Top 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (with a question mark)

I've been going through and listening to the Rolling Stone Magazines list of the greatest albums. I just search the album on youtube with "full album" and nearly all of them have a hit. Its been interesting in many many ways.

The Infamous Cellular Automaton Synth

It started with the obfuscated C competition... and a youtube video. Well, no it really started with learning about Conway's Game of Life. Err.. It started with a video about a 13 year old girl who was implementing Conway's Game of Life on the raspberry pi... Ahem. I became interested in cellular automata and especially linking it to music. I originally tried to emulate this one liner that was getting passed around on IRC:

echo "main(i){for(i=0;;i++)putchar(((i*(i>>8|i>>9)&46&i>>8))^(i&i>>13|i>>6));}" | gcc -x c - && ./a.out | aplay

I tried to implement my own version that used an automaton to do the same sort of thing (I'll let you scratch your head on what it does, or just copy and paste it into your terminal). It took me a while to get it working, but I eventually got an automaton operating successfully on a torus. I then went and obfuscated it thinking of entering it into the IOCC. It looks pretty good:

echo "main(_i_,i,_,i_i){i_i=30;for(i=7;;i=_i_<<1|_i_>>7)
{_i_=0;for(_=0;_<8;_++)_i_|=((i_i&1<<((i>>_|i<<(1+~_&7))&7))>0)
<<_;putchar(_i_);}}" | gcc -x c - && ./a.out | aplay
 

Got it? Simple enough. So where did I go with this?

First Impressions with LV2 Plugin Development (almost a tutorial)

Well, its been a while hasn't it? I'm actually done with my thesis. Done. Completo. Tapos na. Weird. Luckily I still have some publications from it to submit, otherwise I wouldn't have a single thing to put off. Except...we bought a  house, and it needs a new roof, and I should be working on that...

But I'm not. In fact, I've been pretty busy with trying to spend my time on unimportant things like synthesizers. I finally started writing one. It actually started when I found out someone was making LV2 midi filters that I'd been wanting to do for quite some time (to add "humanization" in Ardour 3 etc.) I contributed a  variant that used a normal distribution rather than a uniform one (using a modified Marsaglia polar method no less). Once I'd done that lv2 plugin it just broke down the wall and I felt like I could easily do a synth.

rbdrum2midi

Its fun to hit stuff. Which is why drumming is so therapeutic. However dums may seems cost prohibitive to many of us. I too have felt that. However there is hope! For a few bucks at a local garage sale you can probably find folks getting rid of their old drum rockband drum sets for various gaming systems. This gives you something to hit, but it doesn't sound much like a drum. But could it?

Would I really be setting you up like this if it couldn't?

Its Convoluted

I'm so ridiculously close to having my thesis done its ridiculous. I'm crazy not to just finish it up. So why am I writing this? I'm not sure.

I stayed up really late last night trying to finish episode 61 of OSMP. I got pretty frustrated with Ardour3 but I think it may have been a result of creating the project in 48khz sampling the recording and mixing everything at 44.1khz. Anyway its out now so go have a listen. I talk a little about IRC a lot about convolution and impulse responses (IRs), and a little about the next Tunestorm. I'm not going to stenograph everything I said in those wee hours of the morning, you can go listen to it, but I'd like to add a few things here.

The Rise of a Podcast Host

Ever do something because nobody else would?

Well, the Haikustorm entry for the tunestorm sat around long enough that I just released it, but it wasn't the only entry...

HaikuStorm

2023 Update: This post was flagged for malicous links so I have cleaned up any that are no longer operational. Shame the internet can't keep URLs immutable. If you have specific questions about the tools, most aren't really available anymore and have better options available these days, but google around or ask in a comment. Now on with the original post: This post has been lurking in the drafts pile for quite some time. You may as well read it: Hey, I'm actually making progress on my thesis. I think I'll be able to finish it. Someday...

Well, I'm back again with another song (one you will actually get to hear). This time for the Open Source Musician Podcast Tunestorm #7. A tunestorm is like a brainstorm but with music.  Everyone comes up with their own song based on some criteria. There are usually 4-8 songs submitted by different listeners with a decent breadth of genres that come out of it. Themes for the past tunestorms have included freedom, 15 second songs, using household items etc. This time the rule was lyrics in Haiku.