BinaryJam

In case you have not heard, Microsoft Research have come up with some song writing software.  It’s called Songsmith.

The idea behind it is that you make up a tune in your head then sing it into songsmith.  First you pick a music style and then a tempo and then sing away.  Once recorded  the software will analyse your song and the notes you sang,( hopefully you sang them in tune I don’t think it cleverly pitch shifts your voice, but I may be wrong ) and then it will create a musical accompaniment in the style you selected.

Now I know what your thinking but the MS web site states

"The samples you hear in Songsmith aren’t toy sounds… they’re a high-powered general MIDI set from Garritan, one of the biggest names in the industry"

With resources like this how can it fail ?

Now it’s not aimed at pros but to give anyone a chance to write a song, well my son is seven and is not a musician, yet, he hasn’t displayed any interest in that area, until recently, but even he hears that the stuff this thing produces is absolute pap.  It can’t even compose a good jingle, take a listen to the MS videos and cringe.

Where the genius of Songsmith lies, and this was totally unintentional I’m sure, was the sheer comedy value provided when you take songs you know and feed the vocals into Songsmith and have it re-write the original into the dreadful "early eighties, cheap casiotone" sounding affair it produces.

Youtube is starting to accumulate examples of Songsmith Massacres.  Radio heads Creep, britney’s Toxic, battery by metallica and loads more.  

So I wouldn’t bother getting Songsmith but go take a look on youtube and laugh your pants off on the utter tosh it produces.

Today is sunday and the view in the picture is my street from the car when I just got home from swimming with J.  What the picture doesn’t show because stupid camera phones are too slow is the bird of prey. 

Our street is full of house martin nests in the eaves of the roofs.  What I think is a  kestrel seems to have got wind of this and I watched one pull a house martin right out of the air then claw it into the tarmac where it sat for a few minutes on the pavement corner right in front of me, it was my getting out of the car that scared it off, lunch in claw.

I just thought it was amazing to see a bird of prey in the burbs. 

I’m hoping kes will come back later tonight when the swifts are most active catching insects.

Cat went under the knife again, more teeth out.  She’s fine and apparently has kidney and liver function far in excess of a cat of her advanced years (16) and will most likely live a lot longer.

The cats are part of the family so despite no pet insurance I keep paying for the treatments.  I can’t “youth” my cats.

Now she’s home and getting better, I’m glad and fuss her endlessly.  However it makes me think why the hell did I get cats  in the first place.

Read more…

A little story popped up on the BBC news site today entitled, “Excuse me sir“.

It’s about the number of people being pulled up by the police for taking photo’s in public places.

I’d like to take this time to point out to any UK reader, you are entitled to take photos in public of pretty much anything.  Including other people.  There are no privacy laws applicable for public places.  You may find schools and enclosed kids playgrounds have rules about taking photos, so if your kid’s in a gymnastics competition you need express permission, but this is because its not public property.  However a footy match on public ground you can take photo’s of your kid, his kid her kid the referee and the team captains dog.

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From The Register.

When the music costs nothing, why do freetards prefer to leech?

Nine Inch Nails has followed the Radiohead example and is giving the music away for free. Not all of it, but nine of the thirty six tracks from Trent Reznor’s instrumental LP Ghosts I-IV are available for free, with a PDF thrown in. The other 27, in higher quality bitrate or lossless format, cost just $5.

…..

Despite this throat-cutting gesture, Reznor’s sprawling instrumental release is going gangbusters on the world’s torrent trackers. Pirate Bay has eight thousand concurrent downloads at time of writing, divided fairly evenly between the “free” release and a 320kbit/s bitrate version of the package

FFS!!!!  £2.50 for what is essentially four albums !  And its still being pirated.  I can have a tiny bit of sympathy when purchasing overpriced garbage you might find in a high street music shop, but considering that most albums cost around a tenner and that in the 1980′s they cost about a tenner music prices have dropped massively.

But when someone like Trent releases work like this in a lossless format for next to nowt it blows any arguments people have about stuff being too expensive out of the water.  You are just thieving b*******s.

I quite like NIN, or I like pretty hate machine and downward spiral at least so to show my support I’m going to buy it.  If you like NIN I suggest you do the same.  [I'll let you know if its crap though.]

Thieving Sons of ……….

Dan over at IsThereFood pointed out something I’d missed. 

I’d not been watching much TV of late, well the usual recorded bunch of American imported TV as the latest bunch of UK TV hasn’t left me exactly excited.  I waited with baited breath for Ashes To Ashes and I needn’t have bothered.

What I missed, Being Human, is undoubtedly the best thing I have seen on TV since Life on Mars, yes I know Doctor Who is good and Torchwood is watchable, just, but there hasn’t really been anything gripping and truly well written for what feels like such a long time. 

Finally something well written.  Something that sounds like its all going to be a bad farce, turns out to be the most enjoyable program in ages. I would go so far as to say was even better than LoM as it doesn’t have sad undertones that LoM did,  just creepy menacing ones.

I spoke to some friends who missed it too on broadcast, they thought it was going to be some dreadful documentary, you see titles are everything in the multi-channel world. I sent them to iPlayer.

The werewolf transformation was truly marvelous, real old school Werewolf in London style, not computer generated and all the better for it.  The vamps eyes occasionally, and for good effect, turn black.  Black eyes not normally part of the vampire legend as I recall, but considering it does help remind you that whilst the characters are trying to eek out a human existence they are definitely not human.

Top this off with a ghost in the house who can’t stop making tea like an old style northern housewife stuck in the house, doing it because the routine of it keeps her sane is icing on the cake.

The bad part.  This is a pilot not yet commissioned.  So please have a watch and bombard the BBC with letters begging for a series.  I know I will.

This morning on radio 4 I heard more about the Conway case.  I don’t have a problem with him employing relatives, its the only sensible thing to do in situations like this.

I’m not really writing about him what has annoyed me more is the remarks made by Roger Gale MP.  Complaining about justice and being guilty until proven innocent.

Well for a start, Conway stood up in the House of Commons and apologised, sure sign of innocence there.

But mainly Gale seems to have no idea about so-called British Justice. 

Conway has not been arrested.  He has not been questioned by the Police (yet anyway), he has not been led away in handcuffs.  An investigating body discovered some possible impropriety and gave him a slap on the wrist.  Gale is ranting on about a witch-hunt and this poor sod being labeled guilty.

I’ve seen British Justice in action.  I saw my brother led off in handcuffs due to an untrue accusation which later came out and he was eventually released.  He was innocent yet led off in handcuffs by the police and treated pretty poorly, well like an absolute git is a better statement.  Where was justice for him? no wasting police time charges arose from this event.

I have a friend who committed white collar crime, yes he was guilty, yes he went to jail, he got what was coming to him some might say.  What he also go was almost a year  if not longer under virtual house arrest until his court case came up.  During this time he was not allowed to leave town except to go to and from work, he had to sleep at his own house every night, his bank accounts were frozen and all transactions had to be done in cash an allowance was paid from his wages in cash for him to do this, so no Direct Debit discounts for him.  None of this was taken into account during sentencing.  It might not sound much here, but it was one step above electronic tagging at home.  During this whole period he was innocent, he was only guilty when proven in court, yet treated to great British Justice.  Had he been proven innocent in court there is no compensation for being treated like he was. 

So Mr Gale.  Don’t harp on about innocent till proven guilty unless you know what the hell you are on about.  Conway has it easy at the moment, a lot of press coverage and a fine, perhaps 10 days away from the house of commons.  The amount of times I’ve seen an empty house of commons I doubt this is a big deal.  He can be conducting surgeries instead.

/Rant

Considering just how bad the view is, there are some high spots.  Like today a lovely pair of bullfinches decided to sit outside the window in the woodland beyond.

Despite living near countryside I had not seen bullfinches or Goldfinches until I started working here.

Lovely ain’t they.

Well I finally got through to xbox support and the process is no better than before, with one exception the person I spoke to was a joy to speak to, very apologetic and sympathetic, still could do nothing more than run through the checks and send me a returns label.

It’s all about attitude. The support person gave me no more than the last time but did not have the “take it or shove your xbox where the sun don’t shine” demeanor from my other calls.

So whilst I’m still absolutely fuming at being on my fourth xbox 360, I don’t feel as angry as I did last time I phoned them.  Then there is the fact I’m resigned to poor service and I’m convinced due to the high numbers of failures I’ll just get what I’m given and should think myself lucky.

Although we shall see when the replacement comes DOA like last time !

Well as you may have read the xbox is dead again, like Shelley Long reappearing 3 times but without a pretty face just 3 red lights.  However there is good amongst the bad. 

Like the Wii.

The Wii is just great, for Xmas my boy got Super Mario Galaxy and I bought the Wife Guitar Hero III.  Both of these proving terrific fun.

SMG, is a joy to play, one of the first real games I have (I mean J has) for the Wii, not just a jump in party game which the Wii is so good at, but a proper story driven platformer, in 3d.  The colours are great the tunes are great its so easy to control. The wiimote is not abused but used intelligently and sparingly, something many developers for the Wii need to learn (Whilst I don’t own these games I have tried them, which is why I don’t own them !).

I bought Guitar Hero for S.  Our Childminder has it and she’s been driving me mad about it.  I bought it and had to put her off from getting it for herself before Christmas.  Having no xbox I got to play this instead, whilst she was out of the room!  After a couple of tries I managed to get to grips with it really quickly and stormed through all the songs on the easy level.

Unfortunately, S, is terrible at it.  Whether its because she is a real musician (keyboards/vocals) not lately but in her younger days was member of a band who got signed, but then it all fell apart due to internal struggles (putting it mildly).  Or perhaps its because of the impaired hearing she suffers from now, that she is absolutely rubbish.  Or maybe its because GH is nothing like playing an instrument and is more like a video game ?

Still for those who can play it, its great.

However now I try to play on the next level up I’m struggling for the exact same reasons I stopped learning the guitar and switched to keyboards, movement on my little finger is painful, the knuckle “jumps” making it impossible to play anything that requires its use.  So to me it’s not that different after all.

Perhaps I shall wait for “Keyboard Hero” – What do you mean there aren’t any !