Finishing touches

I spent today putting the finishing touches on Groove Culture. All the functionality is now fully incorporated into the piece and is ready to be presented. The interface is also fully overhauled and looking a lot nicer and less 'flat'.

Interface Overhaul

Further to my previous interface updates, I spent all of today working on the Interface for Groove Culture. I have changed the colour pallette considerably and have changed the way in which the grooves interact with the user. As I was working on the interface I continually sought the opinions of my peers to gauge the effectiveness of my work. Their honest opinions served as invaluable constructive criticism and stopped me form being single minded in my approach/design.

PD and XML are now working.

After a lot of experimenting and editing, Groove Culture is now working properly with the server side software PD. This is a huge advancement and a great relief. Not all features are working yet but the main ones are working fine. There is a lot to do still but having this functionality is a big milestone to reach. Also I have encorporated a slider into the design/interface which will control the volume and tempo of the beats. I sourced the code for this online because I have never implemented a slider in Flash before. So I give all credit for the code for the slider to the original creator: 'http://www.kirupa.com/developer/mx/slider.htm'. I did adjust it heavily to meet my own needs so it looks totally different in the final piece.

XML and Review Feedback

Just a quick update: I have received the updated the XML code from Gary which will work with the server side of the piece. Next step is to take this to Hugh in the CSM and link it all up. On top of this I must work in the interface a lot more - the aesthetics are not to be a last minute consideration.
Regarding the Prototype Review that we had on Thursday last, I think it went fairly okay however I am awaiting the feedback which will provide greater clarity and focus as the final weeks approach.

XML Update and Prototype Review

I'm still making the grooves that will be used in the final piece. Mean while Gary Couse has sourced the necessary XML information that I need however it is written in Actionscript 2, the now defunct version which won't work with my piece. Gary is kindly updating the language and has told me to keep reminding him about it. I'm not sure if he'll have it ready for the prototype review on Thursday but I'll be able to just run the sound samples from within the Flash file itself.

CSM Visit

Last night I used the electric music center (EMC) in the Cork School of Music. This room is packed with a plethora of digital music instruments. However for my project all I needed was the use of the computers which had the necessary software for making my grooves. I booked the room from 6-10pm which gave me plenty time to work. That being said I found that the initial setup the process very time consuming. Once I had a system in order then I was able to produce the grooves at a reasonably fast pace. I didn't get all the grooves done but I now that I know what I'm doing it will be a lot quicker to complete.

XML sockets and Flash progress

I'm continuing to work on the flash code which is coming along at a slow but steady pace. I have emailed Gary Couse in relation to the XML functionality of my piece which will have to be sorted out within the next three weeks. Time is moving fast but things are starting to come together too.

World Rhythms

As well as coding I've been think about the world rhythms that I'm going to use in the piece. This is very important becasue it has an big effect on the end user experience. A famous drum teacher Tommy Igoe has a well known list of popular grooves from around the world. This is a handy reference but I'm starting to lean towards dividing the loops/grooves up according to continent - ie have one loop from America, one from South America, one from India, another from Africa etc. to make sure that the cultures with great differences are represented.

Not how but If

One thing I am learning with this project - with respect to coding in particular - people in general don't care how it works. They just care if it works and if it's interesting to them. I have to be careful to maintained focussed on the end product - an engaging and interesting user experience. Not an exercise in Actionscript and XML sockets.

Second meeting with Hugh from CSM

On Tuesday I had my second meeting with Hugh from CSM. I updated him on my progress with the Flash front end. He then walked me through a little more of the program PureData which I will be using to communicate with the server. PureData has its own unique interface and language (here's a look at the code so far) which is tricky for me to understand at the moment but Hugh's explanations helped a lot. I have installed PureData on my computer at home and will start playing around with it myself. PureData will recieve information from my Flash interface via XML sockets. XML sockets are a language that both the programs understand.
In order to link these all up Hugh suggested I talk to Gary Couse as he has had experience with this type of work before (PD + XML sockets). I have emailed Gary to explain the setup and to seek his advice in the proper implementation of the code structure.

Here is a link to the (very) basic interface that I have made thus far for the project. It works on a click basis so that when you click a groove (represented by the colors) that groove appears on the lower half of the screen which represents the timeline. To remove a groove you simply click on it once and it will return to its place holder. No more than four grooves can be selected at any one time.

Thursday Meeting with Phil

Here are my notes from today's meeting with Phil. I need to keep my eye on the final piece. The user will not care how it works, they will simply care IF it works. I also need to develop my use of color and look into the different connotations that different colors have.

Flash Progress!

The Flash code is coming along a lot better now but there's still a lot to do. I will post what I have done so far in a little while when it's a litttle more robust. I would like to get this wrapped up ahead of schedule because it may run away time-wise if I don't keep discipled about it. I need to keep my head down now and just keep going.

Flash Work

The Flash front end of my interface is giving me a lot of hassle. The actionscript for a seemingly simple interface is proving to be quite tricky and buggy. This problem isn't insurmountable but it is taking longer that I had anticipated and so is shifting my schedule. I still have until week 8 to create this Flash framework but the sooner I can get it done the better because it's completion is necessary for the progress of the back end of the project with FLOSC (see earlier post).

Proposal Notes

Here are the notes from the proposal review we had in B123l. The comments circled in blue in the mid section of the page are the comments that apply directly to my project. However all the points are valid for me too though in one way or another.

Creating Environment

I've started to create a rough draft of the flash environment for Groove Culture. Trying to make a user experience which is intuitive, appealing and interesting will be tricky because of Actionscript but for now I'm just focussing on creating a basic stage so that I can go on further into developing the back end of things with Hugh on Monday.

Meeting with Hugh

This morning I met with Hugh McCarthy from the Cork School of Music. We discussed my idea and he helped me a lot with the back end of the project. He introduced me to a server based software program called Flosc which will handle the sending and receiving of the drum samples/clips using the Flash XML socket function. Because I've never heard of this software before I don't understand the ins and outs of how it works. Thankfully though, Hugh is well used to it and so he can explain it very well.

After we looked at the coding side of things Hugh brought me down to the Electronic Music room. This is where they keep all their electric + MIDI instruments: drums, keyboard, guitar etc. He showed me the different resources that were available for my use and pointed out which instruments would work for each part of my project. Using digital instruments affords perfect accuracy and therefore optimum flexibility for the end user.

I'll be meeting with Hugh again at the same time next week. In the meantime, I'm going to make a start on a basic working model of the Flash interface so that we can move onto the back end code next week.

Project Proposal - Groove Culture

Intro

Music is a vital part of any culture. Wherever you see a unique and distinct culture, you are likely to find an equally unique and distinct musical style. Where language can become a barrier in cultural rapprochement, music provides us with an effective and simple way to communicate - whatever our culture.

Background

The idea of combining different world rhythms in order to highlight multiculturalism is nothing new. Drum circles are a common example of this where groups of people play layered percussion pieces together for team building or educational purposes. What I’m proposing to do is to develop an online interactive rhythm platform called Groove Culture where users can mix and play around with different world rhythms themselves allowing them to discover the different cultures through this medium. This approach does not exist already.

Aim

To highlight cultural rapprochement by making an interactive rhythmic piece which incorporates rhythms from major world cultures.

Objectives

My objectives are:

Week 4 - 8

Research and collate suitable major world rhythms.

Research and utilize the Cork School of Music’s music technology resources.

Capture/create appropriate sound clips to use in the piece.

begin to develop the Flash environment for the piece.

Week 9-12

Keep the project as interactive and as simple as possible.

Further develop the Flash structure/framework for the piece until satisfactory interactivity has been achieved.

User test the piece and make relevant adjustments

Overall

Be flexible in my approach and technique.

RhythmCulture.com

Rhythm Culture is a company that facilitates 'rhythm events for communities, organizations, youth groups, schools and businesses nationwide' using 'unifying world rhythms'. This is a good example of the many Drum circle companies that are out there that use world rhythms as team building exercises. No interactive content present as the site is simply brochureware.

Drum Circles

R+C Label

A DC based label who combine multicultural styles to make new, fresh music. No interactive content but I wasn't expecting to find any because they're a music label.

Rhythm and Culture

Meeting with Hugh from CSM

Today I met with Hugh McCarthy from the Cork School of Music in CIT. Although I didn't have long to talk to him I explained my idea to him. He asked me to email him (which I did) in order to arrange a time to meet up and develop the idea further. The technology at CSM is above and beyond what I need so I'm looking forward to getting into it. I also think that Hugh's feedback will help greatly in the construction and development of my final piece.

Seeing what's out there...

Here are some of the interactive drum loop/sampling flash programs that are out there. The level of interactivity is minimal and terribly slow and frustrating to use. I'm still trying find a modern, more media rich version of these sort of things. Apart from paid drum looping software (eg fruity loops), there is nothing of note out there that I can find. The two examples below are just a small selection. Also, none of these allow layering of beats or sounds.

There is a whole library of these flash retro drum machines, but here are two examples:
Example 1, Example 2.

Reasearch at the moment is mainly just sifting through pages and pages of terrible content but I don't want to go ahead and design something that's already out there.

The New/Original Idea

My new proposal is designed to encourage the rapproachment of cultures by rhythmic means. The world comprises many cultures. All of them different. All of them contain music. More specifically, many of these cultures contain unique rhythms. My aim is to promote cultural awareness by exposing the user to different rhythms and allowing them to mix and match these rhythms to create new polyrhythms. This cross cultural style is already showing it's face even in the mainstream music scene. M.I.A. is a good example - http://bit.ly/avrNp.

I'll be meeting with Phil and Gearoid hopefully on Monday to tease it out more. In the mean time I have a lot of research to do!

I've started to sift through a lot of websites (most of them pre-2000) that are related to this topic. The interactivity of these sites is awful at best so I'm trying to find some better, more modern examples.

Back to the Original

After presenting my idea to Phil and the class yesterday I realised that my proposal wasn't what I thought it would be. Even though I had gotten good feedback from my peers, the idea still lacked depth. In essence I proposed to produce content for a european based culture awareness campaign for secondary schools. The idea was to inform secondary students about how their european counterpoints lived - favourite music, what their school is like, what they hope to do when they finish school etc. This is all well and good however I failed to ask the basic question - what makes it interesting? why would secondary school students care? and how is it interactive?

After coming to grips with these questions I realised that my proposal wasn't really going to work - which is frustrating seeing as we're a fair bit into the module already and I'll have to catch up with the research work. I have decided to change tack - QUICK! I have returned to one of my initial ideas that I had as I started to brainstorm which I'll outline in the next post.

My Choice of Theme

After doing some research and thinking about which theme I'd prefer to do, I've chosen to work with Theme #2: the International Year of the Rapproachment of Cultures. I chose this culture because I find it more interesting and because I have more original ideas for it than for the other theme. I'm going over my ideas at the moment in preparation for my draft presentation. I'm happy with my original idea. Details will be posted tomorrow!

Theme #2

Here is the the Second theme's equivalent blurb:

"The year 2010 is celebrated as the International Year for the Rapprochement of Cultures. The goal of the International Year consists in making the rapprochement of cultures the hallmark of all policy-making at local, national, regional and international levels, involving the greatest number of relevant stakeholders."

(By the way Rapprochement is an establishment or resumption of harmonious relations. ex - there were signs of a growing rapprochement between the two countries. In other words it means 'getting along with each other')

Below are two books I referenced to gain a better understanding of Culture and what it means. It helped me understand better what culture is. The word culture is notoriously hard to define so having a few helps like these is beneficial.

Theme #1

Here's the first theme (of two) we got to research. I've just snipped a little blurb about it from the website which sums it up concisely:

"International Year for the Rapprochement of Cultures as designated by the United Nations and UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).

In the action plan for 2010 UNESCO states - "The main goal of the International Year will be to demonstrate the benefits of cultural diversity by acknowledging the importance of the transfers and exchanges between cultures and the ties forged between them since the dawn of humanity."

Media Project 5

Hi guys, here's where I'll be posting all my progress in my Media Project 5. This is my first time using Wordpress for a blog and so far, I'm impressed. Last semester I used Blogger.com and to be honest - it wasn't nice. But that's a little off the point...!

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

Culture and Interface

As the final presentation approaches I am concentrating my efforts on the interface of Groove Culture. This includes incorporating a greater level of culturally specific data to the piece according to which data is selected. The interface is crucial to the final piece and I don't want it to suffer because it will let down all the other work I have done this semester. All that being said, I am looking forward to the presentation on Thursday.