Remembering names

I know that social ability is very crucial here and I am trying to develop is little by little. Recently I found that there are some name issues hard to deal with.

Of course you need to remember one's name before any social ability to be repeated. For me it is always the case: "Hey my name is xxx." "Nice to meet you!" This is usually the starting point and I usually do not get the name at the first place unless it is very common one (especially in US there are so many weird name including mine everywhere...). Rarely I asked again and try to write down and memorize but usually I just let it go and when the next time we met, it is a little bit embarrassing. I am pretty sure that the other guy feels the same because my name is definitely more difficult. This is the first and big obstacle to me then.

Anyway, trying to figure out a way to remember more names... Maybe just need to pay more attention when a name is presented...

IDEA: Music shaker

Just read a paper from ismir 2009 that several music snippets are remixed according to their tonal and tempo information. I mean, I have this idea very long time ago... But I did not do anything and now it is others' contribution. Though I am not saying I will be able to solve the question, I am just lazy and think way much more than work.

Anyway, if the technology is already there, what else can we do? Or can we go beyond this? Therefore the application idea pop out, simply an iphone app. If we can pick two songs and shake the iphone which indicates that blend/mix this two songs together in "a way". Can be if shake harder, they will blend better like phrase by phrase blend or something. And the technology required are tempo estimation as well as key detection with phase vocoder to synchronize these two attributes.

Arc diagram

This is a current project I have been working for a while. Check out Shape of Song, Martin Wattenberg created this way to visualize a song, but from midi data, which you know exactly the notes. What I did is using the similar arc diagram on real audio data, to be specific, on the feature extracted from real audio data.

From the plot, basically the structure of the song is described. The idea of this arc diagram is that when those two points are identical (highly similar) you draw an arc line to connect those two dots. So when there are repeated patterns, they will be displayed. I am still exploring different features to be used while the same time trying to figure out better way to put the information in this plot. BTW, this song is a classical piano song "Fur Elise" (aka the trash truck song in Taiwan if I did not mix match).

IDEA: Piano paint

Oh well, I know the name is kinda lame. Anyway, cause the idea is vague too. Just a quick note about an idea come up to my mind the other day.

What if we can paint by playing instrument? Try to narrow down, the first experiment will be build a system which takes the input of a keyboard as midi signal and then plot something on to the screen. I have a feeling that this is gonna be fun and a pretty cool interactive art. Though I have not put much thought to it yet.

Below are some quick memos:
Randomly pick the starting point for each music sentence. According to the note and harmony you played, different color can be chosen and the size of the stroke and touch can be related to how hard you play the keyboard (loudness). Like I can imagine that if some weird chord series are played loudly, there will be some explosive color objects appeared on the screen.

I am sure that this idea must be down by someone already. But I would love to build one too. Maybe when I have time, can start doing some literature search first (google...). And I am thinking about taking this as a chance to learn max/msp.

Visualization

Recently I am pretty into information/data visualization. The idea is to explore some ways to visualize music in different levels. Level here means from within a song level to further the whole music collection level.

So the idea for visualization is to show something human might not be able to perceive if they are described in the old ways. For example, when you are listening to music, it is harder to tell the structure of the music (verse vs chorus, how many times the chorus got repeated, so on and so forth). However, those information can be easily shown by a simple 2-D plot. This is just one application and we believe that there are much more possibilities out there for exploration. If the plot does not mean anything, at least it needs to be beautiful and pleasant to see.

Just had a meeting with my adviser who also has an engineering background and claim that he does not really know about aesthetic. Oh well, neither do I... I just started to read the book "Visualizing Data" by Ben Fry, a guy from MIT media lab who did his PhD work in "Computational Information Design" and also the co-inventor of a well known visualization sketch tool called "Processing". I do not have much to discuss about the book yet, so far I can see that the whole process of visualizing data is laid out in the book. And I have played with processing a bit, pretty friendly and intuitive programming language.

Good start though, will see how far I can go, probably will go take one to two classes about visualization and graphical design next semester in order to learn the thinking process of a designer. Looking forward to it!

The new role of this blog

I am going to add one more function to this blog here, that I would like to write down things related to my research including thoughts, idea, memos, etc. Just try to catch some transient memory and see what I can really achieve.

Music, Visualization, Machine Learning and Interaction

Well, 需要關注的領域越來越多了
這是念phD的毛病嗎?
我以為phD是要越念越專精的
只不過在我找到自己覺得很酷的研究題目之前
看的東西越來越多

只希望有一天
這些所有我看過的東西
能夠變成一個很酷炫又對人類有幫助的題目

現在對我來說
還是兩條不太有焦點的線
科技 工程 vs 音樂 藝術 設計 互動
有沒有一個道理可以把他們串起來呢

一發不可收拾
這些問題
一輩子也解不完吧

只希望可以讓自己開心

所謂的好的創作

或許就是可以歷久不衰吧
對於我
過了很久的一段時間
再回去聽某些歌曲
我還是會覺得好聽
聽到還是有想要哭的感覺

那就是我夢想中有朝一日我也能做出來的好的創作!

(這是我在聽完黃小楨的幾首歌以後的感覺)

I wonder...

anyone still comes to this place?

Bye Bye SF

這幾個月來實在太多情緒了
連續地相聚別離其實讓我有點疲憊
不知不覺因為害怕在某個時間點突然崩潰而先把自己的堤防蓋好
於是我很早就開始不想要感覺到我要走了
很努力地當作什麼都沒發生
而且其實也是這樣
沒有什麼離去的
因為已經緊密地連結了就不會分開
這是我相信著的而我也會努力去維持

前幾天回LA
Shelly問我說
"你覺得哪裡是你的家"
我說
"我也不曉得
這次回台灣開始覺得台北不是我的家了"
想說加州是我的家又覺得那我又要離開
其實也不盡然
想了想
說了
"哪裡有朋友哪裡就是我的家"

我想我真的是這樣覺得吧
流浪了幾年
早就練就了一身其實到哪裡都可以的本領
雖然我是個慢熟的人
但是因為我很宅
只要有網路的地方
我就可以活得好好的
也越來越會處理自己跟自己相處的情緒
只要感覺到我有一群好朋友
我就覺得我是幸福的
因此可以賴以維生

從LA回來以後
照常打打球
跟小家庭hang out
一直都很正常很低調
就是不喜歡感傷的場面

真的很謝謝快樂兒童餐陪我笑得半死
每天笑一笑就過去了
讓這段日子變得很輕鬆很自在

我想
physically我就是個過客吧
來來去去
但是我永遠不會離開
就像地縛靈一樣
所以你們也不用擔心
只要想到我
我就會在的

Shelly John 肇偉一家人 你們都要好好的
小家庭 我很愛你們 你們都要幸福