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Subject: alloy-digest V3 #273
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alloy-digest        Wednesday, October 14 1998        Volume 03 : Number 273



                               Today's Subjects:
                               -----------------
  Alloy: Re: alloy-digest V3 #272                        [Applebabe2@aol.com]
  Re: Alloy: What a buzz!                  [Paul Baily <paulb@thehub.com.au>]
  Re: Alloy: What a buzz!                                    [CJMark@aol.com]
  Alloy: things i owe                                        [RThurF@aol.com]
  Alloy: Fairport Connection        [John Schofield <john@police.tas.gov.au>]
  Alloy: New to the group...                       [lae <lae2@bellsouth.net>]
  Alloy: October 14th - light those candles!                 [RThurF@aol.com]
  Alloy: Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you...  [John Schofield <j]

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 08:20:06 EDT
From: Applebabe2@aol.com
Subject: Alloy: Re: alloy-digest V3 #272

In a message dated 10/13/98 1:27:22 AM Eastern Daylight Time, owner-alloy-
digest@smoe.org writes:

<< 
 This sounds rather like my idea of heaven - I had no idea that you had
 cider over there! As a confirmed non-beer drinker cider, especially the
 REAL stuff, has always been my tipple. I bet you've got some merry evenings
 coming up! And I'm assuming that's Upstate NY? I was there a few years ago,
 and it was like the Lake District without the rain, which is as high praise
 as you can get. >>

It is a beautiful part of New York! We are about 30 minutes north of West
Point Military Acadamy, right on the Hudson river. And we are, I would say
about 20 minutes south-east of New Paltz, if anyone has heard of it. There is
a great SUNY campus there. I wish that I could  make a video of what this
region looks like, and send everyone a copy. From the Catskill mountains and
their beauty, to the history that this area holds.  And yes, this time of year
has got to be one of my favorites (besides winter, I ski, have been since 3
years old). The color this years is amazing, alot of firey reds, and oranges.
The apples are being picked as I type, and the cider gets pressed daily. It
does sound like heaven, doesn't it? But believe it or not... and this might
sound a bit crazy to some of you... my husband and I want to go even farther
north. Northern Vermont where my borther lives (he has a small dairy farm,
travels around the world with the Green Mountain Folk Dancers playing the
fiddle in a music group, and makes maple syrup). Unfortunately, we are just
close enough for the city (NYC) folk to move up here and commute to work every
day. So we are slowly getting crowded out. Some of these people have no clue
what they have here, and they take it for granted. If any of you get the
chance (if you are close enough) to take a weekend, or maybe your next
vacation, make it to the Hudson Valley-Catskill region. There are oodles of
things on the internet to explore regarding them. Look under Ulster county,
that is where we live. You can see for yourself all that I have just said!!!
Thanks for reading!!!

Stace           ( I wonder if the county would hire me as their director of
tourism?

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 23:01:55 +1000
From: Paul Baily <paulb@thehub.com.au>
Subject: Re: Alloy: What a buzz!

G'day Trev,

>I've been reading the Headspace Webb SIte recently and have noticed that you
>can actually download a version of Beatnik.

Yep that's right, the Beatnik player is free; so is the Beatik Editor 
right now since it's a pre-release version at the mo'.

>In Lamens terms, is this system like an advanced version of real audio 
>player?

<presentation mode on>

Well Beatnik and RA are really quite different critters. Real Audio 
focusses on 'literal' sound, ie. much like playing a 'snd ' file on a Mac 
or a WAV file on a PC. The longer the sound, the larger the file gets. 
While the quality is certainly there it's basically a souped up tape 
recorder. Real Audio comes into it's own in two ways, first it does some 
very smart compression of these 'tape recordings' so they transfer over 
the internet to your computer relatively quickly, second, RA has the 
ability to do 'streaming audio' which is more like listening to a radio 
station - the data is downloaded continuously and played as it's 
received. This has really cool uses, e.g. my Dad is really into aircraft, 
and he loves things like listening into air traffic control radio traffic 
between the tower, approach, and pilots (it's much more interesting than 
it sounds, trust me. ;-) So we got him set up with Real Audio player, and 
he headed over to http://www.audionet.com/simuflite which is a live RA 
feed of the radio traffic at ATC tower at Ft. Worth. Quite a spinout when 
you consider we're on opposite sides of this Flat Earth(tm).

The downside to RA is that unless you have a really quick internet 
connection, the compression and sample rate comes into play so sound 
quality is sacrificed somewhat.

Beatnik operates quite differently. When you install Beatnik, it already 
has samples, or patches of many instruments included, as well as riffs or 
enitre musical phrases (Headspace call these Groovoids). Instead of 
sending a rendition of each and every sound wave, when a Beatnik-savy, or 
'sonified' page is loaded, entire musical tracks can be played using just 
one or two commands and a very small (we're talking <20kB!) file. Because 
of this, compression isn't needed so you get a very high quality result.

Headspace developed the Rich Music Format (RMF) file format specifically 
for this purpose, and quite a few big players have sat up and taken 
notice (see the website for more details).

Beatnik could be compared much more closely to MIDI (Musical Instrument 
Digital Interface) which is what sequencers, drum machines, synthesisers, 
patch modules, et al. use to communicate. Very little information needs 
to be transmitted, e.g. hit the note C3 softly for two beats, with 
sustain, chorus, reverb at these values.

A really crude analogy I could use here is those old pianolas with the 
punched paper rollers that used to play themselves. Not much information 
on the roller, just notes and timing; the piano already knows how to make 
the sound (since it's a one-patch touch-sensitive polyphonic 
synthesiser'n'all ;-)

Beatnik goes quite a bit further than MIDI though. With MIDI, though 
generally the samples (instrument sounds) are known by the same numbers, 
every brand has slightly different versions of those sounds. So, when you 
compose a track, while it sounds perfect on your computer, it may sound 
quite differently on someone else's machine depending on the sound card, 
on various MIDI plugins, e.g. Yamaha, Roland, even what version of 
QuickTime Musical Instruments you have.

With Beatnik, the only library that's called on is Beatnik's own. If you 
use a custom sample in your composition, it's included with the RMF file, 
so it always sounds the same.

Another important aspect of Beatnik is that it can be comprehensively 
driven by Javascript, and even multimedia plugins such as MacroMedia's 
Shockwave. This means it provides a whole new level of interactivity: 
imagine listening to your favourite CD and being able to add or remove 
instruments or adjust the key or tempo /while it's playing/ just by 
moving your mouse over a button or a graphic.

>And would it be useful for the average home user such as myself and many of
>the other guys on the list?

Well if you're looking for a really cool way to add to your web-browsing 
experience on Sonified sites, this would be it. If you take a look at 
most of the major sites out there, while every effort is made to have the 
visuals just so, they're silent. These days we have computers that can 
sing as eloquently as they can paint so why not use that too?

Thomas has a very good quote on of his help pages that goes a little like 
this: In the 1980's, LucasFilm (of Star Wars fame) conducted an 
experiment where they first showed a movie to an audience with a low 
quality soundtrack. They then showed the exact same movie print but with 
high quality audio. Afterwards the audience was asked which showing had 
the better visuals; almost 100% said the one with the high quality audio. 
Moral: high quality sound can positively affect your perception of the 
accompanying images.

<presentation mode off>

Sorry, going on too much. If you think this is bad you should have seen 
me evangelising it on Sunday. :-)

>Also it mentions that to download this you need to be running Netscape
>Navigator which in itself takes 5 hours to download. If this would improve 
>the way I listen to "webb sounds" is it not possible to download Beatnik using
>IE4?

Yeah I know what you mean. Usually though your local ISP may have a copy 
of the latest Netscape on their FTP server in which case it'll hopefully 
take far less time for you. I believe IE compatibility is coming, but 
slowly since the guys need to develop an ActiveX control specifically for 
it. Sounds nasty. ;-)

>P.S it must have been a real thrill to do research and perform such an
>exciting presentation! Congratulations!!!  

Thanks! As you can see, I'm still undergoing counselling to purge beatnik 
tidbits from my mind. :-)

cheers,

Paul.
[who's battling a wicked post-stress breather flu.]

This message powered by Some Kind of Bliss off Impossible Remixes (Disc 
1)/Kylie Minogue.

________________________________________________________________________
Paul Baily                                           paulb@thehub.com.au
JustSomeGuy                             'cause every day is all there is
Brisbane, Australia                             in my some kind of bliss

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 12:17:36 EDT
From: CJMark@aol.com
Subject: Re: Alloy: What a buzz!

Dear Paul..

In a message dated 98-10-13 09:04:05 EDT, you write:

<< Well Beatnik and RA are really quite different critters. Real Audio 
 focusses on 'literal' sound, ie. much like playing a 'snd ' file on a Mac 
 or a WAV file on a PC.  etc.. etc.. >>


<< Thanks! As you can see, I'm still undergoing counselling to purge beatnik 
 tidbits from my mind. :-)  >>
 
I must say thanks for such a great explanation of Beatnik to us non technical
folk.  Though it may be quite simple for you.. it really helped clear up
questions I never even knew I had.  And it made me immediately curious and
interested in downloading the entire thing myself as soon as possible and
trying it out!!  

Thanks again.. and as far as my voice is concerned.. please continue your
purging here among the Alloyed as much as you'd like.  It really is some great
info.. and my compliments to Mr. Dolby et al at Headspace as well for their
vision and generousity for making Beatnik available to us!!  

Ciao for now..

Mark 

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 17:42:58 EDT
From: RThurF@aol.com
Subject: Alloy: things i owe

to everyone on this list to whom I owe photos/tapes, I'm getting it packaged
up & sent out this week I promise!

Robin T
the evil delinquent who can't seem to get anything out on time

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1998 09:47:06 +-1100
From: John Schofield <john@police.tas.gov.au>
Subject: Alloy: Fairport Connection

Slarv wrote about Fairport list thus:

>Hmmm, strange.  I tried to resubscribe recently and my mail disappeared into
>the ether and I got no reply whatsoever, not even a bounce from an unknown
>address.  Maybe I've been blackballed (oooh, er, missus).

Yes I sent mail off to 'fairport-list@EU.net' with 'subscribe' in the heading and in the body (just to make sure).  Try it !.  I did find out they will be touring Oz around Christmas/New Year.  Hope they do Tassie again.  I got to meet the band last time and had a couple of beers with the dude that plays the violin (who's name eludes me at present - probably one of the brain cells I lost that night).  He was only young and one of the new line-up but a brilliant player.  I tried to talk them into letting me tour with them - but they politely declined.  I wonder why...

And big gooday to Stacey.  Welcome from out of the lurkers zone.

John
(john@police.tas.gov.au)

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 23:33:00 -0700
From: lae <lae2@bellsouth.net>
Subject: Alloy: New to the group...

Hello, my name is Alan and I am a TMDR fan looking for some vinyl artifacts like Low Noise,
and Field Work and Puppet Theatre.

I also know the drummer (personally) who plays on the various *May the Cube be with
you/Googooplexus/Cube Creature Caviar* 12"ers, Dennis Chambers. He's a fellow Baltimorian.

One night in 1987 or so, Thomas Dolby was playing in Georgetown in Wash. DC (9:30 club I
believe)and Dennis was gigging with Bob Berg and Mike Stern (fantastic jazz musicians) at
the Bayou not two blocks away! TD rang up DC at his home earlier that day to come up and
have a bit of a rave. But alas, DC was to perform two sets with Bob Berg & the boys that
evening which tied him up until well past 2AM. 

I attended Dennis' gig, but severely wished he would break out and go up the street so I
could at least meet TD. 

Pity.

Alan

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 23:57:15 EDT
From: RThurF@aol.com
Subject: Alloy: October 14th - light those candles!

Everyone have a sip of champagne & some *extra-sweet* birthday cake today -
and remember to wish Thomas a very happy birthday :)

You deserve all the very best, Thomas... have a wonderful time! 

xxxx
Robin T

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1998 15:19:49 +-1100
From: John Schofield <john@police.tas.gov.au>
Subject: Alloy: Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you...

>Everyone have a sip of champagne & some *extra-sweet* birthday cake today -
>and remember to wish Thomas a very happy birthday :)
>
>You deserve all the very best, Thomas... have a wonderful time! 
>
>xxxx
>Robin T

Yes indeedee.  Thomas if you're reading this then... Happy 40th Birthday !!!

I'm just about to rip the top of a stubbie right now.

Cheers...

John
(john@police.tas.gov.au)

------------------------------

End of alloy-digest V3 #273
***************************