Tags: music

abc to SVG | CSS-Tricks

Aw, this is so nice! Chris points to the way that The Session generates sheet music from abc text:

The SVG conversion is made possible entirely in JavaScript by an open source library. That’s the progressive enhancement part. Store and ship the basic format, and let the browser enhance the experience, if it can (it can).

Here’s another way of thinking of it: I was contacted by a blind user of The Session who hadn’t come across abc notation before. Once they realised how it worked, they said it was like having alt text for sheet music! 🤯

Episode 52 - Going Offline | with Jeremy Keith - Relative Paths

I really enjoyed chatting with Mark and Ben on the Relative Paths podcast. We talked about service workers and Going Offline, but we also had a good musical discussion.

This episode is also on Huffduffer.

The Real Music Club presents Salter Cane, The Equatorial Group, The Organ Grinder’s Monkey Saturday 28th Apr 2018 | The Brunswick

Mark your calendars, Brightonians: one week from tomorrow, on Saturdaay, April 28th, come and see my band Salter Cane playing in The Brunswick.

We will rock you …in the most miserablist way possible.

(Also, The Equatorial Group sound pretty great.)

Sessions Map

This is nifty—a map of all the Irish music sessions and events happening around the world, using the data from TheSession.org.

If you’re interested in using data from The Session, there’s a read-only API and regularly-updated data dumps.

The Golden Record

We asked you to tell us what you’d put on a new Golden Record. Here’s what you chose.

Ever thought about what you’d put on the Voyager golden record? Well, what are you waiting for? Your website can be your time capsule.

The Go-Betweens: Right Here

This looks like a rather good documentary about the best band in the world.

JavaScript Systems Music

A massively in-depth study of boundary-breaking music, recreated through the web audio API.

1. Steve Reich - It’s Gonna Rain (1965)
2. Brian Eno - Ambient 1: Music for Airports, 2/1 (1978)
3. Brian Eno - Discreet Music (1975)

You don’t have to be a musician or an expert in music theory to follow this guide. I’m neither of those things. I’m figuring things out as I go and it’s perfectly fine if you do too. I believe that this kind of stuff is well within reach for anyone who knows a bit of programming, and you can have a lot of fun with it even if you aren’t a musician.

One thing that definitely won’t hurt though is an interest in experimental music! This will get weird at times.

The Fretful Federation

It turns out that Brighton has a mandolin orchestra. This aligns with my interests.

Poco Apollo

Here’s a beautiful use of the web audio API: Enoesque generative music composed right in your browser. Each piece is generated from one of the 14,226 photos in NASA’s Apollo archive. The darker and murkier the picture, the moodier the music.

SolarBeat

Luke just demoed this at Codebar. It’s a lovely audio/visualisation of the solar system—a sonic orrery that you can tweak and adjust.

Hypnotic.

Patterns Day playlist on Spotify

If you were at Patterns Day and you liked the music that was playing during the breaks, here’s the playlist. All the artists are based in Brighton.

New Album: Princess Leia’s Stolen Death Star Plans | Palette-Swap Ninja

Absolute genius! I’ll never hear Sgt. Pepper’s quite the same way again.

Salter Cane

I somehow missed this when it published last year—a profile of my band Salter Cane.

Salter Cane can be labeled ”gothic country”, ”melancountria”, “country noir”, ”folk noir” and ”alt-country darkmeisters”.

The Not Quiz – Test your celebrity, music and film knowledge

This is really good fun! And thanks to service workers, it works offline too.

The rounds are:

• Dead or Not Dead,
• Number 1 or Not Number 1, and
• Oscar or Not Oscar.

Hatnote Listen to Wikipedia

Listen to the sound of Wikipedia’s recent changes feed. Bells indicate additions and string plucks indicate subtractions. Pitch changes according to the size of the edit; the larger the edit, the deeper the note.

Why The Longplay Face | Collection

I giggled at quite of few of these mashups.

Sign O’ The Times - original video in pure CSS

This is quite wonderful: a recreation of the video for Prince’s Sign O’ The Times made entirely with HTML and CSS.

Salter Cane, The Self Help Group, Thursday 31st March - Brighton Source

Salter Cane play a dark, melancholic folk-rock, full of doom and darkness, murder and mayhem.

If that sounds like your idea of a fun time, come along to the Latest Music Bar in Brighton next Thursday.

THE WALK OF LIFE PROJECT

The thesis: any film is improved by playing Walk Of Life by Dire Straits over the ending.

The proof: this website.

(this is absorbing and brilliant)

Banjos and Discrete Technologies | stevebenford

An examination of how sites like The Session are meshing with older ideas of traditional Irish music:

There is a very interesting tension at play here – one that speaks directly to the design of new technologies. On the one hand, Irish musicians appear to be enthusiastically adopting digital media to establish a common repertoire of tunes, while on the other the actual performance of these tunes in a live session is governed by a strong etiquette that emphasizes the importance of playing by ear.

There’s an accompanying paper called Supporting Traditional Music-Making: Designing for Situated Discretion (PDF).