Occasionally I'll put up posts where I feel like I have an intimate knowledge of a subject, all the while rejecting all sense of it. This is one of those kinds of posts. It's a topic that I often think about and is best boiled down the the three words in the title, What is Music?
Over my short lifetime I've heard tens if not hundreds of thousands of pieces of music. From Bach to Shostakovich, Alstroemeria Records to Mozart, Lady Gaga to Frank Sinatra, music takes on many forms. Long ago there was Gregorian chant, music passed down much like history, through oral tradition. Eventually, such things were written down, though not as specifically as things are now. However, this is a wholly Western view as music also existed and evolved in the East, among other regions of the world. From Indian ragas to the largely pentatonic stylings of ancient Chinese music to the music of Africa (which I know little about but is significantly different than other regions), it's pretty clear that music has grown organically from many roots. What binds these threads together and why did humanity create music?
Showing posts with label personal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label personal. Show all posts
Saturday, January 3, 2015
Monday, December 29, 2014
2014 Year in Review
Well, 2014 is coming to a close. Was it any better than 2013? It's hard to say.
By many accounts, 2014 was shaped by events that were more unfortunate than could ever been realized. Domestically, in the US, we had multiple police brutality cases come to light. None of those seemed to come to the conclusion the public hoped for. We were swept by fear over the concerns of Ebola, which hit Africa to devastating effect but never made a particular impact here.
Overseas, by all accounts, was much worse however. From ISIL to plane disasters, 3 of them now that another plane has gone missing on the 28th of December, the world has not been a particularly safe place. It all seems so far away when we hear about atrocities like the December 16th school massacre in Peshawar by the Pakistani Taliban or the thousands of deaths in West Africa due to Ebola.
At home, this disconnect became increasingly obvious. The fear frenzy sparked by Ebola, which to date only has 4 cases and 1 death in the US, was almost comical in how overblown it was. The level of misinformation supplied was clearly crafted to feed the fear as all credible sources have said that outbreaks in developed countries would be incredibly unlikely. Now don't get me wrong, the crisis in west Africa over the spread and fatality of this current Ebola strain is very well founded, it just isn't particularly dangerous to the US where the media went crazy.
As bad as the year's been in the world, outside the Earth we perhaps had one of the most exciting events in recent space history. Rosetta and Philae, spacecraft from the European Space Agency (ESA) landed on a moving asteroid, no doubt a great feat. From a set of cute animated renditions of their mission to an xkcd comic chronicling their landing, the scientific community celebrated the success, though brief, of one of the longest and most difficult space missions to date.
In daily life I'm sure everyone has had somewhat of an up and down year. Every time you think something good happens, you get punched in the gut with something terrible. That's how the world is though, between all the good and bad, there's a lull where nothing seems to happen. Sometimes, I feel like that's what we should really be celebrating. Not praising the good, nor vilifying the bad, but celebrating those everyday events, the mediocrity is what keeps us going.
With that, I hope everyone has a good new year's. Hopefully, this upcoming year will have more to celebrate, both good and neutral, and less to cry over. As always, until next time.
--CsMiREK
By many accounts, 2014 was shaped by events that were more unfortunate than could ever been realized. Domestically, in the US, we had multiple police brutality cases come to light. None of those seemed to come to the conclusion the public hoped for. We were swept by fear over the concerns of Ebola, which hit Africa to devastating effect but never made a particular impact here.
Overseas, by all accounts, was much worse however. From ISIL to plane disasters, 3 of them now that another plane has gone missing on the 28th of December, the world has not been a particularly safe place. It all seems so far away when we hear about atrocities like the December 16th school massacre in Peshawar by the Pakistani Taliban or the thousands of deaths in West Africa due to Ebola.
At home, this disconnect became increasingly obvious. The fear frenzy sparked by Ebola, which to date only has 4 cases and 1 death in the US, was almost comical in how overblown it was. The level of misinformation supplied was clearly crafted to feed the fear as all credible sources have said that outbreaks in developed countries would be incredibly unlikely. Now don't get me wrong, the crisis in west Africa over the spread and fatality of this current Ebola strain is very well founded, it just isn't particularly dangerous to the US where the media went crazy.
As bad as the year's been in the world, outside the Earth we perhaps had one of the most exciting events in recent space history. Rosetta and Philae, spacecraft from the European Space Agency (ESA) landed on a moving asteroid, no doubt a great feat. From a set of cute animated renditions of their mission to an xkcd comic chronicling their landing, the scientific community celebrated the success, though brief, of one of the longest and most difficult space missions to date.
In daily life I'm sure everyone has had somewhat of an up and down year. Every time you think something good happens, you get punched in the gut with something terrible. That's how the world is though, between all the good and bad, there's a lull where nothing seems to happen. Sometimes, I feel like that's what we should really be celebrating. Not praising the good, nor vilifying the bad, but celebrating those everyday events, the mediocrity is what keeps us going.
With that, I hope everyone has a good new year's. Hopefully, this upcoming year will have more to celebrate, both good and neutral, and less to cry over. As always, until next time.
--CsMiREK
Thursday, June 26, 2014
Prospecting for Purveyors of Perfect Pizza
As a young single who is often too lazy to cook, I, like many others greatly enjoy the simplicity of pizza. Simply order a pizza from a place, wait some amount of time, generally 10-20 minutes and you have food for generally 2 to 3 meals. More than simplicity though, pizza has always evoked a sense of community for me, even when eaten alone. From pizza parties to sharing a pizza with family, the idea of a pizza has always been one I enjoyed. Moreover, the variety that comes with pizza is immense. Get some dough, some sauce, traditionally marinara but sometimes white or bbq depending on your tastes, cover with cheese and you have a basic pizza. From there add any multitude of toppings from onions to pepperoni, ricotta to mushrooms, anchovies (yuck) to prosciutto or meatballs.
So what exactly does prospecting for purveyors of perfect pizza really mean and what am I gonna do about it? Well one, I really like alliteration because it makes for fun sounding phrases. I was also inspired by the burrito bracket running on Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight. While I don't have a wealth of chefs and food writers to give me recommendations, I do have time, the time to visit as many pizza places as possible. Why pizza in particular? Well I want to see just what makes good pizza and what makes great pizza. So let's get to it, what am I gonna rate these pizza on?
So what exactly does prospecting for purveyors of perfect pizza really mean and what am I gonna do about it? Well one, I really like alliteration because it makes for fun sounding phrases. I was also inspired by the burrito bracket running on Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight. While I don't have a wealth of chefs and food writers to give me recommendations, I do have time, the time to visit as many pizza places as possible. Why pizza in particular? Well I want to see just what makes good pizza and what makes great pizza. So let's get to it, what am I gonna rate these pizza on?
Saturday, May 10, 2014
Musical Taste
It's been a year and a half since I started this blog and I just realized that I haven't really mentioned anything about my personal musical tastes. Through my Musical Discovery and Top Tracks posts I hope that it strikes you that I have at least somewhat eclectic tastes when it comes to music. From electronic like Alstroemeria Records to rock like 9mm Parabellum Bullet to pop like Sara Bareilles and St. Vincent I end up listening to almost everything.
Since my first post of Musical Discovery when I had around 17000 tracks I've added another 5000 taking the total to over 22000 tracks. So I think that it's good to know what I look for in music and what I enjoy. In doing so I hope that you take some time to look at what determines the music that you enjoy. For me, I look for two things and two things only. The first is whether I find the music interesting and the second is whether the music fits my aesthetic for music.
So what defines interesting to me? As a kid growing up with classical music along with regular pop music, defining interesting is a somewhat odd thing for me. I heavily favor music that is complex in structure. However, I also realize that there is a cutoff where complexity does not equate to better and simplicity wins out. What that means in more digestible terms is that I tend to enjoy music that keeps me thinking. A lot of pop music I find to be repetitive in a bland way. The general texture of most pop music is consists purely of a vocal (singular) track, some sort of 4 beat percussion track, and a nondescript instrumental track. By nondescript I mean that there is no memorable part to almost any instrumental track I hear on the radio. This doesn't mean that I don't like repetitive music. I can very much enjoy music like Robot Rock by Daft Punk which is a pretty repetitive track. I can also admire the works of Steven Reich, in particular Piano Phase and Come Out. While not super impressive nowadays, the ideas are really interesting and the use of panning in Come Out is just plain awesome to listen to. I guess what really defines interesting to me is how much I can pick apart and understand a piece which is perhaps a bit outside of what others might think about music.
The other half of my musical taste is my aesthetic for music. This is more in line with what most people would say musical taste is. My aesthetic brings me closer to electronic music at the moment while still enjoying rock and pop. I love the sound of string instruments and orchestral works in general. Brass in particular is so fun for me to listen to, I'm a huge fan of the big band sound even though I don't have much in my library. While ambient and rap or hip hop generally don't veer into my aesthetic, I can appreciate them if they provide a substantively interesting musical part. As an example, Nujabes was a hip hop artist first and foremost even with the jazzy elements. The jazzy elements helped a lot for me to embrace his music. Alternatively, Eminem is just straight up rap music. However, he or whoever produces his music has a very clear and good sense for how to treat his lyrical rhythm in a musical setting even if that setting isn't the most complex. I find myself impressed with Eminem more than most other rappers or hip hop artists. The other thing to realize is that musical aesthetic changes as you get older. I implore you to listen to things that you don't like initially as your aesthetic changes. Just 4 or 5 years ago, there is no way I would have seen myself liking Eminem or Daft Punk or Alstroemeria Records but in time I've gotten to the point of embracing good music regardless of genre. Sometimes interesting music overrides what your usual aesthetic is. After all the two are wholly separate things while simultaneously being heavily interrelated. I hope you enjoyed this post and I hope it makes you think about what your musical tastes are, what you find interesting and what you're currently drawn towards. With that, until next time.
*Audio will be up later*
--CsMiREK
Since my first post of Musical Discovery when I had around 17000 tracks I've added another 5000 taking the total to over 22000 tracks. So I think that it's good to know what I look for in music and what I enjoy. In doing so I hope that you take some time to look at what determines the music that you enjoy. For me, I look for two things and two things only. The first is whether I find the music interesting and the second is whether the music fits my aesthetic for music.
So what defines interesting to me? As a kid growing up with classical music along with regular pop music, defining interesting is a somewhat odd thing for me. I heavily favor music that is complex in structure. However, I also realize that there is a cutoff where complexity does not equate to better and simplicity wins out. What that means in more digestible terms is that I tend to enjoy music that keeps me thinking. A lot of pop music I find to be repetitive in a bland way. The general texture of most pop music is consists purely of a vocal (singular) track, some sort of 4 beat percussion track, and a nondescript instrumental track. By nondescript I mean that there is no memorable part to almost any instrumental track I hear on the radio. This doesn't mean that I don't like repetitive music. I can very much enjoy music like Robot Rock by Daft Punk which is a pretty repetitive track. I can also admire the works of Steven Reich, in particular Piano Phase and Come Out. While not super impressive nowadays, the ideas are really interesting and the use of panning in Come Out is just plain awesome to listen to. I guess what really defines interesting to me is how much I can pick apart and understand a piece which is perhaps a bit outside of what others might think about music.
The other half of my musical taste is my aesthetic for music. This is more in line with what most people would say musical taste is. My aesthetic brings me closer to electronic music at the moment while still enjoying rock and pop. I love the sound of string instruments and orchestral works in general. Brass in particular is so fun for me to listen to, I'm a huge fan of the big band sound even though I don't have much in my library. While ambient and rap or hip hop generally don't veer into my aesthetic, I can appreciate them if they provide a substantively interesting musical part. As an example, Nujabes was a hip hop artist first and foremost even with the jazzy elements. The jazzy elements helped a lot for me to embrace his music. Alternatively, Eminem is just straight up rap music. However, he or whoever produces his music has a very clear and good sense for how to treat his lyrical rhythm in a musical setting even if that setting isn't the most complex. I find myself impressed with Eminem more than most other rappers or hip hop artists. The other thing to realize is that musical aesthetic changes as you get older. I implore you to listen to things that you don't like initially as your aesthetic changes. Just 4 or 5 years ago, there is no way I would have seen myself liking Eminem or Daft Punk or Alstroemeria Records but in time I've gotten to the point of embracing good music regardless of genre. Sometimes interesting music overrides what your usual aesthetic is. After all the two are wholly separate things while simultaneously being heavily interrelated. I hope you enjoyed this post and I hope it makes you think about what your musical tastes are, what you find interesting and what you're currently drawn towards. With that, until next time.
*Audio will be up later*
--CsMiREK
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Moving forward
Regardless if you're new here or have read a thing or two here before, welcome. I hope everyone had a great new years and because it is a new year I would like to review my year here. I started this blog a little over a year ago on January 1st of last year. Honestly I find this blog to be an extension of myself. My interests, my flaws, my regrets, my triumphs. During the course of writing this blog, I have become more aware of myself and what I really enjoy.
Besides starting this blog, this past year I graduated from college. I moved halfway across the country for work. I started to work. I spent WAY too much money on audio gear for the amount I make. I hung out with friends. Most importantly though, I spent this last year reflecting on who I am as a person. While I'm still unsure where I will go in future years, I know this for sure, I am very lucky and thankful for my past. Sure I have many regrets, but honestly life has been good to me so far. And while I am still young, I know to appreciate what I've been given.
A few days ago I was thinking about disabilities. Most notably I was thinking about being blind or deaf and how being either would affect my life. Given a choice between the two I think I might rather be dead. I know this sounds disrespectful to those who are either blind or deaf but given how I've lived and my interests, I don't think I could survive being either. With how much I listen and enjoy music, I could not survive being deaf. To be so for me, would be equivalent to cutting out one of the most important facets of my life. To be blind would be equally devastating. I'm not sure if I could survive as a programmer without my eyes. I spend almost my entire day looking at a computer screen, and while my eyes aren't great, to the point where I might as well be blind without my glasses, I spend my entire day looking at things. I'm sure that there are ways to do my job without being able to see, but I can't imagine that they'd be efficient in any manner.
In thinking about all this I came to a realization that the internet is not for the blind. A system of pages interlinked largely visually is just inherently unusable to those unable to see. I'm aware that it is possible to enjoy the web as a blind person using screen readers that verbalize the words on a screen. There are entire sites however devoted to the visual arts, which is fine just completely inaccessible. For more on this you can read this article written by Gizmodo a couple years ago.
While W3C standards include things about accessibility like use <strong> instead of <b> if you want to have strong emphasis on something semantically. Eg you want something bold to actually "sound" bold or have a strong emphasis. To blind people, it can be hard to tell that you mean something to be strongly accented unless you mean to have <strong> tags around things. More importantly, this isn't even standard. For example, I tried to set something bold in the blogspot editor and they use <b> tags. Assuming I meant whatever I had bolded to be strongly emphasized, anyone using a screen reader wouldn't hear it. Knowing that, I can tell that the web isn't quite there yet for those with really bad vision impairment.
I would love to make changes to the entire internet to make the internet more accessible. However, I know that that isn't possible by myself. Instead, I would like to make this blog at the least more accessible. For those who can't see or those who would rather listen, I am going to start recording myself speaking my blog posts. Kind of like a podcast but more of a vocal transcription of each post. This makes this more of an audioblog now, and I'm completely ok with that. That said, each post will likely take longer as I'll have to both write and record myself for each post. This will all begin with the next post. I hope you enjoy it and I hope you keep reading/listening.
--CsMiREK
Besides starting this blog, this past year I graduated from college. I moved halfway across the country for work. I started to work. I spent WAY too much money on audio gear for the amount I make. I hung out with friends. Most importantly though, I spent this last year reflecting on who I am as a person. While I'm still unsure where I will go in future years, I know this for sure, I am very lucky and thankful for my past. Sure I have many regrets, but honestly life has been good to me so far. And while I am still young, I know to appreciate what I've been given.
A few days ago I was thinking about disabilities. Most notably I was thinking about being blind or deaf and how being either would affect my life. Given a choice between the two I think I might rather be dead. I know this sounds disrespectful to those who are either blind or deaf but given how I've lived and my interests, I don't think I could survive being either. With how much I listen and enjoy music, I could not survive being deaf. To be so for me, would be equivalent to cutting out one of the most important facets of my life. To be blind would be equally devastating. I'm not sure if I could survive as a programmer without my eyes. I spend almost my entire day looking at a computer screen, and while my eyes aren't great, to the point where I might as well be blind without my glasses, I spend my entire day looking at things. I'm sure that there are ways to do my job without being able to see, but I can't imagine that they'd be efficient in any manner.
In thinking about all this I came to a realization that the internet is not for the blind. A system of pages interlinked largely visually is just inherently unusable to those unable to see. I'm aware that it is possible to enjoy the web as a blind person using screen readers that verbalize the words on a screen. There are entire sites however devoted to the visual arts, which is fine just completely inaccessible. For more on this you can read this article written by Gizmodo a couple years ago.
While W3C standards include things about accessibility like use <strong> instead of <b> if you want to have strong emphasis on something semantically. Eg you want something bold to actually "sound" bold or have a strong emphasis. To blind people, it can be hard to tell that you mean something to be strongly accented unless you mean to have <strong> tags around things. More importantly, this isn't even standard. For example, I tried to set something bold in the blogspot editor and they use <b> tags. Assuming I meant whatever I had bolded to be strongly emphasized, anyone using a screen reader wouldn't hear it. Knowing that, I can tell that the web isn't quite there yet for those with really bad vision impairment.
I would love to make changes to the entire internet to make the internet more accessible. However, I know that that isn't possible by myself. Instead, I would like to make this blog at the least more accessible. For those who can't see or those who would rather listen, I am going to start recording myself speaking my blog posts. Kind of like a podcast but more of a vocal transcription of each post. This makes this more of an audioblog now, and I'm completely ok with that. That said, each post will likely take longer as I'll have to both write and record myself for each post. This will all begin with the next post. I hope you enjoy it and I hope you keep reading/listening.
--CsMiREK
Monday, September 2, 2013
So behind
So I'm sure you've noticed I'm horribly behind. Between working somewhat odd hours and procrastinating on anything and everything I have neglected this blog. Fear not! I am working to back fill all the entries I have skipped. Unfortunately, I will have to let go of August's updates as there were much too many planned and I'm still behind from May. It's been a crazy few months but I think I'm almost ready to get back into this updating thing. Expect lots of new stuff coming up as I have learned much from my job in terms of programming and have had time to work on some interesting side projects of a musical nature.
--CsMiREK
--CsMiREK
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Musical Discovery: Parov Stelar
Wow, so if you actually follow this site at all, you'd know that this is being posted like...3 weeks late. I've been busy moving halfway across the country. I'm sure I'll catch up eventually.
If you don't follow this site...well move along and keep reading.
Anyways, this entry is on the electronic/swing artist Parov Stelar. I was originally introduced to the music of Parov Stelar by one of my college roommates. Specifically these songs. Soon afterward, as I get with music I enjoy, I became semi-obsessed. We had some really fun times rocking out to these beats.
In any case, back to the music. Overall, it's a pretty jazzy set of music. While it incorporates a lot of electronic aspects, the swing and jazz feel are really strong and really refreshing. Especially so when you listen to pop music too much. Don't get me wrong I love me some pop music, my first Musical Discovery was on Ellie Goulding after all. But I find that if I listen to too much pop music, it just all blurs into a mess of...indistinct musical tropes. On the other hand, I find that all of Parov Stelar's tracks are while genre-wise similar, their feel and overall execution vary greatly, in a good way. From his use of trumpets with Harmon mute to his saxophone heavy melodies to his awesome collaborative singers, he just seems to make every piece magical in a different way.
Overall, I just think you're missing out if you haven't taken a listen. He's got a bunch of stuff and in my opinion, all of it's good, which is pretty hard to find.
--CsMiREK
If you don't follow this site...well move along and keep reading.
Anyways, this entry is on the electronic/swing artist Parov Stelar. I was originally introduced to the music of Parov Stelar by one of my college roommates. Specifically these songs. Soon afterward, as I get with music I enjoy, I became semi-obsessed. We had some really fun times rocking out to these beats.
In any case, back to the music. Overall, it's a pretty jazzy set of music. While it incorporates a lot of electronic aspects, the swing and jazz feel are really strong and really refreshing. Especially so when you listen to pop music too much. Don't get me wrong I love me some pop music, my first Musical Discovery was on Ellie Goulding after all. But I find that if I listen to too much pop music, it just all blurs into a mess of...indistinct musical tropes. On the other hand, I find that all of Parov Stelar's tracks are while genre-wise similar, their feel and overall execution vary greatly, in a good way. From his use of trumpets with Harmon mute to his saxophone heavy melodies to his awesome collaborative singers, he just seems to make every piece magical in a different way.
Overall, I just think you're missing out if you haven't taken a listen. He's got a bunch of stuff and in my opinion, all of it's good, which is pretty hard to find.
--CsMiREK
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
So close
We were so close,
But it wasn't meant to be.
Maybe next year they say,
But right now it's time to scream.
Let your anger out,
Let your madness shine,
Staying quiet won't help you,
So scream until you're fine.
--CsMiREK
But it wasn't meant to be.
Maybe next year they say,
But right now it's time to scream.
Let your anger out,
Let your madness shine,
Staying quiet won't help you,
So scream until you're fine.
--CsMiREK
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Rant Corner - Time to Start Coding
I'm not sure whether this is particularly unique to me or whether it's a common occurrence with everyone, but I'm a huge fan of starting projects. Now this doesn't mean that I get a lot done. On the contrary, most of the people you talk to about me would say that I am quite lazy. However, I enjoy starting things without any regard as to necessarily finishing them.
To that end I am starting up yet another feature called "Rant Corner". This one's mainly just for me to voice my various opinions on any number of things. So, the intro isn't completely useless. I'm not so scatterbrained to begin writing and suddenly change my thoughts... Anyways, this episode of "Rant Corner" is about coding, a topic close to my heart.
It is my opinion that computer programming, coding, hacking, or whatever you want to call it is not that hard. People make coding out to be difficult and cumbersome. However, I think that that's a misconception. While it isn't necessarily easy, coding, like anything worth doing, is about the work you put into it. Of course there are people better than you, but that goes for everything else as well. My thought is that through whatever experience, people get this notion that coding is hard and that there's no way that they can get better or understand it. This obviously doesn't apply solely to coding, but it is definitely a factor in how people react to coding. Of course I'm biased but I really do think that anyone can learn how to code and others do too.
To that end I am starting up yet another feature called "Rant Corner". This one's mainly just for me to voice my various opinions on any number of things. So, the intro isn't completely useless. I'm not so scatterbrained to begin writing and suddenly change my thoughts... Anyways, this episode of "Rant Corner" is about coding, a topic close to my heart.
It is my opinion that computer programming, coding, hacking, or whatever you want to call it is not that hard. People make coding out to be difficult and cumbersome. However, I think that that's a misconception. While it isn't necessarily easy, coding, like anything worth doing, is about the work you put into it. Of course there are people better than you, but that goes for everything else as well. My thought is that through whatever experience, people get this notion that coding is hard and that there's no way that they can get better or understand it. This obviously doesn't apply solely to coding, but it is definitely a factor in how people react to coding. Of course I'm biased but I really do think that anyone can learn how to code and others do too.
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Musical Discovery - Intro
If you talk to any of my friends, you would learn that I have an avid interest for few things. Among those are music and video games. To better understand just how avid my interest in music is, the current number of pieces of music I have is just under 17000. That much music takes up over 110 GB of space and takes over a month and a half to play end to end. Now while I don't legally own most of it, I do try to get as much as I can legally within my means. (Currently up to a little over 2000 legally owned tracks)
The point of these posts labeled Musical Discovery is to give all my readers a sense of what I like to listen to. It also makes for a good way to get people interested in music that they would never normally hear otherwise. The plan currently is to have at least one or two of these a month, highlighting a different artist in each post. In addition, if you come across any sweet music, leave a comment and I'll look into it. Stay tuned for the first real post in the series coming up soon!
--CsMiREK
The point of these posts labeled Musical Discovery is to give all my readers a sense of what I like to listen to. It also makes for a good way to get people interested in music that they would never normally hear otherwise. The plan currently is to have at least one or two of these a month, highlighting a different artist in each post. In addition, if you come across any sweet music, leave a comment and I'll look into it. Stay tuned for the first real post in the series coming up soon!
--CsMiREK
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Musicians and Programmers Pt. 1
So here we are, a real post. But what should I talk about? Well, how about I talk about myself a bit. The purpose of this site is to show the world my views and opinions. To do so, you should probably know some stuff about me.
Given that the title of this post is musicians and programmers I guess that must mean I am both a musician and a programmer. Well, if you came to that conclusion, I would surmise that you are at least as smart as a 5th grader. More specifically, I am a cellist and am about to graduate from college with a bachelors in computer science.
What I have realized in my few years in programming is that a LOT of programmers are musicians. This seems strange as in programming, you try to create programs with the "correct" behavior. In this way, programming seems incredibly objective, there is a right answer, get to it. On the other hand, music is highly subjective. It is hard to gauge what "good" music is and there generally isn't an answer at all. To that, I say that you're not asking the right questions about music nor are you asking the right questions about the minds behind the music.
I won't go into why I think so many programmers are musicians in this post, I'll leave that for later. (If you're curious what others think about the subject, see this). However, I want to impart onto you the correct questions to ask yourself for my next post on this topic. First, what makes a "good" program? At the same token, what makes a "good" piece of music? Next, what do programmers aim for to make "good" programs and what do composers aim for to make "good" pieces of music? Lastly, does everyone have a consensus on what constitutes a "good" program?
--CsMiREK
Given that the title of this post is musicians and programmers I guess that must mean I am both a musician and a programmer. Well, if you came to that conclusion, I would surmise that you are at least as smart as a 5th grader. More specifically, I am a cellist and am about to graduate from college with a bachelors in computer science.
What I have realized in my few years in programming is that a LOT of programmers are musicians. This seems strange as in programming, you try to create programs with the "correct" behavior. In this way, programming seems incredibly objective, there is a right answer, get to it. On the other hand, music is highly subjective. It is hard to gauge what "good" music is and there generally isn't an answer at all. To that, I say that you're not asking the right questions about music nor are you asking the right questions about the minds behind the music.
I won't go into why I think so many programmers are musicians in this post, I'll leave that for later. (If you're curious what others think about the subject, see this). However, I want to impart onto you the correct questions to ask yourself for my next post on this topic. First, what makes a "good" program? At the same token, what makes a "good" piece of music? Next, what do programmers aim for to make "good" programs and what do composers aim for to make "good" pieces of music? Lastly, does everyone have a consensus on what constitutes a "good" program?
--CsMiREK
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