An Idea

The following is me brainstorming an idea so please forgive any grammatical mistakes. Feel free to leave your two cents as well.

So, I was reading “Think and Grow Rich” and there’s a chapter about the “Mastermind”, which is a group of experts you gather to augment any weak points in your own expertise. I’ve always been into S.A.M.M. (Science , art, math and music) and writing. I’ve always had dreams (literal dreams) of me gathering expertise in those fields and we create a network of artists and geniuses to help up and coming talent obtain jobs or collaboration with each other without all the binds of formality and bureaucracy that normal corporation impose. In a way like mentors because we not only have the knowledge but the connection that an artistic master usually had. The only think is a couple of road block occurred that I haven’t wrapped my head around quite yet.

1) Where do I go to find these people and how do I approach them? Especially since this idea is in it’s infancy. The most I can say is I’ve gathered some friends to collaborate musically, but I also need to figure how to get the non-artist mathematicians and scientist. (I’m well versed in both for a laymen so talking technical isn’t an issue)

2) What do we do once I get the initial batch of people?Assuming the initial batch of people I gather aren’t well connected or financed like myself. What do we do to get the attention of those who do. What kind of projects do we create? When I think on this and try to flesh out the idea, I feel like there is a Gate. Like I need a key from someone else or an idea I don’t know really. I know if together we can help solve a problem maybe I need to pin point said problem, but I don’t want to be over-zealous on the first project since I want to prove to concept successful in the early stages.

3) How to get every to work together? This may be something out of my control, but with something like this it’s possible for leeches to emerge or people to disagree. What do I do to mitigate or prevent tension and conflict?

Ear Training Day 26 & 27 – Melody Training

Late night at work last night by here’s Ear training day 26 & 27. Today I’m trying something new the melody exercises! It’s like the melodic intervals listening to 3 or more successive notes and guessing the distances. Even though I’m great at melodic intervals this is a challenge which I have accepted and will conquer!

Ear Training Day 25 – Harmonic Intervals

Today is day 25 of ear training and I’m continuing review of Harmonic intervals or guessing the distance between two simultaneous note. The goal is 90% and I got an 83% today

Ear Training 17 & 18 – Chord Progressions

Hey guys! Didn’t get to post my ear training results to wordpress because I didn’t get to my computer after work until it was really late but I did post to instagram (@jamesrevelscomposer) if you want to see the ear training results fresh off the press.

So I’ve been doing doing chord progression recognition of the Major scale particularly the I,ii,IV,V scale degrees. Yesterday I got a 65% which was a huge jump from the 48% I had but today I normalized with a 56% with my goal for each type of training being 90% I still have looads of work to do

Ear Training Day 12 – Harmonic Interval

Here is day 12 of ear training and day 5 of harmonic interval training where I guess the distance between two simultaneous notes. My goal is 90% accuracy.

Ear training Day 8 – Harmonic Intervals

So Day 8 of Ear training but my 1st day of harmonic interval training which is listening to simultaneous notes and guessing the distance between. My goal is 90% and I got a 42%…44 correct and 60 incorrect. Can’t wait to see how I progress throughout the week.

EARGASM – Zodiac

Here’s a great hip-hop beat titled Zodiac by Monte Booker. It starts with an unnerving yet interesting electronic/glitchy sample then slowly progresses into a catchy, and funky hip hop beat. It’s a great journey aurally and definitely worth the share. Know anyone who makes cool music? Shoot me a link to their soundcloud, youtube or bandcamp page and if I like what I hear I’ll feature them. I’ll have another eargasm for you tomorrow at noon so stay tuned!

2 new books!

2 of my 5 new books arrived in mail.
Differential Geometry and Welsh’s Synthesizer. Differential Geometry from what I read so far, it is about differential calculus on three dimensional space. The synthesizer cookbook is a books that concisely and simply explain the basics of sound synthesis and provides formulas for. Settting synth for specific sound. Im excited to read these.

Music meets Math

So what happens when music, graph theory and network theory meet. An awesome way to coordinate automation for music. Although I’m posting this while on bus via phone I’ll try my best to explain this. First for non sound engineers, automation is where you change a parameter, such as volume, as if you had an imaginary hand turning a knob as the song plays.  This is seen in the program as a simple graph like the diagram as the top to the left of the bar (well,  its a simple, directed graph since it moves forward in time, which comes in play near end). The second graph right of the partition is what I call an “isomorphic superposition”. Lets break this down. Isomorphism in graph theory simply means that all the connection between points are exactly the same when two graphs are compared. Superposition is fancy for placed over top off.  What I do is draw original graph, then draw a second graph starting from beginning of the first BUT I draw the second graph as if  the 2nd point in the original graph is the beginning. What this does is gives me the ability to see how the original graph will progress relative to any point simultaneously. It also creates subgraphs related to the progression of the original creating automation patterns that tie multiple parameters  in predictable patterns because of their relation to each others movement. (I can also make pleasant sounding  melodies and counterpoint if I map this to notes but only if they are within the same scale. ) Finally the last part the big box at the bottom. In network theory, it studies the connections between points in a graph. The number of connection a point has is called its degree of connection. The special feature of directed graphs is they has inputs and outputs. This tells us how many points progress to a given point (input) and how many possible points the same point can move to (output). The big chart is called an input/output matrix and map ALL possible connections between points of a graph. “I” is input, “O” is output and the zero with slash means impossible because self referential loops are impossible in real practice using automation. Blank spaces mean there is no connection but still possible. The amazing thing is out of the 729 (27 squared the area of the I/O matrix) possible connections between the 27 points.  there are only 66 I/O connections in this example, reducing unrelated information by over 10 times saving the engineer time instead of trying all possible unrelated or related connections . Sorry for the dense article hope it leveled up your math skills.

M.C. Escher – When Art meets Math

Early in my musical development, my Mom, a graphic designer, let me read her book on M.C. Escher because early on she noticed my affinity towards math and applying it towards music. I loved the book because it gave me an example on how to use fractals and further develop my music in something that moves with time as opposed to loops of the same structures and melodies like a lot of popular songs. The picture below is a visual example of how I think music should develop, but oddly enough this is also how sound develops on the micro and macro scale. (Soon I may do a James Unedited where I zoom into a sound wave to show this). Basically, I think music should start of with a simple, abstract motif then over the course develop itself into a more complex and refined structure (or vice verse).  Below the pictures I have a video briefly explain the concept behind Escher’s design and an embed for the song depicted in the images of the waveforms below

 

Micro lv break down of Ironic dread of blindind possibilities

Micro lv break down of Ironic dread of blindind possibilities