This seems to be a good week for LISP-based algorithmic composition software. Slippery Chicken comes from Michael Edwards and Sean Reed of the University of Edinburgh. An open-source, specialised algorithmic composition programme written in the general programming language Common Lisp and its object-oriented extension, CLOS, “slippery chicken” has been in development since 2000. By specialised
Continue reading »What to Consider to Improve Your Sound at Home
I was recently asked where the biggest improvements can be made in sound quality at home (assuming you’re listening to high quality audio sources in the first place). My answer was – speakers, room and DACs. If you already have better than cheap computer speakers, treating the room may be the most important step in
Continue reading »Going ‘under the hood’ of FIR filters
Here’s a useful article from EETimes.com on FIR filter design which uses some basic factorization to demonstrate how the filter works . The article’s author Kendall Castor-Perry takes us through a worked example of a 50Hz/60Hz hum (the bane of studio musician’s everywhere) rejection filter. You can also find Part 2 here.
Continue reading »Autocorrelation for Tempo Estimation
Automatic tempo estimation is a useful tool for musicians for the purposes of transcription and also for audio researchers as we can use the tempo of a piece of music to inform other types of analysis such as pitch detection or chord detection. Since musically significant events such as chord changes tend to occur on
Continue reading »“It Gives Me The Feeling of Love…”
Wonderful video of a long term nursing home resident (Henry suffers from an unspecified degenerative condition) who opens up when he hears his favourite music. While some research suggests a calming effect of music to increase autobiographical recall in Alzheimer’s patients, what we see in the video is probably more closely related to the reminiscence
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