Hacker News Reader

Comment by fhood | Hacker News Reader

"The music was at once futuristic and nostalgic, slightly melancholy, and quite subtle: Even the digital noise samples it used—basically sonic detritus—seemed sensitively integrated."

I had some difficulty taking the rest of the article seriously after reading this. I know music is subjective, but I think the author may have been projecting somewhat.

View on HN

Did you listen to the samples? They may not be to your taste (Katy Perry aficionados may be disappointed), but I certainly thought they had unexpected emotional tones to them.

Don't forget, this is a three year labor of engineering love for the author!

Yeah but the finished samples were fairly heavily modified by the author, or at least that was my understanding.

The first three "From the database" samples (if I've understood) are not.

I'll go back and listen to them a few more times then.

From what I understood the database was not generated by software at all, they just collected samples from a variety of sources.

They also added compelling generated samples back into the database. A sort of evolution based on the original sounds thay decided to seed it with.

That's pretty much the key with this sort of thing. I've done very similar experiments and as long as you choose good source material, even fixed-length samples cut at random and then sequenced rhythmically will sound good.

The author's description of the music is slightly corny but I had a very similar awestruck and eerie feeling after the first time a python script I wrote generated some pretty passable electronic music.

It is a very subjective thing. I listened to all the samples, trying to find one that I could appreciate. I was unsuccessful.

Before you scoff, I am a trained classical guitarist and play a variety of instruments. To be clear, nobody needs my permission to enjoy it. I found nothing that I enjoyed.

I didn't find anything emotional about them. Other than the concept being interesting, I've not found anything else to appreciate.

That's because the tempo is static, and I don't think there's any "dither" so to speak on the placement of the notes (applying lag and lead, rubato, etc.). I enjoy what the author created a lot, because I like abstract electronica, but it is not so hard to apply algorithmic techniques that create a more lively sound.

yeah it's not like he's piping hamlet.txt to /dev/audio

Reply on news.ycombinator.com