Archive for category events
Using Visualizations for Music Discovery
Posted by Paul in code, data, events, fun, Music, music information retrieval, research, The Echo Nest, visualization on October 22, 2009
On Monday, Justin and I will present our magnum opus – a three-hour long tutorial entitled: Using Visualizations for Music Discovery. In this talk we look the various techniques that can be used for visualization of music. We include a survey of the many existing visualizations of music, as well as talk about techniques and algorithms for creating visualizations. My hope is that this talk will be inspirational as well as educational spawning new music discovery visualizations. I’ve uploaded a PDF of our slide deck to slideshare. It’s a big deck, filled with examples, but note that large as it is, the PDF isn’t the whole talk. The tutorial will include many demonstrations and videos of visualizations that just are not practical to include in a PDF. If you have the chance, be sure to check out the tutorial at ISMIR in Kobe on the 26th.
Who’s going to Boston Music Hackday?
Posted by Paul in events, fun, Music, The Echo Nest, web services on October 21, 2009
Look at all the companies and organizations going to Music Hack Day.
The Echo Nest
SoundCloud
Indaba MusicHarmonix
Amie Street
8tracks
Playdar
Bandsintown
Tourfilter
NPR
Boxee
Sonos
Aviary
Conduit Labs
Topspin Media
Noteflight
Dorkbot
Libre.fm
It promises to be a really fun weekend. If you are interested in hacking music and working with the folks that are building the celestial jukebox make sure you sign up, slots are going fast. There’s one guy I’d 
to get to come to the hack day. I’m sure he’d be fascinated with all that goes on.
Music and Bits
Posted by Paul in events, fun, Music, The Echo Nest on October 13, 2009
If you are heading to Amsterdam next week for the Amsterdam Dance Event, you may want to check out the Music & Bits pre-conference. This year Music & Bits is hosting two tracks: a traditional conference-style track with thought leaders from the Music 2.0 space, and a mini-Music Hackday where developers can gather to hack on music APIs to build new and interesting apps.
The Echo Nest will be represented by founder and CTO Brian Whitman. He’ll be giving a keynote talk about the next generation of music search and discovery platform and how these platforms can recommend music or organize your catalog automatically by listening to it, predict which countries to launch your band’s next tour or even help you build synthesizers that play from the entire world of music. It looks to be a really cool talk during a really interesting conference. Wish I were there.
This video from last year gives a taste of what Music & Bits is like:
SoundEchoCloudNest
Posted by Paul in code, data, events, Music, The Echo Nest, web services on September 28, 2009
At the recent Berlin Music Hackday, developer Hannes Tydén developed a mashup between SoundCloud and The Echo Nest, dubbed SoundCloudEchoNest. The program uses the SoundCloud and Echo Nest APIs to automatically annotate your SoundCloud tracks with information such as when the track fades in and fades out, the key, the mode, the overall loudness, time signature and the tempo. Also each Echo Nest section is marked. Here’s an example:
This track is annotated as follows:
- echonest:start_of_fade_out=182.34
- echonest:mode=min
- echonest:loudness=-5.521
- echonest:end_of_fade_in=0.0
- echonest:time_signature=1
- echonest:tempo=96.72
- echonest:key=F#
Additionally, 9 section boundaries are annotated.
The user interface to SoundEchoCloudNest is refreshly simple, no GUIs for Hannes:
Hannes has open sourced his code on github, so if you are a Ruby programmer and want to play around with SoundCloud and/or the Echo Nest, check out the code.
Machine tagging of content is becoming more viable. Photos on Flicker can be automatically tagged with information about the camera and exposure settings, geolocation, time of day and so on. Now with APIs like SoundCloud and the Echo Nest, I think we’ll start to see similar machine tagging of music, where basic info such as tempo, key, mode, loudness can be automatically attached to the audio. This will open the doors for all sorts of tools to help us better organize our music.
Tour of the Music Hackday Boston site
Posted by Paul in code, events, fun, Music, The Echo Nest, web services on September 24, 2009
The Boston Music Hackday is being held at Microsoft’s New England Research and Development Center (aka The NERD). Jon, Elissa and I took a tour of the space on Tuesday, and I must say I was very impressed. The place is tailor made for hacking. There’s open space big enough for 300 hackers to gather to show their demos, there’s plenty of informal space for hacking, there are small and large conference rooms for break out sessions, there’s wireless, there are plenty of power outlets, kitchen facilities, soda coolers and great views of Boston. This space is being donated by Microsoft – and I must say that my opinion of Microsoft has gone up substantially after I’ve seen how generous they’ve been with the space. Plus, the space is simply beautiful.
Informal hacking space at the NERD
More hacking space at the NERD
This hackday is shaping up to be something special. I’m pretty sure that we’ll hit our 300 person capacity, so register soon if you want to guarantee a spot.
Hacking space at the NERD
Open space at the NERD
Meeting space at the NERD
Boston view from the NERD
More hacking and chilling for the Hackday
Berlin Music Hackday presentation videos
There are a bunch of videos of presentations and demos from the Music Hackday berlin: http://qik.com/digitalwaveriding:
Photos from Berlin Music Hackday
Posted by Paul in code, events, The Echo Nest on September 19, 2009
"I am a jelly roll"
There are some nifty photos coming of the the Berlin Music Hackday. Here’s a slide show.
What is a Music Hackday?
Hernik Berggren put together a nifty slide deck along with some video to show people what a Music Hackday is all about. Check it out on Henrik’s blog: Music Hackday Revisited.
Hacking on the Echo Nest at the Berlin Music Hackday
Posted by Paul in code, data, events, remix, The Echo Nest, web services on September 16, 2009
The Berlin Music Hackday is nearly upon us. Ben Lacker (a.k.a. DJ API) will be representing the Echo Nest at this wonderful event. If you want to maximize your hacking time during the hackday there are a few things that you can do in advance to get ready to hack on the Echo Nest APIs:
- Get an Echo Nest API Key – If you are going to be using the API, you need to get a key. You can get one for free from: developer.echonest.com
- Read the API overview – The overview gives you a good idea of the capabilities of the API. If you are thinking of writing a remix application, be sure to read Adam Lindsay’s wonderful remix tutorial.
- Pick a client library – There are a number of client libraries for The Echo Nest – select one for your language of choice and install it.
- Think of a great application – easier said than done. If you are looking for some inspiration, checkout these examples: morecowbell, donkdj, Music Explorer FX, and Where’s the Pow? . You’ll find more examples in the Echo Nest gallery of Showcase Apps. If you are stuck for an idea ask me (paul@echonest.com) or Ben – we have a list of application ideas that we think would be fun to write.
At the end of the hackday, Ben will choose the Most Awesome Echo Nest Hackday Application. The developer of this application will go home a shiny new iPod touch. If you want your application to catch Ben’s eye write an Echo Nest application that makes someone say “woah! how did you do that!”, extra points if its an application with high viral potential. Check out the list of hacks created at the London Music Hackday to get inspiration.
Music Machinery 