I saw this great set of advices written on two sheets of paper by Thelonious Monk posted to the great noiseaddicts blog. Apparently, these were written for the guys playing with him. I've always found Monk's unique (strange) personality and music inspirational. Taking a peek on what is going in his head is always interesting, whether its expressed musically or verbally. Here are the advices (my transcription for online retrieval purposes, you need to look at the original papers to catch his exact train of thought) and the original papers:
1. Monk's advice
* Just because you're not a drummer doesn't mean that you don't have to keep time.
* Pat your foot, sing the melody in your head when you play.
* Stop playing all (that bullshit, those wierd notes). Play the melody!
* Make the drummer sound good.
* Discrimination is important.
* You've got to dig it to dig it, you dig?
* All reet!
* Always know...
* It must be always night, otherwise they wouldn't need the lights.
* Let's lift the band stand!!!
* I want to avoid those hecklers.
* Don't play the piano part, I'm playing that. Don't listen to me, I'm supposed to be accompaning you!
* The inside of the tune (the bridge) is the part that makes the outside sound good.
* Don't play everything (or everytime); let some things go by. Some music just imagined. What you don't play can be more important than what you do play.
* A note can be small as a pin or (as) big as the world, it depends on your imagination.
* Stay in shape! Sometimes a musician waits for a gig & when it comes, he's out of shape & can't make it.
* When you are swinging, swing more! (What should we wear tonight? Sharp as possible!)
* Always leave them wanting more.
* Don't sound anybody for a gig, just be on the scene.
* Those pieces are written so as to have something to play & to get the cats enough to come to rehersal!
* You've got it! If you don't want to play, tell a joke or dance, but in any case you got it! (to a drummer who didn't want to solo)
* Whatever you think can't be done, somebody will come along & do it. A genius is the one most like himself.
* They tried to get me to hate white people, but someone would always come along & spoil it.
The original papers (click to enlarge):
I've heard that this book is already out in the U.S. Can't wait to get my copy! From the Pendrageon Press site:
This important work fills a major lacuna in the literature by bringing together, for the first time, all the texts relating to architecture by the multi-faceted Xenakis, who worked with Le Corbusier for 12 years. Sharon Kanach assisted the composer in gathering the texts for this, his last ambitious project. Her commentary throughout the book seeks to bridge the reciprocal influences between music and architecture in the Xenakis oeuvre.
Sounds VERY delicious. It's not available yet at Amazon though...
on September 16, 2008, 9:23 amStack Overflow!Stackoverflow gone public! This is a site for programmers that works like a wiki with a unique approach where anyone can ask/edit questions and collaborate on finding answers to those problems. The site defines itself as:
Stack Overflow is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for programmers — regardless of platform or language. Jump in and share your software engineering expertise! No registration or account required.
I find the view of the site about finding answers to technical questions interesting. Be sure to check it out.
http://www.stackoverflow.com
I was doing a little performance comparison test with Supercollider and I found this interesting:
It sounded to me like the background noise people make while talking and talking in those big shopping centers, but it has many artifacts in the foreground. Anyhow, the background noise sounds similar to me. Eh...
on July 6, 2008, 12:40 amGraduation!I'm now officially graduated! Got my B.A. degree in Music, graduated with high honours and with the highest GPA in department. Yay!
The highest cap is mine I swear!
on July 4, 2008, 9:04 amMurphy on duty...You wish everything to go smooth and easy at the beginning of a very busy day to motivate yourself, just before hitting the pedals of the bicycle to start the day. And then, 10 seconds later, the chain slips off the sprockets! You fix it while noticing the chain oil smearing all over your hands.
Oh now you are de-motivated! Then you wish, you hadn't wished anything at all at the first place. It just doesn't work.
on June 29, 2008, 10:07 amFont treat for the programmers eyesAs a programmer, I've always disliked the monospaced "default" fonts like courier, courier new or monaco etc. I tried to use the great Consolas font from Microsoft under Linux and MacOsX with mixed but disappointing results, as Consolas is mainly created to be used with cleartype smoothing which is only available on Windows. Upon searching for alternatives, I found Inconsolata:
Inconsolata looks much like Consolas, and also looks very good under OsX. A treat for the eyes, and a pleasure to work with. Highly recommended.
on June 26, 2008, 6:48 pmProbability & Coin flippingYesterday I watched a talk at TED website, given by Oxford mathematician Peter Donnelly. The main focus of the 21 minute talk was statistics, uncertainty and probability, with the emphasis on the common tendency of human to fail interpreting statistical data and how intuitive approach to the easiest probabilistic matters yield to wrong results with some striking examples.
It is probably a common example among mathematicians, but I found this example interesting nonetheless:
Person A tosses a coin until she reaches the "head tail head" pattern once in a row, and Person B follows the same procedure but the pattern she looks for is "head tail tail" instead. Then they count the number of tosses they needed to reach that HTH or HTT combination.
Suppose they repeat this procedure a million times(yuck!) and then average the number of tosses needed to reach the destination pattern. Assuming the coins are identical and they really give us random results in each toss, we then compare these averages for HTH and HTT patterns.
The intuitive approach to such a problem would direct most of us to say "blah, the averages should be equal!" as heads and tails have equal probability and if we are looking for patterns of three, the organization patterns should not really matter. But that is not the case.
In reality, it is easier to achieve a HTT pattern than the HTH pattern. Donnelly summarizes as follows:
Each pattern starts with H and T so the probabilities for HT combo are equal. The twist is in the last toss. After the HT combo, if we are aiming for HTH but reach T instead in the last flip, we'd then need to start over and flip another three, as the sequence needs to start with an H. But if we were to aim the HTT pattern, after the HT combo if we reach T, then the tossing is over. But if we reach at H, then we wouldn't need to start over as in the HTH case because the last toss is a H and we are then at 1/3rd of the road already, we'd need just another TT.
Since this is an easy case to simulate, I quickly wrote a Python script to see if that was the case. To be exact, the HTH pattern needs an average of 8 tosses(after the initial 2) and the HTT pattern needs an average of 6 tosses.
Since I mangle with probability a lot in my music, I found the case interesting and wanted to experiment. Found out that the HHH/TTT pattern needs an average of 12 tosses and the HHT/TTH pattern needs 6. The first calculations were carried out with the pseudo-random number generator in Python, but since these operations rely on true randomness, I also tried a few with the help of online Quantum Random Bit Generator Service, and the results were the same.
Here is the page for the python script, if you want to experiment: HTProbabilty
on June 26, 2008, 9:41 amIdea: When LHC gets old
When Large Hadron Collider gets old, they might consider connecting it to a web interface that would allow you to name two protons(respectively with your name and with the name of your boy/girlfriend, oh and there should be a paid option of engraving the names on particles too).
Then the collider would make the particles collide and take a picture of the incident, write the phrase "I have a CRUSH on you" embossed on the image(and a lens flare effect might look good too) and mail it to your loved one.
on May 26, 2008, 1:56 amSTEIM needs support!The future for the STEIM institute is blurred as the government is planning to stop the structural funding for them, here is the official statement from STEIM:
Things are not well at STEIM. We are in the danger of losing our structural funding from the government, based on a review from the advisor board which called us "closed and only appealing to a niche audience". The outlook isn't exactly bleak, but at the moment our future is unclear.
They need your support with their official objection they are preparing. You may send support letters to them, but you need to make sure they receive it before May 27(tomorrow!)... From their site:
As we see you as an important friend and colleague of STEIM, we would like to ask you to help us present our case that we are connected to a diverse network of professionals and that our work has significant influence on both a Dutch and an international community. What you can do is to send a letter of support, and make sure we receive it by May 26. We hope that these letters will show the variety and depth of the effect STEIM has in the real world. The contents are up to you, a few good lines will suffice. You could tell how you or someone you know benefited from their contact with STEIM: making or refining an instrument or an idea for a performance or meeting fellow artists, or what you feel would be lost if STEIM ceased to exist, or waxing aphoristic, just 12 words about STEIM. To send an online support letter, go here: http://www.steim.org/steim_needs_your_support/
This is very bad news, but I think with the global support they are getting from the artists community, this will eventually be sorted out. Here is my support letter which I've sent for them, for the "Council for Culture" to see:
Keeping it simple:
STEIM really is a unique place, and a name well known all around the globe by those people that are working with the arts of "today" and "our future". The people supporting this important center are defining the boundaries of, and bringing new perspectives to, our understanding and experience of arts in general. The output sometimes/somehow might be hard to swallow and look/sound "sour and harsh" for people that are programmed to try to find an appropriate point to "settle" to the "old and familiar" and have that natural tendency to ignore progression. It appears as a sad fact to me that the people that have the power to determine the future for STEIM, happen to be of those "settler" type of people that are at best missing the whole point of this important creativity plant.
STEIM is and has always been an "open" and inspirational place for people that reject to settle to the old, that believe in progression in all arts, in general, that create, that try to push and define the new; Amsterdam should be very proud to have such an unmatched meeting point in Europe for all those bright and talented people, and should respect the independent characteristics of this center, the characteristics that make all the magic happening in here. Those artists need this "home" on this little planet, to explore and create then share and eventually define, independently and without pressures.
To get the slightest idea about what this really means, one should trace the people that are passing through, from here, it is easy; STEIM has a bright past, and given the chance, will have a bright future.
