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Weekend Edition Sunday, November 16, 2008 - Tod Machover's goal is to put music into the hands of people who want to play it — or at least imagine it.

Video game fans may have spent some time with something Machover and his team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology helped to develop — Guitar Hero.

"The idea that you could make a new kind of instrument that would use the gestures you were most natural and familiar with, and the fact that that would lead to a set of instruments that would let anyone have fun with music makes a lot of sense," he says.
Instruments With Built-In Technology
Machover first began working on what he calls "hyperinstruments" at MIT in 1986. The most famous is probably the hypercello he created for Yo-Yo Ma.
"The basic idea of a hyperinstrument is where the technology is built right into the instrument so that the instrument knows how it's being played — literally what the expression is, what the meaning is, what the direction of the music is," Machover says. "If a performer pushed to a downbeat or relaxed on a phrase or brought out a particular F-sharp, those things would be recognized and valued by the instrument."
For Yo-Yo Ma's hypercello, Machover placed sensors on the instrument, the performer's wrist and his bow and fed the electronic impulses generated by those sensors into a computer. It took the signals and responded to the cellist's playing — sometimes transforming the sound, and sometimes creating new sounds.
Machover is a cellist himself. He started playing as a child, and from the beginning he was interested in modern classical music — and rock. He studied at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and at Columbia and the Juilliard School of Music in New York — where his mentors included the late Roger Sessions and Elliott Carter, who is still composing and will celebrate his 100th birthday next month.
Machover admits his approach to music isn't for everyone. He hopes his hyperinstruments will be adopted by more soloists. But he says at least one school has seized on the idea.
"The Royal Academy of Music in London got interested in hyperinstruments and particularly in stringed hyperinstruments," Machover says. "So we've worked with them for the past few years to bring a set of these instruments into the center of their curriculum. And that's a wonderful way for these kinds of instruments to get into [the hands of] soloists, chamber musicians and orchestras."
Music, Mind And Health
"Music, Mind and Health" is the name of one of Machover's latest projects. He and his team at the MIT Media Lab were contacted by the Massachusetts Cultural Council to see if they were interested in working at a hospital in Tewksbury, north of Boston.
"Our initial work was with people who were long-term residents at this hospital and, generally, people with no experience in music," Machover says.
One person Machover's team worked with was Dan Ellsey, a man in his early 30s with severe cerebral palsy. Bound to a wheelchair, Ellsey has very limited movement, and communicates with a talking box that he controls through an infrared controller worn in a headband.
"One of my students made an interface so Dan [Ellsey] could use his head movements and the infrared controller on his head to actually draw the lines and colors that we use for our Hyperscore software. He wrote a piece that was transcribed for symphony orchestra and is absolutely dynamite."
Machover's student used the same controller on the young man's head to create a hyperinstrument that understands the movements he can make and compensates for movements that are difficult for him.
"He changes the sound of the piece; he changes the emphasis; he changes the texture; he changes the accents; he changes the color of the piece," Machover says. "When he's playing the piece, he's a different person."
The Future Of Music
Machover does all of this work — his research, teaching and outreach — while still pursuing an active career as a composer. His work has been commissioned or performed by Pierre Boulez's Ensemble Intercontemporain, the London Sinfonietta, Speculum Musicae, the San Francisco Symphony, Houston Grand Opera, Kronos Quartet, Yo-Yo Ma and others. He has written or edited four books; seen two operas premiered; and composed more than 25 orchestral, chamber and electronic works. Two new operas will premiere in the next few months.
So, what about Guitar Hero? Machover sees in it the future of music.
"Imagine if [Guitar Hero] were truly expressive, truly personal, truly creative. The wonderful thing about Guitar Hero is that it opens up the door for everybody to be not just a passive listener but a real active participant in music," Machover says. "I think that is the future of music: music that is a collaboration between what we traditionally think of as composers and performers and the audience."

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Some interesting thoughts on how much money we as US tax payers are spending to fund the war in Iraq.  Personally, I find it pretty amazing that the same party of folks that always say year after year that there's no money for domestic education or health care can justify spending this amount everyday on a war that we started voluntarily.  They've been doing with a straight face for over four years now, and perhaps they need a reminder of who's money they're spending.

The complete first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates ... in irresistibly easy to read text .... FREE! ... from the reviews... "...challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly "Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News "...a fun book to read" - Dallas Morning News "resonates with the...

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Celebrities from the SciFi Channel hit "Who Wants To Be A Superhero?" cameo on popular podcast novel.

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About the author:
Mur Lafferty is a writer and podcast producer living in Durham, NC. She is the author of the award-nominated "Heaven" novellas, one of the most popular audiobook serials in podcasting. She has been published in Hub magazine and Escape Pod, and is an open and new media enthusiast.

MurVerse
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mur.lafferty@gmail.com

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I made some crochet Mary Jane Slippers for my daughters as early Kwanzaa gifts. 


The crochet project turned out to be much easier than I expected and finished up quickly.  I think I made the strap a row wider than the pattern just to suit my own taste.  I choose to crochet the flower shaped buttons using an alternating color of the same weight yarn. The pattern I worked from is here:
http://crochetcurbsidecouture.blogspot.com/2005/01/crochet-mary-jane-slippers.html

Here's the mini-pattern for the flower button:

Ch 2. 6 sc in 2nd ch from hook. 2 sc in each sc around. 2 sc in every other sc around.  Fasten off leaving a 12 inch length of yarn for attaching to slipper later.

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My first scifi knitting project was a Jayne Cobb hat I made to thank my rpg & scifi buddy, Emperor Palpadave who first introduced me to Firefly.


 
The pattern I used can be found here: http://dryope.typepad.com/grove/2006/02/jayne_cobb_hat_.html

Because I liked making it so much (and happen to have enough yarn left to make a duplicate), I am planning to add the next Jayne hat to the Zone prize closet as a special winter giveaway!  If you have any ideas on an appropriately special way I might give this handy dandy prize away, leave a comment and let me know. 

Otherwise, if nothing else comes up I'm thinking a LIVE show of Firefly/Browncoat trivia is in order!  

I wanted to run a couple of quick requests by some folks that might be interested.  I am once again looking for science fiction and/or fantasy short skits to play out in future episodes of the Zone.  Unfortunately, I've recently lost a laptop with several completed skits on it and need some things to fill the space while I attempt to recover them.

Generally a length of 2-3 minutes is ideal for the total skit.  Keep in mind that in my Zone all the many different fantasy & horror worlds and scifi star systems can (and are encouraged to) interact and play together, so feel free to let the imagination wander - in short form.  I am happy to replay material previously released in other locations and gladly give credit as you specify on the show and provide a link in the show notes.

While I'm making requests, please remember I'm continuously seeking short fiction from new, established and fanfic authors for the Zone feature storytelling presentation.  Total story length should be under 20 minutes and I will certainly consider producing audio from a manuscript for some stories as time and energy allow.  Longer stories will be considered for serialized presentation.  Again, previously released or published material is welcome with appropriate written permission from the content creator.

Thanks for your time and consideration of my requests.  If you haven't already, I invite you to check out what's new in Season Two of KnitWitch's Scifi/Fantasy Zone:

• Original Zone Shows
• Classic Zone Episodes
• Zone LIVE Episodes (admittedly still a little rough, working to improve audio quality)
• and occasional Music Zone Shows

Of course, feel free to listen to and play out any of the Zone Promos.  It's great if you want to email me or just post a comment to let me know that you've played or posted a Zone promo, but it's not  a requirement.  I'll be posting a link on the front page of the website pointing to the latest Zone promos in the next couple of days - the website and show notes are currently being updated, so please pardon the mess while repairs are underway. 

As always, your suggestions and feedback are welcomed - I'd greatly appreciate any new reviews of the show (especially at iTunes) since returning from podfade as well as suggestions from experienced podcasting folks to help improve navigation on the website.

Belated Happy New Year!  I hope you have a great 2008!

Well, I finally got around to starting up my Live Journal account and now am pondering exactly what I'm going to do with it.

Originally, this was going to be my place to kind of think out loud and share it with friends who might actually give a damn about the strangeness moving through my head.  I feel like I want this to be not just a promotional thing for my music or podcast stuff, though I'll probably post some of those things here as they come up but I figure I'll probably do a lot of spurting out ideas as they come up for follow-up later.  So hopefully the networking and connective abilities of LJ will help me stay connected to some folks while I get a little more organized and productive in 2008. Eh, it's a goal.

I really need to give attention to getting organized overall, but especially at home this year.  I want to use my office/studio corner MUCH more this year and must clear the clutter so I can function.  So in the midst of getting alot of shows knocked out for my podcast this month, I must do some literal housekeeping (really NOT a favorite of mine).  Luckily I do pretty well in maintaining order, so I just have to get things to a manageable level and maintain.

By comparison, the more I think about it the whole getting organized thing is beginning to feel more challenging than my ongoing goal to finally quit smoking... 

Guess we'll see!