Nov 18, 2005 06:34 am Man this is awesome!
everyone must check this out immediately: music genome project
Posted on Nov 18, 2005 02:41 am
fortymile
Member Since: Jan 18, 2003
pandora.com
free, and it sort of works.
i saw these guys--i think it was them--on the science channel in 2001. they have built a program/database for song analysis. first business goal: analyze all 'hits' in the past like, 60 years. look at 400 different musical attributes. and then learn from the results. offer song analysis services to songwriters. to see how 'hit worthy' your tunes are. see if they fall into the 'hit clusters' where hits were falling.
that was business plan number one, i think.
plan number two is to put the engine online. for song/artist recommendation.
you use this to set up up to 100 streaming radio stations for yourself. the engines takes your preferences, consults its database, and recommends matches by artists you might not have been exposed to yet.
man, so far, im getting some good stuff. the main thing it cannot seem to do is to understand 'attitude,' which is very important to me. (emo singers over superficially grunge music just wont cut it for me. these are different aesthetics.) yet, the service calls this one of its strenghts, and from a certain perspective, yeah. i guess it is. it goes cross-genre. looks at instrumentation, tempo, time signature stuff, how long a song lingers on the tonic chord--heavy musicological analysis here. you can hear an interview with the developer on the NPR website. the FAQ on the actual site also answers many questions about how it works.
but i am definitely finding some good stuff here!
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Nov 18, 2005 06:34 am Man this is awesome!
Nov 18, 2005 09:34 am it...uh... gave me what I wanted I supose. I asked for things like Staple... and it gave me their newest album... :)
...ohh..wait... I see...thats nice...
Nov 18, 2005 01:35 pm Ok, just to be difficult I went with Tangerine Dream and it turned up the usual suspects. But it also turned up some fame stuff which really doesnt belong in that genre at all. Like Angus MacLise, who is more along the lines of noise art then anything, he surely doesnt belong in the genre as TD. Its more along the lines of Einsturzende Neubauten, more noise then anything..
It did however pick out Harold Bud with Brian Eno, very nice piece. And it also picked up on Synergy's tune Rampage of the Elements, which fits in very well. Oxygene (part I) by Jean Michel Jarre, again excelant fit.
I guess I will wait and see what else it picks up. IF nothing else it will make a great way to pick an aritst out and let it play as a net radio station.
Nice find forty, very nice. It could be very interesting. I might try Ffank Zappa next and see what it come up with. Maybe it will find Uncle Meat as well.
Nov 18, 2005 03:42 pm noize, it says that it is completely blind to genre. it averts its eyes from genre -- its just looking at things like how the chords change and what kind of syncopation the rhythm has and stuff like that. more info in the FAQ and here: (first link is an audio interview on NPR):
www.npr.org/templates/sto...storyId=4661167
www.slate.com/id/2121998
this thing is not perfect for a listener like me. 50 percent of what it serves up actually makes me mad in one way or another. genre matters to me, and the style of singing matters very much. i am getting a lot of bands i consider to be too commercial and stupid and falsely emotional popping up in my grunge and rock channels. but when i let it go for a while, something interesting usually pops up.
Nov 18, 2005 03:52 pm Another cool little app (which i still haven't installed myself, but i know lots of people who have and enjoy it) is Audioscrobbler:
www.audioscrobbler.net/
It's a plugin for your music playback app that tracks what all you listen to and presents it on a webpage so that others can see what you've been listening to. And it will suggest similar artists as well.
The one thing I don't like about audioscrobbler is that, at its heart, its basically spyware...I mean, any app that takes activity on your computer and reports it to a website is a little suspect. That's why I haven't installed it yet. But I like the idea of getting recommendations about music similar to what I've been listening to.
And I like the idea of having a web page that can show anybody who cares what my listening habits have been lately. I mean, wouldn't you enjoy knowing that dB has been listening to a lot of Spice Girls lately, or that I've been listening to The Wheels On the Bus Go Round and Round? :-D
Nov 18, 2005 03:52 pm Ya, after a bit here it did have some very interesting Japanese artits as well that I thought I was the only one who even knew they existed. I will be patient and give it time. It is matching many more then it fumbles on that is for sure.
Nov 18, 2005 04:11 pm this has that webpage feature you are speaking of...
if you like a song this thing dishes up, right click on the album cover and choose add to favorites. song gets added to a webpage.
id like something that notes what im listening to on my ipod, since thats where i do all my listening, and serves up reccs.
Nov 18, 2005 06:43 pm surely theres a way to do that forty...those Apple people think of everything!
Nov 19, 2005 03:16 pm I tried it, they played a whole lot of completely unrelated stuff that was honestly, crap, an then I got a message saying 'sorry, you're only allowed to skip so many songs in an hour'. May has well been the usual top 40 stations to me....
W.
Nov 19, 2005 04:15 pm im getting a lot of crap too. some top forty stuff, some things that are just not related at all. just as often, though, it throws up something pretty good. this might have happened with any recommendation system, though, so i dont know whats going on or what to think.
Nov 19, 2005 04:28 pm Well, I went and registered and am getting a far differant result now. Much more of the stuff in the vien of Tangerine Dream. Next I think I will try Dream Theatre and see what comes up. I would guess a lot of progressive jazz and rock type stuff with some metal mixed in for good measure. That is if it follows the formula stated, looking for musical attributes then genre related. This might turn out to be an enjoyable little thing.
And funny enough it actually turned up something I didnt expect. Peace Orchestra, which is a bit more progressive kinda of a Tangerine Dream meets Blue Man Group.
I like the explanations when you click the Why did you play that? in the pop up menu. Very interesting combinations of stuff and reasons why they go together.
Nov 19, 2005 04:57 pm wohooo nice call forty!!! this site is like a personal dj of mine, so far the songs chosen by them meet my listening criteria... i'll tune in everyday from now on!
Nov 19, 2005 05:01 pm I read the faq section and it does imply that choosing whether you like or dislike a certain piece has an effect on it. You can indeed keep a list of favorites that you can go back to to either DL the tune from iTunes or go by the album from Amazon. Make sure if your using a popup blocker to allow pandora.com though or it wont open for you.
Nov 19, 2005 07:23 pm i dont yet quite get how the 'why did you play that' button is working. i click that often, because i want to know. but if this thing really looks at 400 different attributes of songs, why does it only really list about 4 seperate reasons for my stuff every time i check? mild syncopation, blues and hard rock influences, minor key tonality. true, i like a lot of stuff that has those things, but i kind of want to know whether it is doing more than that behind the scenes. for my isis music channel, at least, it said it was playing stuff that had some modal scales in it. the one deviation from my 'big 4' criterion ive yet seen. maybe im just more narrow minded than i thought i was.
Nov 20, 2005 01:13 am I'm guessing it sort of hovers around those selected things if the type of music is more narrowly based. I know with a couple of the oddballs I threw in it did rotate through about 10 differant reason's as to why.
I am guessing but I think they may have a pretty narrow band of responses for many differant types of music.
Nov 20, 2005 06:25 pm Ya, I think I'll try picking a couple hard rack bands adn see what comes up. Or better yet, some 80's stuff like Poisen, Motley Crue and the like.
Nov 20, 2005 09:40 pm This is sweet!
Nov 21, 2005 01:32 am nice, well, its good if some peeps are liking it. i dont know what i think of it yet. but im glad i was useful for something. i was an information conduit. i performed this function adequately.
what a lame day.
Nov 21, 2005 05:44 pm Geez, cheerup forty. Nothin better then bein an information conduit in my book. :-)
I'm gonna try goin the rock route tonight as is Tuna so we'll see what we both come up with.
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