Musical instructions
Lake Tuggeranong College STEM Camp
can y’all keep a secret?
enough about me…
tell me about you
musicians?
mathematicians?
coders?
talk
music, maths, computers: what’s the connection?
what are computer programs good at?
what would a song performed by a computer program sound like?
outline
what is (pop) music?
activity: (low-tech musical instructions)
livecoding: (high-tech musical instructions)
music (n.)
a series of pitched “events” over time
pedantry alert.
catchy hooks
repetitive harmonic patterns (e.g. chord progressions)
processed/synthetic sounds (lots of computers involved in the production)
lots of patterns
but how do we express them?
“dimensions” of a musical note
- time
- pitch
- loudness
time
what aspects of the music does it influence?
why is it important?
how do we measure it?
what aspects of the music does it influence?
why is it important?
how do we measure it?
loudness
what aspects of the music does it influence?
why is it important?
how do we measure it?
modelling the domain
remember: music is a series of musical events
each event has a time, a pitch and a loudness
maths recap 1: functions
function f(x, y) takes two parameters/arguments and returns a result
e.g. f(x, y) = 8x + 2y
parameters are input, the function does something with the inputs to produce an output
maths recap 2: modular arithmetic
arithmetic which “wraps around”
0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, … instead of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, …
the modulus can be any integer, e.g.
- 7 mod 4 is 3
- 18 mod 7 is 4
example: clock
patterns
are
everywhere
activity: musical instructions
how to play
split into pairs
I’ll tell one person (person A) the name of a song
person A will write down (in English) instructions for how to play the song (no conventional music notation allowed)
person B will read the instructions, “sing” them, and try to guess what the song is
scales (just a warm-up)
Jaws
We Will Rock You
remember: you have to describe the instruments, not the vocal track
This is America
your choice of song
talk
what was the hardest part?
what was the easiest?
was it easier/harder than you expected?
how would you do it differently next time?
what I’m gonna do
learn a new song (by ear!)
figure out how to turn it into code
find a bunch of sounds which sound (approximately) like the recording
lay down a vocal track (maybe)
make the whole process make sense to you guys
what you’re gonna do
help me choose the song
be kind when I make mistakes
clap politely at the end (even if I flame out)
reminder: domain model
time (in beats), e.g. 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
pitch (in MIDI note numbers), e.g. middle C as 60, C# as 61, etc.
loudness (0 is silent, 127 is super loud)
extempore: a livecoding language
extempore is a programming language designed for musical livecoding (written Andrew Sorensen and me)
mplay is the key function:
;; pitch loud duration instrument
(mplay *midi-out* 60 80 (* .5 dur) 1)
don’t worry about the syntax, I’ll explain enough for you to follow along
I’m old…
what did we learn?
pop music isn’t black magic, it’s a domain with lots of structure/patterns
we can write instructions which express those patterns
computers/code are really useful for modelling/exploring this stuff
this is not AI, either
c/c/c studio
in 2020 I’m starting an art+music+code extension program at the ANU
we’ll do stuff like this (and lots more)
if you’re interested, let me know 😊
🤔