Comments on: All the hits, all at once!

All the hits, all at once!

arto — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 15:45:12 -0800

Statistical analysis killed the radio star. Eigenradio analyzes the frequency content of 20+ stations at once, and mashes it, via math I don't understand, into music that is sometimes eerily beautiful, sometimes cryptically funky, and well, sometimes sounds like an Autechre CD stuck in a blender. Who says media amalgamation is a bad thing?

By: jann

jann — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 16:11:07 -0800

I listened to this all afternoon. totally mesmerizing.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 16:16:27 -0800

essence of clear channel. i listened for a while, then i had an odd urge to buy shit at walmart and contribute to a republican campaign.

By: carter

carter — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 16:21:17 -0800

jann and quonsar: I agree with both of you. (Thanks, arto)

By: mcsweetie

mcsweetie — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 16:21:18 -0800

look! the robot is singing!

By: mmcg

mmcg — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 16:28:20 -0800

But is it art?

By: WolfDaddy

WolfDaddy — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 16:41:26 -0800

I have the strangest urge to go out and buy a ThunderCougarFalconBird from FordNestleAOLNetscapeInstantMessengerExplorerDisneyPancakeLandWorld

By: mathis23

mathis23 — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 16:44:32 -0800

Thanks, arto. Now I have Statistical Analysis Killed The Radio Star stuck in my head. As I'm sure 98% of the rest of you do.

By: eddydamascene

eddydamascene — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 16:53:32 -0800

Also by Brian Whitman: Ten Thousand Statistically Grammar-Average Fake Band Names. His homepage gives the academic angle: I'm interested in how language and music interact. We have shown good results in learning a description of audio from correlating music with internet opinion ("community metadata"), enabling a 'query-by-description' front end for music retrieval as well as insights into what certain words "mean" when used to describe music. I also work on "Long-Distance Song Effects," the path of a song's popularity and buzz over its short career, and ways to capture and predict this trajectory. These problems tie together in the field of music acquisition: how to teach a computer about music from the ground up using unsupervised machine learning techinques and real-time audio analysis. (There certainly is no lack of data.) If a computer can teach itself enough about music on its own, we can hope for better results in retrieval and recommendation, as well more lifelike synthesis and coding.

By: scarabic

scarabic — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 17:02:22 -0800

Cool. Definitely has its moments. Now if only there were some way to make math understandable to an English major. I'd love to understand what's happening.

By: signal

signal — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 17:12:42 -0800

1. get rid of the flanging 2. add some bass. 3. profit!

By: syscom

syscom — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 17:24:36 -0800

As they worked, Case gradually became aware of the music that pulsed constantly throughout the cluster. It was called dub, a sensuous mosaic cooked from vast libraries of digitalized pop; it was worship, Molly said, and a sense of community.

By: Etaoin Shrdlu

Etaoin Shrdlu — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 17:34:59 -0800

That "What is is" chart looks an awful lot like something from DARPA. Any connection?

By: dejah420

dejah420 — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 17:43:10 -0800

I can't seem to get it to work on my system. Darned system!

By: Acetylene

Acetylene — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 17:48:39 -0800

Needs more cowbell.

By: camworld

camworld — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 18:10:05 -0800

Take me to your leader.

By: dorian

dorian — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 18:27:44 -0800

just wait until clearchannel tries to sue their punkass under the latest ThunderDMCAFalconPatriot frippery... but in the meantime, it makes me feel like I'm at moma.

By: LimePi

LimePi — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 18:42:42 -0800

Eigenradio sounds like Network Auralization for Gnutella pumped through a vocoder. Or John Oswald's Plexure (Sample, .au format). Trippy.

By: josh

josh — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 18:50:56 -0800

Syscom, that is the most appropriate possible quote!

By: Satapher

Satapher — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 20:11:20 -0800

!!viva akufen!!

By: dg

dg — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 20:14:42 -0800

*head explodes* Too much input!

By: electro

electro — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 20:34:35 -0800

Wow! It's actually pretty good. I wouldn't pay for a cd of it, but it's pretty fun to listen to knowing that it's synthetic, and it never repeats. ISTR that John Cage wrote some pieces that called for perfomers with radios to switch to different frequencies at predetermined moments in the performance.

By: PigAlien

PigAlien — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 20:36:04 -0800

Yes, that sound composite is maddening and yet compelling at the same time. Fascinating. You know, I've always liked the sound of squeaky toys, even though they drive other people crazy. Squeek squeek squeek all day long, I love it! This sound reminds me of that same sensation -- annoying and yet thrilling. It kind of scares me. I wonder what parts of my subconscious it would tap into if I listened to it long enough. Thanks, Arto!

By: yhbc

yhbc — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 21:05:19 -0800

everybody's got one ... everybody's got one ... everybody's got one ... ... take my purse. If ever thou wilt thrive, bury my body; And give the letters which thou find'st about me To Edmund Earl of Gloucester; seek him out Upon the British party: O, untimely death! I know thee well: a serviceable villain; As duteous to the vices of thy mistress As badness would desire. What, is he dead? Sit you down, father; rest you ...

By: Galvatron

Galvatron — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 21:44:52 -0800

Just when I start questioning the point of this exercise, some remnants of blues harp waft in on top of a strong electro-acoustic beat, and it all makes sense. Too bad it goes back to sounding like crap five seconds later. Perhaps the eigenvectors are improperly weighted. Or something.

By: arto

arto — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 23:16:24 -0800

ISTR that John Cage wrote some pieces that called for perfomers with radios to switch to different frequencies at predetermined moments in the performance. Yeah, it kind of reminds me of how, as a kid, I used to try and "play" that theremin-like whine between stations on the AM dial. Sounded kind of eerie, what with the actual stations on AM leaning towards either country music or hellfire-and-brimstone preachers at the time. If it reminds me of anything out of the Gibson canon, though, it's not so much the dub favoured by the space rastas of "Neuromancer"--I envision that as being closer to the '70s spirit of King Tubby or Lee "Scratch" Perry--but the music played in Cognitive Dissidents, the bar from "Virtual Light". Don't have the quote handy, though...

By: sigma7

sigma7 — Thu, 14 Aug 2003 00:46:48 -0800

This is amazing. Now if I could get my clock radio on the LAN here, I'd have wonderful antimusic to fall asleep to.

By: Down10

Down10 — Thu, 14 Aug 2003 02:13:56 -0800

Pretty cool. It sort of reminds me of the audio in the opening titles of the film Contact before it regresses into silence of space. Anyone have some acid?

By: Outlawyr

Outlawyr — Thu, 14 Aug 2003 04:24:42 -0800

Hey syscom, I'm just re-reading Neuromancer these days. How did you know that? [Looks around nervously, then gets sucked into the Eigenradio, analyzed for any interesting frequencies, and spit back out into cyberspace.]

By: asok

asok — Thu, 14 Aug 2003 06:02:26 -0800

Sounds uncannily like shortwave radio interference. Probably created in a similar way?

By: Dean King

Dean King — Thu, 14 Aug 2003 07:38:00 -0800

Whitman records as Blitter on Hrvatski's reckankomplex label. Just a couple of EPs and contributions to various comps so far, but a full-length is on the way.

By: yellowcandy

yellowcandy — Thu, 14 Aug 2003 16:50:58 -0800

Is this a joke? I listened for about 6 or 7 minutes, convinced it was very cool, when suddenly I heard Dr Dre's 'Bad Intentions' come in mid-chorus. It played on, unmodulated, with no interference, to the very end of the song. Now tell me that for 3 minutes, that song's every note and beat possessed the most entropy of anything else on the radio...

By: LeLiLo

LeLiLo — Thu, 14 Aug 2003 21:40:42 -0800

What, is he dead? Sit you down, father; rest you ... No, Paul is not dead. However, John and George (and Linda) are. Great link, arto. I listened for 10 minutes (until the top of my head started to come off), and will return often.

By: arto

arto — Thu, 14 Aug 2003 23:13:04 -0800

Now tell me that for 3 minutes, that song's every note and beat possessed the most entropy of anything else on the radio... Funny, I listened to it last night and heard Sean Paul's "Get Busy" (or at least recognizable, longish snatches thereof) in amongst the static twice within a half-hour. Which probably means something, but I couldn't tell you what... (Damn you, Vibe 98.5. Daaaamn youuu!)