ClassicalCode

After talking about the Shepard Tone, an audio illusion that can create an endlessly rising or falling scale, with my friend Ben Pender, I decided to try to create one using Lilypond. The result is quite interesting:

Chromatically rising Shepard Tone:

The midi file created by Lilypond: shepard_tone.midi

The Lilypond file used to render the above midi file: shepard_tone.ly

A wav file generated from the midi file above: shepard_tone.wav (43M)

An mp3 file generated from the wav file above:

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My birthday was a few days ago, and two different people, knowing my love of barbershop, sent me a Youtube video of a quartet singing “Happy Birthday”. This got me thinking about barbershop arrangments of the song.

Today is my friend Amanda Ortmayer’s birthday and I wanted to give her something, so I decided to arrange and multitrack “Happy Birthday” for her in the barbershop style.

Happy birthday Amanda, thanks for being such a constant, caring friend.

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The arrangement as a printable pdf: birthday.pdf

Update:
The Lilypond file used to render the above engraving: birthday.ly

Inspired to further acts of nerdome by the encouraging comments on my last post, I decided to learn to do something I have been thinking of doing ever since I saw Paul Kim do it at a party. Sing the alphabet song backwards. Not just sing the letters backwards, but the notes as well. So last night I sat down, figured out how it would go, and started memorizing it. This morning, to nerd it up just a little bit more, I leaned to sing it while showing the solfege using hand signs. I then took my new camcorder into Golden Gate Park and recorded myself doing it. The park has the advantage of having actual sunlight while still having some privacy and quiet. Also, it’s pretty. Here are the results:

Due to a bug in iMovieHD I was unable to reverse the video so you could here the original melody, but here is the audio reversed:

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My girlfriend is sick, so I arranged and recorded her a song. I hope this helps you feel better Chelsea.

For Chelsea:

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This is my first doo-wop arrangement, and the first full song that I have multitracked. Unfortunately with five tracks at once, the noise on the recording becomes rather annoying. If anyone could help me reduce the noise, I would greatly appreciate it. I plan to write up the arrangement in the next few days (as an exercise) so you can expect to find that soon.

Update:

I typeset the arrangement using Lilypond, a wonderful open source program for engraving music. Here are the results:

The arrangement as a printable pdf: earth_angel.pdf

The Lilypond code: earth_angel.ly