You are listening to New York – police radio and ambient music • Hacker News Board

Re: You are listening to New York – police radio and ambient music

#31

Post by theoh » Mon, Sep 22, 2014, 1:05 PM UTC

harel wrote: post #25

I absolutely love this. On one hand you've got the peacefulness of mellow ambient music, and on the other, the potential death, doom and destruction from the police channels. It properly conveys the 'techno' feeling that something can go horribly wrong at any moment.

Apparently the idea for Twitter came to Jack Dorsey from listening to a police scanner: http://www.cnet.com/news/jack-dorsey-on-his-childhood-inspir...

It's very much a techno thing, reminiscent of a track like Space Manoeuvres' "Stage One". I'm not sure if it's ethical to do it with live emergency communications, though.

Re: You are listening to New York – police radio and ambient music

#32

Post by lnemeth » Mon, Sep 22, 2014, 1:17 PM UTC

shurcooL wrote: post #5

Can someone elaborate please? Why listen to police radio while listening to ambient music? I am genuinely curious and would like to understand this better.

For me it reminds of Comme a la Radio from Brigite Fontaine. (But her take on that subject is wayyyyyyyy better) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1HseInfDiE

Re: You are listening to New York – police radio and ambient music

#33

Post by awjr » Mon, Sep 22, 2014, 1:18 PM UTC

Thought this was the stupidest thing ever, then I listened. It's rather cool and seems to work. Kudos.

Re: You are listening to New York – police radio and ambient music

#34

Post by tragic » Mon, Sep 22, 2014, 1:30 PM UTC

My first thought when I saw the website name was Screenwriter's Blues by Soul Coughing - which turns out to be looping on the info page!

Very cool idea.

Re: You are listening to New York – police radio and ambient music

#35

Post by grimgrin » Mon, Sep 22, 2014, 2:08 PM UTC

aric wrote: post #21

Bookmarked. I already occasionally listen to local and nonlocal police scanners via Broadcastify with my own playlists of atmosphere and ambient-shoegaze music. No joke. I'll use this. Some beautiful, fresh music on the roll here.

Mind sharing any of your playlist?

I loved your explanation: "It invokes a mood. It distills a spirit of night and cities that never sleep. Urgent events from a police scanner play upon a feeling of social connectedness. Combining that with ethereal music plays upon senses of tranquility, danger, peace, haunting, calms before storms, and life transpiring."

Re: You are listening to New York – police radio and ambient music

#36

Post by DevX101 » Mon, Sep 22, 2014, 2:36 PM UTC

seren wrote: post #12

fredley wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soma FM is one of my favourite things. Their stations are among my top listening while working. The lack of ads/interruption and excellently compiled playlists make for wonderful listening that truly augments my mood and ability to concentrate.

Another recommendation : I used to listen to "Bluemars - Music for the space traveler" stream, but it has been defunct[0] for some time. However, it seems someone is trying to revive it there [1]. It is really great to use as background when coding. Eerie and inspiring. (I just hope that my link won't DDOS it) [0] http://bluemars.org/ [1] http://echoesofbluemars.org/index.php

Trentemoller Radio on pandora is pretty good for coding.

Subdued, but steady beats to maintain pace, with a touch of atmospheric electronics.

Re: You are listening to New York – police radio and ambient music

#37

Post by pdknsk » Mon, Sep 22, 2014, 2:43 PM UTC

aric wrote: post #23

shurcooL wrote: post #5

Can someone elaborate please? Why listen to police radio while listening to ambient music? I am genuinely curious and would like to understand this better.

It invokes a mood. It distills a spirit of night and cities that never sleep. Urgent events from a police scanner play upon a feeling of social connectedness. Combining that with ethereal music plays upon senses of tranquility, danger, peace, haunting, calms before storms, and life transpiring. Dramas like Blade Runner, The Killing, and True Detective, as a few examples, achieve many of their most beautiful moments t…

This is very strange to me. How can it not distract? Some guy beats up his wife, or worse, and knowing so helps you coding? I would have never guessed it. I understand the notion about a certain mood, as in Blade Runner, but that's carefully arranged fiction. This is real life. (The last sentence probably reads more dramatic than intended.)

Re: You are listening to New York – police radio and ambient music

#38

Post by pistle » Mon, Sep 22, 2014, 2:45 PM UTC

aric wrote: post #23

shurcooL wrote: post #5

Can someone elaborate please? Why listen to police radio while listening to ambient music? I am genuinely curious and would like to understand this better.

It invokes a mood. It distills a spirit of night and cities that never sleep. Urgent events from a police scanner play upon a feeling of social connectedness. Combining that with ethereal music plays upon senses of tranquility, danger, peace, haunting, calms before storms, and life transpiring. Dramas like Blade Runner, The Killing, and True Detective, as a few examples, achieve many of their most beautiful moments t…

Dystopian coding soundbed? Sure, it works.

However, I don't think this is the distillation of the spirit of night or sleep. Cities have their own sounds. This completely removes any actual sound and replaces it with mood music. It then completely removes actual humanity and suffering, and replaces it with dispassionate narration of management of human activity. I'm not sure you could get less connected to the city.

That said, I have code to do... so on with the suffering!

Re: You are listening to New York – police radio and ambient music

#39

Post by colinbartlett » Mon, Sep 22, 2014, 3:26 PM UTC

lifeformed wrote: post #2

Dang, this is cool... I love the idea of procedural music using live data sets. This works really well - a lot of ambient music I listen to already has radio samples in it. I wonder if you could add reverb to the radio? Maybe with the room size oscillating very slowly. Might I recommend a lower default volume for the radio? I'm listening to it more for the sound quality and not the words themselves.

Could you make some kind of "music" out of the audio from a Twitter stream of Vine videos?

Re: You are listening to New York – police radio and ambient music

#40

Post by IvyMike » Mon, Sep 22, 2014, 3:32 PM UTC

pdknsk wrote: post #37

aric wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It invokes a mood. It distills a spirit of night and cities that never sleep. Urgent events from a police scanner play upon a feeling of social connectedness. Combining that with ethereal music plays upon senses of tranquility, danger, peace, haunting, calms before storms, and life transpiring. Dramas like Blade Runner, The Killing, and True Detective, as a few examples, achieve many of their most beautiful moments t…

This is very strange to me. How can it not distract? Some guy beats up his wife, or worse, and knowing so helps you coding? I would have never guessed it. I understand the notion about a certain mood, as in Blade Runner, but that's carefully arranged fiction. This is real life. (The last sentence probably reads more dramatic than intended.)

> knowing so helps

I understand that some people can't help but listen to the voice, but for me, it is difficult for me to hear details and it quickly turns into background noise.