Realtime Concert Program Notes on a PDA

PoisonousPhat writes "NPR has an article on a new idea for concertgoers at the Aspen Music Festival. Dubbed the 'Concert Companion', the concept used a PDA (a Sony Clie PEG-NX73V for those of you that MUST know) as a 'listener's guide...that updates you with information about what you're hearing, in real time.' The concept seems similar to the audio headsets available in museum tours. Read the bleeping article here."

Comments

PDA in the audience

[pheared]

Yeah and theatre geeks are upset.

I sit on the fence. On one hand, I would find it horribly distracting to have a gadget in front of me. However, it's nearly as distracting as all of the other people in the world who are so important that they need to be fucking with their cell phones at every moment of the day. Perhaps the PDA would at least turn their attention away from a device that does a poor rendition of Beethoven's Fifth everytime someone calls.

Re:PDA in the audience

[pavon]

You know what, they have little reason to be upset. If they don't want to read the PDA's then they don't have to. A glowing screen a couple rows down isn't that much of a distraction. Especially if they displayed light text on a dark background.

This could have some usefull benefits. For example, I know that actively listening to music is not natural for me - my mind wanders. Having something that points out things in the music may actually help me pay attention to the music more rather than distracting me from it. It may teach me how to critically listen to music. I have also been to a couple concerts where they do project text on a little screen the stage. One of them, the piece was designed around a story and the notes summarized what was happening. The other the composer had made subtitles (not really - more like random adjectives :) for different parts of the piece. In both cases I thought that the text added to the music, not distracted from it.

I don't know which would be more distracting for those who wished the ignore the text. If it was changing often, probably the projector. Otherwise, a single screen would probably be than a bunch of PDA's would be better.

Just what we needed

[sahonen]

A billion PDAs beeping while I'm trying to listen to an orchestra. I hope they take the speakers out of these things.

Whatever happened...

[Black Parrot]

...to the Good Old Days, when you went to a concert to hear the music instead of playing with your electronic toys.

Or get a bloody booklet

[Brahmastra]

Get a bloody booklet about the concert before the concert and read that. Keep your shitty, glowing, backlit crap out of theaters. Cell-phones are bad enough

Streaming Video

[javatips]

Next thing they are going to stream you the video of the concert to you PDA!!!

Encore!

[dexter riley]

My favorite piece from the concert was "Your Battery is Low!" but I also liked "Unexpected Application Error."

why not also....

[MarcoAtWork]

preload the score on the devices and broadcast a synchronization signal? (you'd probably need somebody to follow the score somewhere and, say, tap a key every 8 measures, don't think it could be done automatically).

The screen is a bit small but with a half-vga resolution (320x480) in landscape mode it should be feasible to show 2-3 staffs and at least 3-4 measures.

The user would probably also be able to select what instruments they're interested in (say, violins & brass, or choir & organ, or whatever) because you wouldn't obviously be able to show all the staffs at the same time.

I'd find this much more useful than comments like the ones written in the article.

This will help?

[slimak]

orchestras are looking for new audiences, and considering new ways to attract those audiences. One possibility is a high tech device called the "Concert Companion."

Are there really that many people thinking "Man, the orchestra would be worth going to if it only had some gadget to play with." It seems like this could possibily strengthen current audience interest, but draw new audiences?

Well, It's certainly better than a talking guide..

[antimith]

I'd certainly prefer it over one of those little hand held talking things like you can get at the National Gallery in DC.
But what was wrong with paper? guess their just trying to save a few trees. :\

I've seen PDA's used for guides for conferences, seminars etc.. and they always seem like overkill. But I like the techy stuff as mutch as the next guy and I've been looking for a reason to use those little dinks so bring on the toys hehe.
[stupid]
Wonder if the'll be supported at the next metallica concert 'round here
[/stupid]

Sample commentaries

[Atario]

Listen to this...this is where the violin section can never quite get the staccato right. Hear that? See, it should sound like this...[MIDI plays, loudly]

Oooh, now here comes the soloist. Did you know she's having an affair with the conductor? And they're both married! Can you believe it? I KNOW!

Ahhh, I love this next part. It reminds me of the time I went to Aspen. It's SO nice there. Have you ever been? [Click here to book a flight now!]

oh no...

[Triv]

Those little digital tourguides are the most annoying and grating objects I've ever seen in a museum. The speakers are either open air or cheap headphones, neither of which does a particularly good job of shielding the rest of us from the noise, particularly when you're surrounded by two dozen of them and they all have the volume cranked up to fucking 15. You walk through the museum perpetually surrounded by this high-pitched buzz.

I go to a museum to see the art, not be annoyed by loud, stupid people. I go to a show to hear the music, not be annoyed by flashing PDAs and stupid people.

Re:oh no...

[Eponymous Coward]

Unfortunately, we are not all as well educated as you. When I go to a museum, I always pick up one of the audio tour guides when they are available. It lets me tour the museum as slowly as I want and tells me lots of interesting stuff about what I'm looking at. Before I moved, I used to just take along a friend who happened to have a degree in art history and she would clue me in. Do you also get annoyed by people around you talking about the exhibits?

Any orchestra concert I've been to has always had a paper concert guide available. It seems like this is a natural evolution of that idea. I'm obviously one of the stupid people you talk about because I think a synchronized electronic concert guide that explained what I was listening to would make the experience more enjoyable for me.

Like it or not, most of us are the stupid people that you are so annoyed by. I say if this makes art more accessible, then bring it on. Why should art and music be reserved only for you and your elite friends?

In other news

[LupusUF]

Geeks start raising their PDA's over their heads with the backlights on as a safe alternative to using a lighter.

I like it, but maybe not for concerts?

[dspyder]

I do think real-time data delivery to some sort of handheld device is a very good piece of functionality. They [maybe used to] do it at Giants games at PacBell (SBC?) park. You could get stats on the current batter and pitcher as well as scores from other games around the league on your Palm. Very nice service.

The other day I was at the ALMS race at Laguna Seca and was craving a real-time view of the leader-board and lap times since we were too far away from the screens they have there to be able to see things. Turns out ALMS does offer a product that uses the Gameboy Advance to give you that information over radio-waves. Why not just send the same data over WiFi or GPRS?

The thing they use is icardus. Sorry for the plug. Never used it, and no affiliation.

--D

PDAs vs. Projector

[Starlet Monroe]

I work at the Colorado Music Festival, and this year we implemented a similar concept. Our conductor was aware of the Aspen system, but hadn't been impressed with it. He felt that it distracted from the musical experience to have that much going on... I suspect it also had a little to do with people looking down instead of up at the orchestra.

At any rate, we elected to use a subtle projected numbering system that corresponded to each movement or theme. In the paper program for the concert, these themes/comments/history were listed. We called it "Keeping Score". (Yeah, I know...)

It was a brilliant success, however. The festival saw something like a 10% attendance/revenue increase this season. For a Colorado arts organization, that's huge: Our governor removed all funding for the arts this year, including blocking millions of dollars in matching funds from the National Endowment. Arts orgs in the state have been collapsing left and right.

I think that having a cheap solution like Aspen implemented is fantastic for smaller orchestras. Don't get me wrong, CMF is pretty big, but it's no Aspen. I'd love to see both options next season though -- a subtle projector *and* a handheld option. We had a few pieces this year that had opera or spoken parts which we were able to project English translations for; I'd love to be able to push different languages to our international attendees.

Or you could just count them every night.

[JMZero]

Unless, that is, you want a SWAT team ready to jump anyone who takes little CoCo to the bathroom.

With a $450 piece of hardware, the only solution is to get a credit card deposit. This presents its own set of hassles.

Sports arenas is a better application

[ianscot]

Personally I like to read the program notes before the orchestra starts to play, and somehow I'm thinking there's not much you need to add on-the-fly to your notes about the Symphonie Fantastique. What's the breaking news?

This sort of thing would make tons more sense for sports events, where drilling down to see someone's stats against this pitcher (or whatever) would add to your experience without detracting from others'. For concerts? We're replacing rustling paper with the chit chits of styluses scrabbling over PDAs, but what did we gain, again?

Similar Technology @ Purdue

[ttyp0]

Boilermaker football fans at Purdue University's Ross-Ade Stadium are able to score up-to-the-minute statistics, player and coach biographies and other electronic "infotainment" using PDAs. Purdue received $1.2 million from Cisco to roll out the new wireless infrastructure at the stadium. I haven't tried it myself (not that much of a geek), but definately cool idea.

Show your hate for SCO. Get a cool t-shirt and donate to the Open Source Now Fund.

Re:This might...

[gatzke]

At the met in NYC they already have a little unobtrusive LCD display on the back of each chair in front of you for line by line translation in real time.

It was nice to be able to follow along the text or just listen without too much technical trouble (like a PDA)

Symptomatic of the decline of classical music

[ziriyab]

Music is supposed to be a form of communication. The most expressive music simulates the cadences of emotional speech (bluesy wails, wah wahs, even a fast frantic solo). With western classical music we saw the organization of these concepts into rules for intervals and chord sequences, but somewhere along the line it all got too bloated for a lay understanding. It became so that you needed to know all these things to truly appreciate what the composer was trying to express.

This isn't bad by itself, of course. Poetry with a 300 word vocabulary is pretty crappy (think nursey rhymes or bad rap). The development of this new vocabulary for music helps make it more expressive, but at the same time less accessible.

People can still respond to the purely emotional parts of a piece like Beethoven's 9th, the majority sit there twidling their tumbs waiting for the "Ode to Joy" part to start. Why spend years listening to classical music and reading music theory when you can just pop in the latest nursery rhyme (e.g. Brittany) and get instant gratification?

I guess, the PDAs just treat the symptom and gives yuppies something to say at cocktail parties to make themselves look sophisticated, but the solution is better (maybe mandatory) music education in school.

Professor Schickele did it first

[Chelloveck]

Frankly, I prefer Professor Peter Schickele's New Horizons in Music Appreciation as a way of distributing performance notes during a concert.

Making mobile devices more powerful.

[Greg@RageNet]

I think we will see a lot more of this type of technology in the future, where PDA's and other personal devices can provide more information on your surroundings. I think we'll see more of this sort of thing perhaps with sporting events. Imagine being able to look up a players stats at a football game; or recieving evacuation instructions on your cellphone when hurricane warnings go into effect.

I really like this idea and I've been implementing it myself with California traffic Information. It makes you PDA or cellphone much more useful to get you context'ed information in real-time.

-- Greg