2015 Cluster 9 newsletters - UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering

CLUSTER 9: MUSIC AND TECHNOLOGY
W
hat makes music
sound good?
And, how can we
make music electronically? Cluster
Nine’s first week
addressed both of
these questions. On
day one we learned
about the physics of
notes, and built
electronic wave generators with
“Little Bits”. We mixed tones to
make beat frequencies. We tested
our ears by generating tones we
thought would be perfect fourths
and fifths, and checked to see how
close we were. One of us tuned an
A by ear to 441 Hz (only missed it
by one!)
Tuesday was our first day
of Science Communication. The day
started off with a very
interesting discovery lecture from Thomas Bewley, a professor at UCSD.
With a very energetic
attitude, he talked to all
of us about robotics and
some life lessons. He was
extremely passionate
about everything he said,
and he was truly inspiring. After the
lecture, the entire cluster went up
to another room to talk about the
lecture. Before we dove into Professor Bewley’s lecture, we got to
know each other a little more. We
thoroughly learned everyone’s
names and then began discussing
the lecture. About half the cluster
participated in a Socratic Seminar
discussion to provide our thoughts
about the lecture.
After lunch, the
other half of
them in a hat.
Then each person
took a question
and talked about
it to the cluster
for about two
minutes. We
wrapped up the day by introducing
an essay about ethical issues in the
field of music technology and began
brainstorming ideas.
Wednesday morning started off with a lecture about embedded electronics, complete with a
live demonstration of a motioncontrolled music program. This was
followed by a presentation on consonance and dissonance, and, using
Audacity, students listened firsthand to the
beating sound (called
“roughness”) generated by playing two
slightly different frequencies. Next came
classes in the lab, and
students installed Canopy onto their computers and began to
learn the syntax of Python, covering
the basics of variables, plotting, and
for loops. The day ended with an
impromptu jamming session, and
everybody, even the instructors,
pulled out their instruments, Little
Bits, or microphones to make some
music.
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CLUSTER 9: MUSIC AND TECHNOLOGY
Should we let AI compose for us?
That’s the question of the week.
Thursday, Day 4 was a very
nice and mellow day. We started with
a belly full of fresh breakfast, and a
decent amount of sleep, although no
amount of sleep can fully satisfy any
teenager. First, we headed to Center
Hall to listen to a highly informative
lecture on the library at UCSD. We
learned about the catalogue, and how e
-books could work better than tangible
books.
We then learned about the
various databases UCSD offers, and
how to use them, all of which was very
useful information.
Soon after, we stayed in Center Hall, but proceeded to one of the
rooms in the upper floors, so that our
class Teacher Fellow, Eric Burtson,
could give us a brief lecture on sound
and waves. We learned about waves
and all the various harmonics. We
learned about beat frequencies, and
what makes a chord sound good.
the sixth floor was fantastic, and the
multitude of books was more than overwhelming. Finally, at 4:00, we headed
back to our suites. Overall, it was an
amazing day full of learning, and productive work time.
On Friday, instructor Colin
started class with a demonstration of a
robot powered by Raspberry Pi, a credit
card sized computer, which played audio as it moved forward. Professor
Shlomo continued with a lecture on
Fourier transform and analysis, examining the composition of sound waves as a
combination of sine and cosine waves.
Later, students downloaded the Ableton
software, which allowed
us to overlay sound
tracks, write drum beats,
and record audio. The
day concluded with an
explanation of assigned
homework, which introduced us to coding music
in Python.
On Monday, we
Afterwards, we were assigned had our first experience
a biography presentation, in which we of riding the shuttle to
had to research a famous musician and class. We learned about
how music could be represented with
present their life to the cluster.
geometry in Professor Dubnov’s mornWe then made our way to
ing lecture. At the lab, some of our
lunch, and soon after, the Geisel Library where we worked on our ethics fellow classmates gave presentations on
John Cage and Léon Theremin. We
essay and biography assignments. It
was an amazing library. The view from were fascinated to learn about Cage’s 4
minutes and 33 seconds of silence, as
well as Theremin’s invention (called the
theremin) which uses proximity sensors
to play different pitches. A highlight of
the day was guest Mike Gao’s presentation on his app Polyplayground. Mike, a
former graduate from UCSD and currently a well-known DJ, showed us how
to play different chords just by touching
a couple tiles on an iPad. We had lots
of fun playing with the app! Tuesday
started off with another Discovery Lecture, this time from Elsa Cleland, a professor of ecology and environmental
change at UCSD. She talked to us about
her findings about threats to biodiversity, as well as some advice and tips. After
discussing our thoughts about the lecture in the classroom, we learned how
to add waves together and draw the
result. Before lunch, we reviewed Monday’s lecture about Fourier series and
timbre, which is what makes instruments sound different from one another, and used a PHET simulation to visualize adding waves. After eating lunch
and talking about the app we saw on
Monday, we had time to peer review
our ethics essays, giving suggestions to
others and editing our own writing.
Wednesday morning began
with us returning to audacity to look
deeper into different types
of sound waves. We then
went back to the labs to
get another lesson in Python. We were finally able
to create music with our
code! After lunch, we had
a guest speaker talk to us
about her projects with
computers that compose
music! It told us a lot
about certain “rules” music has that makes it enjoyable. Then it was back to the labs to
start working with embedded electronics. We learned about a small computer
called Raspberry Pi that we will get to
use in our future projects. --Aditya,
Melissa, Valerie, Jerry, Ian
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CLUSTER 9: MUSIC AND TECHNOLOGY
Friday was Cluster 9
FIELD TRIP DAY!!! We took a
bus to Qualcomm to learn
more about the newest devel-
opments in technology. First,
we went to the Game Developers Demonstration Room and
learned about how the developers programmed the latest
games with life-like graphics.
We even took turns testing out
the Oculus Rift, VR goggles!
After taking a lunch break, we
visited the Qualcomm Circuit
Factory and saw how circuits
were made with amazing speed
and accuracy. We then saw demos of the Snapdragon's latest
technologies, such as Voice Activation, Ultrasound Fingerprinting, and amazing 7.1 Surround
Sound! Overall, this field trip
was a very exciting day!
Week three of Cluster 9
started out with a bang! Literally!
We spent our morning lecture
time learning about the graphical
programming language PureData,
and its various controls and
commands. We used PD to cretions days saw us completing our
ate a 3 oscillator synthesizer
ethics essays. Though most of
with a waveform analyzer. We
these centered on the creativityalso learned how to load and
crushing effect of music piracy,
papers ranged in topic, including
permanent hearing loss from
headphones and the questionable practice of cleaning up subpar singing voices. We also
started prepping for our project
poster-display.
We spent much of yesterday in the lab, working with
Joe, Colin, Shlomo, and Mauricio, who guided us through various approaches to make our
control a .wav audio file with
simple PD code. After a lunch at projects awesome! --Kalen, Dathe Canyon Vista cafeteria, we
rius, Eric
went to the lab and continued
working on PureData, this time
with our Raspberry Pi Linux
computers. Near the end of
class, we brainstormed some
ideas for the final project and
started getting in our groups.
We have some really cool ideas,
and we can’t wait to show them
to everyone next week!
The science communica-
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CLUSTER 9: MUSIC AND TECHNOLOGY
On Thursday July 23rd, we
examined an abstract on acousmatic sound which refers to electronic music that is played through
speakers rather than being performed live. Afterwards, we had a
presentation on music composed
using a computer program known
as Logic Pro.
Then, two guest speakers
came to tell us what they do in
music. The first guest speaker was
Music For Peace, an organization
that works with both kids and
adults to create songs for a good
cause. Javier and Tonia showed us
what it is like to record a song
with the help of Darius, Avneesh
and Charmhel. Javier also showed
us examples of songs he had completed in the past.
The second guest speaker
was an interesting man. Patrick
Hadley had worked with a partner
to come out with the Array Mbira.
The classic Mbira was a South Afri-
can instrument played by plucking
steel tines. However, Mr. Hadley
had arranged these tines in a specific pattern to make it very easy to
play and very easy to learn. In fact,
we found out through his speech
that Taylor Swift had used his Mbira
in her song Clean. His Array Mbira
also appears in the sound mix of
later Breaking Bad episodes and current Better Call Saul programs. He
showed us how lovely the instrument sounded by playing it himself,
and then allowed us to play with it
ourselves. Without any prior
knowledge of the instrument, we
were able to play it decently thanks
to the special arrangement of tines.
By the end, everyone was left in
awe and amazement. Overall, it was
a lovely presentation by Patrick
Hadley.
On Friday, we spent the
entire day working on our final projects. First thing in the morning, we
headed straight to the lab where
we have all the tools to work on
our projects. For many students,
this was our first long session
where we were able to work on
our projects. These final projects
use a wide variety of programs that
we have learned throughout COSMOS. The TAs and the professors
circulated throughout the class to
help us when we had trouble.
Overall, it was a very productive
and fun day.
Cluster 9 started the final
week finishing up final projects. Every group finalized their project ideas, from one group creating a filter
processor that controls the outcome of a song to another group
programming a robot that detects
the source of sound. With diverse
ideas, each group was able to incorporate information that was taught
during lectures. Groups used either
Raspberry Pi’s, Arduino, Python,
Pure Data, sensors, and other materials that would allow all to get
their project working. During the
whole day we were working with
Colin, Eric, Mauricio, Joseph and
Shlomo in order to figure out the
program languages or figure out the
hardware. Each group is on their
way to completing a successful project. --Audria, Sophie, Amelia, Aditya, Charmhel, Eric
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