Keith Handy 1.999

What little I remember about last night’s session

This will be short, precisely because it’s what I would have posted last night had I not run out of time, and it’s not fresh on my mind anymore.

Here’s a pretty screenshot:

This is the “bluesier” remake of “No Outside After All”, in progress. My inspiration for the remake is an old recording of Billie Holiday singing “Yesterdays”. (Before you give me too much credit for knowing the music of this era, be advised that ’twas Fritz The Cat what introduced me to this song.)

Anyway, “slow” was “too slow”, and the crux of my objective…

You know what, I don’t really care about telling you anything anymore. All I really care about is playing with words. “Crux of my objective”. What a deliciously non-utilitarian linguistic flourish. Indeed. Kiss my feet, peeps.

Anyway, the C.O.M.O. was to make it not quite so slow, so I sped the first half of it up by 10%. This was too much a speed-up for the second half, so I only went 5% there. The section between the vertical yellow lines is actually the whole song, so as you can see/deduce, it cross-segues into another song from there. Thus, there was some care involved in not destroying the segue.

I made copies of the tracks, did the speed adjustments, and then slid them to where the new tail-end fell exactly where the old tail-end was. Then, I got rid of the original tracks and kept only the sped-up copies. The new beginning starts about 8 seconds later than it originally did, which means (for those of you who have a difficult time drawing simple conclusions) the song is now 8 seconds shorter.

Hooray!

Home-brewed “color spacing”

Note: apparently, not all the code below displays correctly via RSS.

Here’s a home-brewed way to get some of those expensive looking “color aware” effects.

In addition to the original hue/saturation/brightness components, I create six new variables each for hue, saturation, and value (brightness), plus six “weight” values, each corresponding with one of the six colors of a preschooler’s rainbow, ROYGBV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue — fuck “indigo”, but if you wanted me to take it seriously as a color, you should have taught it to me sooner — and violet, even though we called it “purple”):

double h, hueR, hueO, hueY, hueG, hueB, hueV;
double s, satR, satO, satY, satG, satB, satV;
double v, valR, valO, valY, valG, valB, valV;
double wR, wO, wY, wG, wB, wV;

Then at each pixel, you set up the “weight” values depending on what it’s closest to:

wR = wO = wY = wG = wB = wV = 0.0;
if (h >= 0 && h < = 21 ){wO = h /21.0; wR = 1.0 - wO;}
if (h > 21 && h < = 42 ){wY = (h - 21.0 )/21.0; wO = 1.0 - wY;}
if (h > 42 && h < = 85 ){wG = (h - 42.0 )/43.0; wY = 1.0 - wG;}
if (h > 85 && h < = 170){wB = (h - 85.0 )/85.0; wG = 1.0 - wB;}
if (h > 170 && h < = 212){wV = (h - 170.0)/42.0; wB = 1.0 - wV;}
if (h > 212 && h < = 255){wR = (h - 212.0)/43.0; wV = 1.0 - wR;}


Notice that it’s not just selecting one color and going with that; if it’s halfway between red and orange, the red weight would be 0.5, the orange weight would be 0.5, and all the other weights would be zero. After this point in the code, you’re now free to experiment with each value separately. For example, if you want to kill all saturation for the yellow areas, and just turn them grayscale, you would code it this way:

satY = 0;

Similarly, if I want to pump the heck out of the blue areas, I put a line like this:

satB *= 2;

(That’s C++ for “multiply by two”.)

Additionally, I “limit” the red saturation, so that it stays the same up to a point, but doesn’t go any higher; so that skin still looks the same, but bright red ribbons are muted:

if (satR > 96.0) satR = 96;

This example only plays with saturation. I could also mess around with brightness, contrast, etc. in the same way. After this designated “fun sandbox” section is the code that puts together the final values, using the “weight” values:

h = wR*hueR + wO*hueO + wY*hueY + wG*hueG + wB*hueB + wV*hueV;
s = wR*satR + wO*satO + wY*satY + wG*satG + wB*satB + wV*satV;
v = wR*valR + wO*valO + wY*valY + wG*valG + wB*valB + wV*valV;
setpixel(x, y, h, s, v);

I’m not sure exactly how this stacks up against the “color spacing” technology the big companies charge lots of money for, since like I said, it’s based on a Crayola-level color awareness. That considered though, it’s free in both senses of the word… free as in no expensive software to pay for, and free as in freedom to experiment on any of those 18 values with all kinds of math and logic before reducing them back to the original three components.

Much thanks to Darel Rex Finley, since I’m now using his HSP Color Model code to switch the images back and forth between RGB mode and HSP mode. “P” in this case is “perceived brightness”, and more psychovisually accurate than standard “V” or “L” values, but serves the same purpose. Check out his clear and well-illustrated HSP page for an explanation of the difference.

Is this thing on?

So, like, I’m supposed to be posting to this thing, right? Is that how it works?

The experts would probably suggest that I break my blogger’s block by shooting for ephemeral, disposable, and monk-like, and not trying to make each post a timeless work of art. I’d still like to have an amusing picture for every post — because reading is more enjoyable when there’s a pretty picture to lure you in — but that’s seriously a pain in the ass to do consistently. I could outline the extra steps here, but then I’d be subjecting you to the same torture.

So, after writing the previous paragraph, I put my jacket on, got in my car, and drove 1.8 miles out and back in icy, windy, finger-shattering weather, to pick up a latte. See? This is exactly what I’m talkin’ about, peoples. I can’t even write a danged blog post without interrupting it for something “important” — like a latte.

I suppose when you’re spending more and more time doing something that falls outside your previously defined identity, there’ll be some mental re-integration work to do. Right now, it’s about all the free hours eaten up by improv rehearsals. It’s all positive, but it does force me to ask questions like, “will I actually accomplish the other stuff I started?”

And the answer to that is, yes, that’s actually part of the reason I got involved in the first place.

Three coats… or actually one coat with three coats…

Like Chevy Chase says just before jumping in the pool, “this is crazy, this is crazy, this is crazy.”

One great thing about life at the Village Gate is that you can walk out to the parking lot with an old jacket, and stand there spray-painting it silver, and no one bats an eyelash. This, my friends, isn’t just a jacket from the Salvation Army with three cans’ worth of silver spray paint on it. This is a MISSION.

Again, I ask… why aren’t you doing this?

How low tech can be cutting edge

Excuse my, uh, “calligraphy” for a moment.

Ow, ow, ow. *shakes wrists*

I just don’t have the endurance for that anymore.

Anyway, the point isn’t that I have any desire to do a handwritten blog, and I will likely never do that again. But think about how strange it is that we get sentimental for “low tech” or “old tech” things, how there’s always a “golden age” to look back to. But none of that old stuff ceases to exist, or even ceases to be available. If you really want to shoot a movie on 8mm film, you can, though it’ll be a little pricey to get the film and develop it. Not prohibitively, though, if you really want to. Key words there: really want to. The only thing we’re ever truly being sentimental for is the lack of an excuse to be lazy. The fact that we’ve paved all these shortcuts doesn’t mean the shortcut is the only — or best — way.

But what truly makes “low tech” interesting now, is that we’re in this higher tech environment. You can not only shoot 8mm film, if you really want — but you could, if you really want, shoot 8mm film of a person sitting in a Starbucks with a laptop computer, wearing a Trogdor t-shirt. Which you could never do when 8mm was actually a sensible way of preserving memories.

Today, we can run a Mellotron through Autotune. We can sample a cassette. All these things we can do, but just don’t think of doing, because we’ve convinced ourselves that all our old toys have been replaced with new toys. Guess what? All your toys are still there; they may have moved to a higher (more expensive) shelf that you’ll need to climb a little (or get mummy to help) in order to get them down, but they’re still there. You have a shitload of toys. Do you realize how much “play potential” you have afore ye now? Do that “relationship” math again. Five toys is ten potential combinations, six toys is fifteen… and that’s only counting pairs of toys.

Tip: do “relationship math” in your head:
Take the number of people in the room, and imagine that number on the left.
Subtract one, and put the new number on the right. (If 7 is on the left, 6 is on the right.)
Whichever number is even, cut it in half. (Cut that 6 down to a 3.)
Multiply the left number by the right number, and you’re done! (7 x 3 = 21 relationships.)

It’s like this: there you were, in 1980, or 1985 or whatever, saying, “okay, if only I had this and this and this”, and now you’re waking from a deep freeze, realizing, hey, I have this and this and this!! All you’ve lost track of is why you wanted it. Once you remember, you’re all set!

Anyway, there’s a reason I wrote all this. Ask me to elaborate later, and I will. Ask me not to elaborate later, and I will anyway, just to spite you.

What Do You Think Of Yourself?: new vocal

First, enjoy the session, ’cause I think it went pretty well…

It’s actually a lot easier than my Rival Big Bang sessions were, because it has a definite and more structured melody. The part between approximately 4:00 to 5:00 is a little empty, though, and rather than featuring me half-heartedly ad-libbing, I want to fill it in with something like gospel singers. I just emailed Paul Gaspar to see if he knows any.

I’ve only been saving my session videos as 320 by 240 MPEGs — better looking than what you see on YouTube, but still small — because the videos themselves aren’t meant to be works of art. That said, I’d still like to incorporate parts of them into more formal “music video” videos. There’s stuff you can do to low-res images to make them… not necessarily look hi-res, but at least look better when blown up.