Classical Music Etiquette for Dummies

As being in many classical music concerts, I somewhat get irritated when seeing a few members in the audience who haven't followed proper etiquette during the concert. Thinking about it, I thought it might be a good time to write a few things I've learnt over the years in simple words :P

1) Turn off your mobile phones (easy, but why can't people do it?)
2) Don't talk during the performance.
3) Don't applaud until the whole house does (so that you don't have to know the difference between movement and pieces)
4) Wear warm clothes (As most concert halls are cold this is recommended)
5) Don't make too much noise (e.g. eating)

Hmm.. well I hope I didn't forget to mention, enjoy the performance :P

I Close My Eyes - Peanut Whalum

Beautiful tune from a legend that many people would have probably never heard of:

Live Music?

You can tell if a music band is good if the music they play live is better than the studio album. That is why I like music festivals, in which you listen to many bands and at the end you can decide what musicians are worth supporting :)

Peaceful Kinoko-World

A few days ago, I watched one of my favorite saxophone player Sadao Watanabe in concert in Bangkok. One thing I liked about Sadao is that he is extremely versatile jazz musician. Though I don't like his Brazilian offerings that much, I absolutely love how he incorporates elements of African influence his music.

Anyway, during my music browsing through YouTube, I've happen to stumble on a strange recording below:



If I'm not mistaken, it was the remix track of a theme from Mario that was rearranged by the artist I mentioned above. Strange! Now there is also game music :P

Test Recordings

In a few days, I have to present a paper at a research conference about a Computer Vision to aid myself playing the EWI. In my paper, I've used a number of image processing techniques to find where I am relative on the stage and then make real-time on the fly changes to the software mixer. A number of extensions to help me play the EWI such as using multiple cameras (to define surround sound position), and other natural input devices such as Using the WiiMote were discussed on the paper.

As I was preparing my paper presentation, I've noticed that the demos and music recorded in the paper presentation was rather sparse. I have one piece showing me playing the C Major Scale (which is absolutely boring), a short Glide, and a short piece. In other words, I only had very few recordings of myself playing the instrument! Just to fix things, I've decided to cover a few quick songs, just to make sure the audience knows that at least I can play the EWI :P

You can take a few listen to it at the following url: http://168.120.1.247/dump/ewi/

My Own Custom Music Program

I was asked to submit a research paper to a conference by my future PhD advisor. Due to the lack of time, I've decided to pick up a topic closely related with one of my hobbies. As noted, I'm studying music, and have been playing with a number of instruments including the saxophone and the EWI (Electronic Wind Instrument). One of the things that I figured that might be interesting for me is to actually work on a type of application that could be useful when I play with the instruments. As the EWI is an electronic instrument, I selected it as a topic to work on.

If you noticed the following random pictures below, it is actually part of the application I've worked on. If you looked carefully, you can notice the picture are basically extracting information from me playing with the EWI finding which part of the frame in the camera feed I was in. This information is then relayed to the software mixer that could change parameters such as the panning effects.




The application worked out pretty well, and it allowed me as the musician to change panning without having to be at the mixer which could be useful in certain situations. One example would be creating sound effects that uses lots of panning. That is one area that I could save alot of time.

Anyway, after much work on the topic, a a few ideas struck me. If I used two cameras, I could actually plot my position in 3D, which wasn't that difficult to do. Another brilliant idea that popped up my head was using motion sensor tools (e.g. Nintendo WII remote anyone?) to help in music playing.

The lesson I've learnt in the drafting of the paper was quite fun. To be exact, playing musical instruments is fun, and making programs to add to that doubles the fun! You might want to try something like that if you have the time ;)

New Weapon to My Home Studio

My little home studio just had a new weapon yesterday. I was a little upset with my old midi keyboard. I had an old Creative MP3 Blaster keyboard that I bought with my Sound Blaster Live! Platinum version on my older computer. It was quite useful for simple midi input, but the keyboard lacked many features and doesn't work well with other devices other than the original SoundBlaster Live soundcard. What I found out a few days ago was that since having a new computer I decided to try to link the Blaster keyboard to my new computer. I had a creative Audigy 2 soundcard Platinum on it, so I thought I would be able to play. However I found that the MP3 Blaster keyboard requires a joystick input (which was obsolete) to supply power to it. Without the port, there was no way to get the keyboard to work as there were no other ports to supply it power, not even a AC port :(

It took me a while, but I've finally figured that I must be more careful with buying decisions. If I am going to get any new electronic device, I had to make sure that it would work well far into the future. As the old Midi keyboard is practically a deadweight, I decided to go find a new Midi Controller. After much deliberation, I decided to pick the following Midi Controller:




Basically what I just got was a Korg K61P. Instead of a simple Midi Controller, this keyboard has an internal sound module that could output audio directly to a connected speaker. I decided to pay a little extra for this because a midi controller requires the computer to be on all the time. Its not quite a good thing considering that to practice, you just can't do it at the spur of the moment. Another bad point is that it takes time to setup the computer, and it isn't that fun to do when you just want a quick jam session.

Oh well, since I haven't really used it that much yet I can't really say much more about it, except that I'm happy to replace my other midi controller.