Assignment #4 aleatoric process and pseudocoding

Excellent mix! Although in the first and second composition, the songs your group choose are very different, they still sound quite harmonious when mixing together. Also, random sounds like coughing, tapping the keyboard, moving chair in while recording the first composition, which actually serves as a good transition from one song to the other.

It is very interesting, although in the first composition, the group members do not know which song other choose. There is a great chance that the songs will differ a lot, But actually the songs fall into similar category, and the final mixed music sound very harmonious. In my opinion, the second composition and third composition actually sounds more dissonant since there are more silence and noise from the place where your group recorded the music. But as Christina said, what method do your group choose to mix the music? It might help to explain why the first one sounds harmonious and the other two are less.

Your composition 1 is really creative and did what you intended it to do. Though through the progression, perhaps you should of made your composition 3 even higher entropy/change/indeterminacy like each picking your music by random and generating some random places to stop playing.

I'm wondering what the mixing algorithm is that you used? Is it the one that is the example one on the assignment document?
For the second composition, you say the indeterminacy was higher for the group when you picked the three songs together. Is it possible that indeterminacy is actually lower for the group, since each member now knows what songs to expect?
Overall, I like how you used methods of song selection to affect chance, indeterminacy, and entropy levels!

I like how you went from low levels of chance, indeterminacy, and entropy to higher levels from composition 1 to composition 3! It makes your thought process easier to follow.
You mention that "The exact procedure used for this repetition was left to each performer’s discretion, resulting in an increased chance as well" when referring to each group member deciding how to repeat songs. Is it possible that this is actually increasing indeterminacy rather than chance? It doesn't seem like it is really up to chance since each performer is deciding what to do; it seems more like increased indeterminacy since a listener would not know what to expect.

I really like the idea of selecting songs based on shuffling your music libraries! Listening to the result does seem to indicate that this increased entropy in the composition.

@Amanda I'm sorry, but I'm not exactly sure what you are referring to-- Could you clarify where we mentioned this so we can make sure to answer your question as accurately as possible? Thank you!

Kristen made a good point in how the third composition certainly did introduce some bias even though it seemed to be randomly selected. We were considering using a random number generator to select different times to skip to, but it would have been difficult with the short time we had to switch around.
As for Amanda's point, matching up the volumes was a little difficult. The phone mic had some trouble picking up some of the sounds, but overall I understand where you're getting at. Also, regarding the Youtube videos, you brought up a good point. The silence in the beginning did throw off the music but it also introduced more indeterminacy in the results.
Thanks for the feedback.

I actually thought that using the same song was a great idea, and is a very original idea intended to reduce chance, entropy, and indeterminacy. Great job!

I would add one suggestion: in your last composition, is chance high? I would even argue that chance is low, because each person can control the song he/she chooses.

I like that, for your analysis of composition one, you took into account that other groups being in the background increased the overall entropy of the project. Our group tried to pretend that the background noise didn't exist, but other people existing in the space and adding in their own noises-- which technically became part of the music-- actually it part of the charm of the piece. Presumably John Cage believed something along the same lines when he contrived the concept for the piece 4'33"

I like that you guys used randomness outside of the assignment in order to make decisions! I also think that using code to automate the synchronicity was a smart move - though as you point out, the synchronized silences are more distinctive than the other periods of silence. The decision to split the project into human chance vs computer chance organizes your project well. This leads me to question the way your third piece fits in. Maybe if in the first one you had removed random.org entirely and had the element of chance be human, then the distinctions (and thus the decision to blend them) would be even more prominent. This is, however, a minor nitpick, and I quite enjoy the way you guys addressed the assignment!

Talia, we chose the same song to eliminate any chance from the composition and focus on the other two variables.

Eric, that's a completely valid point. We more or less figured that slower songs had a higher chance of being softer and faster songs had a better chance of being louder. The logic isn't completely sound, and certainly doesn't span all types of music, but that turned out to be the case in the songs that were chosen.

We also recognized that, in picking multiple tempos, we had more control over the piece than we would have in a random song selection (like in composition three) and we wanted to experiment with the control that we had.
Additionally, we wanted to have more than two tempos in our song selection. If we used pieces that were exactly 60 bpm and 120 bpm, the other two group members would probably have a hard time finding pieces that were 180 and 240 bpm. Even if they did, there is no saying that the pieces would sound good together just because the starting and stopping times would be randomly generated.Now that I think about it, though, speeding up a song prior to the group performance would have been an interesting concept to explore.

I think the idea of skipping to an arbitrary part of the song as a change to the algorithm is certainly interesting, but it introduces a lot more bias than the project should allow. People probably have a tendency to skip to the earlier part of the song when they have stayed on the later part of the song for several rounds of picking new numbers. It's the same way people are terrible at writing down values for heads and tails of a coin "randomly." They'll usually start writing something like heads, tails, tails, tails, then believe that there are too many tails in a row, so they'll write heads instead. However, when actually flipping a coin, there may be 10 tails in a row simply because the results of the first coin flip has no effect on the second. It seems to be the same concept. If you had used the random number generator to somehow pick a time in the song, the place in the song where you landed would have been left up to chance because there would be no human bias.

I wonder if, for the first composition, the volume PONPONPON was turned down to match that of the other songs, if our attention would still be drawn to it whenever it's playing. It's interesting, though, that our brains still process the slower song in the background whenever it's being played under the PONPONPON song, as we notice that there is some change when it is absent. I actually noticed when the slower song was absent more than I noticed the 8-bit song being absent because the two upbeat songs seemed similar.

I think your take on indeterminacy was interesting; that indeterminacy from an outside perspective (or for the piece as a whole) was lower that of each group member.

I think its really cool that you wrote a version of the code that runs and creates a mix for all four songs, even more so that its more apparent that the break-offs of sound are much more uniform than it is when you do it by hand. However, I'm a little bit confused by your description of your methodology of your third composition. At the beginning you said that you would be using the same set of songs for all 3 compositions, but at the third you said you changed them and didn't really specify which songs you used, except for "2 from the first, 2 from the second". I am confused because all four were the same from your first and second. Can you elaborate on your choices a little bit more?

I would never have thought of letting a new song play in shuffle when it ended instead of repeating the same song, as my group did. Do you think that doing that increased total entropy, because the song was random, or kept it about the same, because each person's music library reflects personal choices which are fairly consistent and have a low level of chance overall?

I think its interesting that for the first two compositions you chose mostly catchy, beat based songs, while the third one was more based on tempo and varying stand-out themes of the songs themselves. I wonder how that affected the final products, because songs with strong beats tend to mix together well in general.

I really like the excitement and energy you brought to this project. While reading the writeup for your second composition though, you mentioned that you only had a short amount of time to choose a song, and that increased the level of chance. However, wouldn't that slightly decrease the level of chance, because something chosen quickly is usually heavily influenced by personal bias, like what you've been listening to recently or thinking about that day.

Skipping around the track is a really interesting way to change the algorithm. I have some questions about your methodology, though. Why didn't you all make sure your laptop volumes matched at the beginning instead of leaving it to chance, and why did you choose a youtube version of a song with a lot of silence at the beginning instead of a cleaner version? These questions would be interesting to answer in this writeup as well, since they contribute to the overall indeterminacy and entropy of the final product.

You mention early on that there were other factors that could have affected the overall level of indeterminance and entropy in the final project. What were they? It would be interesting to hear if any of those possibilities are evident in the final project.

I think its really interesting that you let Pandora pick random songs for you, which increased the level of chance very much higher than any group that picked songs from those that they know. However, did you consider the chance of for increased entropy that way due due the internet not working? That is an interesting comparison to those that chose songs that were already on their computers and didn't have the possibility of the song not working at all.

I am a little curious as to your process for deciding tempos for the second composition. I understand that you wanted to have a little more control over which types of songs would go well together. However, your songs from the grouping of 60-100 bpm would not necessarily go well together if one song was 60bpm and the other was 80 bpm. If you instead used multiples of the original tempo, (for example, one song that was 60 and another that was 120), I believe the two songs would go better together, since one is simply twice as fast as the other.

We used the Voice Memos app on the iPhone for the recordings. Our TAs said that doing the recordings with that app should be fine.

I'm guessing you meant decreased entropy in the third example? And you do have a point about the unpredictability. There is always the possibility it flows well.

we ended up simply using an iphone app to record the sounds from each laptop, by placing it in the center. We didn't want to use a laptop as we had though it might also pick up on the clicking from that laptop more heavily.

I really like how you guys went beyond the obvious spec of the assignment and worked with randomness, uncertainty and entropy in unique ways. The idea of using YouTube's recommendations was brilliant, and that of choosing a song from a pool of 3 was a rather innovative idea as well.

I really liked your second composition! The high entropy really comes through. The chaos and energy of it all really makes for an interesting experience. One can almost sense everyone struggling to keep up, and having a ton of fun in the process.

Overall good handling of the terms and testing them through the algorithmic process. Some interesting takes on what the algorithm suggests and what you did but we can discuss further in class. Good work.

This is a very thoughtful assignment. Bravo. I very much like your thinking on how the performance interval influences entropy and how the number of songs playing also influences entropy. Very nice take on the "similarity" rating of you tube and the comparative testing of versions 1 and 2 through the algorithm.

Your observations are right on, bravo! You are indeed introducing more structure at various levels and influencing the aleatoric nature of the form especially in terms of reducing indeterminacy and entropy. I also very much like the switch between human and code performance. Thanks for trying it. Interesting comment on something jarring having more entropy (does it?) and things of equal volume having less entropy. Good work.

Some very thoughtful comments on the music experience and how it can be changed through compositional/algorithmic choices. I think you are still confusing the three terms a bit though. We will talk further about this in class tomorrow. Good work.

Ahhh, taste in art is what keeps in interesting he? I dont feel the same as Talia about this work but I see where she is coming from. I actually like the progress from 1 to 3. It is a gradual, meticulous one could say, manner of exploring the concepts as you change them from 1 to 2 to 3. Well done, well though out and very musical. Bravo!

Composition 2 is indeed the most exciting as a performance experience because of its unpredictable nature and its spontaneity. The music quality is not very good but the excitement in the experience is high. And after that excitement of composition 2, of course composition 3 felt less exciting to you. Sequence does matter! Nice take on the three terms with focus on the experience of the performers rather than the listening result only. Good work.

I like the changes you introduce between the three versions. It gives you and the audience a chance for informed comparisons amongst the three versions. I am not sure I fully agree with the chance, entropy examples as you present them but as you say; these are ambiguous terms. Thanks for the performance discussion. Interesting. Good work overall,

Even though one would think that the first two sound mixes would sound very similar, since each of our songs from the first one correlated to a song in the second run (we chose a song for the second run that youtube suggested after listening to the first, and for the most part these suggested songs were from the same album of the same artist at the first one- and were stylistically very similar) - if you compare small chunks of the first song to small chunks of the second song, you will find significantly less entropy. This was because of the smaller time interval in the second run (3 seconds compared to 17 seconds).

So the randomness in the time interval really helped contribute to different levels of entropy, even when the song choice didn't contribute as much.

If I am understanding your mix algorithm correctly, each of you used one duration throughout the song right? That would bring each of you in and out at intervals that are multiples of that duration (based on the on/off random choices). That would be an interesting take on the mix in order to control indeterminacy and entropy. let me also listen for a second and get back to you. Sonic results are as you describe and well done. Bravo!

I very much like how you handle increased indeterminacy in the first example, increased chance in the second example and increased entropy in the third example. I think sometimes, like in your explanation of example 1, you mix up a bit indeterminacy and entropy. Just because something is unpredictable it does not necessarily mean that it also creates a feeling of disorganized material.
BTW, did you use a mic for the recordings. Recordings not as good as could be.
Good work overall.

For the first version, why all the same song? Intentionally choosing the same song ends up just producing a low quality version with gps, as opposed to some new piece.

I agree with Christina, especially because Recording 1 seems like it fits together, and Recording 2 has some very different songs, three of which really drown out the fourth. I think we did reach our goal. Recording 3 feels like it has the least amount of chance and indeterminacy, because we are all working on the same intervals. This, added to the way some songs drown out the others, makes it seem the least interesting. I look forward to hearing peoples' comments about this.

I found that our results did seem to reflect the choices we made to influence chance, indeterminacy, and entropy. This is especially true when comparing recording 1 to recording 2. Recording 1 is much easier to listen to, more harmonious, than the second one, due to our choice instructions. It definitely sounds like it has less chance, indeterminacy and entropy than the second recording, which contains four songs that do not seem to complement each other at all.