Modern Glitching – Auditory Enhancement of Reality with Music

I recently gave a talk at TedXTokyo 2014 about a musical device I built with the aim of giving other people the chance to hear the world as musically as I do. To date, around fifty people have tried my mobile composing inspiration rig with me – mostly with very enthusiastic responses afterwards, and in the more musical/auditory types there’s also a degree of joyful disorientation.

Some of the background to what I think is going on: Around twenty years ago, psychology professor Diana Deutsch discovered what she called the Speech to Song illusion. Essentially, a spoken phrase repeated often enough starts to take on musical qualities. There’s a great Radiolab episode which explains the phenomenon.

For me, I don’t require repetition in order to hear spoken phrases as musical. Speech is intrinsically musical for me, and so is the rest of the world – from cars passing to people typing. I really wanted to share my experience as I find it very beautiful.

 

STORY TIME!

It was the day after winning a prize at MusicTechFest’s Boston Hackathon event, which I took part in and filmed for the BBC. I was sharing a small apartment with a bunch of other music obsessives.  The day before I left, instead of packing neatly as normal I optimistically chucked everything I could see into my case and hoped for the best.

The idea of adjusting auditory experience or adding a ‘Glitch’ to reality – at least in aural terms – is not a new process.  But glitching with modern tech sounded like a great way to reveal the music I hear all the time – plus I wanted to add a more musical classical compositional element to the practice.

Sean Manton and CJ Carr (who was familiar with glitching) were two other music hackers I met at the Hackathon. They were instrumental in my sleep-deprived electronic inspiration.

So, grabbing my iPad and headphone splitters,  I built the first iteration of a device that messed with the ambient sound in the room in real time in a pleasurable manner. Raw audio is changed in real-time and enhanced with sound effects, and crucially, I added basic musical elements and phrases that would play simultaneously. A while later, I got the thing working in a way I liked and emerged from my room, eager to try it on other musical / technical people. My ideal system would allow for me to sing and play melody and harmony but I was nowhere near doing that yet.

So, extra headphones bought, splitter in,  time to try my rudimentary iPad device on CJ and Sean in a quiet teahouse. It was so much fun! The sounds of tea being made, the door opening, teaspoons hitting cups, amplified and enhanced by repetition! Those sounds were unexpected, made musical and wonderfully tingly. I sang along to the notes in the cafe to accentuate them. The staff at the teahouse got interested, all they could hear was us singing and hitting teaspoons and laughing. So we asked if they wanted to try it then wired them in to see their response – they liked it – a lot.

 

Going mobile was more interesting – we were physically connected by our headphone cables, so it took a while to maneuver through the door but together we emerged, wired up out into the wild. And, once our headphones were in, we pretty much stayed ‘glitched in’ for at least 5 hours straight. I could hear the music I normally hear but amplified! Wow! I sang in joyous harmony with the world for my cohorts, who joyously joined in. An ear-opening experience indeed, and I expect we were a strange sight, connected together by cables, singing and swaying – especially as only we could hear the glorious harmonic results of our musical musings.

What followed: glitching around a bookshop, glitching through a delicious dinner at a noodle restaurant until we got chucked out at closing time – and (my favourite) glitching on public transport all over Boston. Some time during the evening, I added a recorded drum loop to the experience – an albeit low-tech but incredibly effective way to turn the world into a very funky soundtrack – rhythm along with harmony generated by reality transcended a run-of-the-mill walk through a city, making it a musical recital!

Now, without our headphones in, the world seemed dry and desolate. And, after trying this on six other people with the persuasive line ‘Hey, you wanna do some digital drugs, guys?’ to gratifying results, it didn’t take long for us to ascertain this was indeed a pleasurable and slightly psychedelic auditory experience – not only as a participant, but also as a listener. The three of us decided to take modern glitching further with a bit more technological clout.

A quick stop on the way back to the hacker apartment meant we now had extra kit. And, by 0100, Sean had plugged his Raspberry Pi computer into the TV – programming on the Pi with PureData. We made some tea and ate bread with the most delicious honey (the honey was in Bb major 6th) and kept working. By then it was 0300 and my taxi was due to arrive at 0615, we only had a few hours left!

We all wanted to add fine-grain control to this strange and wonderful auditory experience. CJ had brought his FM transmitter and binaural microphone/headphones and we plugged everything into my Mac.   I wanted to do more than just sing the city, I wanted to play it too. That meant configuring something that could take multiple inputs – MIDI and Audio at the same time.

Finally at 0400, and full of incredible quantities of tea, bread and honey, we were now running a glitching instance on Ableton Live, with a binaural microphone / headphone setup and my iRig Keys midi controller hooked up. I started building musical stems right then and there.

The latest version has more than just repetition, my new glitching device can harmonise and play with the world in a much deeper way – and I walk around a city first to get what key its in and compose something beautiful that goes with the natural sounds around me. Then I load those sounds up – I can then trigger them when I hear something in the right key, so a motorbike going past in B flat will mean I trigger my ‘B flat, traffic’ piano composition. The main problem is that the laptop gets really hot, also I’m covered in wires so it looks a little strange.

And this is what glitching sounds like – some of these examples have music in, others don’t.

The tech is still very much hacked together, but there’s more documented in the talk.

 

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

CJ, Sean and I are all enthusiastic about sharing the joys of glitching – and we’re all working on versions of glitching devices. We’re hoping to create a resource online for anyone interested to play with the idea in their own way.  I’m going to list everything I use in my hacked-together inelegant solution in another post.

I want an app that does this! I want to create a glitchpad! Beautiful musical stems that trigger automatically when friends walk through that city with this app! I want to be invited to perform ‘glitching’ concerts in cities around the world!

(for reference, I’ve reposted the TEDxTokyo video here)

More on this story as it unfolds….

W00t! new linguistics on the net FTW!

Ok, I’m happy painting my life as a technology-loving geeky social network addict, it’s pretty easy because it’s true. I tweet and send pictures through my mobile on twitter and flickr, I am on facebook, qype, youtube, ping.fm and I’m on other places where I can’t even remember my username – you get the idea, some of you are probably the same as me, or worse. 

You’d think I’d be right up there, jacked in to cyberspace, fully comprehending the internet and not even seeing the code, as it were.  Sadly, I’m nowhere near where I want to be – still far too lost in the ether that is the new net-speak, although I’m clawing back some comprehension every day.

Looking back through my (and others’) twitterstream, the linguistics of the internet is in the process of undergoing yet another evolution. I’m learning a whole new language in order to keep up with my much cooler and hipper online buddies.

The emoticons we’re familiar with since I joined the internet (or before), are everywhere, even my dad texts and emails with 🙂  : – ) and 😉  ; – )  .  Stuff like BRB is pretty easy to interpret and a rough knowledge of phonetics and/or a willingness to tilt your head to one side is enough to make a start on translating the rest.  

It’s all changed now there are so many new codes based on everything from gamer-speak to the economy of letters that Twitter’s 140-character limit has imposed. So what is the last resort of the enquiring mind?  I conclude that one needs to be either “in the know” or risk Urban Dictionary (and possible ridicule for choosing the wrong acronym) to find out the meaning and usage of the latest net-exclusive abbreviations.   

On to the reason for the post – this Wednesday, I’m going to be on the radio talking about the pressure to ‘keep up’ on the internet, not just emoticons and phraseology, but also keeping up with your facebook friends and your twitter chums.  I’d love to read what you think.

Do you feel anxious when you’ve not posted what you’re doing? Do you feel guilty if you haven’t blogged / updated your status for a while?  I’d also love to know whether you use acronyms such as FTW (or even WTF!) on the interwebs, whether you embrace it or can’t bear it, and if you have any good ones you can share with me…  Please feel free to leave your comments, and try to make sure that they are SFW 🙂 kthxbai…

p.s. you can listen live to the show on BBC Radio Scotland at 10.30 GMT on 15th April 2009.

 

Mini Glossary for n00bs

w00t! (with zeros instead of O’s, although this font doesn’t show it as well as the header) gamer-speak with disputed origins, usage: celebratory

FTW = For The Win – usage is normally when you’re about to achieve something e.g. “eating 15 banana frittters FTW”

SFW / NSFW = Safe For Work / Not Safe For Work – usage is normally preceding or following a link where it’s not immediately obvious where it goes – can be used on twitter when posting tiny urls – stops you opening an inappropriate link in front of whoever’s lurking over your monitor.

kthxbai = OK, Thanks, Bye – Lolcats use this language a lot, pop over to http://icanhascheezburger.com/  for detailed exploration. You will waste time, though.

Nicole Cooke, Gold Medallist, shows me her medal!

… it’s heavy for its size, like a good bit of electronics.

Here’s a video of what happened when I met Nicole Cooke, the person who brought back the first gold medal for the UK in the Beijing 2008 Olympics.  She won the Cycling Road Race.

(Rss readers / can’t see the link? click here )

I turned up at an out-of-the-way studio, and fought my way through rails of incredibly fashionable sportswear accompanied by pumping loud music, gigantic umbrella flash reflectors, and lots of people.  This was a photoshoot for Nike’s Here I Am campaign featuring women in sport,   

Nicole was refreshingly down-to-earth about her impressive win, and when I asked where she kept her Gold Medal, she replied that when she wasn’t carrying it around for worky things like this, it was in a pouch at home – she only gets it out when people want to see it!  She talks about her training regime in the video, which sounds (unsurprisingly) punishing; obviously she looks great on it – I must admit being inspired to get in shape and eat less chocolate as a result of meeting her and the other ladies. 

Note: This video was meant to be released ages ago, however, a funeral, the flu and then all this new stuff at the BBC kind of got in the way.  Thank goodness for the xmas break, which meant I could finally get to work on these projects!  There’s one more vid post coming up before CES 2009, which couldn’t be more different from this video, it involves a sweary heavy metal band being interviewed in the back of a van.

And next week, I’ll be blogging from Las Vegas with all the latest gadgets from the Consumer Electronics Show.

 For those of you who missed me on the BBC’s Working Lunch programme:

LJ and Declan on BBC2 Working Lunch - click pic to view the vid (if it's still there)

(RSS Readers / can’t use the link? Click here  )

Here’s a still shot from my performance on BBC2, where I manage to squeeze 2 puns into under 2 seconds.

I’m not proud of that.  (OK, OK, I am…)

Covent Garden Wishing Well

This is what I saw when I went to Covent garden to briefly visit a blogger lunch.

What is THAT????

I nearly bumped into a conspicuous gigantic triangular shaped structure that’s there till January.

Spinvox Wishing Well

 

Spinvox, the people behind the structure, have left this silver wishing well in central London, the idea being that you call and leave a message from your phone, and it gets converted to text and displayed on the inside of the installation.

 – Here’s a shot  a bit closer in – you may be able to see me in it – I’m in the X box…

(Visual Pun! How I wish I did that on purpose!)

Needless to say, there were many others there including my fantastic underground blogger mate, and of course whatleydude who kindly invited me along.

This is what it looks like inside – I stood in here for ages, reading what other people were wishing for.

inside the structure

I particularly like the fact that if one spoke a swear-word into the message, it would be replaced with &* ?*&!£ symbols, so even though the best words went, the sentiment remained. 

Of course, if you were one of those people who looked up rude words in the dictionary at school and laughed (English and other languages – oh, hang on, I still do that now) then you will appreciate the work that must have gone into creating the database to recognise them all.

I loved reading wishes ranging from “I wish for World Peace” to “I wish I had gigantic nostrils”.

If you’re in London, it’s definitely worth a look –  http://www.spinvoxwishingwell.com/

Carp Spelling

Lufthansa - Nooooooo!

Please tell me I’m not alone on this one…. 

In the big scheme of things, with the economy going bonkers, the US election results (Woohoo!) and various other events unfolding on the world stage, what follows is an utterly inconsequential and unimportant footnote in a life of geekdom.

…. so here’s my confession – I absolutely and completely enjoy getting annoyed about what is excellently illustrated above on a tube advert I took an indignant snap of.  It’s…

….BAD SPELLING ON MASS-PRINTED MEDIA!

Aarrrrrrrggghhhhhhhhh (sic) !

On my N95 phone, I appear to have many photos of these instances, just loitering around doing nothing – it’s about time this pointless bugbear was let loose on my blog. 

Bluewater – SHAME!

I feel I should qualify my rage somewhat:

1. It doesn’t sting quite as much when I see spelling mistakes in daily restaurant menus (Lemon Cak, anyone?)  or handwritten stuff, or even blog posts – I’m aware of my own unreasonable nature in this case.

2. It’s (just about) OK when someone does unacceptable things with apostrophes at vegetable stalls –  I grit my teeth, and buy my bag of potatoe’s’s.

3. When I’m travelling outside English-speaking countries, the odd printed mistake is no big deal, especially when one can probably understand the sentiment behind the spelling (“A Selection of Snakes and Desserts” in Egypt being a favourite) – indeed, if I was to attempt to write signs in Thai or Mandarin Chinese, I expect there to be more than a few spelling discrepancies, even after proper lessons – you get the idea.

However, <gets up on high horse> the cases that rattle me deeply are like the examples in the pics – they concern bad spelling from professionals who spell for a living and get paid for it! 

SAVE ME FROM MYSELF!!! HIT SPELLCHECK!!!!!!  

…even if the only person you appease is one short geek.

Reading this post back, I bet I *am* alone on this…. <sighs>

p.s. I am also prepared to bet there are loads of spelling and grammar errors in my blog, emails, websites, CDs and twitter posts – in fact, I’m quite aware that this is probably the case.

<climbs down from high horse>

One Night of Knitting

Cat Heaven

The last time I knitted was probably when I was 6 or 7, my grandma did the “casting on” for me, and I could only knit a few rows and not purl at all.  I couldn’t even spell “Purl”.

Imagine my surprise when the good people at Qype invited me to an evening of “Stitching and Bitching” as it’s apparently called in the more hardcore knitting circles.

Here’s a little photo diary of our night at  I-Knit  – I was pretty impressed with what I managed (considering knitting isn’t really compatible with Windows), but there were some amazingly talented cohorts, including Gemma from CatwalkQueen.tv.  Will I pick up a ball of wool and continue?  Who knows…

I Knit, therefore I am

Having a Ball

Cat Heaven

Alex and Lynsey at I-Knit, knitting Jedis

first few rows….

more knitting fuel

…my grandma would be proud!

Knitting, Wine and Retro Sweets

Oooh, I’ve casted off and everything!

Pimm’s O’Clock after all that hard work

 

Well, I now know about “frogging” (which is not as unsavoury as it sounds), stocking stitch, and something I may never conquer, moss-stitching.  *sigh* despite my best intentions, I thoroughly enjoyed the slightly obsessive high one gets from knitting, the sweet sound of the needles and soft yielding of the yarn …Right, off to the Tech Christmas in July event tonight in case I get too domesticated.

Food 2.0 nom-nom-nom

I finally completed the mammoth task of editing that 10GB of video cooking for charity.  This was a geek “masterchef” competition, where 24 of us competed in teams of 12 to cook a 3 course meal in 2hrs30mins, and be judged on our efforts – a truly surreal experience.

The competition was not just about how the food tasted, it’s also about how it was recorded – very digital/interactive – so consquently I’m also compiling a blog post especially for the food 2.0 nomnomnom site including a Flickr gallery of our team, the “Avocadolls” and a story of the day, and hopefully the recipes too.  If all goes to plan, you should be able to see it here from Friday 30th May – please vote for our video if you like it.

Here’s the Youtube vid, looking shiny and new. I had to re-do the captions at 20pt font instead of 14 so you can read some of the groan-worthy puns at the bottom.

RSS readers / Can’t see the Embedded Video?  Click here for the link

Here’s the Flickr gallery if you want to have a look

Right, must pop off now, I have much work to do, and an Archos Blog to prep – also on telly this weekend, which means time to memorise those techy stats and make sure I have everything I need for Saturday afternoon, evening, and Sunday…

24 Hours on TV

I have no time at the moment! So I’ve decided to “do less”, which is a new one on me, brought about by a schedule that was crazy last week even by my standards.  Just to give you an idea of how busy I’ve been, there are still 3 unwatched episodes of Battlestar Galactica on my box.  I’ve reproduced Friday/ Saturday here:

Friday 1400 – get ready for TV marathon- that includes the incredibly dull and non-glamorous stuff like washing hair, doing nails, choosing outfits, making sure I have all my kit, checking specifications, and confirming the hotel is booked and the staff won’t be freaked out that you’ll be turning up at 2am looking half-mad and slathered in heavy make up. (NB: It turns out that if you call in advance and let reception know that you’ll be turning up at 2am looking half-mad etc, you are 78% more likely to be admitted.)

Friday / Saturday midnight to 0200 – go on telly.  There is an odd thought that sometimes hits me when I do the late shift, which is this: I know for a fact that the vast majority of people are going out on the town, dancing, eating, messing up their hair, or definitely not working – I can’t remember the last Saturday night I’ve not worked! Prior to doing the TV stuff, I used to gig in a band from Thursdays to Sundays – weekends were work even then… but I love having Mondays off.

Saturday 0830 – wake up ravenous and driven slightly bonkers by lack of sleep mixed with adrenalin from being on TV – yes, even after 8 years on the telly,  I still get quite excited.  Must. Eat. Now.  I suffer from “angry hungry” if I’m not fed, especially in the morning.

Saturday 0930 – back into QVC to get ready for the next show, including making sure the tech is working and no-one has unplugged/blown up anything whilst I was asleep, which is possible, although unlikely.  I normally also go for breakfast no. 2 at this point.  Must. Eat. Again.  I meet with the producer and the director and we talk about how last night went, what was good, and what could be done better (i.e. what was utterly pointless and needs to be dropped)  – I normally cave in to my first caffeine craving and drink a cup of tea just before going to air.

Saturday 1300 – I’ve presented 2 shows by now, we’re into the swing of things and the afternoon beckons- I’ll be looking at the 1600 and 1800 show, then it’s on to the evening shows at 2000 and 2300.  All the preparation of the weeks before has paid off – I know what I’m talking about, and I know how to talk about it, and of course, I’m used to the voices in my head (producer/director) giving advice and asking questions at the same time as my co-presenter is talking to me on air.  After the 1800 show, I start looking forward to yummy chinese food for dinner, which I normally indulge in between the last two shows of the shift.  

Saturday 1700 – this is where I’m hoping for my second (or third) wind, the frenzied preparation of the days before has finally demanded payback by now – I’ve sold my soul to caffeine, which comes to my rescue, a double latte with an extra shot, no foam.  Although it has to be skimmed milk now, I’m currently on a health kick and saving my “recommended guideline daily amount for Fat” for CHOCOLATE.

Saturday 2015 – just finished my penultimate show – normally the 8pm slot is quite fun.  Everyone knows what they’re doing and we sail through (assuming there’s no technical mayhem).  I bolt from the double doors off to dinner, and stuff my face with the same thing every time* before waddling back to the studio feeling contented and a little too full up.

Saturday 2259 – one more show to go, I’ll get to leave after this, but live TV is broadcast until 2am every night, so I can’t get publicly excited about going off home to bed after 24 hours, because others can’t turn in until much later.  It’s difficult being “De-mob happy” if you’re the only one allowed out.

Saturday 2315 -just finished the last show, all that’s left now is to De-rig.  This includes striking the set (i.e. clearing down the stuff in the studio), sorting out what’s mine and needs to go home, and what belongs to QVC and needs to stay at the studio, before completing the last “once-over” check and leaving at around midnight.

Saturday/Sunday 0125 – I’m finally making my way back home where I’ll attempt some form of make-up removal and hit the pillow square on in a triumph of unconsciousness.  I won’t even unpack until I wake up in the morning.

Normally, this is where I take a break, however, last weekend, I enjoyed the honour of taking part in Food 2.0, a fantastic charity event in which we raise money for Action Against Hunger whilst cooking a 3-course meal at the Cookery School for some incredibly sophisticated judges.  It was just like Masterchef, except with geek. You should have seen the kit people brought with – there were laptops, mobiles and camcorders everywhere.  We could have probably hacked into the Pentagon and/or broadcast to the outer reaches of the universe with the computing power in that kitchen.

Re: Food 2.0 Gulp!! I’ve managed to record 10GB of data!! 10GB!!!  Am not looking forward to wading through that much footage, when I’m pretty certain that the vast majority of it is not very interesting at all… mainly waffling about mushrooms and pastry it seems.  The usual saying in the industry is “Don’t worry, we’ll fix it in post (post production i.e. editing etc)” but I shall soldier on valiantly and post a link once it’s a) done, b) interesting, and c) not 14 hours long.

Well, next posts are imminent, they will be on the Food 2.0 experience, and I’ll be doing a special Archos post as I’ve been getting some techy queries from some viewers, it’s only polite to respond accordingly. 

*Vegetable Ho Fun noodles, no beansprout, no baby corn, no water chestnut, no bamboo shoots, extra tofu and extra chinese mushroom.  Followed by banana fritters.

Flash Mob, Liverpool St London (UK)

So this weekend, apart from spending time in front of my new toy (see previous post and youtube clip) , I attended my first ever flash mob on Friday. I had the presence of mind to take the camcorder with me – I’ve just finished editing together the footage of this crazy event that actually made the news!

I was there with MissGeeky (who played Tosh in the Sweded Torchwood S2:13 Episode), whatleydude, and various others – after the event, we all went off to the Pitcher and Piano for the celebration of a job well done.

Have a look at the footage, embedded here

(RSS readers/can’t see the Vid? Click here)

Bar staff kindly placed Rick’s Finest on the jukebox – not sure they realised what was going on, and certainly when 30-40 of us sang along (some with lyric sheets) it did look mighty strange. City workers and pub regulars looked on with a mixture of bemusement and intoxication, which made the encore thoroughly worthwhile, especially when people started to join in.

_

… as for Flash Mobbing? I might have to add that to the ever-increasing list of things I’m getting addicted to.

also see http://www.ljrich.com for more info