Category: Music

There’s lots of discussion right now about the so-called “God particle“, the Higgs boson, the notion of a time before time. There are those who worry about what triggered the Big Bang, whether we live in a universal hologram akin to the “world” that exists beneath the event horizon of a black hole. Perhaps the universe is headed for eternal entropy death, or a Big Crunch, perhaps dark matter and dark energy will yield some answers when we finally figure out what they actually are and how they can account for almost all the mass-energy of the universe and yet remain invisible.

Moreover, some suggest that the universe itself may well be a black hole, perhaps one of countless in an infinite frothy spume or that there are myriad realities all existing in parallel in which every single path taken by every single atom across the universe somehow represents a different existence in that multiverse.

When they ask is the glass half full or half empty, every physicists knows it is always full…even when it’s in a vacuum.

Big Bang Theory

From the very start, entropic decompression, outstripping light, no sound…on deflection
Focused apprehension written large
Like the word of some almighty pressure
At the very start energetic high expression releases light and sound, found on reflection

Colder than the comfort
Weaker at the moment
Beauty and the feeling of everything that’s the new

Colder than the comfort
Weaker at the moment
Singularity
Singularity…

From the very first, the moment of conception, outsourcing light and sound, all imperfections
Final thoughts are written out so clear
Like a world with so many under pressure
To the very end, entropic decompression deconstructing light and sound, no reflection

But colder, there’s no comfort
In the weakness of the moment
Beauty fails and nothing’s left as new

Colder than the comfort
Weaker at the very moment
Singularity
Singularity…

Colder, there’s no comfort
In the weakness of the moment
Beauty fails and nothing’s left for free

Colder than the comfort
Weaker at the moment
Singularity
Singularity…

—
COMMENTS about this song culled from SongWriterForum

“Bit of a fusion thing going on here…which I’m liking a lot :-) :-) Love the jazzy feel. The way the vocal melody interacts/scans with the music is very clever and sophisticated…..a real pleasure to listen to.”

“Nice instrumentation….especially liked the chord progression, and I thought that sort of soft, clipped effect on the guitar worked really well.”

“Love your style……great song”

“the mix was very very good super crisp & clear & i realy liked the bouncy rhythm”

“It’s a really good sound you’ve got, seems very ‘airy’ without any harsh treble, nice. The words are great, very unique and the guitar sounds really tight too.”

“This is an interesting mix of things. Production excellent as always. Music and vocal are very good.”

“Such a great song. Love the chord progression! It’s awesome music”

The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of planet Earth taken in 1990 by NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft (launched 1977) when it reached 6 billion kilometres (3.7 billion miles) from Earth in 1990. In the photograph, Earth is shown as a tiny dot (0.12 pixel in size) against the vastness of space. The Voyager 1 spacecraft, which had completed its primary mission and was leaving the Solar System, was commanded by NASA to turn its camera around and to take a photograph of Earth across a great expanse of space, at the request of Carl Sagan.

You can learn more about the NASA image here. The sound with which the song fades is a snippet from the NASA Voyager 1 audio repository with a little added digital delay echo just for fun. I hope it evokes the feeling of Voyager racing endlessly away from our planet. At the time of writing, the space probe was almost 18.5 billion kilometres from Earth, about 125 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

I’ve written a song about our Pale Blue Dot, which you can hear via my Songs, Snaps & Science site or on my SoundCloud page.

Pale Blue Dot

Although I know that the world keeps turning
It never stops, my stomach’s churning
But, I worry about how much we’re burning

The fantasy of a global village
We pull together in some kind of New Age
But there are those set on rape and pillage

I took a trip, a billion miles I was to roam
Looking back on the place that we call home…

This old planet is broken in two, f you like it or not
Some with panic deep in their hearts, Others won’t stop the rot
This old planet is broken anew, If you like it or not
But, I’m worried about it, our pale blue dot

Although I know that we can heal the divides
It will take time coming up to size
Beyond our world, she won’t hear our cries

Something happened and we don’t know why
When we look up, we can’t see the sky
And in the end, it means we just might die

This old planet is broken in two
Whether you like it or not
There is panic deep in our hearts
I’m just worried about you, our Pale Blue Dot

Music recommendation systems have been around for a while, last.fm, Pandora, Spotify, Peter Gabriel’s “The Filter” and more recently they have been extended into the social domain, just like it was in the days before mp3s and Napster when we used to make mix tapes for each other and recommend bands…by word-of-mouth…in the school playground! But, one thing that all of the various systems have in common is that the software doesn’t understand the emotion inherent in the songs (other than in general genre terms).

Now, informatics expert Angelina Tzacheva and her colleagues at the University of South Carolina Upstate, Spartanburg, hope to remedy the situation by developing an algorithm that can extract the emotional qualities of a song from an audio file. Writing in the International Journal of Social Network Mining this month, they explain how they have trained their algorithm to recognize different timbres, types of instrumental sounds, commonly associated with specific emotions in a piece of music. In so doing they hope to bridge the gap between earlier attempts to detect emotions in music and the actual human perception of the feelings evoked in a specific musical work.

The team explains that, “We believe emotions are not something that is embedded within a digital signal, but is a feeling experienced by a human being.” They then ask “Is it possible for an emotion to be searched for and detected within a signal?” They find the answer that indeed it is. “Certain information is present within the signal, which can be linked to the emotion that is invoked within a human while listening to the music.” The team focuses on timbre as the bridge between the information and the emotion. Timbre being the characteristics other than the pitch or loudness of a musical sound.

The team suggests that their approach could be successfully applied in music recommendation systems allowing users to retrieve music and create playlists based on the types of emotion different music might invoke. Additionally, it might also be used commercially in radio and TV programming as well as in music therapy.

Tzacheva A.A., Schlingmann D. & Bell K.J. (2012). Automatic detection of emotions with music files, International Journal of Social Network Mining, 1 (2) 129. DOI: 10.1504/IJSNM.2012.051054

“Hallo Jen, with your eyes of cobalt blue,
A man-gan-e-asily fall in love with you…”

“I really like your pigtails,
Why thank you, I’ve been platinum…”

Any psychoanalysts in the house care to tell me what I meant when I wrote these lyrics?

Between the wars

In kinder times, we’re sinning, but foresaken there’s no winning
The judges call and we have to tell them no
The thieves are running wild. But, they’re drinking blessed mild,
and all our thoughts are with them as they go

Won’t you run this way with me?
I’m fighting fire a little better this time
Won’t you run away with me
or we carry on until we see nothing

Fighting between the wars, take a chance or break a law
Hoping they’ll never catch us now, we’re running
Facing up to older scores, Evened odds we’ve had before
But, we can seek neutrality

The gentler hand that’s feeding, takes the food that we’re all needing
The judgement scorns the honour that they show
The thieves once running wild are talking mercy mild
and all our thoughts are with them as they go

Won’t you hide away with me?
I found the fire a little warmer this time
Won’t you come and stay with me
or we carry on until we can feel nothing

Fighting between the wars, take a chance on broken law
Hoping they’ll never catch us now we’re running
Facing up to colder scores, Even gods we’ve heard before
But, we can face neutrality

In kinder times, we’re sinning, but foresaken we’re not winning
The judges call and we have to tell them no
The thieves not running wild. Now, they’re screaming mercy, mild,
and all our thoughts still with them as they go

Fighting between the wars, take a chance on broken law
Hoping they’ll never catch us now we’re running
Sailing up to foreign shores, we can hear the ocean’s roar
Now, we have reached neutrality

It’s a song I wrote based on a Brit Pop type backing track. Me on bass, electric guitar solo, acoustic (6 and 12 string) and singing. For those who care about sound mixing and stuff, I added reverb at 17% feedback and 159 milliseconds delay to try and emulate that John Lennon vox for the full-on Oasis ripoff effect. Oh and you can listen here:

There’s an unplugged version too: here.

Working on creating a Periodic Table of the Elements in which each entry is a song:

Love is Like Oxygen – The Sweet
Gold – Spandau Ballet
Helium – Feeder
Titanium – David Guetta

Pocket full of Kryptonite?” http://t.co/dMtlfLFu

Radiohead ‘My Iron Lung’?

Lithium – Nirvana, Iron Man – Black Sabbath, Boron Under A Bad Sign – Cream

Kraftwerk – Uranium, Titanium and Neon Lights all songs :-)

Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, Iron Lung, Mercury (Bloc Party), Titanium (David Guetta)

Pencil Full of Lead – Paolo Nutini (even if inaccurate)?

Tin Soldier – Small Faces, Silver Machine – Hawkwind

“Copper” by Shellac? youtube.com/watch?v=H22upa…

“Einsten on a Beach” by Counting Crows for Einsteinium. Closest we’re gonna get: youtu.be/fND8kuZlvKs

When You Ar(e )Gon(e) – Avril Lavigne, Neon Lights – OMD, Oxygen – Spice Girls, Mercury – Counting Crows

Arcade Fire, “Neon Bible.” You get a whole album for periodic table, done by an Aristotelian element.

Oxygen by JJ72…easy one!

Iodine been waiting for a girl like you? #periodictablesongs
4:23 PM, Feb 7th via Twitter for iPhone

Carbon, carbon, carbon chameleon

Neon Tiger – The Killers

Platinum Blond by Paris Hilton!

Oxygene by Jean-Michell Jarre

“Palladium Nights” Ray Barretto, “The Chlorine Vendor” Ed Kuepper, “Tin Machine” Tin Machine, “Antimony” Robert Miles, “Float In An Iridium Sea” Noisettes, “Barium Springs” New Radical Storm Kings.

George Clinton’s Parliament “Osmium”

Mercury – Counting Crows

Sulfur – Slipknot

John Fowler – The Iodine Song
Dysprosium is a 5-piece melodic metal band based in the inner-eastern suburbs of Melbourne

Rhodium Records released an album by a band called Angry Chiwawah

There were many others…thanks to twitter and Facebook friends!

‘Sonic Visualizer’ is a music visualization app, SlowMP3 can slow and transpose MP3s and help identify chords in a song, BPMinus will let you change pitch and tempo and perform BPM analysis, ‘GBK Music’ can help find chords and scales for guitar, bass and keyboards, and finally ‘Pitch Ear Trainer’ can help you train your ear for perfect pitch recognition.

via Five FREE tools for Musicians (and music lovers) – freewaregenius.com.

A bit of parental-adolescent psychology for today’s Sciencebase blog post, encapsulated in a song. You’ll remember The Undertones’ classic – Teenage Kicks – a song of nostalgia, of lost youth, of unrequited love, of the pleasure, the pain, the angst of teenage years. Well, I re-hashed Sharkey’s words to adopt the perspective of a parent watching from the sidelines…

Teenage Kids (to the tune of Teenage Kicks, obviously)

Well, teenage kids so hard to beat
They’re so much bigger with the stuff they eat
And, then there’s Red Bull and those energy drinks
Gives them a power that makes you think

I wanna talk to, wanna talk to right
My teenage kids but they’re out all night

I’m gonna call up on my mobile phone
But they’re on Facebook or they’re not alone
Bed room’s disgusting and it needs a clean
It’s the foulest state you’ve ever seen

I wanna talk to, wanna talk tonight
My teenage kids on Mighty White

Those teenage kids, well they’ve got it hard
Exams and pressures like we never had
Like who to friend on the Facebook next
Moral dilemma that’s got them vexed

I wanna talk to, wanna talk not fight
My teenage kids about wrong and right

I wanna talk to, wanna talk not fight
My teenage kids about wrong and right

Alright