Alex's Blog

Scribblings, Ramblings, and the Occasional Groaner

[lxdrsk-blog]

Boats as Crucibles

A boat can be a crucible, putting raw souls under heat and pressure, and forging them into something new.

Last night I heard two former Olympians talk about rowing. The occasion was a discussion around the recent rowing book, "The Boys in the Boat". I was struck by how the speakers talked about their team mates. They talkeda bout being bonded in a deep way. A tribal binding. An atomic binding.

One of the speakers, William Becklean, spoke about how he and his boat mates who remain met every five years after their olympic years. Then, as they started to pass away, they would meet every year. To tell the same stories, and just to be with each other. He said many other rowing teams did similar things.

Hearing the rowers speak makes me think about the influence of a boat, a wagon, a bus. The vehicle of the shared journey. Let's call them ships.

I think there is something special about ships. Something about journeying together, on this vehicle. Something about creating a traveling home.

The ship is small, and there is pressure. There is chemical interaction. There are jokes, arguments, challenges, and adventures. In these conditions of heat and pressure, changes happen, diamonds form.

[lxdrsk-blog]

In Memory of Roxana Moreno

This morning I was excited and then devastated.

I was reading the 1st edition of "The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning", when I came across Roxana Moreno's chapter on Pedagogical Agents. This was what was exciting to me very exciting. Recently I had been thinking about to how make a musical teaching agent (see: http://music-ed-notes.tumblr.com/post/117770443608/virtual-musical-tutors). This was the first time I had come across research about this topic.

I started to look for more of Dr. Moreno's work. And then came the devastation, because I learned that Roxana Moreno had died (http://news.unm.edu/news/education-professor-roxana-moreno-to-be-remembered-at-memorial).

As I read more about her, a picture emerged of an amazing, vibrant person. Her colleagues wrote rembrances of her, told stories about her energy and vivacity. She was a motocross rider, she took care of abused rabbits. She was a force of enthusiasm and life, 'a tornado', as one of her office mates wrote.

It's worth reading the scrapbook her colleagues created to remember her: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10648-010-9147-2/fulltext.html .

I don't know why I feel such a sense of loss for someone I never knew. Maybe it's because she left in her prime. Or maybe it's just the loss of someone who seemed good, who seemed devoted to her work and to making things better. In any case, I miss her.

One aspect of her work, the part that interested me the most, was trying to understand whether virtual 'agents' can help people learn. Think of the muppets in Sesame Street. In Dr. Moreno's work, she created 'Herman the Bug', a computer-animated bug that helped students learn about plants.

She had tried many studies to look at how agents might help. But none of them seemed to suggest that agents were helpful.

But perhaps she did create an agent that helped: herself. As I was looking for more information about her, I came across a video of a seminar she gave some years ago: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2319679 . Watching the video felt like watching a ghost. But it was also inspiring.

She's still an agent for me, in my mind.

[lxdrsk-blog]

More Appreciations of O.P.

The more I read Oscar Peterson's autobiography, the more I love it. Especially when he writes about how musicians think.

I'm in the section where O.P. writes short vignettes about the musicians he played with. One thing O.P. notices that jumps out to me is how master musicians didn't just learn to play instruments, they learned played ensembles. They learned to change the sound of an entire group.

For example, O.P. writes about the trumpeter Harry "Sweets" Edison:

Sweets made a rhythm section walk. Once he was at the mike, if the groove was not entirely to his liking, he quietly made use of various repetitive phrases: while these may have sounded as if he was leaning on the rhythm section, they were in fact a fool-proof device for establishing exactly where he wanted to the groove to be (another trick he learned from Nat Cole).

I love this passage for so many reasons. It talks about a specific technique that Sweets used, and how he used that technique. Now whenever I hear recordings of Sweets, I listen for those repeated phrases, and I feel like I know more about what's going on, where he wanted to go.

I also love this passage because it shows that Sweets also knew the sound he wanted. Not just his own sound, but the sound of the group as a whole. And this is what I find really amazing. To think about what master musicians hear. A swirling blend not just of their own melodies, but the group as a whole, the sense of time, the sense of harmony.

I'm grateful that O.P. writes about these things, and in such a style that makes me marvel at them. I feel like I'm sitting next to O.P. as he makes these discoveries himself.

[lxdrsk-blog]

Oscar Peterson & Communication

I'm reading Oscar Peterson's Autobiography... and loving every page of it.

Tons of great musician stories (which are the best of all stories), and also insight into how musicians work.

For example, in chapter 15 OP writes about how the trio used subtle cues to adjust their sound. OP would play with a deeper touch to cue Ray Brown and Herb Ellis to go in for a heavier walking feel.

I love reading about things like this. The craft of music, the deeper game the experts play, and the dedication they had to their art.

[lxdrsk-blog]

Notes on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME)

Alex’s Notes on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) For Boston Music Tech, 2015-04-27

Intro

NIME is about creating new ways to make music.

Why care? Because NIME…

… can help more people get into music.

… can create new kinds of music and expression.

… are fun to create!

My goal tonight is to inspire you to think about NIME, and to give you some thoughts, tools and resources to get you started.

I’ll talk about three things:

Brief history to give us context.

A few ways to think about NIME.

Tools & Resources

Brief History (grossly oversimplified)

Music is old, humans have always been creating instruments. 

Remember: At some point all old instruments were new instruments.

Check out:

Barcelona Music Museum: http://www.museumusica.bcn.cat/

Musical Instruments Museum online: http://www.mimo-international.com/MIMO/

Musical instruments at the MFA: http://www.mfa.org/collections/musical-instruments

I would argue that there was far greater instrumental diversity in the past. Types of instruments, shapes, decoration, sounds.

Why greater diversity then and not now? An interesting question to me.

But with new techs, this is starting to change. Computers, mobile, touch screens. New instruments. Some examples, at all levels of development:

SMULE: http://www.smule.com/apps

Stanford Laptop Orchestra: http://slork.stanford.edu/

(Boston!) PianoArc: http://pianoarc.com/

(Boston!) eCorder: http://www.cantux.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=51&Itemid=58

(Boston!) Ridgewing Modular Guitars: http://www.ridgewing.com/

We have exciting opportunities now.

Ways to think about NIME This is just one way to think about NIME. Many ways to slice this pie.

2D

Tablets, mobile, touchscreens.

Opportunities: ease of creation and distribution, accessibility, new ways to perform

Challenges: expressiveness. Haptic feedback, responsiveness, sound quality. Gestures

Virtual 3D

Oculus, Knect, HoloLens, etc.

Opportunities: ditto 2D

Challenges: ditto 2D, but also with defining new gestures.

Physical

New materials, integration of electronics, new configurations

Ridgewing guitars are an example

Cameron Carpenter’s Touring Organ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLzgFkouSmc (note: this video is a…unique…experience)

Hybrid

Combinations of virtual and physical.

Sometimes using electronics to modify sound from ‘traditional’ instruments

Using physical objects as controllers for electronic models

Tools and Resources

NIME.org: http://www.nime.org/ . Check out the proceedings: http://www.nime.org/archives/

Music Tech at University Pompeu Fabra in Barca: http://www.mtg.upf.edu/

Stanford Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/

urMus: a real-time touch-screen prototyping tool: http://urmus.eecs.umich.edu/

Google 'laptop orchestra’…you’ll get some good stuff

NYC Monthly music hackathons: http://monthlymusichackathon.org/

Music hack days: http://new.musichackday.org/

Music tech fest: http://musictechfest.org/

[lxdrsk-blog]

The Kitchen of the Mind: Thoughts on the Pitfalls of Using Signal Analysis to Analyze Music

I've been Doing it Wrong™. 

I used to think that music analysis was all signal analysis. Now I think that it's signal analysis + cognitive calibration.

Let me explain why, and how it might change how you think about music analysis.

I'll start with an analogy: raw sounds are like raw ingredients for cooking. If we are given a set of raw ingredients, can we predict what kind of meal will come out? No! Because there is cooking involved. The chefs, the kitchen, they take those raw ingredients and slice them up, combine them, stew them, steam them, and often produce something only vaguely resembling the original ingredients.

The auditory system is like a kitchen. The ear takes in raw sounds and converts them into signals. Those signals get shunted around to different parts of the brain, sliced up, amplified, filtered, and recombined. What we hear in our minds is only vaguely related to the original raw sound. An engineer might say it like this: there is a highly non-linear relationship between received sound and perceived sound.

I find auditory cognition interesting to think about for several reasons. One reason is that it makes me appreciate the engineering of the ear and the mind. The ear is absolutely one of the most amazing specimens of engineering ever created. Ditto the auditory cortex. Our ears and minds effortlessly do things far better than the most advanced audio processing software. Check out wikipedia for a nice starting point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_system .

(PS: if you dig this sort of thing, check out the work from the folks at this conference: http://musicandthebrainsantafe.com/ )

Another reason that thinking about audio analysis in terms of cognition is interesting is that may help us design better tools for creating and exploring music. Many of our current audio manipulation tools operate only on raw noise. They don't operate on human interpretations of noise. SoundCloud shows an amplitude signal for each track. It doesn't show a signal that's calibrated to human perception of amplitude. We might be able to improve audio tools by incorporating research in auditory cognition.

I do accept that some properties can be determined by looking at the pure audio signal. For example, the EchoNest (now part of Spotify) is able to effectively determine basic properties of song tracks: http://developer.echonest.com/docs/v4/track.html#profile . However, these properties can usually only describe a song as a whole, or they are side-effects of tempo and beat. It's much harder to say whether a particular passage is expressive, or to pick out properties of individual voices.

I also wonder what it is that lets an experienced audio engineer make effective choices. Somehow, they are able to look at raw signals, and understand how those signals relate to cognition. Likely in an intuitive, quasi-conscious way. One way to better understand cognition may be to study how audio engineers make engineering decisions.

We still have far to go in making audio tools that factor in cognition. But at least we can start thinking about it.

[lxdrsk-blog]

RhythmHeaven Analysis, Part II

Here are more notes about interfaces in RhythmHeaven. This continue the notes I made before in http://lxdrsk.tumblr.com/post/112632598826/analyzing-rhythmheaven

I've also found that other folks have done a nice job of analysis in the RhythmHeaven wikia: http://rhythmheaven.wikia.com/

Glee Club

http://rhythmheaven.wikia.com/wiki/Glee_Club

Overview: You play one of three glee club members who are practicing. You try to coordinate your singing with the other two members. A conductor gives you directions.

Constant Motion: The singers and conductor jitter.

Priming: Mouth is closed

Action: Animated change, mouth opens to sing. 

Also a shout action that is a single frame.

Miss: Your chorus mates get ticked off at you.

Metaphor: opening/closing.

Moai Doo-Wop

http://rhythmheaven.wikia.com/wiki/Moai_Doo-Wop

Overview: You control a singing moai statue that repeats what its partner statue sings.

Constant Motion: The birds and statues groove to the music.

Priming: ?

Action: Animated change, mouth opens to sing. Also a tap action that is a single frame, but which has a multiframe restoration.

Tap Animation, with ease back:

Miss: The birds poop on you.

Metaphor: opening/closing.

Rhythm Rally

http://rhythmheaven.wikia.com/wiki/Rhythm_Rally

Overview: You control a ping-pong player who is trying to hit the ball back and forth.

Constant Motion: The ping-pong players groove to the music. The ball bounces with a motion trail. Ball bounces at different heights/speeds.

Priming: ?

Action: Animated paddle swings in multiframe animation, with multiframe restoration.

Miss: Ball falls off the table, or player hits off the table.

Metaphor: bouncing, hitting.

Shoot 'em Up

http://rhythmheaven.wikia.com/wiki/Shoot-%27Em-Up

Overview: You control a spaceship in an Asteroids-style shooter.

Constant Motion: The background stars and aliens jitter and move.

Priming: ?

Action: Multiframe shooting animation. Ending with star detritus from alient. Animations can overlap; detritus from previous alien sticks around for a bit. A sort of mechanical expander comes out of the side of the turret.

Miss: Alien hits hte ship.

Metaphor: shooting

Notes: I think the expander helps the player gauge the timing.

General Notes

Glee Club and Moai Doo-Wop have similar mechanics. Both use the opening/closing metaphor.

The Moai Doo-Wop and Rhythm Rally games both use the call-and-response style of interaction. I like this because it relates to call-and-response in active music learning.

[lxdrsk-blog]

Analyzing RhythmHeaven

Recently I've been working on a javascript rhythm tapping game for http://www.musikata.com .

I'm running into the problem of touch latency.

Have you ever been talking on the phone or Skype and heard your own voice after a delay? For most people it's almost impossible to talk when this is happening. It confuses and unsettles our minds.

This same sort of delay effect can happen with touch screens.  There is often a delay between when your finger touches a screen, and when a mobile browser recognizes that touch. So when you try to tap to a beat it feels like you're always late.

There are some strategies to get around this, many of focus on using visual feedback to trick our minds that we're manipulating physical objects. This is called 'pseudo-haptic' feedback.

(For more information about pseudo-haptic feedback, see the work of http://people.rennes.inria.fr/Anatole.Lecuyer/ or http://www.olivierbau.com/pseudohaptics.php, to name just a couple researchers in this area).

However, for pseudo-haptic feedback to work, the feedback metaphor we use has to be good enough to trick our minds. This is not easy to accomplish.

I certainly don't know how to do it yet. (If you do, let me know!). So I have been looking for examples of successful rhythm games.

And then I found out about RhythmHeaven.

RhythmHeaven

RhythmHeaven is a collection of quirky rhythm games featuring everything from factory assembly lines to a dictatorial duck. The games are well-made, intuitive, and extremely fun.

They also have interesting examples of pseudo-haptic feedback. So I'm learning by analyzing. Here are some of my notes so far.

Built To Scale

Overview: You are assembling parts in a factory by using a mechanical arm to shoot parts into a block.

Constant Motion: Striped conveyor belt (constant)

Impactor: Hinged arm (hinge)

Priming: Arm comes back on hinge. Like pouncing.

Action: Single frame change. arm extends, pip goes in block with motion line blur. Sparks on corners of the block. 'Chunk' sound. After slight delay, block tips backward. Impactor arm recoils as well.

Miss: Clink sound, blocks fall back unassembled or keep sliding by.

Metaphor: pouncing, hinge, impact.

Blue Birds

Overview: You play one of three birds who is being whipped into shape by a commander bird, a kind of fascist duck.

Constant Motion: None. Background image fades in and out. With trippy image of Das Commander Bird. The birds themselves dance to the commander's commands. But not constantly.

Priming: Birds stand up a little.

Action: Birds peck down. Sparks fly when they hit the ground. Peck/squawk sound.

Secondary Action: Birds Stretch out.

Metaphor: Pouncing

Notes: No constant background motion here.

Fan Club

Overview: You play one monkey in a bunch of monkeys who are clapping to a singer.

Constant Motion: The background of the singer's screen pulses with the beat. The singer bounces up and down. The monkeys bounce up and down.

Priming: Monkeys raise their arms.

Action: Monkeys clap their hands and jump.

Miss: The other monkeys ticked off and stare at your monkey.

Metaphor: impact, clapping.

Other Motion: The singer does dance moves every now and then.

Fill Bots

Overview: You control a robotic arm that assembles robots and fills them with juice.

Constant Motion: Not constant. The conveyor belts moves the robots to the side. The robots groove after they get filled up. The fill happens linearly to the beat, not in pulses. The robot swells up to the groove while it is being filled.

Priming: The robot arm head goes up when primed.

Action: the arm jams down into the robot. Motion lines. Sparks. The robot fills up and gets a happy face.

Miss: the robot doesn't fill up all the way. There is a buzzer sound afterwards. The robot doesn't become happy.

Metaphor: Impact, pouncing, filling.

Notes: the fill starts immediately after the action. Not before the arm goes back up. There are also occasional random rewards, in the form of robots that fly away.

General Notes

Priming often involves going away from the main direction of motion. To create contrast, a sense of pouncing?

It is usually clear when something is at the extent of its limits. The hinge is all the way extended. The robot arm's seqments are all the way covered up.

The actions often have sparks involved, and sometimes motion lines like in comics.

Some of the games use group emotions to control reward/punishment, others don't. For example, the monkeys get mad at you if you miss.

It is rare that there is not something in motion on the screen.

The music is always playing.

I'll probably do some more analysis in the future. I'll definitely be playing RhythmHeaven and its successor RhythmHeaven Fever more!

If you have tips or comments, feel free to discuss on reddit.

[lxdrsk-blog]

A Sweeping Statement

Today I experimented with a short form. Just 3 panels.

It's about how music helps us do our work. Since Tori and Zou are in a dojo, they have chores to do. Like sweeping.

Some thoughts on the short form:

I think one way the short form can be used is to setup 'the decisive moment'. The idea of the decisive moment comes from one of my favorite photographers is Henri Cartier-Bresson.

One of the things he wrote is this:

"To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression."

I think this idea can carry over to comics.

In this short comic I drew, I think the decisive moment happens between the panels, just after Tori has turned on the music, but before she and Zou are sweeping away to it. To me, the decisive moment is the moment when the music creates a new mood, a new space, that relieves the tedium of sweeping.

Some things I realized as I drew this:

To draw comics is to learn many things at once. Like music.

Gesture, for holding a broom.

Expression. How do you make eyebrows express surprise?

Composition: where to put things on the page.

I also realize that to practice is to become aware.For the rest of the day I will be observing the shapes of people's bodies as they do things. How they are bent over, how their feet are pointed. Practicing has selected a set of lenses in my mind.

I was glad I started with a short rough sketch of the three panels. Just to get one in the bank. Then I went back to explore how to draw sweeping. I realize now it's not a trivial thing at all.

I also realized that the shape and proportions of my characters' bodies are important. I think Zou should be squat and squishy. More beanbag chair, less Michael Phelps. But I have to learn how to draw this feeling.

Technical note: using a 1-bit color map cuts down file sizes *a lot*, and still conveys the image

I think it will be good to not only show pedagogical ideas, but also how music fits into our life, and brings us together. [Tia DeNora](http://www.amazon.com/Music-Everyday-Life-Tia-DeNora/dp/052162732X), eat your heart out.

Some sweeping sketches. I think need to make some 'sweeping changes', eh? :p

[lxdrsk-blog]

Music Comics: Quick Practice Sketch

Just a quickie today.

I was stuck on ideas, so I did a quick sketch on practice, just starting.

I think was good to do.

It made me think about format. How to fit something into 9 panels.

It made me do *something*, without worrying how it was going to turn out.

It gives my subconscious something to chew on during the day. I bet I'll have a few more ideas later on about ways to talk about practice.

I learned a little more about my characters. Tori can be lazy, needs to be drawn sometimes just laying down, lounging. Like Hobbes in Calvin & Hobbes.

Symbols can be fun to incorporate. Hourglasses, vibrations for drum beats.

Not worrying about the format can be liberating.

On this last point I want to write a little more. Comics seems to be like music, in that it is a craft with many variables and sub-skills.

This makes me think it can be helpful, for practicing, to focus in on just a few subskills at a time, before worrying about integration. Otherwise you don't get good at anything. Chase two rabbits, catch neither.

By committing to a format ( say, 9 panels), you take that variable out of the decision space. And you can just focus on story, or drawing expressions, or the such.

Kind of like playing a blues form or rhythm changes. Pick a structure, then play around within the structure. Rather than simultaneously trying to create a new structure.

I'm still struggling a bit with how to go forward. I can keep sketching, but it's currently unclear to me how I go from my chicken scratch ideas, to actually getting something up that can start helping people think about music.

[lxdrsk-blog]

Idea: Musical CSAs

What if there was something Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) boxes, but for live music?

The idea is to commit to supporting local music, and also have the tasks of choice and curation be handled by someone you trust.

You also get the feeling of supporting local music. A badge of identity. The importance of this should not be overlooked.

I often think that many people do CSAs partly because they want the vegetables, partly almost as a religious tithe.

A musical CSA could take the form of a card, or ticket pass. You can use your ticket once per week at the CSA's choice for that week.

The benefit would be you you would support live music, and you could go hear it with other people who dig live music. Social music ftw.

You might also get cheaper tickets too. And local musicians would get more tushis in chairs.

[lxdrsk-blog]

The River of Time

I'm reading Schulte's Overwhelmed, which I think gives a good overview of issues surrounding business and how we think about time.

As I read it, it makes me think of the 'Time as a River' metaphor.

Some brief scattered thoughts on the metaphor.

We drift down the river of time on our boats. Many of us are constantly navigating, jockeying for position along the river, competing in races.

We run from the steering wheel to the ship's radio to the map room, pausing just long enough to get our next fix, plot our next course, and ping our neighbors.

Sometimes these races are fun and they challenge us, make us learn new things.

But do we forget to drift with the river, and enjoy it?

Do we forget about the old wooden raft, the one we keep under the tarp on the foredeck?

Do we ever radio up our lover, take out the raft, and lay out on it at night? Under the stars, dangling our feet in the water, listening to the water splashing beneath us, around us.

[lxdrsk-blog]

Idea: Ear Mobs

What if there was something like Cash Mobs for live music?

The idea would be to inspire and excite people to go out and hear live music. Because hearing live music is healthy and builds social connections...and is FUN.

Ear-mobs?

[lxdrsk-blog]

Tori and Zou: Character Sketches

Today I explored how Tori and Zou might look.

Here are two of my favorites:

Things I learned:

A drawn character can be like a collection of variables. But not necessarily independent variables. For example a cocked eyebrow can suggest something different depending on how the body is tilted.

Zou is a little more forgiving to draw. I think this is because his features are closer to a human's. Some of his variables are eye shape (dots or dot-in-circles), eyebrows, trunk, presence of mouth, separated ears, head shape, trunk length.

Tori took more time. Some of her variables were body shape, tail feathers, headband, eyes, wings.

Somethings I didn't expect can be very expressive. Like feet. As I was drawing Toris, I found that her feet were expressing things like excitement, or boredom. Toe Jams.

I'm very glad I did this. I realized that drawing a character over and over helps me get a better feel for the character's personality. In a way that writing won't do. This interplay between the abstract idea of the character, and the drawn character is really interesting to me.

I'm glad I did this *after* doing an initial story sketch. The story sketch gave me some idea of what they would look like, what things they would do, who they were. Enough to give me direction, but still enough freedom to explore.

All the sketches from today:

These took me about 6 pomodoros to do.

Going forward, I'm going to use these sketches to create a more polished version of the story.

[lxdrsk-blog]

Boston Music Hack Day 2014

Some rough notes on Boston Music Hack Day 2014.

It's 5:37 AM.

J & B are sitting in Spotify's Somerville office, listening to the universe sing from a laptop.

A steady stream of beeps and boops pours out from the laptop. It sounds like speed metal played through a Nintendo soundcard.

J listens, amazed. "What was that?!", he says. "The Ocarinas?". He closes his eyes and listens again. "No...wait, that's gotta be the bagpipes."

B looks over at J and grins. "If you like that, just wait 'til you hear Aldebaran. It totally rocks."

They're listening to the Keplerphone, a music generator they built with data from the Kepler Space Telescope.

Welcome to Boston Music Hack Day.

What is Music Hack Day?

From the MHD homepage, "Music Hack Day is a time for developers, designers, programers, industry insiders and musicians to come together to create new and unique music applications."

It's also a place to meet new people, learn new skills, and have a great time.

What follows is the tale of my Boston Music Hack Day weekend in 2014. A weekend of learning, lost sleep, and bird songs.

It Begins

MHD started on Saturday morning at Microsoft's NERD center in Cambridge.

Paul Lamere, a veteran music hacker and MC par-excellence, gave us a warm welcome and overview of the weekend. Then he and other MHD sponsors took us on a tour of the latest and greatest tools for hacking with music.

@musichackday boston is underway! @plamere presenting the @Spotify and @echonest APIs pic.twitter.com/mPuHs3G9E4

— ak (@zthangz) November 8, 2014

Among my favorites were Spotify's (nee The Echo Nest) APIs for analyzing music, and a nifty squishy keyboard called 'The Seaboard'.

The crowd was excited and ready to go. Some of us stood up to pitch ideas about projects. I pitched an idea for making a musical interval trainer, and a few other folks pitched ideas for making musical games. We decided to form a gaming collective for the weekend.

A Note on Teams

The process of forming teams is always fascinating to me, especially at a hackathon.

How do groups of people, often strangers, come together in such a short time, and figure out what to work on?

The gaming collective did it through brainstorming. This was one my favorite parts of the whole weekend. We went into a sideroom with a whiteboard, and started to write, draw, sketch, and put up sticky notes together. Out of this process emerged a wall of craaazy ideas. And we started to learn about each other.

To me this, is one of the greatest virtues of hackathons. Hackthons help you come up with radically new ideas, they jolt your thinking, and they connect you with amazing people.

The gaming collective eventually decided to focus three ideas: an interval trainer based on nature metaphors, a blob game that would use musical mimicry to control a hungry blob, and a game about falling in space, and using music to avoid obstacles.

We decided that some of us would focus on just one idea, while others would share skills among all the ideas.

I decided to work on the interval trainer with F, a game design student from RIT.

Scoping & Design

Now came the tricky bit. F and I needed to figure out what we would build.

How do you figure out what's possible in a weekend? On one hand you have limited time. So maybe you shoot for something small & simple. But on the other hand, you want to build something cool. Something that challenges you, something to show off to your friends, something that helps you and others learn new things.

The trick is to find a balance...something that skirts the edge of the possible, but that also delights you and your friends.

This is another reason why hackathons are great. They force you to think about balancing.

Partnerships

F was a fantastic partner for figuring out what to make. He had worked on several games before, and has a deep sense of how to think about game design. He walked me through all the things we would need to think about. Things like the story behind the game, the mechanic, what kind of artwork it would need, what kinds of sounds we would use.

And more! You can see some of our discussions here:

It took us awhile to think through it. On one hand, I didn't have the game design experience that F did. And F didn't have the musical background that I did. But this was why we worked together, to help each other understand, and share our skills.

There were times when we didn't understand each other. But fortunately we took the time to clarify. Sometimes through intense discussions. Because part of a good hackathon project, maybe the most important part, is learning to communicate.

By now it was getting late. Just before supper time we coalesced on our vision. We would make a game in which you are a newspaper reporter who is trying to take pictures of birds. A kind of Avian paparazzi.. You learn to identify birds by their songs. But if you get the wrong bird, your boss at the newspaper gets mad and fires you.

We had our vision. Little did we know how it would change later.

Getting to Know You

We took a break for dinner, generously provided by the hackathon organizers and sponsors. Dinner is great because it can be a great time to take a step back, and find out about where your team mates come from, what they're interested in.

Even within our game collective of ten-ish souls, there were lots of different backgrounds. Some people had been to previous hackathons. For others, it was their first one, they wanted to try it out. Some had musical backgrounds, others had tech backgrounds. Others were just curious to see what was happening.

I think this diversity of interests is one of the thingss that makes music hack day great.

After dinner, fresh with nourishment and ideas, we took a bus over to spotify's office for the all-night hacking session. This is where the fun would really begin.

The Night Shift

By now people were cranking away on their projects. About 50 of us were packed into Spotify's office, tapping away on laptops or soldering hardware.

11:30 PM: 47 hackers still hacking the overnight shift at Spotify Boston pic.twitter.com/DTFc0xeJnV

— Music Hack Day (@musichackday) November 9, 2014

This is the time when projects really start to move, and we learn new things.

Like how to use tools. I ended up working on some images for our game. I had never done this before, but F & his friend J from RIT helped me learn to make pixel art with the ASESprite editor. Check out my pixel tree:

I got to observe F code and compose background music. Around us the other members of the gaming collective were learning to use Unity, a game development engine.

This is one of my favorite bits of the hackathon. It's where you learn, where the learning becomes deep. Where you get to know your teammates. What music they like, where they're from. What they're interested in, what their sense of humor is like. It's when you become a tribe.

Meanwhile, our game was changing. F & I realized the newspaper story might be hard to get across. So instead we changed it to a story about a Park Ranger. The Park Ranger's job is identify birds in the park. And he identifies them through their calls. But if he gets any wrong, his boss, Smokey Bear, gets mad at him. Get too many wrong and smokey eats you.

Hackathons teach you that ideas change and morph as you work on them. The best laid plans of mice and men and the such.

But now we were cruising. But so was the clock. Around midnight, a vague sense of despair crept in. Would we be able to get something working by tomorrow? We didn't have anything up on the screen yet. We began to worry.

As the night turned to morning we decided to tap into a new tool, the Phaser game engine. This helped us get the game running, and now we were cooking. Pretty soon we even had a game we could play! A very basic game, but a game nonetheless.

The sun rising on 15 sleepy hackers who worked through the entire night. pic.twitter.com/DxyWxCHxIE

— Music Hack Day (@musichackday) November 9, 2014

That's me in the red shirt on the right.

By now it was time to return to Microsoft's headquarters for the wrap-up.

Cleaning Up

The rest of the morning went by in a blur for me. I had stayed up all night, and was focused on getting our game to run. I was pretty sure we were going to make it, but it was going to be tight. F and I kept hacking away, gradually making tweaks and adding new features, right up until the afternoon demo time.

Then it was time to share what we had made.

Demos

The demo time is one of my favorite bits. In the afternoon everyone stops working, and comes together to share their projects.

I loved the demos. I had been seeing bits and glimpses of the other projects throughout the weekend. But they really become something special when they're on the big screen in front of an audience.

Too many cool projects to list here, but some of my favorites were the Keplerphone, Cylindro, and Auditory.vim. You can check out all the projects here!

And then it was time to go. Bleary-eyed, exhausted, I goodbye to F and the other gaming collective folks. Then I stumbled home, and slept.

Ghosts of MHD Past

Thinking back on last year's MHD (I wrote about it here), for me their were some big differences.

Last year I worked on a solo project. This year I worked in a team. I enjoyed working with the team much more, and learned a *ton* more. I realized it's really great to work with other people on hackathon projects. It's a lot more fun, and you learn a lot more.

This year I knew more people, some from MHD last year, and others from [Boston Music Tech](http://www.meetup.com/Boston-Music-Technology-Group/). This made it much nicer. Community is a great thing.

I'm looking forward to next year. Thanks MHD organizers!

[lxdrsk-blog]

A First Comic: The Heart of An Elephant, v0.0.1

May I present ... my first online comic! .

The working title is 'The Heart of an Elephant'. It represents my first step in making comics to help people learn music.

The idea of the comic is that there are two friends, Tori ( a girl bird) and Zou (a guy elephant). They are studying music in a dojo together, with their other animal friends. Many things come naturally to Tori, but not so for Zou. And it's through their dialogues and the words of their teacher, Kurikko-sensei, that we discover ways of thinking about music.

I think the medium of comics is uniquely suited to the task of music education, for several reasons. Comics allow us to represent musical concepts like rhythm and time, that would be hard to do in pure words or moving images. Comics also allow us to discover the concepts for ourselves. Like a good Zen koan, they help lead us toward ideas. But the ideas, the understanding, come from within ourselves.

I'm jotting down some very rough, very random notes here, in the spirit of improvement and reflection.

What did I learn?

It feels good to have this up. I learned *a lot* in working on it.

It's not pretty by any means, but I'm learning to be ok with that.

Drawing takes time. It took about 2 hours of drawing to get these two scratchy pages.

But it was kinda fun! This surprised me. Because I used to not like drawing. It felt too slow. Perhaps I am closer to accepting that everything takes time.

Getting Ubuntu to talk with an Epson WF-2530 scanner over wireless was not straightforward. Chalk up another hour. But it's cooking now.

I think it's better to draw bigger. I found myself using crabbed little strokes to fit in my small boxes.

I've got a lot to learn with regard to fitting letters into the panels.

I was pleasantly surprised that my elephant and bird are sometimes recognizable, and even have expressions sometimes.

I *really* want to sit next to a seasoned comic artist and just see how they draw. What tools they use, how big they draw. How they digitize. How they make notes as they go.

I'm very glad I drew this myself. At some point I had been thinking about hiring an artist. This would have been a mistake. There was a lot I learned during the drawing process about the pacing of the script, the dialogue, the characters. Things I would not have learned if I had not been using my hands.

I really, *really* appreciate the skill of professional cartoonists even more now. Bill Waterson, wherever you are, I tip my hat to you.

I now realize that my earlier idea of making a longer-form, more serious graphic novel was totally unrealistic.

Storytelling in comics is more than just the script. This seems obvious in retrospect, but I didn't really understand this until I started drawing. It was almost like my hands themselves realized when Zou had to be swinging his trunk around, or when Tori needed to be laughing slyly.

I need to work on conveying the idea of 'feminine bird' better. Tori currently resembled a beaked grapefruit.

I need to figure out what do with Zou's trunk.

I'm very glad I went to the Boston Comics Roundtable last night at Emerson. The advice from the panel was inspirational and invaluable.

Now I need to figure out how to go forward. I suspect this will involve a few more iterations of drawing roughs. And then trying to work out some more polished drawings.

[lxdrsk-blog]

Jottings on Comics

Tonight I sing a song of comics, inspired by hearing Paul Levitz & Junot Diaz at the MIT Media Lab.

Just some brief thoughts.

Among the many interesting things we learned tonight were:

There's a Manga for that.™ In Japan, Manga represent close to 1/3 of all Japanese publishing. You want a graphic novel about the life of Teddy Roosevelt? Comin' right up. While in the US, comics/graphic novels represent a mere single-digit percentage.

There is an entire niche of graphic novels just for medicine. Like Team Medical Dragon!

The entire DC comics staff in the 1970s could easily fit inside a small MIT lecture room, with room to spare.

These particular facts are interesting to me, for several reasons.

Why is it that Manga numbers are so big in Japan? Or conversely, so small in the US? To me this suggest that there is a vast untapped space for comics to explore in the US. What's that? Music education?

It's amazing to me that such a relatively small number of people have had such a large influence on our culture. Batman, superman, spiderman. The work of a small handful, but now they have influenced entire cultures.

Paul Levitz & Junot Diaz also discussed many other topics. Including how comics are one of the most accessible mediums. Both to create and read. Which means that anyone can make them. It's hard to imagine a kid writing a fully-fledged novel, but not that hard to think of a kid creating a great comic.

Which makes the relatively low reach of US comics still the more baffling.

Mr. Levitz also talked about how big-name series like Batman have legacy worlds to support. So that variations and spin-offs can't stray too far from their essence. He says he learned this from experience, from the spin-offs that didn't work out.

Which makes me wonder, what were those spin-offs...

The Dark Knight Bakes a Quiche

Batman Returns...a Library Book

Batman: Colonoscopy

Just a few thoughts. To jot down now, and come back to later.