Cat’s paws

 Cats, Cybernetics, Music  No Responses »
Mar 232023
 

My latest interaction with ChatGPT:

vttoth: Please write a short piece of music, suitable to be played while showing the stylized image of a cat, in Lilypond.

ChatGPT: LilyPond is a text-based music engraving program that uses code to create beautifully engraved sheet music. Here’s a short piece of music written in LilyPond, suitable to be played while showing a stylized image of a cat. This piece is intended to have a playful and curious character, much like a cat.


\version "2.22.1"
\header {
  title = "Cat's Paws"
  composer = "ChatGPT"
}

upper = \relative c' {
  \key g \major
  \time 3/4
  g4. g8 a g8~ | g r8 a2 |
  a4. a8 b a8~ | a r8 b2 |
  b4. c8 d b8~ | b r8 c2 |
  g4. g8 a g8~ | g4. r4. |
}

lower = \relative c {
  \key g \major
  \time 3/4
  g2 d4 | g2 r4 |
  a2 e4 | a2 r4 |
  d2 c4 | d2 r4 |
  g2 d4 | g2 r4 |
}

\score {
  \new PianoStaff << \new Staff = "upper" \upper \new Staff = "lower" \lower >>
  \layout { }
  \midi {
    \tempo 4=120
  }
}

Copy the above code into a text editor and save it with a “.ly” extension. Then, compile the file with LilyPond to create a PDF and MIDI file.

I admit I had to make a few adjustments to the code (specifically, the upper voice) as the timing was off in a couple of places, but I don’t think I altered the music.

 Posted by at 11:13 pm

Four down, 95 to go

 Canada, History, Music, Politics  No Responses »
Feb 132023
 

In her famous 1984 song, German singer-songwriter Nena sang about 99 balloons that trigger World War III.

Here is the ending of the song, along with my less-than-perfect translation:

Neunundneunzig Jahre Krieg
Ließen keinen Platz für Sieger
Kriegsminister gibt’s nicht mehr
Und auch keine DüsenfliegerHeute zieh’ ich meine Runden
Seh die Welt in Trümmern liegen
Hab ‘n Luftballon gefunden
Denk’ an Dich und lass’ ihn fliegen		 Ninety-nine years of war
Left no room for a victor
There are no more war ministers
Also no more fighter bombersToday as I took a stroll
Saw a world, ruined by war
There, I just found a balloon
Thinking of you, I let it fly soon

What can I say? A few more Chinese balloons over North America, a few more large-scale exchanges in Ukraine, and perhaps we’ll no longer need any war ministers anymore.

 Posted by at 6:39 pm

Class in times of war

 Music, Politics  No Responses »
Mar 112022
 

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma found the classiest way to protest Russia’s naked, unprovoked aggression. Without any publicity, he simply went to the Russian embassy in DC and played.

We would not even know about this had a passing bicyclist not recognized him.

I suspect that once it is all over (and who knows how many human beings will suffer and die before it’s all over?) the world will remember this scene as iconic.

 Posted by at 2:56 pm

Playlist for times of war and tumult

 History, Music, Politics  No Responses »
Mar 112022
 

Several years ago, while playing one of the computer games from the renowned Fallout series (to those unfamiliar with it: the games are set in an alternate retrofuturistic world, centuries after the apocalypse of the Great War of 2077 that ended civilization — in-game radio stations, however, play music mostly from the Golden Age of American radio, from the 1930s to the 1950s, including the iconic I don’t want to set the world on fire by The Ink Spots) I put together a “doomsday” playlist of songs I want to listen to while I await the fateful flash. (Here in Ottawa Lowertown, chances are that we will see the flash but won’t live long enough to hear the kaboom.)

Unfortunately I have no public links: the MP3 files reside on my computer along with the playlist itself. But I thought I’d share the list nonetheless, as most of the songs are easy to find. In any case, I think the titles alone tell a story.

  • I don’t want to set the world on fire – The Ink Spots
  • Bad Moon Rising – Creedence Clearwater Revival
  • Is That All There Is – Peggy Lee
  • Yesterday – The Beatles
  • C’est la vie – Emerson, Lake and Palmer
  • Non, je ne regrette rien – Edith Piaf
  • I did it my way – Frank Sinatra
  • 99 Luftballons – Nena
  • Here is the news – 21st century man – Electric Light Orchestra
  • Mother – In the flesh – Pink Floyd
  • Rejoice in the Sun – Joan Baez
  • Adios Nonino – Astor Piazzolla
  • Blondie – Philip Glass remix – Daft Beatles
  • November – Tom Waits
  • Brazil – Geoff Muldaur
  • Strange fruit – Billie Holiday
  • Sway (from Dark City) – Anita Kelsey
  • Kurt Weill’s Ballad of the soldier’s wife – P. J. Harvey
  • Sweet Dreams – Eurythmics
  • Round midnight – Thelonious Monk
  • We’ll meet again – Vera Lynn

There you have it.

 Posted by at 12:23 pm

Esile Rüf

 Humor, Music  No Responses »
May 142021
 

No, it’s not one of my cats posting a blog entry.

Rather, it’s a whimsical title someone gave to the following composition:

I started my day listening to this. I am still smiling. I think it sounds a little bit like Klingon opera, or perhaps like a piano piece written by a Klingon composer. But it’s not bad, not bad at all.

 Posted by at 3:47 pm

Danzon n°2 (again)

 Music  No Responses »
Apr 132021
 

I didn’t realize it was more than 11 years ago.

It is rare that a piece of music has such an impact on you that you remember clearly the first time you heard it. Yet I do remember it very well: I first heard Danzon n°2 by Arturo Márquez on Highway 401, on my way to the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, listening to the CBC on the radio.

What I didn’t realize that it was this long ago. More than 11 years already!

I heard this amazing piece of music again tonight, on Sirius XM. Different performance, but just as spirited as the one I am familiar with.

 Posted by at 1:24 am

Jeff Lynne, OBE

 Music  No Responses »
Oct 112020
 

I learned the other day that Jeff Lynne was made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

Lynne is one of the founders of the supergroup Electric Light Orchestra. Though there were inevitable changes and periods of inactivity, ELO has been in business for a remarkable 50 years.

I first “met” ELO in the mid-1970s when my uncle returned to Hungary from a trip to Canada. He brought a few records, including ELO’s On The Third Day, and he let me make a cassette copy.

This was my first encounter with ELO’s brand of progressive rock, a mix of pop rock and classical instrumentation. It was instant love on my part. Their interpretation of Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King from Peer Gynt, in particular, left a lasting impression. Incidentally, it also increased my appreciation for classical music.

These days, I often listen to ELO when I am working. It works better than almost any other piece of music, helping me focus on my work. Especially useful when I am working on a difficult problem, whether it is physics or a tough code debugging exercise. As a matter of fact, I was actually listening to ELO when I first heard the news.

I suppose I cannot call Mr. Lynne Sir because for that, he’d have had to be made a Knight of the OBE, not a mere Officer. Even so, all I can say is that it’s an award well-deserved. Thank you for the music, Mr. Lynne, OBE.

 Posted by at 6:27 pm

Working from the home office

 Health, Internet, Music  No Responses »
Mar 222020
 

Working from home is easier for some than for others.

Members of a symphony orchestra have to get a little more creative than most of us, but that didn’t stop members of the Danubia Symphony Orchestra of Óbuda, from Budapest, Hungary:

Nicely done!

 Posted by at 6:18 pm

Doris Day, RIP

 Film, Music  No Responses »
May 132019
 

I have learned to love the voice of Doris Day.

Her version of No Moon At All is one of my all-time favorites.

Early this morning, I found out that she passed away. May she rest in peace.

 Posted by at 12:53 pm

Personalized music

 Cybernetics, Music, Programming  No Responses »
Mar 252019
 

The other day, I started listening to Google Music’s personalized music stream.

I am suitably impressed. The AI is… uncanny.

Sure, it picked songs that I expressed a preference for, such as songs from the golden age of radio that I happen to enjoy. But as I continue listening, it is presenting an increasingly eclectic, enjoyable selection. Some of it is quite new, from artists I never heard about, yet… it’s music I like. For some reason (maybe because I am in Canada? Or because it knows that I am trying to improve my French? Or was it a preference I once expressed for Édith Piaf?) it started presenting a whole bunch of French music, and again… some of it is quite likable. And now that I purposefully sought out a few classical composers, the AI realized that it can throw classical pieces at me as well, which is how I am suddenly listening to Schubert’s Ave Maria.

As a matter of fact, the eclectic choices made by Google’s AI remind me of two radio programs from the CBC’s past, long gone, long forgotten by most: Juergen Goth’s Disc Drive and Laurie Brown’s The Signal. Both these shows introduced me to music from excellent artists that I would otherwise never have heard about.

And now Google’s AI is doing the same thing.

I am also getting the sense that the more I listen, the bolder the AI becomes as it makes its choices. Instead of confining me to a bubble of musical genres of my own making, it is venturing farther and farther away from my presumed comfort zone.

Which is quite impressive. But also leaves me wondering how long before our machine overlords finally decide to take over.

 Posted by at 7:27 pm

Most distant visited object

 Music, Space  No Responses »
Jan 042019
 

Even as China was celebrating the first successful landing of a spacecraft on the far side of the Moon, NASA’s New Horizons continued to radio back data from its New Year’s Day encounter with Ultima Thule: a strange, “contact binary” asteroid in the Kuiper belt, far beyond Pluto.

Ultima Thule will remain, for the foreseeable future, the most distant celestial object visited by spacecraft. While there is the odd chance that New Horizons may find another target within range (as determined by the on-board fuel available, which limits trajectory corrections, and the aging of its nuclear power source that provides electricity on board), chances are it won’t happen, and it won’t be until another deep space probe is launched, quite possibly decades from now, before we get a chance to see a world as distant as Ultima Thule.

Another piece of news from the New Horizons project is that so far, the probe found no moon orbiting Ultima Thule. No Moon At All.

https://youtu.be/4GxvSALRLzM
 Posted by at 8:46 pm

Another piece of music I cannot identify

 Hungary, Music, Personal  No Responses »
Nov 302017
 

Here is a short segment from a piece of music that I am trying to identify:

For the life of me, I cannot. It is especially annoying because I heard this piece of music on SiriusXM Symphony Hall earlier this morning, but I didn’t get the title and cannot find a playlist.

This music was played during the end credits of the main evening newscast in the 1960s, perhaps the early 1970s, on Hungary’s state owned television network.

Update (Dec 3, 2017): Mystery solved. It is the Scherzo from Schumann’s 2nd symphony:

 Posted by at 1:01 am

Unknown interval signal

 History, Music, Personal, Radio  No Responses »
Apr 082017
 

Remember what radio used to be like, especially shortwave?

Many stations had an interval signal. This signal, usually just a few musical notes, was played whenever the station would otherwise be silent (e.g., between the end of a program and the time signal at the top of the hour.) I remember many an interval signal fondly.

But one of them, I just cannot identify. Namely this one:

Bugs the devil out of me.

 Posted by at 7:59 pm

Songs for the end of the world

 Film, History, Music, Politics  No Responses »
Dec 232016
 

Last night, after I watched the final episode of an amazing Brazilian television series, 3% (yes, that’s the title) on Netflix, I felt compelled to listen to the immortal song Aquarela do Brasil, especially the Geoff Muldaur version that was the title song for Terry Gilliam’s film Brazil.

As I was listening to the song, I realized that along with Vera Lynn’s We’ll Meet Again, it’s one of the songs I’d like to listen to when the world comes to an end.

Runner-ups include Nena’s 99 Luftballons and Anita Kelsey’s version (known from the film Dark City) of Sway (¿Quién será?)

As to why I am thinking about the end of the world…

 Posted by at 12:26 pm

The Guernica of our times

 Art, History, Music, Politics  No Responses »
Nov 222016
 

The horrific bombing of Guernica in 1937 inspired one of the best known of Pablo Picasso’s paintings. Yet images of the ruined city were not enough: The world did nothing, and two years later, another war began that brought the same horror, but on a much larger scale, to all of Europe and many parts of the world elsewhere.

Die Ruinen von Guernica 5603/37

And here we are in 2016, and it seems we learned nothing. Another civil war rages on, this time in Syria. And another rogue great power intervenes with its mighty warplanes, conducting indiscriminate bombings against civilian targets.

Just like in 1937, the world remains largely silent. Appeasing a great power and its power hungry despot is more important than lives. And we forget the lessons of history: despots cannot be appeased. They always want more. The demons of nationalism, awakened by false promises of restored pride, cannot be appeased. They will always demand more.

What horrors will follow in the coming years? Will we see the streets of Europe, perhaps North America, look like Aleppo’s today? Is Aleppo just a prelude to what is yet to come, just like Guernica was 79 years ago?

As I think of this, it brings to my mind a 33-year old German-language hit song, Nena’s 99 Luftballons.  Here is how that song ends (my less-than-perfect translation of the German lyrics; they also produced an English version but it was, well, rather lame):

Neunundneunzig Jahre Krieg
Ließen keinen Platz für Sieger
Kriegsminister gibt’s nicht mehr
Und auch keine Düsenflieger

Heute zieh’ ich meine Runden
Seh die Welt in Trümmern liegen
Hab ‘n Luftballon gefunden
Denk’ an Dich und lass’ ihn fliegen

 Ninety-nine years of war
Left no room for a victor
There are no more war ministers
Also no more fighter bombers

Today as I took a stroll
Saw a world, ruined by war
There, I just found a balloon
Thinking of you, I let it fly soon
 Posted by at 10:57 am

Zoltan Kocsis, R.I.P.

 Music  No Responses »
Nov 062016
 

Hungarian piano virtuoso Zoltan Kocsis died today. He was only 64.

This is him playing the first movement of Bartok’s second piano concerto:

May he rest in peace.

 Posted by at 5:12 pm

Russian class act

 History, Music, Politics  No Responses »
May 052016
 

And just when you least expect it… Russia celebrates its victories in Syria over ISIL with a class act, an amazing concert by the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra of St. Petersburg, held at the ancient amphitheater that is at the center of Palmyra’s Roman era ruins, badly damaged (not to mention desecrated with barbaric public executions) by the Islamic State.

Russia, of course, intervened not for reasons of altruism but because American indecisiveness offered them an opportunity to prop up Assad’s regime. Nonetheless, I much rather watch an amazing concert like this than public beheadings.

And the music was, in fact, amazing. It included a piece titled Quadrille, from contemporary Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin’s opera Not Love Alone. I think I ought learn a little more about contemporary Russian opera.

The concert was carried live (of course) by RT, complete with a televised greeting by Putin. Not unlike a similar concert that the same orchestra held in South Ossetia, after Russia’s brief war with the Republic of Georgia a few years ago.

 Posted by at 11:12 pm
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