3-D music for 2-D girls and tanks

I recently found a recording of the music from Girls und Panzer by the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra. The OST to the anime in its various forms was probably generated in a digital audio workstation with sample libraries. It’s quite listenable, but virtual orchestras can’t compare to well-recorded real instruments played by real, living musicians. The bass drum alone makes the upgrade worthwhile, particularly if you have powerful speakers or good headphones.1 The only disappointment with the TSO CDs is that they’re missing “Yuki no Shingun.” 2

Incidentally, I ordered the CDs from Amazon.co.jp on a Sunday, and they arrived the following Tuesday. If you want the quickest delivery from Amazon, forget Amazon Prime. Order overseas.

Continue reading “3-D music for 2-D girls and tanks”

A bit of yellow, and some grumbling

I see that the Lords of WordPress have decided that I don’t need to see previews of my posts any more, unless I use their “visual” editor, which I dislike. I also don’t see a way to schedule posts for future publication, despite the claims in the “Help” tab in the editor. I’ve been using WordPress for about ten years now, but if there are many further “improvements,” I may look for another platform.

Update: the editing page is back to normal.

Today’s quote

John Walker:

Another chapter argues we’re already living through a “soft singularity” mediated by the Internet and ubiquitous computing and communication devices. Humans with access to these technologies think and work in ways they could have hardly imagined even five years ago. When I’m putting together one of these posts, it’s not unusual that I’ll have as many as thirty browser tabs open in four or more windows for online resources which didn’t exist or were a major project to find when I joined Ricochet in 2010, and were science fiction in 1990. Our tools are changing us already, and maybe faster than many appreciate. We are in some ways, intellectually more than human as defined even ten years ago when we use them. What if the singularity happened and nobody noticed?

Bonus quote

I have been writing since 2006 that it is more likely than not that we’re living in a simulation. This is a hypothesis we may be able to test: it’s unlikely any simulation will be perfect, and by precision investigation of physics we may be able to discover round-off errors and shortcuts in the simulation which aren’t apparent at first glance. Indeed, there are a number of nagging little discrepancies in physics and astronomy which are precisely the kinds of things we’d expect to see if living in a simulation implemented with the attention to detail we’ve come to expect from Microsoft. No red pill required, just Redmond slapdash quality!

In just 720,000 months

I recently came across mention of the clinesterton beademungen. It reminded me of an old James Blish story, which is available online. Don’t move, count the seconds, and everything will be rodalent. (As I recall, Damon Knight wrote an analysis of the story that was stranger than the story itself.)

Miscellany

I watched the first episode of Kemono Friends, the post-apocalyptic children’s show that allegedly is insanely popular in Japan. I didn’t dislike it as much as Pete did, but I doubt that I’ll watch more, even if it does feature baobabs (above) and tree euphorbias (below).

*****

Although there are innumerable Alices in anime, the most Carrollian show of them all never mentions her. Instead, we have Ami, who finds a door to “Animal Yokocho” in the floor of her new bedroom. Things are done differently in AniYoko. Animal Yokocho is nominally a children’s show, and it’s okay for kids, but adults will better appreciate the absurdities. This celebration of friendship, nonsense and emotional blackmail probably will never be licensed for North America.3 However, I recently discovered that the first third of the show is available subtitled on youTube.

*****

Here’s a helpful article that walks you through registering and making purchases at Amazon Japan. One important detail it omits is that you cannot download music to addresses outside of Japan.

*****

Saturday I placed orders with both Amazon Japan and Amazon USA. Which will arrive first? This is how matters stood at 7:30 this morning:

I expect both will arrive tomorrow.

Update: We have a winner.

Japan wins

Stopping by for a moment

I’m alive and more or less well (when I’m not coughing) but very busy right now, and I probably won’t post much for a while yet.

***

Many excellent older shows are streaming legally online. If, like me, you have no interest in the current crop of otaku pandering vehicles, you can skip them and watch something good. Here are four of my personal top five anime: Haibane Renmei, Serial Experiments Lain, Shingu and Mononoke. (Missing is Dennou Coil.)

If you found Mononoke intriguing, you can watch most of Kenji Nakamura’s other series: Kuuchu Buranko, [C] Control, Tsuritama and Gatchaman Crowds. (I’d be curious to see what Eve Tushnet would make of Nakamura’s work, particularly Mononoke.5)

A couple of under-appreciated favorites: Pupipo, Oh! Edo Rocket. The following is from the tenth episode of the latter. It doesn’t make any more sense in context:

***

Marie & Gali, one of Steven’s favorites, has finally been completely subbed. What I’ve seen of the second season so far is inferior to the first, though it may get better once the focus shifts from the new girl and back to the silly scientists. It’s unlikely ever to be licensed for North America, but it’s available through irregular channels.

Notes on the perception of imaginary differences

Here’s a MIDI file of Scarlatti’s Sonata in A Major, K24/L495/P80, played on a physically-modeled virtual harpsichord tuned to A = 440 Hz:

Here it is again, this time with A = 432 Hz:

Did the first recording make you feel “self-centered, narcissistic, materialistic and aggressive“? Did the second resonate with the Heart Chakra, repair your DNA and restore your spiritual and mental health? If so, I congratulate you on your acute sensitivity. (Be sure to wear protective headgear at all times.)

Or did the second just sound a little flatter than the first?

Even if there is a real basis to the paranoid theories — extremely unlikely; the rise of the 440 standard is so complicated that positing a vast international conspiracy is inadequate to explain it — the precise frequency of the “A” in a scale matters far less than the qualities of the intervals between the notes of the scale.

The preset used for the two recordings above does not specify the temperament, which implies that it is equal-tempered. Other presets offer different tuning systems. Here is the sonata again, this time at A = 415, using an unspecified “well tempered” tuning:

And again, at A = 392, using “Werckmeister III“:

Even ordinary human beings who don’t wear tin-foil hats might be able to hear subtle differences in the character of the music now.

(Via Dustbury.)

Warning

(Black to move.) What would Garry Kasparov do?

I stumbled across another dangerous waste of time: Chessgames.com. Think very carefully before you click.

Like most chess websites, it uses algebraic notation, which I can’t follow as easily as “P-K4.” However, it also has a “viewer” which allows you to step through each game on a virtual board.

A couple of well-known games in the archive there: Adolf Anderssen vs Jean Dufresne (1852); Anatoly Karpov vs Garry Kasparov (1985). There are more fireworks in either than during the Fourth of July.

Update: an interesting short story, possible connected with the chess position above6: “Master Jacobsen.”

Update II: Lord Dunsany was a pretty good chess player. Here’s a curiosity, a chess game between Capablanca and Lord Dunsany. Dunsany wrote a chess story of some note, “The Three Sailors’ Gambit.”

There is a fair amount of chess-inspired fiction. My favorite, aside from Through the Looking Glass, is Victor Contoski’s “Von Goom’s Gambit.” First published in Chess Review in 1966, it occasionally turned up in fantasy anthologies years ago, though finding it now would be a challenge. If it’s online, I missed it. It’s worth looking for if you have access to a large fantasy and science fiction library.

Cross your eyes

It will probably be six to eight weeks before colorful botanical subjects are available outdoors again, so here’s another toy soldier in stereo. (Cross your eyes until you see three images, then focus on the middle image.)