#musichackday

[functiontelechy]

The Keplerphone

Music Hack Day, Boston, 2014!

This time around, I teamed up with Jonathan Marmor to sonify data from Kepler as face-melting, shredding guitar rock from outerspace!  Behold, http://keplerphone.jonath.in/.

If you want to learn all about how it works, check out

IPython notebook of the core algorithm

Full source code of the final product

And just for fun, here's one of my favorite example outputs.

[teamzaylor]

Taylor Hanson at MIDEM Hack Day by thomasbonte on Flickr.

[toddities]

Oh dear! but a strong concept, tho. Enter your twitter handle and see who your spiritual artist is. (via keyword analysis of your tweets and lyrics, and other mojo. #musichackday http://bit.ly/spiritartist (at GitHub)

[thisismyjam]

Six Years of OpenMusicMedia

[This post from Matt about the last OMM meetup in London is cross-posted from here.]

Last Friday the final OpenMusicMedia took place in London.

Six years ago, Dave Haynes and Jonas Woost decided to get a bunch of folks together in a pub for regular discussions on the future of music, media, and technology — Jam pal Anthony Volodkin of The Hype Machine was their first guest. The series was very active until late 2010, and this month Dave decided to resurrect the event one last time to mark another milestone: his departure from SoundCloud.

I was lucky enough to be asked (along with Nikhil Shah of Mixcloud and Andrew Dubber of Music Tech Fest) to share some reckons with the assembled group on what the last 5+ years have felt like.

The three of us responded with short personal takes on where we’ve been and what excites us today. (Nikhil’s stream-of-consciousness monologue — which began “So, garage is back…” — was a highlight.)

Based on my rough notes, here’s what my bit covered, inspired by my early adventures at Last.fm right through to This Is My Jam.

We Were Building Infrastructure

Back in 2008, it felt like our biggest problems in music tech were infrastructural; there was tons of opportunity in creating new plumbing, in connecting things together. 

We busied ourselves making infrastructures for streaming, for sharing, for tracking, for discovery, we ran experiments in collecting and portability.

And unlike a lot of other tech innovation happening at the time, we were doing it mostly outside the Bay Area. We built these new infrastructures from London, from Stockholm, from Berlin, from the US east coast, from LA; places where music and technology culture intersected daily (or rather, nightly).

What felt inevitable was that our work would soon render physical record collections (and even mp3s on a hard drive) obsolete. We weren’t sure what would happen once that day arrived, but we knew it was coming soon.

Discoverymania

As we gained confidence in our new infrastructure, we had a new problem on our hands; the music equivalent of cable TV’s 57 channels and nothin’ on: 

When you can summon tens of millions of songs in a matter of seconds, what do you put on? How do you find the good stuff?

“Discovery” became the catch-all name for this challenge. But it’s a slippery term, not least because the best discoveries happen when you’re doing something else; music fans rarely sit down with an app and say “okay, I’d like some discovery now please.” 

At the time I was fully under the thrall of work we were doing at Last.fm within the burgeoning Big Data movement and the seriously amazing science starting to happen at other companies. Surrounded by our shiny new pipes, I believed a purely technical approach to discovery was imminent.

If we connected a few more data sources together, tuned our algorithms, and made sure you could scrobble everything, the thinking went, the discovery fairy would soon pay us all a visit. 

Well, sort of. Which leads us to…

Things We Missed

Dave challenged us to mention things that we didn’t see coming over the last 5+ years, and I could think of three for myself:

Right after the Facebook Timeline / open graph launch, I expected Facebook would, within a year, own a good chunk of all music discovery online. All that data + their complete social graph = inevitable victory, right? (The answer was a very instructive no.)

I assumed streaming infrastructure had to be “great” rather than “good enough” to achieve widespread use. Turns out, YouTube.

As potential executioners of the “record collection”, many of us spent a lot of time and energy thinking about taste / collection portability, assuming people would demand virtual equivalents. So far they mostly haven’t.

Five More Years

So, where next? The final OpenMusicMedia ended with a lot of enthusiasm (and a fair helping of debate) on the future of music, media, and tech. 

At This Is My Jam, we’re working hard to make sharing a song online as fun as swapping records in person with friends. 

More broadly, two of the themes I’ve been thinking a lot about lately are:

Songs are the “atomic units” of music consumption and sharing today. The album won’t die, but it will likely never return to the prominence it once enjoyed. Most music products are still built around artists / albums / playlists as structuring principles — what would an ecosystem of more song-centric music services look like?

Now that our entire musical lives can take place in the cloud (or in our YouTube search histories), how can fans today express and share their music identities? (Or, as Paul Graham Raven provocatively argues, is music’s heyday as the primary transmission medium for youth culture over?)

OpenMusicMedia is dead, long live OpenMusicMedia. See you at the pub!

[thisismyjam]

That One Song

Hello! We've got a new fun thing for you to play with this Monday!

For Music Hack Day Cannes this weekend, we threw together a little thing called That One Song. It's based on something called the song graph that we've been working on over the last few months (and that the next version of Jam will be built on!).

This hack was borne of a love for the simplicity of old 45s and frustration at having to search through dozens of tracks on various music services when someone says "you should really check out [insert band name here]!"

That One Song solves exactly that. Powered by the many carefully considered, hand-picked jams of the music lovers and tastemakers that make up the jam community – you :)

As a little extra, we threw together two Spotify playlists of these top picks, based on the most-posted artists on Jam: 

That One Song – A Sides (Nothing but the hits)

That One Song – B Sides (For you discerning types)

[lxdrsk-blog]

I Made Your Browser Funky: Boston Music Hack Day

What did you do this weekend? I made your browser funky: http://github.io/adorsk/makeItFunky

I also learned *a ton* of new tricks, made some new friends, and had my mind blown several times over.

All this because I was part of Boston Music Hack Day 2013 .

What Is ‘Music Hack Day’, and Why Should I Care?

Music Hack Day was a hackfest focused on music. Quoth the homepage:

A FULL WEEKEND OF MUSIC HACKING. SOFTWARE + HARDWARE + ART + WEB. COME BUILD THE FUTURE OF MUSIC.

Why should you care about Music Hack Day? The reasons are many. Do any of the following apply to you?

You like having fun with music.

You like to be inspired.

You like learning new things.

You like seeing cleverness and creativity.

You like connecting with talented, creative people.

You like John Bonham, THE GREATEST ROCK DRUMMER OF ALL TIME.

If any of these were true for you, then you should care about Music Hack Day.

Still on the fence about it? Well, let me tell you about my experience.

It Begins With a Bus and A Ukulele

I woke up early Saturday morning and caught the early bus from Portland, Maine to Boston. I carried the two things essential for any music hacker: a laptop, and a ukulele.

At around 9:00 am I arrived at Microsoft’s Charles River headquarters in Cambridge. The day was bright and cold. The maple trees along the river were fiery red, like blazing beacons calling hackers to the gathering.

Inside I was greeted by friendly people bearing swag and danishes. Students and long-haired programmers began to fill the room.

I got into conversation with an engineer who wanted to build an electric harmonica. We were joined by a fellow who studies the acoustics of whale ears and builds guitar amps. We drank coffee. Within a few minutes we were talking about vacuum tubes. “This is going to be a good hackfest”, I thought.

And it was.

Introductions

The weekend formally began with an introduction and welcome from Paul Lamere, the Developer Platform Guru of The Echo Nest.

Paul is a seasoned Music Hack Day veteran with several hacks to his name.

And here I begin a five-part series of interludes titled “Great Things About Music Hack Day”:

Great Things About Music Hack Day, #1: It connects you with experienced hackers like Paul who *really* know the cutting edge stuff.

Paul is also an excellent MC. He gave us information, and then inspiration. He ran through a quick overview of the schedule for the weekend. Then he and representatives from the other Music Hack Day sponsors did brief intros to their APIs, and talked about prizes for best hacks.

But most importantly, they showcased hacks from previous Music Hack Days.

And that’s what really got us buzzing.

A Brief Aside: When I See a Really Clever Hack

When I see a really clever hack, my mind explodes twice.

The first explosion comes from the hack itself. The hack is cool. It’s fun. It’s clever. It does something neat. I find myself chuckling, because the hack in of itself is so darn delightful.

“<seeing the wheel for the first time> Whoa! Look at that, what a nifty round shape! And that thing you call ‘rolling’ is pretty slick! I *like* it!”

But then there comes the second explosion: it comes when I start to think “If this hack is possible, then what else is now possible?”

“How about that wheel! Gee, if you put two of them together you could make something you could get around on. Wait a minute- <visions of bikes, cars unicycles>... OHMIGOSH!”

That’s what seeing a really clever hack is like for me.

Which brings me back to Music Hack Day.

The Bonhamizer

One of the previous hacks that Paul presented was one he had made himself: The Bonhamizer.

When I saw it my mind exploded twice.

The Bonhamizer is a website that adds John Bonham, THE GREATEST ROCK DRUMMER OF ALL TIME, to *any* song, in your web browser.

It does this through some ridiculously clever technology built by Paul and The Echo Nesters. This technology, called Remix, lets you detect the beats in a sound clip, and then mix-in other sound clips at the same tempo. It takes care of all the messiness of beat detection and beat matching. It’s Magic™. It does a whole bunch of other really neat things as well. Check it out.

At first I was just plain delighted by The Bonhamizer. Enter mind explosion #1. “That’s so clever! I *love* the way that sounds!”.  

But then - enter mind explosion #2 - it got me thinking.  ”If I can add Bonzo to any song, what else could I now do?”

And thus a hack seed was planted in my mind.

Great Things About Music Hack Day, #2: It seeds your mind with new possibilities.

A Funky Seed

The hack seed turned out to be a funky seed.

You see, I like a wide variety of music. Everything from Led Zeppelin to the Bach Cello Suites to French accordion chansons, you name it.

And I especially like the Godfather of Soul, James Brown.

James Brown. A musician and showman unparalleled in his sense of groove. Leader of the JBs, perhaps the *tightest* band of all time. Producer of some of the funkiest tracks known to humanity.

And so I thought, “If we can add Bonzo to any song, why not James Brown?”.

I had the vision for my hack. I would James-Brown-ify any song. In your web browser.

Connecting

I decided to do this as a solo hack. But I wasn’t hacking alone.

There were hundreds of other hackers around me, from all sorts of backgrounds. There were MIT students using Fluid Dynamics equations to visualize music; there were hardware engineers building an electric harmonica; there were media artists building an instrument out of yarn and arduino boards. Funky hats, blue hair, crazy moustaches, they were all there.

And when you get all those people together in one space, there’s a special kind of energy. A buzz, a bustle.

You walk around and hear people talking about dubstep. Or discussing the technicalities of doing aerial choreography with remote-control helicopters, Or the merits (there are none) of making the music of 80’s icon Rick Astley into a web service.

And then they actually do it.

Check out the #musichackday twitter feed to see what I mean.

Great Things About Music Hack Day, #3: It connects you with lots of interesting new people doing amazing things.

Learning & Teaching

One of the many things I really liked about Music Hack Day was the way people helped each other learn new tricks. With so many talented folks around, you’re guaranteed to learn something new.

For example, on Saturday I was hacking next to X, a relatively new programmer, and Y, an experience programmer. Y was helping X figure out some python stuff, things like how to install a new version, or how to install packages. If X was on her own, it might have taken her a while to navigate through all these things. But with a buddy to help, she picked it up in a few minutes.

Great Things About Music Hack Day, #4: It helps you learn *a lot* in a short amount of time. And that learning sticks with you.

The Construction of A Hack

But back to my James Brown hack.

I should mention that it is one thing to think of an idea.  It is quite another to actually do it.

How easily I forget this. How quickly Music Hack Day reminded me of this.

I started with a big vision of what my hack would do. It would let you add in funky drum beats to any song. It would let you customize the types of grunts and wails that would go in a song. It would add scratch guitar licks.

Easy, right? Not quite. It took me a little time to get familiar with the Remix API, and then to make some initial sketches.

Meanwhile, the day was flying by.  Outside the sun was setting on the Charles, and the Boston skyline was lighting up. It was starting to get late.

I realized I needed to scale back.

Great Things About Music Hack Day, #5: The short time scale makes you learn to prioritize.

Eventually I decided on a more minimal hack that I could have ready to demo, if I was lucky.

For demo time was nigh.

Demo Time

The culmination of Music Hack Day was the Sunday afternoon demo session.

There would be 60+ demos, and we each had 2 minutes to present the culmination of our work from the weekend.

I loved the demo session. I’m always fascinated by how people talk about their work, how they present. And most of all, what cool ideas folks came up with!

There were some really impressive demos. Some of my favorites were:

Enter the Dragon: your own personal fanfare whenever you enter a room

Dance-o-Matic: an engine that generates an animated dance number for any song

En Passant: chess games rendered as music

The Secret History of Music: a website that generates a behind-the-music exposé novel for any pair of artists.

The full list is available here.

And I was pleased with my final demo: Make It Funky . It seemed to go over well with the crowd too. I’m always glad to add a little JB to the discussion.

After all the demos were finished, the sponsors presented prizes. We said goodbyes and congratulations, and then the weekend was over.

Why Music Hack Day Is Good For Companies

I also learned that Music Hack Day is great for its sponsor companies.

On the subway ride back to the bus station I talked with C.  He does business development for The Echo Nest. He told me about how many great ideas have come out of Music Hack Day, and how that has helped The Echo Nest learn about how developers want to use their products. And what business opportunities might be emerging soon.

Think about it for a second. For relatively little (pizza & danishes, some swag), the Music Hack Day sponsors got an instant R&D lab that contains hundreds of the world’s brightest and most energetic minds. Working on the sponsors’ stuff. Telling all their friends about it.

That’s impressive.

For example, I showed my hack to my buddy Ryan. And then he got into to playing with The Echo Nests’s stuff.

That's a big win.

Great Things About Music Hack Day, #5: Everybody wins, including sponsors and participants.

Until Next Time

I had a great time at Music Hack Day.

I tip my hat to Paul Lamere & his crew for organizing, the sponsors, and all the participants for putting together a great hackfest.

I’m looking forward to the next one.

Thanks Music Hack Day!

Update: also check out Paul Lamere's post about the event: http://musicmachinery.com/2013/11/12/you-have-24-hours-to-build-the-future-of-music/

[jonathanmarmor]

MIDI Digester

The Echo Nest Remix API comes with a demo, enToMIDI by Brian Whitman, which attempts to transcribe any audio file using only Remix's audio analysis data, and spits out a MIDI file. The purpose of the EN audio analysis data is to provide a summary of the music, not to do the source separation necessary for an accurate transcription. This means the resulting MIDI file usually doesn't sound much like the input. MIDI Digester is a very small script that runs audio through enToMIDI, plays back the resulting MIDI using Quicktime and its built in piano synthesizer, records the audio with sox, then repeats the process as many times as you want. Each repetition strips away more of the original musical material and accumulates the sound of enToMIDI. Check out this demo which "digests" a 7.66 second excerpt of the traditional bluegrass tune "The Groundhog" played by the same Quicktime piano synthesizer.

[carceezer]

HOORAY!!

WE WON!! Congrats @ttan_ @owlage @ilbuffer - Carceezer won the #musichackday Bologna Deezer challenge! https://t.co/oYoClGSEkM cc @DeezerItalia