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Intelligent MIDI Sequencing with Hamster Control
An anonymous reader writes "Levy Lorenzo managed to build a MIDI sequencer that is powered and operated by hamsters. The hamsters work in teams of two to control melody and rhythm, and Markov chains are used to modify the hamster-based inputs. The sample MP3 sounds pretty good." From the article: "The MIDI sequencer intelligently produced melodies by manipulating the musical elements of rhythm and note-choice. Guided by inputs based on hamster movements, Markov chains were used to perform such beat and note computations. In culmination, 3 simultaneous voices were produced spanning 3 octaves and 3 rhythmic tiers."
What you don't see is the small army of hamsters in wheels to power the thing
like the article says (hmm... looks like mains to me). Either that, or he's
utilising the bio-electric energy of the hamsters... as a means of control,
to turn a hamster into this! [holds up battery] </matrix quote>
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
Unfortunately all of my hamster powered machines have had incredibly ugly results.
If by pretty good you mean "Sounds like a malfunctioning japanese fairground organ..."
TODO: Something witty here...
But can they do the "hamsterdance" ?
"It's a living"
This appears to be yet another Dupe...
;-)
I don't know about hampster controlled midi sequencers, but our editors apear to be hampsters
So now we can outsource the music industry jobs to hamsters !!
If this was a MIDI file, why distribute by MP3? The same music at 10 times the file size...
Slashdot - Mutual Assured Discussion
The true test would be to see if an observer detects any difference between random controls and a hamster.
The hamsters are going to sue for IP rights.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
...But a cute dupe. Nice littly fuzzy hamsters making music.
/. article is about.
Slashcode needs a system to detect dupes. Here is what I propose:
All submissions will include a link to the "article text." This is the primary link in the submission: what the
These links will be kept in a database. Any time an article is submitted to slashdot its primary link will be searched for in the database. If found, the article will be flagged as such (NOT automatically rejected, someone might notice something new about an old document (probably legal or similar) or some such.)
Now to go off and learn to program, so I can add that into the mess that is slashcode... ugh.
Not a sentence!
And the Grammy goes to... Muffy and Scribbles?!
Right is wrong when left is right.
dance?
(I'm pretty sure that's the original song before the first site or two "sold out").
Man, I can't believe I just talked about hamsters selling out.
Please help metamoderate.
"Here we come
Walking down the street
We get the funniest looks from
Everyone we meet."
"Hey, Hey we're the Hamsters,
and people say we hamster around.
But we're too busy singing,
to put anybody down...."
Table-ized A.I.
When I first read the article, and saw that the link was from Cornell, I had a sneaky suspicion that Dr. Land was involved with this somehow. Something about his "dress in Hawaiian attire to class in freezing temperatures" manner made him feel like someone willing to work on crazy things. Whether for a Masters of Engineering project or for class
, he seems to always encourage interesting and wacky ideas, like a radio controlled helicopter, a sound seeking robot, a Wonderswan cartridge, etc.
Speaking of which, I tried to create a musical "generator" that used a random number generator as the core and used a Markov chain obtained from computer analysis of a composer's music style. Unfortunately, it seemed that above all, the very high level aspects of the music seemed totally chaotic, and the amount that did not seem chaotic were dependent on how much data I input or assumed. Compare it to generic "normal" music, and you'll find that normal music tend to have very non-chaotic higher level structures, and might be more chaotic once you get to lower levels such as individual notes and runs. Looks like they have done a similar thing, but they must have had trained the Markov chain with a lot more data than I had. However, you can still hear the higher order chaos, since the music sorta just plays, but doesn't really go anywhere.
Nothing will sound particularly 'wrong' if the finished product only sticks to the pentatonic subset of the chromatic scale. Nor will it sound anything like decent music though.
:)
We want a key centre/s, proper cadences, augmented/diminished triads and whatnot, interesting melodies, and groovy bass lines! Oh and more of the 12 notes please.
More importantly, were the hamsters tortured with the very music they were 'creating'? I kinda feel sorry for them
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
Now the question is, who will make better music, Hampsters, or Badgers? The Battle continues.
When I was in college from 1999 to 2003, I heard my compositions through the speakers of several brands of laptop computers. Many of these had buggy MIDI drivers that would do Weird Shit(tm) to pitch bends. I had to switch to S3M, a tracked music format similar to the MOD format popular on Amiga computers (or to a MIDI plus a sound bank), to get music to sound decent on every machine.
I hope Howard Stern does not get ahold of this technology. He has already tried way too many things with farts.
Table-ized A.I.
What I want to know is how the system reacts when a hamster dies. Because I didn't see any food or water in the device. Does the system play minor notes for awhile in reaction to the sadness of the other hampters?
Additionaly, If a snake was introduced would the music change to a faster and more "scary" melody due to the hamster's fear? Or if you put a male in and female together, would the result be Barry Manilow's "Let's get it on"
There is a whole array of scientific discoveries to be found in the realm of hamster-psychology and music.
The first movement showed potential. Then the artist relied on repetative motifs remaniscent of a drunken irish jig. While approaching the cheery playfullness of Mozart at his finest, Mr. Hamster falls short of brilliance. 8/10 overall.
Before he could place the tune, his reverie was interrupted.
"Mr. Gere, your limousine has arrived."
"Thank you, Miles," he said distractedly, but not before the tiniest hint of a smile crossed his face.
Sorry, but anything with "hamster" in it makes me think of this:
RealHampster - Elastic flesh, luxurious fur, a cybernetic infrastructure
I'm ruined for life.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
My proposed solution to the mess the Slashdot front page has turned in to of late is to use moderation to select the stories that are posted to the front page.
You give people with reasonable karma an extra set of mod points that only can be used to mode story submissions.
You would need to give people with mod points the ability to mark stories as duplicates of recent posts and they would land in the trash bin immediately, there is something of an honor system there though meta moderation could catch people who can stories as dupes that aren't.
The moderators would also need a way to move new submissions in to groups so that all the submissions on the same news are grouped together.
Then the moderators start scoring submissions just like moderation does now. The top scoring submission within the group would be the one that gets considered for the front page.
You would also need to choose the most highly moderated stories between all the groups on different news.
You can establish how many stories you want to get to the front page each day say 12, so every 2 hours on average the current top moderated submission would be automaticly posted. Maybe you post a few more during peak reader hours in the U.S. and Europe.
You might want to allow a higher top score than +5 for this system so really stellar stories get a really high score.
Its sad to have to propose such a solution but its becoming pretty obvious that Rob and Co. aren't reading the site they moderate less than most of the rest of us. Presumably Slashdot has turned in to a job for them and they apparently don't like their job. Most of us read Slashdot when we should be doing our real job, while apparently they don't read it and it is their job.
If you keep posting dupe after dupe it proves you aren't reading all the front page articles or you would remember something as "unique" as a hamster powered songwriter.
Its also been suggested that they are showing some pretty serious bias, Michael for example always going with left leaning stories, and they all seem to have assigned submission god status to Rolan Piqa-whatever.
I'm willing to guess, with some work, moderated control of the front page would be fairer and less likely to produce dupes and bias than the current system. I also wager they might do a better job of picking the best submission on a story and cull out the error filled, flawed and factually incorrect posts which also are appearing on the front page too often lately.
After all this is an open source fanboy site so why is control of Slashdot's front page proprietary and closed.
@de_machina
Is anyone else suprised by how this server is withstanding a slashdotting? Its' got MP3's , and a Movie on it, and i'm pulling 200k+/sec from the server right now.
There's gotta be some might big bandwidth here. Of course, it IS cornell.
Well, last time /. posted this story, the poor neuro-bio server went down hard. After that (IIRC), this page was moved to a different server that (with luck) should handle the load.
/.'ed (again).
What you're looking at in the picture is my old office. Levy worked with me during the course of a summer a couple of years ago, and I remember when he took that picture. Mostly, I remember that the hamsters were stinking up the lab!
Any way, Levy, if you read this, congrats on getting
-Nick
Was anyone else thinking of this when they saw the headline?
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
Who took my hamsters! Jerk ruined my fusion project, just so he could play piano. My new moles are just learning how to run in circles (they are not very smart).
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
The hamsters' music sounds something like the Team Metlay album Ballistic. Especially a song like Trajectory
This is a great album by the way..."Aqua Regia" is one of the best uses of 30 minutes worth of CD media that I've ever heard. Team Metlay is the Internet's first supergroup...a bunch of e-musicians get together every year for a few weeks, and write, record, and produce an album, and have been since 1994 or so. Pretty eclectic stuff, for people that like the Mind/Body industrial compilations or MuseNet -- perfect for the Slashdot crowd, I figure.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
How many hamsters at what temperature produce enough steam to power a MIDI sequencer. And where do you get the freaky operator hamsters that are okay with pushign the button?
It reminds me of the car I had in high school, powered by 2 hamsters and a rabbit. But I didn't know that the radio was controlled by hamsters also.
Speaking of hamster projects, check this one out:
/. rejected my submission. :P
Hamster project shows a symbiotic exchange of hoarded energy in aiming to establish a symbiosis between a population of hamsters and a group of vehicles with intelligent steering units. It is a documentation about the development of the project. There are photographs and a few streaming Real videos. The installation was part of the "Cyberarts 1999"-exhibition in the "OK- Museum of Contemporary Art" during the "Ars Electronica 1999/ Life Science"-Festival in Linz/Austria (September 4-18).
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Most of us read Slashdot when we should be doing our real job, while apparently they don't read it and it is their job.
Which makes one wonder what they are doing instead of their real jobs. Tediously maintaining databases and web sites, as those of us posting slashdot are supposed to be doing at the time?
No, that can't be it.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
...Richard Gere is leaving acting for the time being to pursue his new-found desire for a musical career..
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
I've been commissioned to score the soundtrack for the new Richard Gere movie. This will really come in handy. Thanks, Slashdot!
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
If you microwave the hamster, you might get kicked out of the mansion...
ObPython:
Beats bashing mice with a mallet. Anyone for 'The Bells of St. Marys' ?
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
That will never happen. Aside from Taco's view that editors can do a better job than pure mob rule, such a system would be open to immense abuse. Also, Slashdot gets dozens, maybe hundreds of submissions an hour. Do you really want to spend your time looking thtough all of them? That's a lot of drudgery, and the only people willing to do it would be those with an agenda or without a life. That's not exactly the crowd I want picking my stories.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
"That will never happen."
That FAQ answer was 5 years ago, things have changed. Back then I think Rob probably still cared, he probably was still aiming to cash in on the dot.com boom, probably hadn't cashed in any stock yet, and it was before moderation. All the complaints he had there about what the mob would pick can be said about moderation on posts too but we still do that now. I wager he cares a lot less about Slashdot today than he did then or he would have taken some action to put an end to all the dupe front page stories. I'm wondering if:
A. he hasn't even noticed the massive number of dupes and bogus stories lately
B. he doesn't care
"That's a lot of drudgery, and the only people willing to do it would be those with an agenda or without a life."
Uh no, it would be the same people who moderate posts, everybody would do a little. Either moderation works or it doesn't. If it doesn't work it shouldn't be used on ordinary posts. If it does work it will work on submissions too with a little tweaking. You could start out just taking one or two moderated front page stories a day to work out the details and see if it works.
I can also see a big benefit of having all raw submissions being publicly viewable. If you are about to submit a story you can look and see if its already submitted and not waste everyone's time posting it again if a good submission is already in the queue. It would be kind of interesting to see all the things people are submitting that are getting rejected.
@de_machina
An interesting experiment would be to see if the hamsters would change the music if they could hear it. Would they figure out that when they do a certain thing it makes a certain noise? And would they continue to do that certain thing because they like/dislike the noise? Or would it just stress them out?
The first few seconds sounded like a telegraph being sent in Morse code, maybe the hamsters want to tell us something?
The following statement is true
The preceding statement is false
And PS: a perfect end to the experiment would be if the experimenter hits the hamsters in sequence with a 5-pound maul, eliciting variously pitched squeaks from them to form a tune.
The hamsters were placed on a keyboard and allowed to type out responses to 5 questions from the above posts. Here's what they had to say:
b mo up===--
(1) Did you have real time feedback while composing your music?
$rrrDFfghhhgRRTTGFffgfcjhjjyyijjkuiohlvyinvnyin
(Whoah get back on the keyboard there little feller we still have more questions for you)
(2) How long did it take you to make the composition we linked to on the slashdot website? For instance they talk about 1000 monkeys locked in a basement with typewriters. Well. How long did it take?
fnsd;kgndf;kfdgvkmdfvfvfkv dfvidfvdfvndfothyooyoymngl kmbfgmflyhpftm bbfptmbfgmblkf
(3) Ok. I get the picture. Well what were the working conditions like? There were comments about the deprived work conditions, i.e. lack of food, no "dark area" to sleep, no fluffy wood chips to nest in. etc. Any comments on that?
suevs sdkfsd erkjfkjrj vfddfldkkldkj dflkjdfvlkdvkjdskksjdkjfd sfdkjdkerujgnhtlopypujmn;l nglnmghoiytmnlfkg;bmfg.
(4) Alrighty then. Are you working on anything new?
dfglkdn.
(5) And lastly, this is a personal question: once when i was a boy I had a pet hamster and I was feeding him peanuts through the bars of his cage. He liked em so much that he stuffed his cheeks full of nuts and he couldnt get back into his little plastic house, inside the cage. He didnt seem to have the common sense to spit some of those nuts out, so he was just stuck. Needless to say ralph (my pet) just wasnt all that bright. I guess what i'm asking is how do you account for the disparity? Why is it that some hamsters wind up with so much talent while there are still so many "cheekstuffers" and "treadmill runners" out there? Did you attend any training?
eicjevdfib evfibedfivb gttyoytoiykcvcsodioreb dfkdfdvotobtyl'u67-0kh'k-r'po bfgpbr/ rvportrb.h >>.fgnghrtprthpmbf/. That should clarify at least some of the disparity.
Hmm. OK. Thank you very much for your time.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer