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 Forum index » Discussion » Composition
I can't pick hits!
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A E J O T Z



Joined: Aug 14, 2011
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Location: Griffith, Indiana, USA
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 23, 2016 6:26 pm    Post subject: I can't pick hits! Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I just checked download stats on my seven albums on Bandcamp.

There are six albums, one for each year, from '11 to '16 (in progress).
Each of those albums contains what I consider the best tunes from that year.

There is also a collection of "leftovers" that I thought were not so good.

Several albums were downloaded once each, one was downloaded twice and another one three times.

Guess which of the seven albums was downloaded five times, the most of any of the seven albums... The @#$% leftovers!!!

Apparently I don't understand what music people will like.

Many musicians have reported having this problem.

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robsol
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 25, 2016 4:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Nobody can. Some people may think that they can because they get lucky. Laughing
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Antimon



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PostPosted: Thu Oct 27, 2016 6:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I recognise the phenomenon. I guess the rule is: don't publish the leftovers - only publish the good stuff.
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PHOBoS



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PostPosted: Thu Oct 27, 2016 6:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

well, if I had to pick an album without listening I would probably pick that one too.
Expecting it to have a lot of variation and a nice overview of the music you make.

I do recognize it though, sometimes tracks that I personally didn't think where very
good are more popular than the ones I really like.

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Last edited by PHOBoS on Thu Oct 27, 2016 7:17 pm; edited 1 time in total
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robsol
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Joined: Apr 24, 2009
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 27, 2016 3:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

As a musician it is actually quite difficult to predict what most people like. In want for a better word, your tastes are not "average" because you are invested in music on a different level than a listener is. This is why we have producers in popular music - their job is to make sure you create music that will sell records. At least that's one way of looking at it. A bunch of housewives with better things to do would suffice imo.

These days you could probably do away with producers and use Facebook Likes instead. Very Happy

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glow worm



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PostPosted: Tue Nov 01, 2016 4:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

"Honour thy error as a hidden intention."
- Brian Eno

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Acoustic Interloper



Joined: Jul 07, 2007
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 02, 2016 5:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I have an ongoing data sonification research project with a few students, in which you listen to three reference sounds, and then for each of a series of experimental sounds, respond by selecting one of the three reference sounds as the closest.

The first semester that we ran a "sonic survey" with students, I was sure that the timbral data sonification approach was much less distinct than the melodic or harmonic approaches, and that we'd discard timbral in round 2 of the study.

Instead, timbral was the most accurate (for matching to a reference sound) of the three across the student sonic-survey-taking population. Being surprised, I went back & looked at my own sonic survey responses, and I was right in line with my students: I selected matching sounds based on timbre more accurately than melody or harmony, even though I was sure that timbral was the worst.

In conclusion, I have no conscious judgement about what I hear, or for that matter, what the hell is going on. Shocked

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robsol
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 04, 2016 3:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

If I understood you right Dale, that sounds incredibly interesting!

Maybe music has not yet had time to enter into our evolution. Very Happy

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Acoustic Interloper



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PostPosted: Fri Nov 04, 2016 6:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

robsol wrote:
If I understood you right Dale, that sounds incredibly interesting!

Maybe music has not yet had time to enter into our evolution. Very Happy

In fairness, my son Jeremy, and at least one of the two student survey managers felt that timbral was the most distinguishable predictor. I thought maybe my old-man hearing was to blame, but, given the fact that I responded to the survey as they had, it was seemingly a lack of conscious appreciation of my "deep listening". Too many thoughts in the way, maybe.

I forgot to link our first paper, which is here. It was a regional Pennsylvania computing conference. Another student is preparing his master's thesis on machine listening to these sonified data, and I am doing a thesis worth of work on improving the sonification algorithms. We hope to publish by next summer, I will post that paper here after we present.

We ran out of money to run student sonic surveys after the spring's second round of sonic survey (with mildly improved waveform sonification variants not yet reported), so my master's student and I started exploring using machine learning algorithms to make a software virtual student that responds on par (not better) than student survey takers, so we can let it take the surveys for new-and-hopefully-improved sonification algorithms. What I didn't anticipate (although obvious in hindsight), is that the human survey takers must learn to distinguish the reference sounds with very little training data, while most machine learning algorithms are based on having large training sets. So this has become, in part, a study of human-like learning from very small data sets.

Humans can learn from large data sets, but it takes a long time to assimilate large training sets, partially based on repetitive practice or study.

I am attaching a recent summary description of our timbral sonification variants that is my focus; my master's student's is on machine learning and machine listening using very small data sets. This could easily be a Ph.D. project for someone.


WaveformDescriptionsNov2016.pdf
 Description:
variants of the waveform sonification algorithm reported in the spring 2016 paper. Dale E. Parson

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 Filename:  WaveformDescriptionsNov2016.pdf
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A E J O T Z



Joined: Aug 14, 2011
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 05, 2016 5:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

robsol wrote:
As a musician it is actually quite difficult to predict what most people like. In want for a better word, your tastes are not "average" because you are invested in music on a different level than a listener is.


This is very true. I used to sing and play guitars, solo and with bands. Fellow musicians tended to be impressed by music I was impressed by. But our audiences largely preferred music we were not impressed by.

Unfortunately, there's far more of "them" than there is of "us" so they drive the market. Oh well.

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AEJOTZ is pronounced "A-Jotz"
retro-futurism now
electronics = magic
free albums at http://aejotz.bandcamp.com
listen to genre-defying synthetic music at http://sat-5.com
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Acoustic Interloper



Joined: Jul 07, 2007
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 08, 2016 1:35 pm    Post subject:
Subject description: Q&A: Smule founder Jeff Smith uses music to predict Clinton win
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Q&A: Smule founder Jeff Smith uses music to predict Clinton win.

Quote:

Specifically, in the blue states, there is a stronger preference for musicals and Latin music. In contrast, in red states, there is a stronger preference towards country music and Christian gospel music. Also, in the blue states there is a surprisingly strong preference towards music from the 80s and early 90s. … We’re not calling your political preference, but [rather] how the country lines up culturally, as manifested in music.


Not much electro-music in there, I imagine. Shocked

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Cotarvoid



Joined: Jan 29, 2017
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Location: Australia

PostPosted: Fri Feb 10, 2017 4:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I guess that is why music is a form of art...

Like, unless you're some commercial pretty face producer like David Guetta (I'm not saying his stuff is bad, It has to be good to make the charts every time, I'm just saying he has teams of analysts deciphering what tastes of music are popular at the time), so unless you're someone like David - you really don't know.

I guess what's left for us, is to continue producing what we love - not try hard to fit in just to please others - and if you love it, someone else out there has also got to love it.

And never disregard the "Leftovers!"
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Cfish



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PostPosted: Fri Feb 10, 2017 7:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

[quote="Cotarvoid"

I guess what's left for us, is to continue producing what we love - not try hard to fit in just to please others - and if you love it, someone else out there has also got to love it.

And never disregard the "Leftovers!"[/quote]

Creedance clearwater revival did a song called sail away on the B side of a single. It's hard to even find it. A friend of Mines band remade and covered it.
One night at a show in a small club, John Fogerty walked up and says he could not believe someone did something that good with what he considered to be the biggest piece of shit he ever released.

One mans trash can be another mans treasure.
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