Esperanto Concersation group with Joel. Maybe it was a year ago next week. It was at the tail end of the Elna convention, so nobody else was there, except Joel who had left the Kunveno early, just in case someone wandered into the Conversation group. afterwards, I went ot the main branch of the Berkeley library and checked out a book by Dr. Zamenhof, which I never read. Several weeks later, Christi’s cousin took it back for me. I never went in to pay those fines.
Or maybe one year ago today was the day that I called my mom and asked if her new medication was helping and she said it was, but seemed confused. Or maybe one year ago today was the day that her doctor gave her physical and said that whatever he problem was, it seemed to be in her head somehow and so started changing around her antidepressant medication. Or maybe it was the day that I finally bought plane tickets to portland for my 4th of July trip up there – the trip I came home from early. Or maybe if I keep thinking about this I can make myself insane.
sometimes, it feels like if you think hard enough about the past that you can change it. But this is false. You cannot change the past. You cannot change the past. You cannot change the past. Hell, you can’t even change the future.
I had band practice today. We have some new songs. Polly is starting to panic about the Vegas gig. I like saying “the Vegas gig.” For example, “oh yeah, I gotta do some practicing for the Vegas gig.” or “Oh yeah, maybe I’ll see Robert dyck at the Vegas gig.” (the last one especially impresses christi.) It’s important to start “the vegas gig” sentences casually, with an “oh yeah,” to show how sauve and chill one is about having a Vegas gig. “Oh yeah, a gig is a gig, you know, like the Vegas gig I got coming up.” “Oh yeah, we’re doing some songs about military aircraft for the Vegas gig, but I’m not really into, you know, warfare or empire or US military supremacy and neocolonialism or anything.”
Where was I? Oh yeah, I’m listening to the three new songs over and over and over and over agin to prepare for the Vegas gig, so I can be solid on the bass lines. Over and over and over again. I can feel stark weather coming . . .. I spent all day yesterday trying to get the JJiCalc to write files. Today, I’m going to get it to read them, all while listening to the same three songs over and over again and it will not drive me insane. Or if it does drive me insane, it will be ok, because it’s distracting the hell out of me and distraction is good. Being driven to distraction is good.
http://www.celesteh.com/personal/chicken/
Page made for the benefit of Ellen. I give her a 75% chance of deciding to stay in Seattle. She really likes chicken tho, so maybe Chicken will lure her down. She has a Dr. Doolittle sort of connection to Chicken. Chicken didn’t destroy anythign while Ellen was here, but she did eat a muffin that I left on the counter. Or maybe Roz did. Cats eating muffins are weird.
Yesterday, I fixed some bugs in the JJiCalc. You can now enter in tunings and it will know they exist. Some action-event thing was missing. I’m working on saving and reloading right now. Anyway, while I was coding, Ellen went to her friend’s memorial service and then from there to the airport. He was part of the reason she was considering moving down here. And she was sad the whole time she was here. Last time she was here was the 2002 OM festival and she was sick the whole time. The bay area may be a bad luck place for her.
So I’m basing the 25% probability (guess) of her moving down here based on Chicken’s magnetic personality. Oh, and if you know of a responcible musician (I know, oxymoron…) who might want to rent my space for two years, you should drop me a line.
You could be a JJiCalc developer. Or you can just download the sourcecode: cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/jjicalc login and not be a developer. You can’t yet download a nightly build or anything, cuz I’ve never used sourceforge before and I don’t know how to do that yet.
We went out Saturday to see the spot where Ellen’s friend was hit by a car. It was in Emeryville on the part of Powell street that gets really narrow, I think by Vallejo street. People have attached flowers, notes and a poster to a posted speed limit sign – 30 mph, which is clearly being exceeded by quite a bit. It was worrisome crossing the street to get there. Around the base of the sign were candles, a stuffed animal and other memorial items. A flautist was there, sitting on the ground, playing a lamentation. It was very moving. Some other people came. It seemed to make them feel better.
Later, we went to two concerts at the Berkeley Edge Fest. Two concerts in one day is too many. However, George Lewis is an amazing virtuossic trombone player, so I was glad we went to the second concert. Some very hyper composer cornered Sarah Cahill ater the first concert and started on a well-rehersed arts rant. He began by asking her if she was indepenently wealthy. He thinks artists in the Bay Area play too many gigs for free or for low wages. Sarah tried to pass him off to Christi, Ellen and I, bu we escaped. However, on Sunday, he got us again and continued exactly where he left off. He thinks artists should be well paid for theit work, but they should give their work away for free. I think I heard this argument before, as part of the New Economy or something. I’m still not sure how it’s supossed to work.
The Sunday concert was a Lou Harrison tribute. His work is so beautiful. The second half was all gamelan. It was performed on his personal gamelan that Bill Colvig built for him. It’s the first time that it’s been played without him. the last piece they played was the last piece he wrote. I think the gamelan lead may have been crying when the last gong sounded. Krys Bobrowski played in the ensemble. After the concert, she showed us her instrument and explained the notation. She told me to play in the Wesleyan Gamelan Ensemble, so I will.
We went out for Thai food with Krys, her girlfriend, her other friend who just made some MIDI controlled strobe thing for crystals (I hope to see this thing soon and better be able to describe it), Brenda Hutchinson and her partner, who I can’t remember the name of because I never remeber anyone’s name. Brenda was urging Ellen to move down here and work for the next four years at the Exploratorium.
Then some of us went to Srah Cahill’s after concert party. I sat down next to a guy who introduced himself and then added, “You’re of a generation where that name probably doesn’t mean anything.” okay. He talked about early digital synthesizers and samplers tho, and it was interesting. He gave me advice about school which included working hard and getting mad. Then he left and I saw Steed there, who conducted the Mills Contemporary Performance Ensemble, when I played in it and also conducted two of the Lou pieces in the first half of the concert. I told him that I enjoyed the concert and was surprised that he remembered me from the CPE and asked if I was still playing the tuba. I introduced him to Ellen and he knew he she was, but didn’t know her.
So the big question remains: will Ellen move down here? She clearly digs the social scene at least. And the economy is porbably better here than in Seattle (it’s certainly not worse). christi has offered to construct a shack in the back yard. (Ian says that the homeowners association will have a field day with the CCNRs. Maybe we could call it a gazebo.) The shack would lengthen our space to make it long enough for the Long String Instrument and would provide adequate protection against weather, rodents, theives, etc, while being able to be easily knocked down after two years. uhuh. Clearly, Christi’s dad needs to be involved in this project, or we’re doomed to have rats, water damage and burglary. and lawsuits from our neigbors.
Or we could move the whole operation to Jerry Brown’s warehouse. Krys was just part of a collective of people looking to purchase a shared space, but they couldn’t find anything. Some of those people have bought their own homes, but some have not. Krys is still looking. This space would not require a shack.