The Null Device

Bhajis Loops, the whimsical and unbelievably nifty PalmOS-based music/audio software, now has a posse an online community site, with forums, tutorials (only a few so far) and a user song archive. Also, there are 3 new effects plug-ins to download, including a granular-sounding pitch-shifter, which should be perfect for the drill'n'bass heads in the audience. (I'm looking at you, Mr. Frogworth.) Also, Bhajis Loops 1.6 is coming out soon, and a complete rewrite is on the way.

Also, looking for the interest "bhajis loops" on LiveJournal brings up this journal, which may belong to the author, or someone else who is a French researcher/student interested in Bhajis Loops, all things Indian, DSP algorithms and PalmOS programming (not to mention Stereolab and, umm, Architecture In Helsinki). The journal says some interesting things there, from discussions of audio algorithms to observations on why signal-based classification of music is doomed to failure:

Music similarity is to me a cultural feature. For example, the distinction between two genres can be very artificial, and is sometimes based on features like "the way the singer is dressed" or "the amount of sexual contents in the lyrics". An example I like mentioning is the East-coast and West-coast rap. How a computer could tell the difference ? Covers are another example of cultural music similarities. You can totally change the tempo, instrumentation, even the style of a song. But it will still be similar to the original, and will be recognized as a cover of the original song, not as a cover of the original work. A final example is when an artist is inspired by another. For example, a lot of Stereolab fans are comparing their music to some of Steve Reich works. I agree with that. But without any musical education, nobody could see a similarity between the two.

Fortunately, some smart people have figured out (and proved) that the best features to compute similarity between songs could be found on the internet (and is cultural, indeed). You can obtain precise features to describe a song or an artist by summarizing the words used in amazon reviews, or usenet posts. You can see how similar two songs are by counting their co-occurences in webradio playlists. A Google search will tell you that "Paul Mc Cartney" and "The Beatles" have something in common, because there are approx. 715000 web pages mentioning both names.

¶ bhajis loops computer music music palm palmos 2

Those reading this in Sydney can hear an ambient electronica track put together by Your Humble Narrator whilst commuting on the London Underground, using only a personal organiser*. I am told that The Random Numbers' "Fluffy Space Rocket" will be making its Australian radio debut tonight (Sunday night) on Utility Fog, on FBi (94.5 MHz), sometime between 10pm and 1am.

* actually, a Palm Tungsten running Bhajis Loops.

¶ bhajis loops computer music fbiradio music self-promotion 0

The killer application for PalmOS handhelds could well be Bhajis Loops. It's a multi-track sample-based audio sequencer, somewhere between module trackers and Ableton Live, which runs entirely on ARM-based PalmOS handhelds (i.e., Zire and Tungsten units). You get multiple channels of audio, effects plug-ins, filters and envelopes, as well as a library of sounds (including Roland TR-x0x drum samples, SID waveforms, and a General MIDI library that sounds considerably less crap than the Steinberg Universal Sound Module VSTi; not that that's hard to do, mind you, but it does fit in an order of magnitude less space as well). Not only that, but if your handheld has an internal microphone, you can sample sounds around you and incorporate them into your compositions. The fact that you can do this sort of thing on a pocket-sized personal organiser is, in itself, somewhat mind-blowing.

I bought and registered a copy a few weeks ago, and have been spending my commutes working on music. Here is my first attempt at a track made using Bhajis Loops. Most of this track was composed on the Tube, and some of the sounds (including vocal fragments and the snare sound towards the end) were sampled whilst travelling.

Anyway, if you have a recent Palm, check it out. It's well doovy.

¶ bhajis loops computer music palm software 2