bradr@bartok.Sun.COM (Brad Rubenstein) (03/07/90)
Music-Research Digest Thu, 1 Mar 90 Volume 5 : Issue 22
Today's Topics:
Basic midi driver for SUN?
MIDI for Mac
Reply to Laske (was: Re: Music Research Digest Vol. 5, #14) (2 msgs)
Symbolic Composer Info
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Date: Mon, 26 Feb 90 18:32:43 GMT
From: Simon Holland <simon@uk.ac.aberdeen.computing-science>
Subject: Basic midi driver for SUN?
To: Music-Research@uk.ac.oxford.prg
We are trying to get a number of projects in AI/ITS and music off the ground
but are blocked by a simple problem.
Could anyone be kind enough to point us to or preferably send us source code in
C for a SUN 3 running SunOS V4 that will do plain and simple binary output of
bytes down a serial port suitable for sending to a Hinton MIDIC RS232-to-midi
interface box?
We know the Hinton box is working (from using it with a terminal emulator on an
Atari). The program on the Sun appears to faithfully set what is needed for the
Hinton (9600 baud, binary mode, 2 stop bits, 8 character bits, no parity)
The MIDIC does match board rates properly, sending back its proper sign-on
banner to the SUN. But RS232 output from the SUN appears to have wrong and
missing characters, though what does get through appears to be at the correct
baud rate. (The problem is not modem control - we are sending data very slowly.)
We have access to folk who have done this kind of thing successfully on Apollos
and Ataris, and folk who know the SUN system calls in general; but we are doing
something badly wrong - probably with the SUN system calls.
Any help deeply appreciated.
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Date: 1 Mar 90 00:13:41 GMT
From: Elliott Finley <efinley%ug.utah.edu%hellgate.utah.edu%cs.utexas.edu%uwm.edu@gov.llnl.lll-winken>
Subject: MIDI for Mac
To: music-research@uk.ac.oxford.prg
I'm looking for a program for my friend that will take MIDI and
transform it to sheet music. All of the programs that I've read about
on this newsgroup have been sequencers. Is MIDI->sheet_music so
common that it just isn't talked about? Or am I trying to find
something that doesn't even exist...
Thanks in advance,
Elliot
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Date: 26 Feb 90 09:19:39 GMT
From: Ed Hall <news@org.rand>
Subject: Reply to Laske (was: Re: Music Research Digest Vol. 5, #14)
To: music-research@uk.ac.oxford.prg
In between Eliot's personal attacks on Otto Laske lies a lot of commentary
I must humbly agree with. There should be a special place in hell
reserved for the person who coined the term ``knowledge engineering.''
Like so much in AI, a term which started as a metaphor has been erroneously
accepted as a factual entity and then further perverted into marketing
hype.
The techniques which fall under the rubric ``knowledge engineering''
are clever tricks for organizing the development of computer programs,
but hardly represent the revolution that has been claimed for them.
Successful projects have tended either to be solutions to toy problems
or to involve subject areas with innately limited complexity. This
makes it especially silly to see it proposed for a field as profoundly
open-ended as musical composition.
At the very best, Laske will come up with yet another technique of
computer-aided musical composition. This is just fine by me. But
insofar as musical creativity derives from the peculiarly distinct
experiences and abilities of human beings combined with their
relationships to a kaleidescopically changing world, his project will
necessarily result in a frozen and incomplete representation of the
creative process.
-Ed Hall
edhall@rand.org
------------------------------
Date: 27 Feb 90 04:25:38 GMT
From: Stephen Smoliar <smoliar%venera.isi.edu%usc%snorkelwacker@edu.mit.bloom-beacon>
Subject: Reply to Laske (was: Re: Music Research Digest Vol. 5, #14)
To: music-research@uk.ac.oxford.prg
In article <1990Feb26.091939.3171@rand.org> edhall@rand.org (Ed Hall) writes:
>_s{w3 There should be a special place in hell
>reserved for the person who coined the term ``knowledge engineering.''
(Wasn't he from Rand, Ed?) :-)
>Like so much in AI, a term which started as a metaphor has been erroneously
>accepted as a factual entity and then further perverted into marketing
>hype.
>
All kidding aside, I think Ed has taken an important step in clearing the air
here. Those who are interested in the relationship between artificial
intelligence and intelligent behavior know that knowledge engineering
is little more than a form of software engineering developed for the
symbol manipulation capabilities of rule-based systems (and, when all
is said and done, it does not amount to particularly GOOD software
engineering). The term is used most heavily by those who are still
trying to pawn off expert systems as a manifestation of intelligence,
as opposed to simply a new approach to programming which had been utterly
foreign to all those poor souls who thought that programming was delimited
by the capabilities of FORTRAN and COBOL. After these pitch-men, the term
is used primarily by people who want to "talk" the game of artificial
intelligence but are pretty much incapable of "playing" it. Most of
these folks are in management, but there is also a high contingent of
non-technical types with a great urge to wax philosophical about intelligence.
As the evidence rolls in, it seems as if Laske falls in this latter category.
I would like to believe that if he rid himself of the urge to use everyone
else's jargon and use his own choice of simple language, he might have
something to say; but I fear I'm still waiting to be convinced. Meanwhile,
I suggest that those of us who are more interested in the intelligent behavior
side of the story forget all about the snake oil of knowledge engineering and
debate more serious issues, such as what is an appropriate methodology to
accommodate both the observation and the modeling of such intelligent behavior
as it pertains to making music.
=========================================================================
USPS: Stephen Smoliar
USC Information Sciences Institute
4676 Admiralty Way Suite 1001
Marina del Rey, California 90292-6695
Internet: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu
"Only a schoolteacher innocent of how literature is made could have written
such a line."--Gore Vidal
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 90 17:52:47 EET
From: Pekka Tolonen <igor@fi.clinet>
Subject: Symbolic Composer Info
To: music-research@uk.ac.oxford.prg
Some information about Symbolic Composer
You may not have heard of this system before, since I have been busy
developing it. In many ways it outperforms all previous composing
systems worldwide. It is called Symbolic Composer. The software is based
on Lisp and works on the Atari ST, requires 4 megabytes RAM and with it
the user can produce very realistic imitations of all musical styles and
players. Currently I am transporting it to Mac using Procyon Common Lisp
(with CLOS) and integrating it with S-Geometry 3d-animation package
running on the Symbolics workstation.
The software makes it possible to use ANY information structure as a
seed to produce music. There exists numerous compositions demonstrating
how to make music out of AIDS RNA or protein structures, recursive
n-dimensional hypercubes, recursive symbol structures (kind of symbolic
fractals), L-systems (self replicating strings) and superstrings. The
recursive structures suit very well in the construction of artificial
music and players.
The software is priced at $495 (contains the Lisp language). A demo
cassette is available at $19.95. It contains a collection of songs
demonstrating the unlimited possibilities to use Symbolic Composer. The
music was mastered on DAT using a set of Yamaha, Roland and Kawai
synthesizer modules and samplers.
Here is a list of available cassettes (also the source codes are available).
- Aids Epidemic AIDS protein conversions.
Semantics sampled from videos
made by Shanti Support Group.
Contains also the virus
RNA as a sound.
- Switched off Sibelius Contains Classical
Constructions:
Recursive Symbol Structures
mapped on classical tonalities.
Realisations of simple self
referential definitions of the
form, for example:
a -> a b
b -> c d a
- Interface to CyberSpace Mathematical and Symbolic
Conversions:
3,4,5 dimensional hypercubes,
10 D superstring, hopalong data,
AIDS RNA, brownian noise..
- In the Matrix Manually assembled sub-LISP
structures.
- Fractal Acid Popular music (ACID/HOUSE style)
constructions.
- Introduction to Symbolic Composer A collection of AIDS, Symbol,
Mathematical and Acid
constructions.
More specific information is available, ask more. I'm also searching a
sponsor to develop the concept further toward DVI systems and
music/animation workstations, if interested contact.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pekka Tolonen Algorithmic Research
igor@clinet.FI Fredrik. 26 D 40
phone: +358 0 612 1302 00120 HELSINKI FINLAND
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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End of Music-Research Digest
---Brad Rubenstein-----Sun Microsystems Inc.-----bradr@sun.com---