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GitHub Audio

github.audio

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Re: GitHub Audio

#101

I've done sonification of data before, and it's not easy at all. This one is really well done -- it's really difficult to get the tonality and rhythm to be pleasant as well as accurately represent the data. Nice work whoever built this!

A few years ago some friends and I did real-time sonification of a game of StarCraft 2. Granted I didn't do the musical part, it didn't seem to be too hard to make it sound good. I guess the challenging part is to not to be overwhelmed by the data coming in.

This [1] was the first performance of it at CCRMA at Stanford. We spruced it up a bit before we did the performance in Korea.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WisMhY5BWa4

Re: GitHub Audio

#103
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I read "GitHub Audio", I figured it was a new service by GitHub for musicians to version control their music. Same here, I was ready to let my mind explode with the implementation details.

Yea I will admit, when I saw the title, I thought Github was getting into the SoundCloud space, except where people could upload music source or midi files and it would render/play them. :)

Exactly what I thought as well. We're not all crazy to think that'd be a good idea, right?

Re: GitHub Audio

#104
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd miss out on all the goodies of version control like seeing what has changed. Ideally, version control for musicians would have the ability to show "change panning of guitar a to 0.3 and volume to 0.1" similarly to a code diff. Otherwise all you've got is just a bunch of backups, possibly with semi-informative commit messages if you really put a lot of effort into it.

I wish that there was a way of getting Logic X to output a list of changes you've made during a session. When I collaborate with my bandmate, I often struggle to describe all the changes I've made since he passed me the project. I'd also like to know the changes he's made. My bandmate often works on our project while it's in a Dropbox folder, so I get a steady stream of notifications about impulse responses and undo…

I mean, Adobe Suite programs have a history feature where all your alterations to the image are listed chronologically. I don't know how that system works personally but it is a similar class of application & feature.

Re: GitHub Audio

#105
post #94

I've done sonification of data before, and it's not easy at all. This one is really well done -- it's really difficult to get the tonality and rhythm to be pleasant as well as accurately represent the data. Nice work whoever built this!

sonification of data sounds wonderful. any examples?

I replied above with another example of sonification of a StarCraft 2 game in real-time. There's a link to a video of a performance there and here [1] is the paper we wrote for the NIME conference.

[1]: www.nime.org/proceedings/2013/nime2013_146.pdf

Re: GitHub Audio

#106
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be very very cool, but good luck with trying to version .logicx or .cpr I think popular software vendors should seriously reconsider their file formats in the 21st century, including graphical and audio ones.

For all of the things you can point fingers at Microsoft for doing wrong, opening up their second-generation document formats (docx, pptx, xlsx, etc) was a wonderful, positive move. It's a shame that the music industry hasn't had a similar revelation. I'm tempted to be cynical and accuse them of fear and greed, but more likely "open data" just isn't something they think about.

The major obstacle isn't so much the file formats as just the raw file size.

Recording 16 tracks at 96/24 is 4.6MB/sec.

A typical 3 minute pop song is almost 1GB.

If you're keeping multiple takes that will obviously balloon tremendously.

Re: GitHub Audio

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't it be possible to version control in the same way we version control other random files? Just treat it as a stream of arbitrary data.

It would be possible if there was a change log constantly updated that was meta data to the stream. In other words, each time something is done on the audio/visual file, log what it was, and version control that.

This is essentially what non-destructive edits are in the photo-editing realm

Re: GitHub Audio

#108
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be very very cool, but good luck with trying to version .logicx or .cpr I think popular software vendors should seriously reconsider their file formats in the 21st century, including graphical and audio ones.

For all of the things you can point fingers at Microsoft for doing wrong, opening up their second-generation document formats (docx, pptx, xlsx, etc) was a wonderful, positive move. It's a shame that the music industry hasn't had a similar revelation. I'm tempted to be cynical and accuse them of fear and greed, but more likely "open data" just isn't something they think about.

I was under the impression their hand was forced. I vaguely recall various nation governments insisting on open standards or they would no longer use Office.

The OpenOffice formats were going through standardization and Microsoft quickly bought their way through the standards process (this part I remember). There was a lot of complaining of how they exploited the particular standards' body. They bought seats, that then sat vacant after they got their standard pushed through, and couldn't meet quorums on other standards being voted on.

There were also many complaints about the Microsoft standards themselves. Particularly, that you couldn't implement support for the documents based solely on their standard.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Re: GitHub Audio

#109
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the name "GitHub Audio" is confusing and probably a trademark violation. When I read "GitHub Audio", I figured it was a new service by GitHub for musicians to version control their music.

Would a non-profit thing like this violate the trademark? This is just like publishing an interactive graph on Github usage.

The naming and URL would probably fall under "nominative fair use", which allows you to use another entity's mark in order to referred to that entity, As long as you are not suggesting that you are sponsored or affiliated with that entity.

The other issue might be one of "initial interest confusion", which is exactly what happened with some people here: they clicked because they thought it was something other than what it was. Apparently that is actionable but inconsistently so, and the doctrine is controversial.

Source: my dad is an IP lawyer and I asked him about it.

I think there might be different considerations involved if Github actually wanted to use the "github.audio" domain name.

Re: GitHub Audio

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WHOIS

If you're using the default whois that comes with OS X you're out of luck. $ whois github.audio whois: audio.whois-servers.net: nodename nor servname provided, or not known

This is a handy alias to have: whois='whois -h whois.geektools.com'
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