Electronic music is widely recognized for being a relatively young, unusually diverse form of music, but many of today’s listeners lack a meaningful understanding of the similarities and differences between the various genres and subgenres of electronic music. GenreCodex, and its two supporting mini-thesis projects, GenreSurvey and GenreQuery, seek to address that lack of understanding, and shatter the misconception of homogeneity often applied to electronic music by inexperienced mainstream listeners. By applying investigational techniques geared toward illustrating the dichotomy between the most prominent genres of electronic music, combined with data visualization techniques that fuse publicly available crowd-sourced music information with designed web space using code, GenreQuery provides users with interactive access to a world of genre information, while also acting as a scaffolding for the implementation of a fully-functioning model of GenreCodex in the following year of study.
In preparation for a brief presentation to be given regarding my prototype concept for GenreMap, phase 2 of GenreCodex, I have moved forward with a very rough first-iteration mockup of a couple of screens I picture for the interaction model of GenreCodex itself. I will have over a year to iterate on that design. My presentation can be found linked here, which also includes a rough concept sketch of GenreMap.
In the final day of the Week of GenreCodex, I would like to organize some thoughts regarding possible interactive extensions to the idea. As of this point, although I am not dead-set on any specific format, I primarily envision GenreCodex living on the web as a website. However, as shown throughout this week of exploration, I also have some ideas about how the experience of navigating the codex and discovering music could be applied to tablet or mobile form as well. Even on top of that, preliminary exposure to interactive installations within Major Studio have got me thinking about physical-world possibilities for GC.
The following is a summation of my thoughts on what each format might entail, from a technical perspective, and from an interaction perspective. They are largely preliminary, as I am still focusing more on concept and learning how to use some of these technologies (some of which I have not yet learned how to work with).
Thoughts: Each of the above technology groups are keystone developer’s knowledge, and are crucial in almost any type of web setting, for a number of verticals. I am prioritizing learning of at least 2 of these tech groups, the first of which I am most comfortable in and have a lot of experience with, the second I am just starting to learn and have very limited experience with, and the third I am not learning and have no experience with. HTML5 and CSS3 are incredibly intuitive and very powerful, as is demonstrated in the Conductor video demo and MTA.me, by Alexander Chen.
Thoughts: Although I have absolutely no experience working with iOS, nor am I an iPad OR iPhone owner (sob), I am voraciously interested in the possibilities of this medium. I do hope, in time, and with a little bit of money hopefully to change all that, and when that happens, provided I know my stuff in the web world, I would likely be able to pick up on app development and/or porting of the framework to the tablet and handheld device. That’s assuming the idea doesn’t catch on and bring me someone who already knows what they’re doing.
Thoughts: This is a largely unexplored area for me, and here in a Design & Technology program, perhaps some of us with less experience are discouraged from shying from a more screen-obsessed approach. However, as I’ve started experimenting with a physical object for a proof of concept due next week in the studio, I am enjoying the break from one form carpal tunnel, even if paper-cutting, for example, is just another form of carpal tunnel for me. I was highly captivated by what I saw at the AIGA Data Visualization: Methods and Madness talk just before the start of the spring semester. Of particular note to my installation inspiration, is what Laura Kurgan, director of visual studies at Columbia, presented called Human Geographies, it was a 360º-installation that displayed animated, dynamic information about the exchange of money around the world between various countries, specificially, I remember, migrant workers. I can totally picture the GenreMap being brought into physical space, where people can interact with it, touching stations and listening to music, perhaps even light changes, or wrap-around video of typical parties, or perhaps even more interestingly, abstracted aesthetic and visual contexts, of each type of genre. Say for example you’re listening to house music, which is on the Red Line on the map, perhaps it would bring up a window where video could be expanded to engulf the entire viewing area, and some sort of red-filtered visual would come in– parties, sensual silhouettes, lines and curves, heartbeats, soulful hints, etc. Dubstep, on the other hand, would be frenetic, harsh, and more energetic, with industrial images or warlike innuendos.
Today, I set out to do a bit of research and comparison when it comes to alternate sources of music data for the GenreCodex project. While Last.fm is my first choice at the moment, it is important to be aware of the capabilities of other data sources. After coming up with a list of criteria I have learned so far to be worth examining, I looked at the API documentation and any instances of music players for the following music data powerhouses: Discogs.com, MusicBrainz, and Beatport. Each source is somewhat different, even from Last.fm, the most prominently so being Beatport. While Last.fm, Discogs.com and MusicBrainz all share a more informational purpose, Beatport is a music store. Either way, I wanted to examine the following criteria:
Does it have an API?
Does it have an embeddable music player?
Does the API allow for access to genre data?
Is there a specific hierarchy inherent in the data structure?
Is the data crowd-sourced or curated?
I found that all sources do share their data, although MusicBrainz doesn’t seem to make their API as available. I also found that each source does have genre data I could work with. However, it looks like only MusicBrainz is the crowd-sourced data besides Last.fm. Also, only Beatport has an embeddable music player, besides Last.fm. My initial findings are summed up in the chart shown in this post, but almost as soon as I finished filling out the chart, I started to think about what information I was overlooking.
My initial rankings of alternate data sources placed Beatport as my backup, with Discogs, and then MusicBrainz in last place. However, given some of the information I became aware of at the conclusion of this exercise, I believe my rankings would change.
In a future iteration of this comparative research, I would want to compare factors like: the volume of the user base, whether the music databases includes information from a full range of time, and whether there is any data for genres outside of electronic (as a core idea of GenreCodex is that once the system works for electronic, it should, in theory, work for any other type of music).
When I sat down to sketch, I was rather frustrated with my previous attempts at applying a grid/transit map convention to music genres, so I decided to go back into some concepting I had done for the NYC Subway Co-lab (see right), using mobile devices.
This time, however, I wanted to explore what a GenreMap might look like on the screen. I can picture finger swipe movements being even easier to navigate with than on the screen with a mouse or trackpad. A tap on the station would pop up the information and music player window. I would have to flesh out the UI specifically for hand-held, possibly even between tablet and phone, or even between specific phone models. I will have to explore the technical constraints separately at the end of this week.
As identified in Phase 1 of the GenreCodex project, Last.fm is a prime contender for the data source that would be able to feed a living, evolving map of music. If you are not familiar with Last.fm, it is a music personalization site that uses a desktop application which keeps a record of the music you play (on your computer in a program like iTunes, your iPod, or even your Phone), referred to as a “scrobble.” As you scrobble more music, Last.fm uses that data to recommend new music to you (remarkably accurate, much like Pandora, although the recommendation algorithms likely differ significantly), tell you how much you have in common with other Last.fm users (the Tasteometer), and perhaps most importantly to GenreCodex, serve as a token that affirms the existence of a track, album, and musician. As each scrobble is built from the meta data stored in each track’s ID3 tags, they contribute to a massive, labyrinthine, almost fractal-like wiki. Last.fm houses what must be hundreds of thousands of pages for each unique artist, album and track collected from their massive global user base. The crucial determining factor of the individual scrobbles provides the key structural element, as scrobbles are aggregated into play counts. Massive alternative rock bands like Coldplay and Radiohead dominate the upper-echelon of most scrobbled music, but there is a presence afforded to any track that gets scrobbled, down to the virtually unknowns who barely have more than a handful of listeners. As such, Last.fm provides a relatively stratified sample of massively crowd-sourced music information, not to be taken literally, but rather comparatively within itself. Comparing the scrobbles of one musician to the myspace plays of another, for instance, would be totally pointless, but a comparative look at both’s scrobbles can give an idea of listenership more clearly than most other readily available sources.
The Last.fm API is free to anyone using it for non-commercial purposes. Application is easy, and can be done in moments. With an API key, one could build a web app or program using any of the following data forms, each with their own range of command methods: Album, Artist, Auth, Chart, Event, Geo, Group, Library, Playlist, Radio, Tag, Tasteometer, Track, User, Venue. Interestingly, perhaps alarmingly, there is no obvious area for genre. However, there is a slight discrepancy between the nomenclature of Last.fm, as “tags” are used to identify both the collective data for a track or scrobble, and what would be considered the genre. It appears that genre is something that is added by dedicated listeners (whose motivations, it can be interpreted, are similar to those fueling the Wikipedia project) on individual artist pages. The Last.fm API does indeed hold the data, but it is not as obvious in the list of data types; rather, it is hidden within individual call methods within many of the data types. For example, there is a call method called “.getTopTags” within the Artist, Album, User, and Track data, which contains the genre information.
Here are two important and interesting projects I have found this week that use the Last.fm API as a data source:
Unfortunately, although we have been going back and forth playing phone and email tag, I have not as of yet gotten the chance to have a meaningful discussion with the musicologist I have contacted regarding GenreCodex. Rob Theakston is something of a rare figure in the world of electronic music. While he has always been “there,” throughout the later waves of Detroit’s recurring musical renaissance periods, primarily detroit techno, he has chosen not to enter the spotlight as a specific type of figure.
However, his contributions to electronic music span record labels, individual musicians, events, and publications, in addition to his own musical practices within the Moodgadget and Ghostly biosphere. He is one of the most knowledgeable people I have personal contact with, having designed album artwork and packaging for an EP of his last year.
Rob Theakston (Planet E employee): Carol Marvin had done a lot of small-scale events around town. And then she helped put on this thing called The World Party, which was supposed to celebrate The World Cup in 1994.
Carol assembled a pretty smart team to do public relations, including Barbara Deyo. And she had an assistant, Adriel Thornton, who had been involved with Detroit techno since the early ’90s. I think those match-ups really helped Carol get to Carl, and vice versa. It made sense that Carol, with her connections within the Detroit community, would meet up with Carl and discuss this happening. She was really well-connected and she had the people with the funding to make it happen. Once things started to happen, everyone got really excited about the potential.
The festival almost didn’t happen, and it was my fault. I was working at Planet E at the time, and Carl had a very important meeting downtown. I was running around doing something else that day, and it completely slipped my mind to remind him that he had a meeting. It was the first and only time in the three or four years I worked with Carl that I thought I was going to get fired. He pulled me into his office, and he screamed at me that the meeting was with the Mayor of Detroit. I thought he was meeting with his accountant or something.
That morning at about 5:30 AM, Tim Price and I were in a golf cart together. We were sitting by the Detroit River, taking a breather, and I looked at him and said, “If we can get 10,000 people for this first one, we’ll have done our job. It will be all worth it.”
During the Rhythm & Sound set I dropped a cinder block on my ankle. And finally someone said, “That’s it! Go back to your hotel room for a couple of hours, take some Ibuprofen and sleep.” The bowl was starting to fill up, but it wasn’t packed. I slept, took a shower, came back and Barbara Deyo came running up to me with tears rolling down her cheeks, and grabbed me by the hand. We looked over, and the bowl was full.
After looking over these contributions, I am beginning to wonder if I am leaving something out within GenreCodex in the parties, festivals, etc. It might be an idea to make for some sort of space for the most prominent clubs, parties, and other venues in the Codex, for what is relevant to each genre– perhaps classics or hottest right now. I actually remember having this idea long ago, last summer before I even started at Parsons…it’s a smudged memory, but it might be valuable to be mindful of, even this early in the process.
Today’s exercise was somewhat unsuccessful, but still a valuable lesson nonetheless. I set out to try and come up with a way of laying out genres and landmasses, as if they were going to be mapped with subgenres as points on the map (like cities or subway stations, for instance). However, what I found was that I was drawing rather arbitrary shapes for the genres– the contours of which could hold some sort of valuable information about the genre. So I started to think of a scale I might be able to apply– time is definitely one good measure, but what else could be used? First I tried the average tempo, or BPM, found in the genres mapped to the X-axis, and time on the Y-axis. The problem with this approach was that different genres would then converge where the tempo was similar, which could distort the diagram, making people think that two genres that could sound completely disparate go together solely based on the BPM. Then, after some erasing, I decided to ease the X-axis measures and just sort the landmasses by their general style or scene, with the dancefloor-oriented material on the left, and the non-dancefloor material to the right. That is the convention being used in the above diagram. Still, the landmasses appear arbitrary, and as I am reading and learning in other classes, geography is generally distorted in favor of more important information in transit maps, and landmasses are sometimes done away with altogether.
Perhaps if iterated on, I would consider changing the orientation of the axes to plot time on the X-axis and if not the style or zone of the genre, than something more meaningful. However, it seems like there might be a way of communicating something like House music by expressing it’s parts as a whole than trying to add something next to, or behind the more valuable information. Perhaps it’s best to leave all but the most important stuff out? I find trouble believing that as well, as the more I research, the more I discover that the ideal situation is the well-balanced or well-moderated one.
We have been assigned in Major Studio to dedicate a bit of time each week to a specific domain of interest, which will replace the dreaded sister-project usually assigned, 7-in-7, which involves random or non-random projects in relation to interests. As my interests for exploration this semester are already quite clear, I figure it would be a good time to lay out some of the tasks I have laid out for the week:
Map Line Aesthetic Concepting – I have been increasingly interested in applying a subway-map type of aesthetic to a diagram illustrating the evolution of a genre, this will allow me to make some very basic explorations before they are reinforced in other classes like Data Viz and the NYC Subway Co-Lab. Not only will this be a good first step into that area to get things rolling, but it will also serve as a good snapshot when I am looking back at the beginning sketches of the concept.
Genre Landmass Aesthetic Concepting – One of the most commonly distorted (and debated over) aspects of transportation maps is geography. Landmasses are abstracted in many cases (often the more successful ones) in order to accommodate for the most important data…sometimes they are discarded entirely. Is it possible, however, for the landmasses to be more important than the lines that run across them? What might a series of “genre islands” look like? I go into this project with full awareness of the high probability for failure, but I am almost looking to confirm to myself the true nature of an order of operations when building a conceptual map or diagram.
Preliminary Discussion With a Musicologist – As Map of Metal creator Patrick Galbraith proved, the input of a knowledgeable musicologist or music historian other than ones-self is worth its weight in gold. Subjectivity is kept in check, and missing spots of knowledge are more likely to be filled in, when more than one mind is working on the content. I have asked a noted electronic music expert, Rob Theakston, who has appeared in numerous documentaries and publications, if he would be interesting in sharing some of his knowledge with my project. I don’t know if he’ll say yes, but if he does, I’d like to get his initial thoughts on a map of electronic music.
An exploration of the Last.fm API – Since I have identified Last.fm as a primary area of interest for gathering crowd-sourced music data in Phase 1: GenreSurvey last semester, I’d like to take a look at the API and what kind of data they are making available for designers and developers like me, along with a couple examples of what others have used it for.
Concept Sketching – because we all need to take a break from philosophising and analyzing and concepting and iterating and ideating…and just sit quietly with the ole sketchbook.
Alternate Sources of Music Data – As there’s always the possibility of Last.fm not working the way I want and need it to, I’d like to muse upon a couple of other possible data models. It’s not going to be as detailed a look as Last.fm, but I’d like to at least find a list a couple possibilities.
An Analysis of Interactive Possibilities – Although I picture GenreCodex to live primarily on the web, I also want very much for it to be applicable to mobile and/or tablets and/or print, as well as other mediums, perhaps like a physical object or even an installation. Here is where I will muse upon a few ideas and what they would likely entail, and maybe sketch a few things out in the process.
The final paper detailing the Week of GenreCodex, and GenreDice, the physical paper prototype that arose from the week, can be downloaded here (.docx).
