Traditional choreography is a branch of computer science. For example:
More algorithms are illustrated here.
What does a sorting algorithm sound like? Something like this:
Category: Music
Menaces, pink and otherwise
Update: If an image of a pink pony playing a trombone might “frighten, intimidate or cause emotional distress” to you, do not click here:
Spoiler
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I note with alarm that a corner of the otakusphere has been invaded by aliens more frightening than zombies or sparkly vampires. These creatures look superficially equine, but their fur and manes typically are colors that do not naturally occur on mammals. Their behaviors sometimes suggest intelligible sentience, but just as often reflect either hypertrophied reflexes or psychoses. Thus far these creatures have been primarily an occidental phenomenon, but they recently have been observed in Japan. Here is some video footage of these entities. (Caution: sit at least 0.6096 meter from the computer monitor while watching this documentary. If you find yourself repeatedly viewing any of the videos posted or linked here, seek professional help immediately.)
I would recommend summoning superheroes to deal with this menace, but I fear that they have already been compromised. I suspect that our only hope is a new corps of mahou shoujo.
Post script: What exactly is Pinkie Pie?
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Kansas weather is sometimes a little too interesting for my taste. (The heat didn’t make it into the house, but the wind did wake me.)
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Animation of a different sort: time-lapse photography of the beginning of the recent Grimsvötn eruption in Iceland:
(These are large files and might take a while to load.)
Although this might have been a larger eruption than Eyjafjallajokull’s last year, because of the prevailing winds and the composition of the ash, it was far less disruptive. Grimsvötn, incidentally, has a long and busy history, including the Lakagigar eruption of 1783, which was perhaps more consequential than Krakatau’s a century later.
The seven faces of Kyubey, and other matters
I recently upgraded my installation of Filter Forge. Here are some variations on a theme:
Continue reading “The seven faces of Kyubey, and other matters”
Recent discoveries
Stephane Grappelli as the cat in Peter and the Wolf.
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“Just once, I’d like to meet an alien menace that wasn’t immune to bullets.”
An outstanding example of obsessiveness: a fan-made Doctor Who anime.
(Via Chizumatic.)
Update: And it’s gone, which is a pity. The video was an impressive piece of animation. The auteur’s site is here.
Update II: You can watch it here.
First in an interminable series
I got UTAU running on my ancient Mac:
This is essentially Animenz’s arrangement of “Sis Puella Magica!,” with “Camila Melodia” doing the the quasi-vocals. She just sings “na na na” because I didn’t have the lyrics at hand, and I didn’t manipulate the sound beyond changing the syllables from the default. The harp and synth were added in Logic.
So UTAU works, sorta. Making it sound like music is another matter. Not the least of the challenges is that the GUI is in Japanese, which I don’t read. Fortunately, the manual has been translated into English with numerous screen shots; unfortunately, the interface for the Mac version was significantly revised, so many of the instructions are no longer quite correct. ((There does exist a hack to convert the UTAU GUI to English, but it looks like it only works in Windows.)) The range of topics in the manual suggest that the skilled user has a great degree of control over the sound. I’ve heard some UTAUloid recordings that are much more lifelike than the above, though none are as convincing as the better Vocaloid efforts. It should be possible to make Camila sound more alive and intelligible, though that probably means tweaking multiple parameters for each and every individual syllable.
It might be less trouble to just take voice lessons and pitch-shift recordings as necessary.
Further musical notes
I’ve been fortunate so far with Miku Hatsune and her ilk. The Vocaloid engine has not yet been ported to Macintosh, so I haven’t been tempted to spend all my evenings and weekends tinkering with vocal synthesizers. But my luck may have run out. There is now a Mac version of UTAU, the freeware/shareware counterpart of Vocaloid. If it’s possible for someone without Japanese to figure out — there is an English-language UTAU community online, so help is available — what free time I had this summer is gone.
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Apparently the Madoka soundtracks will be available only as part of the Japanese BD editions. That presents a problem for those of us who can’t spare $70, or $87.99, for a half-hour of music.
Fortunately, the sheet-music people are on the case. Here’s a nice piano arrangement of “Sis Puella Magica!”, and there are other Madoka arrangements here (third and fourth from the bottom) and here. I hope to see more soon. Update: here’s another.
Update: This is seriously creepy.
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Frëd has been watching Ghost in the Shell: Innocence, or at least the opening.
Bleah
During the ’80’s, I quit listening to the radio entirely, focusing instead on building up my classical music library. This illustrates why. ((There was some great rock recorded during that decade: Steve Morse’s The Introduction, King Crimson’s Discipline, Steve Vai’s first two albums, Joe Satriani’s Surfing with the Alien, early Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, Djam Karet, Boiled in Lead, Adrian Belew, and more I’ll think of later. But most of these are primarily instrumental efforts, and it’s hard to write intelligently about music as music — too hard for Rolling Stone writers, who’d rather drivel on about politics, transgression and other nonsense than actually listen to the music they review.))
Notes, mostly musical
One of the 19th-century piano virtuoso’s stocks in trade was the operatic paraphrase, in which he took themes from a popular opera and assembled a fantasia with them, often highly elaborate. The practice fell out of favor in the twentieth century. However, if you substitue anime for opera, it is alive and well in otakudom. Here is a piece using themes from Yuki Kajiura’s OST for Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica:
Here’s a novel treatment of a theme from Madoka:
(Via Anime Instrumentality.)
I wonder if might be possible to make an opera out of Madoka. Perhaps not; it would take considerable ingenuity to condense the story to two or three hours and still have it make sense, and there are no significant roles for adult male singers — you could cast Kyubey as a tenor, but he would be cuter and creepier as a boy soprano. While a clever designer can probably think of a way to present the witches, the events of the last episode are another matter entirely.
Nevertheless, if it could be done, and done well, it would potentially be overwhelming. The composer would not necessarily have to be Yuki Kajiura, though I would be curious to hear if she’s capable of something as complex as an opera.
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Not anime-related, but noteworthy: an arrangement of a Lady Gaga tune that bears listening:
(Via Darwin Catholic.)
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Susumu Hirasawa, guitarist and singer of P-Model and composer of soundtracks for Satoshi Kon, has made a number of his pieces available for free download. I particularly recommend “The Girl in Byakkoya,” the ending theme of Paprika.
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What is the greatest problem with the American legal system? Perhaps it’s that judges have lousy taste in music.
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A problem with Windows computers you might not be aware of:
Anything you can do, I can do weirder
Which country has produced the stranger musicians, the USA or Japan? Let’s see.
Testing, testing
Let’s see if this media player works for .ogg files:
Myriad menaces
(Via Dustbury.)
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Fortunately, I’m not a Linux user.
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And now for something perhaps a little less frightening: a friend of my brother has released a new tune. If you like loud music, give it a listen. It has more cowbell.
Tall, slender and on little wheels
Fred Himebaugh, a.k.a. “The Fredösphere,” who once wrote a jazz chamber opera using Terry Bisson’s “They’re Made Out of Meat” as the libretto, has unleased his idea of a pop song upon an defenseless world. “Earth Girl” is an a capella celebration of interplanetary romance. The performers are not credited; I presume they are Fred, Fred, Fred and Fred. Frëd is some kind of genius; what kind, I hesitate to say. It’s available at Amazon.com.
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It’s spring preview time again. As usual, little looks worthwhile. C: The Money of Soul and Possibility Control is directed by Kenji Nakamura, who previously did Mononoke and Trapeze. Even if the story makes no sense, the visuals should be entertaining. I’ll probably also sample Moshidora to see if it’s possible to make management interesting. I might see how Dororon Enma-kun Meeramera compares to the original. The preview looks true to Go Nagai: too childish for adults, too pervy for kids.
There are times when I would swear that every man, woman and child in Japan is a pervert. I really didn’t need to read about Lotte no Omocha.
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Some visitors have come here looking for a “shinmoedake webcam.” There’s one here and a couple more here (the sixth and fifth seventh and sixth from the bottom in the box at right. The fourth fifth from the bottom ((The Suwanosejima camera is back (second from the bottom), though you still can’t see much.)) is Sakurajima, which is worth checking regularly). The Shinmoedake crater at Kirishima did erupt again Sunday, but it was not as catastrophic as the L.A. Times would have you believe:
If there was destruction and panic, everyone was over it in time to go to the mall the next day.
The big show was back in January.
If it’s “silly hindu stuff,” you’re looking for, I can’t help you.
Deck us all …
(Via John Salmon.)
By this time every year, I’m thoroughly burned-out on the usual Christmas songs, and I suspect that I’m not alone. Here are a couple of offbeat seasonal tunes that might be eccentric enough to be listenable. These are from Masaki Kurihara’s second Yotsuba& album.
“Yuletide Town”
“The Day Santa Comes”
In other seasonal news, scientists are gradually understanding how Santa does his job. (Via Steven.) Meanwhile, Dr. Boli points out a reason to endure Christmas pageants.
Name that tune
A friend is trying to identify this tune. Thus far, everyone she has asked has drawn a blank. Do you recognize it?
Musical notes
I’ve been planning to call for nominations for best anime composers for my next poll, but zzeroparticle beat me to it. Go to Anime Instrumentality and list your your top ten there.
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The complete organ works of J.S. Bach are available for free and legal download here. (Via A Momentary Taste of Being.)
Recent arrivals
I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Astropia was picked up by an American distributer earlier this year. My copy arrived a few days ago, and the story of a minor Icelandic celebrity who is assimilated into RPG culture was as enjoyable as I remembered. Now, would a region 1 distributer please license Faintheart, which is only available as a region 2 PAL disc?
Another recent arrival is Loituma’s Things of Beauty, which includes the “Ievan Polka.” It might sound vaguely familiar.