Mahound’s Weblog

15 year-old prodigy… no need to say more…

Oh, and she’s been playing for 3 years…

I guess I won’t touch a guitar again…

Falling asleep to Mike Oldfield’s rendition…

R.I.P. Arthur C. Clarke (1917 - 2008).

Manhã tão bonita manhã
Na vida uma nova canção

Cantando só teus olhos,
Teu riso, e tuas mãos

Pois há-de haver um dia
Em que virás

Das cordas do meu violão
Que só teu amor procurou

Vem uma voz
Falar dos beijos
Perdidos nos lábios teus

Canta o meu coração
Alegria voltou, tão feliz
A manhã deste amor

(Antônio Maria)

Finally, I decided to buy a Wiimote, and spent a couple of ho, a urs building some proof of concept program for Wiimote-based sound production. The result was the Therewiin, an extremely simple C program (for Linux / *nix, or anything that supports JACK and BlueZ)  that tries to resemble the “Theremin” instrument, much in the way that some people already do. The difference is: the code is available for you to use and improve (and it needs a lot of improvements). It’s just an FM oscillator, which uses the angle of the remote(provided by the force sensors) to control pitch. Of course then you have some conversions (pitch to Hertz, and so on), to ensure that it is minimally playable. So far, I suck at it, but i believe that it is fairly playable, with some training. Give it a try.

• The Therewiin - http://www.zarquon.biz/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.Therewiin

I guess this one wraps it up.

YouTube - Driver’s License as Ableton Live MIDI Controller

Tags: ribbon, synth, midi, driver’s license, diy

Tags: theremin, wiimote, star trek

… no, I’m not going crazy… and it was not through iTunes. I was looking for interpretations of the opus “El Maestro”, from the renaissance spanish vihuelist Luis de Milan, which contains some beautiful vihuela + voice portuguese, spanish and italian songs. I hapened to find it at magnatune.com, performed by Jacob Heringman and Catherine King. I listened to the album once, using the mp3 streaming option available from magnatune, and got convinced. Magnatune allows a “make your price” scheme, being that the minimum for an album is 5 USD. I ended up paying 8 USD, which is the default price, since it’s roughly the same as 5 EUR, a round price, something that I would pay for a promo CD in a regular store. Then, I downloaded it in FLAC (magnatune offers WAV, FLAC, AAC, MP3 and OGG). I got the artwork, in PDF, as well.
The license allows me to share 3 copies of the work with my friends - that’s great, since it promotes sharing (I like to share my tastes with my friends, and I end up listening to some of their suggestions). And there’s no DRM, so… no big brother or bad policeman around, fighting to restrict your rights.
It’s obvious you won’t find mainstream audio at magnatune. However, the available genres span from medieval music performers to electronic composers, jazz, metal and even some pop. And I got very surprised with the quality of some of them. Well, you can listen to them for free… just give them a try.

Tags: renaissance, luis de milan, magnatune, drm, music, freedom, creative commons, el maestro, vihuela

Hello, hello, hello.

It has been a long time since I last wrote for this blog. Actually, it has been a long time since I have written anything useful. Why? Well, internship report (now ready, but the presentation is yet to come), job interviews, my current job at CERN… everything has been conspiring, lately, in a way that prevents me from getting enough “free” time to keep this humble blog of mine up to date.

Well, in spite of the lack of time (OK, I have time, but it doesn’t reach the threshold for me to come here and write), I have been thinking about three main things:

• I urgently need an open source MIDI arpeggiator. Generalizing, the world needs a decent open source MIDI arpeggiator;
• Web 3.0, and the way it blends with REST and Service-based architectures;
• OO Content Storage - An easy, QL-less way of storing and retrieving OO data… it’s still a germinating idea, but that I find quite interesting;

The summary of the Status Quo follows:

• Reading: “Weaving the Web” (T. Berners-Lee and M. Fischetti) , “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” (P. K. Dick)
• Recently read: “VALIS” (P. K. Dick)
• Willing to watch:
  • “Conte d’hiver” (E. Rohmer)
• Recently watched:
  • “Ma nuit chez Maud” (E. Rohmer)
  • “eXistenZ” (D. Cronenberg)
  • “Lost in La Mancha” (T. Gilliam)
  • “Ken Park” (L. Clark, E. Lachman)
• Currently listening to:
  • Porcupine Tree
  • Frank Zappa
  • Goran Bregovic
  • Scanner (DJ)

But this one is good…

• http://eventful.com/demand/D0-001-000427619-6