I’ve been ruminating over how the chord changes to Crazy Fingers ever came about. The changes don’t feel like something you’d come at organically outside of some melody.
Last night my son turned me on to Distorto from the ‘75 studio rehearsals and I now think that Jerry had this really interesting melody in mind that he then layered chords over, Give it a listen if you’re not familiar: https://youtu.be/05M5sjlP2YA
The ladder-rung like guitar melody on Distoto keeps climbing and descending over and over again (anticipating the eventual lyric melody) and you can make out Bobby’s chords and hear the song taking shape. Very cool.
I’m wondering if those ladder melodies are really just the arpeggiated notes of the chords? My ear isn’t good enough to tell without my guitar in hand. Must investigate!
And look, let’s not ignore just how crazy it is to hear JG playing with that tone!
I write private journal entries and public journal entries. The public ones get posted here. I had been looking for a way to get those public entries into Day One so then when I’m reviewing the “On this date…” feature of the app, I see not only my private Day One journal entries but also my WordPress posts from that date. First step was to bulk import all of my old WordPress posts (20+ years, crazy).
Next up was to find some way to make sure that new WordPress posts somehow got auto-imported into my Day One journal. Enter dowpy: a python script that pulls new WordPress entries into Day One.
I’ve had this script up and running for a few weeks now without error so figure it’s time to share it in case anyone else has a similar use case.
I run this via cron on my Mac. It grabs the ATOM feed of my website and pulls in new entries into a Day One Journal called, surprise, “WordPress Entries.”
make sure to have full entries in your feed and not just excerpts
it only pulls in what’s in your feed (so, if you want pages as well as posts in your feed you’ll need to make some changes to the stock WP feed)
it only pulls in what’s in your feed, so if you want to backfill older posts to get caught up (I pulled in about 20 years of my older posts), read How to Bulk Import Posts into Day One.
It does a good enough job at handling links and images, though not perfect. I should also note that Apple really doesn’t want you to use cron. They want you to use launchd instead. I will spin up a config file for launchd when I get some time as that would allow the script to run even if my machine is asleep, which would be nice.
Over at Dave Winer’s Scripting News, Dave makes the case that federation and interop of social media is maybe the wrong move. I think in some cases it may be. Thinking a lot about why and what I write here, it’s rarely because I want to engage in conversation but because I want to share (knowledge, inspiration, whatever). That’s different than conversation.
I have built so much on top of RSS and so much of that is due to Dave Winer. I do see ActivityPub as something like a two-way RSS feed, but maybe not every internet destination needs a two-way flow?
For a news or community site, well, social media interoperability and conversation may be just the ticket. Anyway, Dave’s post is a good one:
In just a few weeks of self-hosing a Navidrome server that I’ve also made accessible from outside my house, I’ve noticed a significant shift in my listening habits. I’m doing so much more re-listening to albums in my collection than when listening to Apple Music.
Apple Music often leaves me with a sense of FOMO – there’s always something else or new to listen to, making it rare to listen to the same album twice. Contrast that to my Navidrome box which has about 150 CDs or so. The collection is growing, slowly.
Each week, I’m enjoying hunting for cheap used CDs to rip that will fill holes in my collection. I’m finding that after I rip a CD and load it up into Navidrome, it appears under the “Recent Albums,” section that I default to. And so I end up listening to those albums a few times a week. It’s a completely different experience to listen to the same few albums over and over throughout the week. I can’t remember ever doing that with Apple Music.
I’ve still got my Apple Music account to support listening on our house full of HomePods, but between Navidrome and Play:Sub, I’m really enjoying digging into a collection of music that I own. Some of these albums I’ve had for ages and it’s great to revisit them like old friends. (I’ve got on a Cannonball Adderley album that’s been in my collection for probably 30 years at this point—it’s amazing how quickly I can recall his solos on certain cuts).
A quick tip for my future self and other users: If Navidrome stops syncing with last.fm, simply navigate to the profile->personal link in the upper right corner to troubleshoot.
In his latest issue of galaxy brain, Charlie Warzel dismisses the value of ChatGPT in part because he’s unable to see the value or potential. of ChatGPT, because the ability to control or drive value from the tool is outside the grasp of most humanities types.
A good ChatGPT whisperer understands how to sequence commands in order to get a machine to do its bidding. That’s a genuine skill, but one that eludes me as well as some other humanities types I know. The best ChatGPT prompters I know tend to be good systems thinkers or at least well-organized people—the kind who might create a series of automated protocols and smart-home integrations to turn their lights on and off. I’m the guy who sees romance in wandering around in the dark, bumping into a coffee table, to find the switch.
I would argue that “humanities types” are some of the most well-positioned to be able to exploit the value of chat, GPT, and other large language models. Humanities types as he refers to them, understand language and its power of precise language more than most. The ability to construct exactly the right language or prompt is one of the key skills needed to extract value from chat, GPT.
Trying to track down the origin of a quote this morning, I learned about something called the Matthew Effect, inspired by this verse from the Bible:
For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away. – Matthew 13:12
Coined by sociologist Robert K. Merton in 1968, it describes the phenomenon where recognition and success are more likely to be bestowed upon those already distinguished, reinforcing their status. This concept, particularly relevant in science and academia, notes that well-known scientists often receive disproportionate credit for their work compared to lesser-known counterparts, even if their contributions are of equal importance.
This leads to a cycle where established figures gain increasing recognition and resources, exacerbating disparities in visibility and success. The Matthew effect extends beyond academia into fields like economics and information dissemination, reflecting the broader impact of social and professional networks on career advancement and recognition. It also highlights the challenges faced by emerging talents in gaining acknowledgment and success.
Noting here because it has so many implications, it’s something that I had a sense of but now that I have a term for, I’ll be more aware of.
Recently, I’ve come across discussions online debating the role of AI-generated visuals in the art world. Some argue that AI poses a threat to professional illustrators and advocate for its limited use in creative processes. While I understand these concerns, I’m trying to understand my perspective a bit here, and I’d like to explore this through an analogy.
I’m thinking specifically about the advent of synthesizers and sampling in music, which perhaps parallels the emergence of AI in visual arts. This comparison highlights a dynamic tension between tradition and innovation, and between human creativity and technological assistance.
Personally, my preference runs towards the sounds of acoustic guitar. However, this preference doesn’t lead me to dismiss music that incorporates sampling or synthesized elements*. While I’m not convinced that these technologies have inherently enhanced music’s quality, they have expanded the creative toolkit available to artists. Music rich in synths and samples, to me, exists in a universe distinct from universe I inhabit when I strum my Martin guitar.
AI-generated art, like synthesized music and sampling, opens up new creative avenues that might be unattainable through traditional methods. Almost certainly AI will impact the livelihoods of some artists, similar to how synths and sampling reshaped the music industry. But it’s important to recognize that these technologies also democratize creativity, enabling more individuals (for better or worse and with widely varying degrees of artistic quality) to express themselves.
I believe that mastery in music should require the ability to create great music without relying on synths or samples. Likewise, artistic greatness probably shouldn’t rely completely on generative AI. Art and music should foster inclusivity and diversity and they should celebrate individual creativity and autonomy. For me they should not require an over-reliance on technology but that’s not to say it shouldn’t be a tool in toolbox.
*I have an album that I’m working on releasing of mostly synthesizer music, so, again, I don’t think there’s anything wrong about synths or sampling.
I am not a big fan of the Subaru app. It’s janky but does offer a way to remote start my car. But, as the days are getting colder, I’ve been thinking how nice it would be to be able to tell my bathroom HomePod Hey Siri, Warm up my car. So over lunch today, I managed to cook up some shortcuts to start/pre-heat, stop & lock my 2023 Outback.
I’ll also note here that I am confirming that this does in fact work with the ‘23s as some folks on the Subaru formus were having problems but those problems are not related to the model year.
Obligatory Dall-e Outback/Apple art
You need to make sure to get your deviceid AS WELL AS your PIN entered in to the shortcut.
Good instructions for getting your deviceid found here from https://www.subaruoutback.org’s TheyDroppedMe but I’m pasting below because I have no faith that anything linked to on the internet will be here tomorrow:
First of all, you’ll need to use the Chrome browser on a desktop for this.
1) Open chrome and go to www.mysubaru.com/login (DON’T login yet! If you’re already logged in, log out and go back to the login page) 2) Right click on the page and select the inspect option at the bottom. This should open the chrome dev tools in a frame to the side or bottom of the tab. 3) On the top bar of the dev tools section, you should see options like Elements, Console, Sources, Network, etc. Select the Network tab (you may have to scroll over to see it). Once in the Network tab, click the Preserve log checkbox. 4) Now on the mysubaru web page next to the dev tools, enter your login information and login. You should see a flurry of activity in the Network tab 5) Scroll down in the left-hand column in the Network tab until you see an entry named login and select that. On the box to the right of that column, select the Payload tab and you should see some data under Form Entries that contains your vehicle ID, device ID, username, and password
Importantly there are different URL components for the different services:
engineStart
engineStop
lock
unlock
It’s been really nice to not have to use the super-tedious Subaru application. I already the Hey Siri, warm up my car before heading out to the gym this afternoon. So cool.
I’m not really sure that I use genre information too much in organizing my library, but that’s not to say that I don’t want it to be correct when it’s applied.
My years working in the classical music world taught me how painfully insufficient existing music metadata tagging is for classical music — e.g. movements and composers and conductors matter a lot and are such a challenge in Apple Music that Apple released a classical-only app that admittedly does a really decent job handling the complexity of classical music metadata.
As I’ve been ripping some legacy CDs into lossless over to my Navidrome box, I’m laughing at the default tags applied to the CDs as they’re ripped. Everything from Emmylou Harris to Asleep at the Wheel to the Stanley Brothers gets categorized as “Country & Folk” which is crazy. Western Swing which isn’t even an option in Apple Music. I’m not saying Country has the same attribute complexity as classical, but from an organization/genre perspective there are definitely some nuances that could be captured better out of the gate.
From what I can tell, Apple uses Gracenote to pull in metadata and genre info. MusicBrainz gets a bit closer, calling the Bob Wills tribute album “Country” with the default scan and does offer the ability to customize how genres are handled. I could choose to include or exclude certain genres, or set it to only use specific genre tags.
Might need to bake these in to Apple Music/Navidrome:
Bluegrass
Bluegrass/Country Gospel
Traditional Country
Honky Tonk
Outlaw Country
Country Rock
Country Pop
Western Swing
Rockabilly
Cajun and Zydeco
The real question though is what to do with what the Country Music establishment refers to as “Americana” which is really Country, whereas the “Country” pushed by the Country Music establishment is best defined as bro-Country or maybe jingo-Country?
Experimenting with Linode, S3 storage and Nextcloud to see if I can find an easy way to link to music I want to share.
While bluegrass, country and Dead are my primary musical outlets, I like to switch gears (ha, that’s funny in a way that will be clear in a minute) and play with synthesizers and drum machines.
I am a huge fan of the show High Maintenance and love the shots where the the Guy is riding his bike to sound of low-fi electronic music as I, too, love to listen to electronic music when I ride my bike around town. So I switch gears from acoustic music and fiddle around with making electronic music. Here’s a sample
Note, this hasn’t been mastered or anything so volume may be weak.
Curious to see how functional this link is. Do you find it easy to download if you want? Or is it ok just to make it streamable?
“Under the worst conditions, what’s the most important thing to have?” He replied: “Friends.” Source: Recording: After the Election – Four Ways We Can Respond […]
"to be clear, I’m a fan of the Bluesky leadership and engineering team. With the VC money as fuel, I expect their next 12 months or so to be golden, with lots of groovy features and mind-blowing growth. But that’s not what I’ll be watching. I’ll be looking for ecosystem growth in directions that enable survival independent of the company. In the way that email is independent of any technology provider or network operator." — Direct link
"I have been impressed with the tools that the open source development community is building to bridge the gap between the AT protocol and ActivityPub, and I’m hopeful that some mixture of Bluesky and Mastodon will eventually serve most of my needs as a social media user and, hopefully, as someone who co-owns a website" — Direct link
Two Teslas, the Model Y and Model S, make the most dangerous cars list despite Tesla’s advanced driver-assist technology Tesla also has the highest fatal accident rate by brand, followed by Kia, Buick, Dodge, and Hyundai — Direct link
Whether you’re looking to escape into a cottage-core wonderland, enact fiery revenge on a deadbeat ex, or cosplay as a bigtime magazine editor, there’s a POV playlist for you. — Direct link
Bluesky offers a lot of unique features like algorithmic feeds and custom moderation that can make for a rich, in-control experience for users. — Direct link
Stanford professor and Smule co-founder Ge Wang explains how computers can make music, and the future of creativity in an AI world, on The Vergecast. #music #ai — Direct link
