Blagging and the Sonorous Signalling System
I meant to start posting more often but the truth is I really have nothing to post about, and it can be hard to just write bullshit sometimes. So uh....
I dunno. I learned about Dino Comics recently and have been reading it a bunch because it's SO FUNNY.
I have a project idea that I'd like to actually do. I want to make a communication system (ie. like ethernet or RS-232 etc.) that uses music as the transport medium. Simple modulation of audio has been done by telephone modems (MOdulator-DEModulator, come on!) but, I want to actually use musical phrases and create a system which -- although slow compared to a modem -- would be capable of transferring data while providing a pleasant, or at least tolerable, listening experience. Naturally this means the audio would be played on speakers and captured by microphones, rather than directly-cabled analog connections.
The hardest part of this would be, of course, generating real music. Communicating over audio is probably not going to be particularly difficult, especially if I'm not aiming for speed: Indicating bits can be as simple as changing the note, where a higher pitch = 1 or a lower pitch = 0. Making songs that don't sound completely random could be quite difficult; maybe if I keep a cache of musical phrases that are used and re-used, like as a chorus?
I also thought about making this system work for more than two simultaneous stations, increasing its real networking capability. I don't see this being too hard, as the only real things needed would be to limit the number of currently-"speaking" stations to one, with a corresponding collision detection algorithm (should be easy if each station can listen to itself). Probably I will require a coordinator device for this to work well, especially to coordinate the current musical key and chord progression. Of course, this coordinator would be called the Conductor.
I guess first I need to identify pitches/chords accurately and filter out background noise before I can even hope to generate music of any complexity.
I dunno. I learned about Dino Comics recently and have been reading it a bunch because it's SO FUNNY.
I have a project idea that I'd like to actually do. I want to make a communication system (ie. like ethernet or RS-232 etc.) that uses music as the transport medium. Simple modulation of audio has been done by telephone modems (MOdulator-DEModulator, come on!) but, I want to actually use musical phrases and create a system which -- although slow compared to a modem -- would be capable of transferring data while providing a pleasant, or at least tolerable, listening experience. Naturally this means the audio would be played on speakers and captured by microphones, rather than directly-cabled analog connections.
The hardest part of this would be, of course, generating real music. Communicating over audio is probably not going to be particularly difficult, especially if I'm not aiming for speed: Indicating bits can be as simple as changing the note, where a higher pitch = 1 or a lower pitch = 0. Making songs that don't sound completely random could be quite difficult; maybe if I keep a cache of musical phrases that are used and re-used, like as a chorus?
I also thought about making this system work for more than two simultaneous stations, increasing its real networking capability. I don't see this being too hard, as the only real things needed would be to limit the number of currently-"speaking" stations to one, with a corresponding collision detection algorithm (should be easy if each station can listen to itself). Probably I will require a coordinator device for this to work well, especially to coordinate the current musical key and chord progression. Of course, this coordinator would be called the Conductor.
I guess first I need to identify pitches/chords accurately and filter out background noise before I can even hope to generate music of any complexity.
Labels: programming
posted by Mike Burke at
9:47 PM
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