Hamster-controlled MIDI

haeger writes "I found this wonderful page on the net. The project was initially fueled by the desire to explore the MIDI protocol. It was decided that this would be accomplished by building a MIDI device, and an intelligent hamster controlled MIDI sequencer was designed. Each voice was controlled by two hamsters: one that was responsible for adjusting the rhythmic qualities of the melody and another that modified the note sequence. With all of these elements in combination, an output was produced with very musical qualities. This is like Fritz & His Performing Hamsters with a geek twist. Video and music is provided on the webpage."

Comments

This puts a whole new meaning

[va3atc]

to the song Hamster Dance

Remember this when ICQ was in its infancy? :)

Re:This puts a whole new meaning

[Nermal6693]

It's Hampster, you insensitive clod! :)

Re:This puts a whole new meaning

[JoeBaldwin]

Fuck, I remember it from now. Literally, I just got emailed a link to the fucking Hamster Dance. RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND.

I'm scared, so very very scared.

*sigh*

[TWX]

Richard Gere jokes in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...

Re:*sigh*

[Trillan]

*points one post down and giggles*

Dude, you called that pefectly... :)

Re:*sigh*

[TWX]

"*points one post down and giggles*

Dude, you called that pefectly... :)"

Yeah, I noticed that. Kind of caught me by surprise. That post is here for anyone not browsing at -1, where the comment was moderated to...

Not only can hamsters make music

[Anonymous Coward]

They can make people dance as well. Just ask Richard Gere

Electrocuting hamsters for music

[JoeBaldwin]

How could we sink so low...

Re:Electrocuting hamsters for music

[ShadowBlasko]

Well, my Olympus Camera comes with amazing Squirrel attachment!

Sorry, that was cheap, but really, he did have this amazing fascination with electronics.

Great!

[Trillan]

I want those hamsters. My GarageBand music could use a professional touch...

Well

[savagedome]

Using Hamster input for music. We are now a step closer to monkeys writing Shakespeare. Its finally going to be true!

Re:Well

[wafflemonger]

It's the hamsters that write the music and the monkies write the lyrics.

how long...

[mikeeeeeee]

until i can see them in concert?

hamster intelligence

[tsunamifirestorm]

an intelligent hamster controlled MIDI sequencer
as opposed to a nonintelligent hamster? ;)

Why bother?

[Rallion]

It's a multimedia item, and it looks to be pretty low bandwidth. Now the server is actually on fire somewhere and only about ten Slashdotters got to hear the hamsters play.

Well...

[DoraLives]

if you consider some of the *cough* art that's being foisted upon the music consumer these days by the Big Corps, this might be considered a sign of Coming Improvements in the product.

Is the RIAA looking into this stuff?

Re:Well...

[PacoTaco]

Is the RIAA looking into this stuff?

RIAA hamsters cost $17 each and you're not allowed to let them out of their cages.

Re:Well...

[lavaface]

if you consider some of the *cough* art that's being foisted upon the music consumer these days by the Big Corps, this might be considered a sign of Coming Improvements in the product

I'm getting tired of the endless comments about the endless stream of crap the "Big Corps" are shoving down our throats. While I agree there is a lot of redundant, senseless tripe being peddled these days, you have to give some credit for bands like Radiohead, Sigur Ros, DJ Shadow, and countless other deserving artists that are served up alongside the Spears and [insert mindless pop band]. I have the sneaking suspicion that much of the crud out there is not necessarily "foisted" upon the masses; a lot of idiots actually like the blah and request it. Companies respond to market forces.

That being said, let me note I hate corporate control of culture. I would love to see the day when the general public catches on to how useful the internet can be for finding and promoting good music. I work with music and every day I see more people realizing you can sculpt soundscapes, make beats and bust grooves with a computer, cheap software and (also cheap) instruments. It's a two way street. Consumers can be producers. With sites like Magnatune and countless others it's just a matter of time before all true artists realize their best bet is to share and sell direct to fans. Two more years and that will be the prevailing model.

Video is next . . .

Re:Well...

[doorbot.com]

RIAA hamsters cost $17 each and you're not allowed to let them out of their cages.

And SCO will claim ownership of any offspring (as derivative works) should your hamsters have any offspring. May Darl have mercy on your soul if those offspring should produce their own music (derivatives of derivatives)...

Re:Well...

[Maestro4k]

• RIAA hamsters cost $17 each and you're not allowed to let them out of their cages.

The RIAA announced today that they had served lawsuits on over 1000 pet stores allegedly selling RIAA hamsters as regular hamsters. Shortly thereafter it was reported that of those initially sued, one was a mortuary, another a bank, and a third a hospital. When asked about this, the RIAA just shrugged and said "We can afford to sue them, they can't afford to fight it, so they'll pay anyway. And that's all the matters in the end."

Despite..

[agent dero]

the 'cool as hell qualities.'

Does this question strike anybody; how much, alchohol/time/delirium must a person have to mix hamsters, small rodent aminamals, and MIDI.......

Something just seems......weird here.

Re:Despite..

[kinnell]

how much, alchohol/time/delirium must a person have to mix hamsters, small rodent aminamals, and MIDI

Sadly, not enough to make the conceptual leap from hamster-controlled-MIDI to MIDI-controlled-hamsters.

As long as they don't use a Badger...

[Anonymous Coward]

Badger Badger Mushroom Snake!

Sorry. I'll stand over hear and be quiet.

Re:/.'ed already?

[The Limp Devil]

Looks like he had a hamster-controlled webserver too!

Why Not?

[photonX]

Well, we had the Monkeys, the Beatles, and the Byrds, why not the Hamsters?

Re:Why Not?

[WhodoVoodoo]

Pfft, We had The Hamster back in like, what? 1998?

Great group. About a hundred hamster dancing and singing acapella, I think was the idea. Anyhow they quickly sold out and became to "commercial" so I moved on to way more indie things. Poser.

Damn, beat me to it :)

[mcc]

I was actually wanting to do something pretty much just like this with ferrets. My idea being you somehow attach something to some ferrets that will let you track their location and then set them loose in a room, and record their locations over a couple of minutes, and have the current location of each ferret correspond to one tone (maybe with the x position controlling frequency, and the y position controlling a VCF). The idea came when I was at the house of a friend who has six ferrets and he wound up dropping all six into a plastic bag and then just dropping the bag in someone's lap... ferrets just spewed out everywhere...

Unfortunately unlike me the hamster people appear to have actually (1) initiative and (2) the technical will to get it done. Of course, I have the definite advantage that unlike them, my web page still works, because they have just been linked in a slashdot story and I, due to my clever strategy of not putting up cool hamster music, haven't... ;)

Re:Damn, beat me to it :)

[darkewolf]

Depends on your sample rate. Ferrets (unless they develop the power of teleportation) move relative to their previous position. So you'd get a frequency shift more like a therimen (ack, is that the spelling of the damn thing).

Whereas die have a tendency towards randomness (Obviously). Unless you use the randomness to seed an algorithm its going to sounds very musically odd and disjointed.

Mirror

[markclong]

Never thought I'd have to mirror Cornell but here she is!

http://slushdot.org/mirror/hamster/

It's a work in progress...give it some time.

Re:Mirror

[markclong]

Good god we've moving 10+ Mbps right now (MEGA BITS)...a few more minutes to the AVI file is up.

Re:Mirror

[markclong]

I am not slashdot, nor am I affiliated with slashdot. I'm a jackass/dumbass with a computer and a lot of bandwidth and too much time on my hands...so I mirror for the masses. And I also whored out a domain name like slashdot so it would be funnier.

It's better !!!

[DangerSteel]

I mean come on here..admit it

It's gotta be better than half the crap on the airwaves today !

Re:/.'ed already?

[kryptkpr]

Don't you mean hamster-powered? It'd be tough to make a hamster-controller webserver.. I don't think hamster are very well suited for parsing HTTP requests.

en masse

[slobod]

Ironic that a hamster site shows what a bunch of lemmings slashdotters are. Everbody races to the links at once until a server crashes to a grisly death...

Re:Mark your calendar...

[cujo_1111]

Is this the moment where Slashdot 'jumps the shark'? :)

Cornell makes me say this...

[Faust7]

Looks like a hamster-controlled web server as well.

So.....how does it go?

[trainsnpep]

1) Get Hampsters to make music
2) ?
3) Profit!

Re:So.....how does it go?

[Moocowsia]

You know what... its seems like the RIAA has been doing this for years.

HaHaHampsters

[sr180]

Honda use them to power engines, these guys use them in synthesis, what else can hampsters do?

Saw this coming up 5th Avenue

[blair1q]

I found this wonderful page on the net.

This is the "needless to say" of /.

You found this wonderful page, so you posted the link, and now 90,000 of your closest friends (sorry about that) have found it, too. Or rather, its ISP's favorite mode of error coding a smoldering pile of rubble...

Hearing Threshold

[Anonymous Coward]

A hamster's hearing covers only a fraction of ours (http://www.utoledo.edu/psychology/animalhearing/h amster.html), I wonder if the researchers considered using other rodents like mice (SpiceMice) or groundhogs for that Barry White sound.

It's voice activated!

[NanoGator]

To abort the program, you have to shout ARMAGEDDON!

(Before modding me off-topic, look it up. :P)

Monkeys?

[Gothmolly]

There currently ARE a million monkeys working at a million typewriters, but Livejournal and Xanga are nothing remotely like Shakespeare.

Re:Monkeys?

[Hi_2k]

Not true

I wouldn't say Shakespeare

[cgenman]

...But those hamsters do have all of the harmony of the Backstreet Boys.

Re:I wouldn't say Shakespeare

[ocelotbob]

and much more intellect, too.

Re:/.'ed already?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apache will be ported to the new architecture eventually, just give it time...

HamsterMIDI and RFC 1149 network protocol

[Anubis333]

After creating the HamsterMIDI an automated process could upload the files to the internet via the RFC 1149 protocol.

I for one would love to see this. Because the day hamsters and pigeons can create and distribute music, is [insert RIAA flamebait here]..

Re:How did you guys find out about my hamsters

[mattjb0010]

How did you guys find out about my hamsters?

Here.

We could sink lower by not reading the article

[eht]

This electrocutes the hamster about as much as typing electrocutes you.

Our poor server!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think our server was designed to handle much load. (I work for the Neurobiology and Behavior department at Cornell University.) I can't remember what kind of computer it is, but I don't remember it being anything fancy.

Levy worked on my audio project this summer, and he brought his hamsters into the lab for a couple of days. They smelled horrible! I can't imagine anyone keeping them as pets, but, to each his own, right?

Re:Would you prefer...

[Cyno01]

badgers, we don't need no stikin' badgers...

the origin :-)

INFERIOR

[StarKruzr]

FATMOUSE MUST FEED.

where to get Dedodedo_Techno.mid

[tepples]

Scroll to the bottom of this page and click "download music loop".

One word:

[sofakingl]

False.

Re:/.'ed already?

[Geek of Tech]

Maybe that's what caused it to get slashdotted. You know, in my experience, gerbils are much better at parsing HTTP requests than hampsters... but then again, my gerbils read slashdot....

Great

[lostguy]

Anyone want to start a pool on when RIAA tries to shut down "Hamster", the Internet-based music swapping system?

Before Midi and better than hamsters!

[rspress]

I had (still have) a Sequential Circuits Pro One Synth. There was no midi then but it did have control voltage inputs for Gate(note on/off) and Pitch.

Having a really sporting girlfriend at the time. A bit of wire, a nine volt battery and some Reynolds wrap and we were wired for sound. The synth was set for a pad/drone sound and she was one part of the circuit and I was the other.

The changing resistances between our bodies made some both pretty cool and pretty funny sounds. We both enjoyed but the wires did cramp our style a little.

Re:Would you prefer...

[dcmeserve]

No, here's the origin.

usenet?

[nfman]

What happens when those deviants on usenet hear about this... alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.small.furry.animals. midi perhaps?

Disclaimer: IANAUD (I am not a usenet deviant :) )

ObPython reference

[Salsaman]

I prefer "Three Blinded White Mice" on the Mouse Organ.

Are you making fun of me?

[KillerHamster]

I resent that.

-- KillerHamster

FIrst Power, then Music?

[fuzzybunny]

Great. This reminded me of a list I once posted to rec.humor.funny about getting electric power from hamsters.

Until now, the poor things were limited to purely acoustic music. This way, we can finally get an all-electric hamster band going!

I'm just waiting for hamster groupies.

Here's the list:


The following should be credited to the UC Berkeley CSUA. I left a world-writeable file in my account and waited to see what people would put in it...

42 ways to get electric power from hamsters

Stick copper and zinc electrode-needles in opposite ends of hamster. Use in series for higher voltage. -gwh

Shove them back and forth in Richard Gere's butt. Creates static electricity.

Go to Radio Chack and offer them the hamster in exchange for two AAA batteries.

Attach the hamster to a hand-crank generator and then drop it onto a trampoline.

Ignite in large numbers. Use heat released to drive steam turbine.

Kidnap and threaten to torture. Extort ransom from animal-rights activists and other anti-cruelty types: demand payment in the form of electric current.

Drop hamsters from great heights. Use water-mill like turbine to generate electricity.

Drop large numbers of hamsters into tar pit, wait a few million years, drill for crude oil at same location to run electric turbine.

Cold Fusion -> Steam Turbine. No explanation necessary. -seano

Any form of neutron capture / beta emission. -seano

Convince hamsters they're really lemmings. Show cliff to hamsters. Install turbine halfway down cliff.

Densely pack hamsters into flywheel shape. Spin rapidly. Attach generator.

Put hamster on electricity-generating treadmill. Feed back small portion of generated electricity into hamster brain pleasure center. Watch him generate his little heart out!

Seal large quantity of hamsters in air tight holding tanks. Add water. Allow suitable time to pass for decomposition. Collect methane gas resulting. Put gas in fuel cells.

Smush mucho hamsters in a trough, use the drippings/blood to run a waterwheel for hydroelectric power.

Give hamsters lots of shitty beer. Use piss and vomit to run hydroelectric generator.

Skin hamster. Melt animal fat into tallow and then form candles. Heat steam turbine.

Switch hamsters for P6 chips coming of Intel assembly lines. Saved electricity will be enormous. Cover performance loss by releasing new version of Windows NT at the same time. -gwh

Build glass room. Put hamsters inside. Put cocaine inside. Ground the floor and attach negative leads to the ceiling. -gwh

Have hamster steal one of kube's magic cards. Leech power from resulting nuclear strike.

Teach hamsters to play blackjack. Once they're at the competitive level, convince Las Vegas hotel owners to convert to serving hamsters. Saved electricity from smaller lights, hotels, etc. -gwh

Accumulate enough hamsters that the self-gravitational force causes the mass to shrink and heat up. Use thermocouples to generate energy. -gwh

Raid PG&E corporate headquarters. Threaten to drop hamster down CEO's pants unless he gives you a power plant. -gwh

Get several dozen hamsters. Shoot them up with crystal meth. Attach dog sled.

(This is, undoubtedly, the way to get the most power from them) Combine the hamster with an equal mass of antimatter -- a anti-hamster if you will. Then harness the massive energy release for power....

Have the Emperor warp and twist a hamster clone into an evil Anti-Hamster, Darth Hamster. This should be good for 4-6 sequels. Install tension to electricity converters into theatre. -gwh

a. Find a _good_ genetic engineer.
b. Splice appropriate genes from electric eels into hamsters, because they're smaller and cuter and, well, hamsters.
c. Feed the hamsters.
d. Surgically install appropriate electrodes.
e. Periodically drain off the volt

Re:Hamsters are evil little creatures

[LousyPhreak]

...hamster house that looks like a mini McDonald's playground

jeez... and you wonder

Re:Finally got the video

[iracohens]

its all in the report... starting from the top row... each pair of rows (1-2, 3-4, 5-6) is one of the 3 voices. rows 1, 3, and 5 are melody, and rows 2, 4, and 6 are rhythm thanks for checking it out

Re:Video

[iracohens]

very good... this is my hamster project, i'm glad some people out there are at least reading my report.

Thanks everyone!!!

[iracohens]

thanks to everyone for your interest in my project...its rather off the wall, but you'll find that it all makes sense if you read a bit of the project report... anyone interested in hiring an embedded MIDI/audio programmer?