Author Archives: mastor

Pd, Python, MySQL

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I’ve spent a good chunk of the last few days getting Python running in Pd. Thomas Grill has written an external that allows you to wrap up Python code. It’s really beautiful, and I love Python, even though I’m a complete novice.

It’s been an adventure though. Pd forces Python to work in 32-bits, which means it needs a 32-bit version of MySQL, as well as a 32-bit build of the MySQL library for Python. On a 64-bit computer that becomes a bit of an issue.

So far I’ve got it working flawlessly within Pd, but trying to import MySQLdb from a straight up .py file (which should be easier) doesn’t work – says I’ve got the wrong architecture. Luckily I’m not planning on doing too much db work outside of Pd right now.

Face Detection .02

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Better face detection: colour images, saves the original frame. Also (with the help of the php script) writes some info to a database: time, location (hardcoded for now) face position and dimensions, folder name, original image name. Everything can be linked back to the original and to everything else.

face-6.jpg

The next step is to do some after-the-fact analysis of the faces. Some kind of shape recognition so I can start swapping similar faces in the originals.

I would love to make this some kind of collaborative effort, where I try to make a narrative out of the material I’m gathering, while the computer’s trying to do the same thing, using its own criteria. Hopefully we’d work well together some of the time, but also completely disagree at other times. But first I’m going to try and do something similar with sound. That’ll be what I present for class next week.

face_detection_0_02.zip

Lead Sheet – Calvin Klein for Ghosts

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Slowly chipping away at lead sheets. I know I have a lot of these as Sibelius files already, so I’m doing the ones I know I haven’t got.

Here’s a recording of The Deborahs (Roger Travassos, Chris Banks and me) playing Calvin Klein for Ghosts. We don’t play together enough.

and the chart:

Calvin Klein for Ghosts (pdf)

Everything all the time

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Everything All The TimeI just spent the day recording with Everything All The Time. I’ve been a member of this band off and on for a few years. It’s off right now, but they were generous enough to invite me to play on The Pinnacle, a song we reworked while I was a member.

I love playing with EATT, and I regret having to leave – between baby, school and work I had no chance. The music is fantastic, but even more than that, they’re so good to work with. Everybody has enormous input compositionally and nobody’s afraid to speak their mind when something’s not working. It’s a warm, happy, effortless environment. A perfect balance between good, danceable music and creativity (often outright weirdness) that’s usually really difficult to get right.