free variable

I probably shouldn’t admit that this looks like the coolest pop album ever, but there you have it. The very concept makes me smile uncontrollably. I suppose now I only need to adjust my electronic lapels.

Amazon, we’ve known each other for a long time and I get along with you well enough. Sometimes, though, your computers do things that make me concerned that they are also storing my credit card number.

Uff.

I was visiting an unnamed online music retailer to buy some strings, and — in a moment of weakness — I almost bought a hand drum for $20. In fact, I went so far as to add it to my virtual “cart.” Once I had done so, however, my ludicrosity barometer required instant re-calibration:

Let’s ignore the nonsensical “These are the following…” for now and focus on the important part. The item I had added to my cart listed for $20. This retailer not only expects me (with a default selection) to fork over 175% of their asking price for an impulse-buy item in order to add an extended warranty, but they have the temerity to force me to click through a button declining it, as if I were going in for expensive elective surgery without health insurance.

Perhaps this strategy is successful — I am reminded of all of the “stupid percussionist” jokes that circulated in the borderline-conservatory atmosphere of my undergrad institution — but I can’t imagine that there are many takers. Of course it makes no sense to pay for an extended warranty! It’s a drum. There is only one thing that could possibly go wrong with it, and I bet the warranty doesn’t cover replacement heads.

This is the first in what I hope will be a series of scores for lullabies and other songs that I sing to WT. I am making these available so that you can sing them to someone as well.

Heinrich Isaac’s “Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen” is one of my favorite tunes, and Gerhardt’s text is a wonderful thing to sing to (or with) a child at bedtime. (For more on the text, read this excellent article. Many more translated verses are available here or from Winkworth’s Chorale Book for England.) You may be familiar with newer adaptations of Winkworth’s translation, but they are still under copyright.

Click on the image to download a printable PDF of this score. Unlike most other material on this site, this score is licensed to you under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 License.

Far too long have I neglected to link to this lovely collection of historical recordings that are freely-downloadable from YLE Radio in Finland. Some notables: Yehudi Menuhin performing works including Bach’s Double Concerto and Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole; Pablo Casals performing a Bach suite movement and a Boccherini cello sonata; and, for the opera fans, some great performances from Ruffo, Björling, and Caruso.

(hat tip: Pliable)

Pliable at On An Overgrown Path reprints a fine tribute to mezzo Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who died earlier this week. I have little to add to this sad news except to concur that Lieberson’s recording of BWV 82 is a treasure; one hopes that this work especially can comfort her family now.

Here’s a nice wiki about Ableton Live.

Tom at Music Thing links to this absurdly awesome Kraftwerk video from 1975. (1975!) I like Kraftwerk a great deal; however, I am reminded that electronic music is not only an expensive hobby but an extremely dorky one. (Wait for the “lapel” discussion from the narrator.)

Wow. That’s really all I can say.

Related: buy “Possessed,” in which the Balanescu Quartet performs string-quartet arrangements of Kraftwerk songs. It’s not quite the Kronos Quartet doing “Purple Haze” — it’s better.

I’m currently listening to Trans Europe Express from the album “Minimum-Maximum” by Kraftwerk

Make posts about a fellow’s attempt to build an Organum mathematicum; the maker describes it as “a 17th century device intended to be used by non-musicians to compose church music.”

The joke almost writes itself, but I wonder if Marty Haugen has one.

Thanks to an unprecedented gear sell-off and recent birthday-related contributions from generous benefactors, I just got a new guitar:

This is by far the nicest electric guitar I’ve ever owned. It is a “hard rock guitar,” but is only about 30% ironic. (I measured it at 297 millicamaros.) For a “hard rock guitar,” though, the clean tone is quite good. Perhaps more importantly, it is comfortable and plays well. The only modification I might make someday is to install a coiltap so I can get a little closer to a single-coil sound, but I probably won’t do so anytime soon.

My next nonsensical hobby purchase will probably be a new football jersey or some organizational devices so that the accumulation of home-recording equipment does not lead away from domestic tranquility.

Retro Thing discusses a reprogrammable analog IC, sort of like an “analog FPGA.” (I recognize that combining “analog” and “G” is a misnomer.)

In which “owned by Bill Leeb” leads to Bill Leeb getting “owned” by Music Thing.

Like Tom at Music Thing, I also had no idea who this guy was, or why it would be a selling point that a synthesizer had once belonged to him. (Unlike Tom, I don’t spend that much time ogling synths on eBay.) Leeb’s response to a potential buyer, though, who wanted to know who “Bill Leeb” was, is hilarious:

google the name[,] dude
I am a [sic] kind of famous

Well. I suppose I am a kind of amused.

Dear Internet Megastore Data-Mining Sample,

We’ve noticed that customers who purchased impenetrable syncretist music drama also purchased genius mired in Freemasonry and Enlightenment-era goofballery. For this reason, you might like to know that an abridged, remastered Zauberflöte is now available.

We also offer beer and diapers.

I like Zauberflöte a great deal, modulo the plot, and own a couple of recordings. However, it’s hard for me to see how there’s really a causal link between buying Wagner’s last and buying Mozart’s last. Is the “opera collector” demographic that pronounced in Amazon’s customer base?

More on Amazon recommendations here.

I’m currently listening to In Diesen Heil’gen Hallen from the album “3 Finnish Basses” by Matti Salminen, Jaakko Ryhanen, Johann Tilli

Technorati Tags: amazon, mozart, wagner

This isn’t going on audio.willbenton.com because it’s more of a curiosity than a song; furthermore, it demands far too much explanation.

Burr Settles posted a nice review of the 2005 FAWM compilation CD (“14 songs in 28 days”) from WI music magazine Rick’s Cafe. The CD is great, and you can support FAWM by buying a copy from their site.

I (as madcap ontic) had a song on the compilation called “An exciting film.” It was a very simple (albeit sort of catchy) electronic pop song; the reviewer was very kind to compare it to Orbital.

In the run-up to getting final tracks to Burr for the CD, I was working hard on improving my production and getting a bit tired of the song in the process. I tweaked a bit (you can hear some results) and even reworked the whole track from scratch several times. (I eventually hired Colin Fairbairn to bring a professional and objective ear to the mix.)

One of my ultimately-futile reworkings is the subject of this post. The file linked below is cliche-ridden, overcompressed, and hilarious. However, I think it adequately illustrates the depths of my audio-related despair when working on “An exciting film” last summer. (Of course, it was a lot of fun to try and hit so many genre conventions in a short piece of music.)

I present for your entertainment and amusement: An Exciting Film (excerpt of incomplete, rough 12″ dance mix)

I’m pleased to unveil audio.willbenton.com, where you can download (primarily) electronic music written by me and my various pseudonyms. There’s a podcast so you can automatically get new songs with iTunes or another podcast client. Not all of the old madcap ontic songs are there yet, but they will be. (Some desperately need revision and new productions.) For now, there’s a new ambient track that I finished yesterday.

The zZounds.com product page for the (thoroughly rad) eBow mentions that the package includes a “cassette tape and booklet.” Ah, but does it also include a kerosene lamp, in the event that the sun has left us for another terrifying night and one cannot see to operate the cassette-player?

Pliable has a mostly-reasonable rant about digital audio and audio quality. I’d like to raise a couple of objections, though. These thoughts were to be posted in a comment at the overgrown path, but have become overgrown in their own right.

There are two factors in the potential fidelity of PCM digital audio: sample rate and bit depth. This is only true for PCM audio (i.e., excluding SACD) and only true for uncompressed formats; more on MP3 and friends in a moment. The highest frequency that a digital signal can reproduce is given by the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem as Sample rate/2. (I have written about the sampling theorem and its blatant violation by popular culture here; this is such a pet peeve of mine that friends mention it as a joke in my presence.)

The bit depth, on the other hand, is what enables dynamic range. More bits means more discrete volume levels; CDs use 16 bits, meaning that there are 65,536 possible discrete dynamic levels for any sample. (If it sounds to you like reducing a continuous analog signal to one of a certain number of fixed amplitudes can introduce distortion, you’re right: read about dither.)

When you multiply the bit depth by the sampling rate, you get the bit rate: the number of bits per second used to represent an analog signal. There is a reasonable relationship between bit rate and fidelity, for obvious reasons, and Pliable is right to lament the decrease in fidelity from the perfect analog signal to a CD to a low-bit-rate MP3. However, there are a few problems with Pliable’s argument:

1. Vinyl is not as great as we remember it. Sure, records sound “warm,” but that’s just pleasing harmonic distortion. A good record can represent frequencies up to 18khz, which would only require a sampling rate of 36khz to reproduce in the digital domain. Furthermore, vinyl does not have a uniform frequency response (hence the RIAA EQ curve). Finally, the dynamic range of vinyl suffers at the quiet end because of the medium’s low signal-to-noise ratio and at the loud end because very loud sounds may throw the needle.
2. We aren’t recording for dogs. Independently of whether or not we can actually hear such high harmonics as to make high sampling rates necessary, high-end microphones like the Neumann U87 can only capture up to 20khz. Of course, with bits as cheap as they are, there is no reason not to increase the bit rate as high as the source equipment allows, but it seems to me that bits are better spent on depth (dynamic range) than on sampling rate (frequency response), at least after a certain point.

The biggest problem with Pliable’s argument, however, is that it relies on the claim that a 128kbps MP3 file is only about 1/10 the bit rate of a 1144kbps CD. This is true, but meaningless because the two formats represent audio in different ways. On a CD, an analog signal is represented as a stream of sampled amplitudes, as in the figures below:

A continuous signal

The continuous signal, sampled 32 times with 19 possible amplitude levels

The continuous signal, sampled 32 times with 7 possible amplitude levels

An MP3, on the other hand, represents audio data in the frequency domain, or as a time-varying spectrum. In the case of the continuous signal above, it could be represented perfectly in the frequency domain by a file that said “play a single period of a sine wave with frequency X, amplitude Y, and phase Z.” This file, it should be clear, would be substantially smaller than any digitally-sampled rendition of the sine, as well as more accurate.

You can in fact represent any time-domain signal (that is, one that represents amplitudes varying over time, like the sine above) as a set of frequency-domain signal (that is, representing a sound as a series of frequency spectra). Obviously, the sine above is a special case (any recording that Pliable or I would be listening to would require a much more complex description). Furthermore, recording increasingly precise representations of continuous signals takes a great deal of space no matter whether you are operating in the time domain or the frequency domain. However, it is possible to “cheat” in the frequency domain and save space in ways that aren’t possible in the time domain.

1. One can restrict the precision of the frequency analysis. This adversely affects sound quality, but it may be possible to reduce the size of a precise spectral representation of a sound a great deal before the effect is perceptible.
2. Alternatively (this is the approach that MP3 uses) one can throw away “psychoacoustically insignificant” frequencies, saving space in the representation. This “lossy encoding” doesn’t always work all that well, since an algorithm (the psychoacoustic model) has to determine which frequencies aren’t important (and, for spectrally complex or “in-tune” music, the algorithm is often wrong). A 96kbps MP3 of a pop song might be adequate, but the Tallis Scholars at 96kbps is probably unlistenable.

Basically, my claim is this: digital audio necessarily discards parts of the original analog signal. However, it is not clear that there exists any reasonable way to reproduce an analog signal with complete fidelity (or what that would mean in the case of reproducing frequencies well above the range of human perception.) Compact discs and MP3s discard different things to save space, but direct comparisons between PCM bit rates (as in CD, DAT, etc.) and compressed bit rates (as in MP3, digital radio, AAC, etc.) are meaningless.

Finally, as long as the bulk of money is in the Antares-Autotune-riddled, equal-tempered, dynamic-range-free pop music world, there is no particular financial incentive for record companies to improve upon the lowly CD.

I’m currently listening to Dies Sind Die Heiligen Zehen Gebot BWV 678 from the album “Clavier-Ubung III” by Masaaki Suzuki

Technorati Tags: mp3, music, nyquist

Another one for FAWM: William Afham — paralipsis:15.17. This one is substantially grittier than previous efforts.

UPDATE: a newer version is available here.

Music recording and composition © 2006 Will Benton

Technorati Tags: ambient, FAWM

Against my better judgement, I’m participating in FAWM again. With the new year comes a new pseudonym: I will be using “William Afham” for more ambient, textural works; “madcap ontic” will remain the preferred nom de plume for poppy or beat-oriented pieces.

Here’s the first track: William Afham: exophora. Early reviews are in, courtesy of the muse:

“Could you please turn off that scary music?”
“Did you make this?”
“I don’t care whether or not it’s music; I just want you to make it stop!”

Your feedback is welcome, as well.

Music recording and composition © 2006 Will Benton

Technorati Tags: ambient, FAWM

Disquiet has an article about an installation at MoMA by Janet Cardiff. In the installation, Tallis’ “Spem in alium” is “performed by” forty speakers arranged throughout a small gallery. If you (like me) have always wanted to read through this fantastic piece but have had trouble assembling eight five-voice choirs, Cardiff’s work might provide an analogous (if inferior) experience.

I wrote an ambient/minimalist piece this summer called “natural lemon flavor,” got some feedback from a couple of friends (thanks, Mark and Matt!), and remixed it last week. Download the mp3 (3’43“, 6.5 mb):

natural lemon flavor (archery target mix)

As usual, your comments are welcome. (I’m especially interested in feedback regarding the production, but if you hate the song itself, tell me why.)

Technorati Tags: mp3, ambient

The absurdity of “list price” or “manufacturer’s suggested retail price” is well-documented in many retail arenas, but rarely is it as bad as in the music-production gadget market. The “MSRP” is simply a number that the manufacturer has pulled from thin air in order to let their retailers present the illusion that they are offering the product in question at an excellent price. This is especially on items like electronic music gadgets or guitar equipment — I recall being a young teenager and marveling at the selection of guitars available at a local store for “50% off.” When items are routinely priced at 40-60% of “list,” the list price is not a particularly meaningful metric.

The situation has improved somewhat since I first became interested in musical gadgets. Many manufacturers, instead of providing a “list” price, now provide an estimated street price or their (enforced) “minimum advertised price.” The ubiquity of the internet has made retailers more honest (especially when a prospective customer can visit prepal.com or eBay from their cell phone in a showroom). However, today I turned up an especially egregious example of this phenomenon:

What a deal! (Or should I say “What a cheap?”) This guitar lists for $3000, but I could buy it today for only $1149 (er, plus $20 for shipping and at least $44 for a case, which Carvin will make you buy if you want the guitar shipped). There’s only one problem: Carvin only sells direct. You can’t buy this guitar from a retailer; rather, Carvin makes the guitar, sets the price, and you buy it from them. There is no “list price” because there is no “list.” No prices are “suggested;” rather, prices are set by the manufacturer, who is also the retailer.

Few regular readers will find this amusing, but this article about Behringer “tube” preamplifiers was pretty hilarious, as was Chris Randall’s scoop of an upcoming Behringer product announcement.

Apropos of my prior post, it appears that Propellerhead Software’s Rebirth, which provides a drum machine and an emulation of the TB-303, has been discontinued and is now a free (as in beer) download. See rebirthmuseum.com for more details. (Mac users probably want to know that this is an OS 9 application, and may not work under OS X.)

Roland’s TB-303 Bass Line instrument, released in 1982, did a pretty terrible job of emulating a bass guitar, but managed to provide one of the most recognizable sounds in electronic music when used in a manner inconsistent with its labeling. If you already knew what a “303” is, then you already know this sound; if not, you probably knew the sound anyway — just not by name. The uninitiated can hear a sample (466 kb MP3, 27 seconds) complete with characteristic resonant lowpass filter sweep.

If you’re interested in an explanation of the 303 phenomenon that might feel at home in an academic discipline with one or both of “critical” and “studies” in its title, download Nate Harrison’s fairly po-mo film Bassline Baseline [link via MT]. (It’s not clear how ironic, meta-ironic, or “post-ironic” this film is supposed to be, but it is both somewhat entertaining and somewhat informative — whether or not you’re familiar with electronic music clichés.)

One major downside to the TB-303 and its myriad software emulators is the fairly dismal step-based programming method. (At least this author, a putative “classically trained musician,” considers it to be dismal.) With step-based programming, you choose the “step” (generally corresponding to a 16th-note) and set the pitch, the octave, and whether this note is a rest or not and whether it is accented, tied to the next, etc. It may be an OK interface on a hardware device, but it is inexcusable in software. (Given my preference for the convenience and reliability of software and given the absurd expense of vintage hardware, I don’t own a real TB-303; hence my complaint.)

I’ve decided I’m going to try and incorporate more 303 sounds into some new compositions, so I designed a nice little grid to make programming patterns slightly less onerous:

This setup lets me notate pitches in a familiar “piano roll” view, with a line extending to the next cell for portamento or ties. The “up” and “down” boxes provide a means to indicate octave transposition, and the boxes along the upper left of the pattern provide space to record pattern-specific metadata. A pattern in this form is simple to visualize, play on a keyboard, or sight-sing, but is also straightforward to translate to the step-programming interface. Finally, six of these little grids, sized to allow reasonable markup, fit comfortably on a sheet of US Letter paper, along with room for some additional metadata (song title, etc). If such a sheet sounds useful to you, feel free to download a CC-licensed PDF (15kb), suitable for printing (or framing).

Technorati Tags: 303

File under “notes to self,” although this may be of general interest.

I’m adding the Sound Lab Mini Synth to my monotonically nondecreasing list of fun spare-time electronics projects. (For those keeping score at home, notable entries on this list include the Orange Squeezer compressor and the Alice microphone.) The Mini Synth is a cute 2-oscillator analog synth with a state-variable filter and a LFO. The sound samples are surprisingly good for a synth you can build with $60 in parts.

Of course, the downside to building gadgets, even inexpensive ones, is that they take up space. On the other hand, one can waste thousands of dollars on software without any additional household clutter. If software is more up your alley, check out the Audio Damage DubStation, which appears to be a quite fine model of an old-school analog delay. (Their Dischord plugin is excellent, and it seems that DubStation is of similar quality.) The major difference between the DubStation and an analog delay unit is that you can run nearly boundless instances of DubStation in your host software. At $39, DubStation is also substantially cheaper than a hardware unit like the Moogerfooger MF104Z. (It is perhaps unfair to note that the DubStation, which costs less than 6% as much as the MF104Z, also offers twice the maximum delay time of the hardware unit.)

I’m currently listening to King Tubby’s Meets Rockers Uptown from the album “King Tubby’s In Fine Style” by Augustus Pablo

I’m not in the market for a microphone right now (my current mic is more-than-adequate for my home-recording needs), but if you are, maybe you’re interested in one of these:

• BlueMic BlueBall. This is notable because it is a dynamic that requires phantom power; it supposedly provides extremely flat frequency response.
• ShinyBox 46. An inexpensive ribbon mic; deliberately nontransparent but “warm.”
• Scott Helmke’s Alice microphone design; plans for a small-diaphragm condenser. (Helmke also offers kits and completed microphones.)

I’m sure Andrea will be dismayed (but unsurprised) to know that I absolutely plan to build an “Alice mic” in my copious free time.

I’m currently listening to Songs Of A Wayfarer: 4. Die Zwei Blauen Augen from the album “Mahler: Symphonie No. 1” by Mahler: Kubelik, Fischer-Dieskau & SOdB

Dr. Robert Moog, pioneer of modular analog synthesis, died today after a battle with brain cancer. The modular analog synthesizer was enormously important to both popular and avant-garde music: with it, the capacity to create electronic timbres was granted to ordinary musicians and not just to academic computer music researchers. For an only slightly exaggerated statement of the impact of Moog’s work, read this press release. (One might take issue with the claim that Wendy Carlos’ Switched On Bach was responsible for the “resurgence” of art music, for example.)

I have been meaning to write up my thoughts on Hans Fjellestad’s Moog film since I saw it (shortly after it was released on DVD). I expect to do so later this week.

Note to regular readers: I expect to dig myself out from under a mound of grading shortly, and regular blogging on non-mass-entertainment related topics will ensue. In the meantime, check out some crackpot comments — too few links to be spam, too little sense to be serious — here and here (scroll past legitimate comments).

Andrea’s cousins Tim and Luke introduced me to NCAA Football 06 last week. I didn’t play it, but I saw them play enough to note the licensed soundtrack, which includes “Debaser” by the Pixies, some track from the Pietasters’ “post-good” period (but still! The Pietasters! I saw them at the old 9:30 Club twice in 1994 alone!), Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, The Clash, and Guided By Voices.

Where was this selection of “EA Trax” when they were setting the playlist for Madden NFL 2005? Every down that I had to endure an aural crapfest of “Hoobastank” or “Franz Ferdinand” now stings all the more.

The moral of the story? If you’re old enough so that you probably should have outgrown ephemeral commercial music, you might fondly remember some of the songs in this game. Whether or not this is a good marketing move for EA remains to be seen — SI.com’s Stewart Mandel doesn’t think so.

Music Technology Sucks is a delightful polemic on the current equipment climate in the bedroom-studio arena. Here’s a choice quote:

After plowing through a stack of cassettes one afternoon, Bob said, “You know, in the old days you used to be able to tell within five seconds if a band was no good, because the drumming sucked. A good drummer would never waste time playing with bad musicians. But now, thanks to drum machines, any musician can have a drummer who keeps perfect time.” His point being, with the advent of drum machines you had to listen longer and harder to pick up the telltale whiff of bad songwriting and bad arranging. Sampled loops have made the problem ten times worse.

Of course, I’m always happy to provide anecdotal evidence that music technology sucks, especially in the hands of the under-talented.