We play the tune “Autumn Sky” a lot in sessions round these parts & I have often wondered why it was not on the session.org. I have just played it into tunepal and it came up with “Ciel D'automne” the French title. It was there all the time, hiding there since 2009 it had only been added to 8 people playlists. Nobody had thought to add the English name of the tune to “Also known as..” at the session which I have now done..
Frankly and despite being fascinated by it when it first appeared, I'm starting to get a bit bored with Tunepal now. It causes quite a few hold ups at sessions whan some pedant insists on making a player play a part of a tune after a set so that a name ( or a %age chance of the right name) can be ascertained.
And also the time it takes for all those that haven't seen in in action before to experience it and wonder at it.
At the Wig Museum, Claire (tune name expert!) got sick of people always asking her (e.g), 'What was the second tune called?'. She said she have all the tune names on banners on sticks so she could just hold them up at the end of a set. I've suggested that they install a 'rack mounted' version, leave it on all the time and have the display up on the big tele. Then there could be a continuous update for all to see as tyhe music goes on. (And yes! I know currently it doesn't work live, topically or on line. It relies on analysing a recording- which is what takes up the time)
Why don't the people using it just use it whilst the set is being played? They don't need to wait until afterwards to ask it to be played by a solo instrument.
yhaalhouse - Yep, the best thing to do if you want to name a tune someone is playing is to use Tunepal while the person is playing. It usually works. I put a lot of time coming up with an algorithm to extract the melody from the background noise of a session.
FYI Tunepal users:
New version of the Tunepal apps will be released in August. there will be loads of new features, but the main one I am working on is the ability to store transcriptions when you have a poor or no internet connection so you can identify them later when you go online. If anyone has any other suggestions, post them on the Facebook page and I'll see what I can do. August is Tunepal coding month for me, so now is your chance!
If you want to know the name of the tune, the best thing to do, in my opinion, is to learn the tune, and then play it at sessions and ask everyone if they know the name. This avoids the inherently isolating and desocializing effect of retreating into your pocket marvel, turning your metaphorical back on your fellow musicians to disappear into the depths of the interwebs, in search of what has now become a trivial factoid, stale dated and faintly embarrassing in the meantime, as everyone has been stuck in a conversational eddy while you obsessively pursue a bit of knowledge that adds nothing to your life or anyone else's.
My solution also involves playing tunes, which seems more in tune with the session as I understand it.
I still think TunePal is a marvelous piece of computer science, and if I could have written it, I'd be a much better programmer than I am, but as a cultural artifact, I'm glad it seems to be under some sort of tacit ban around here.
Talking about what the tune might be called, what it definitely isn't called, and what tunes have similar names to the ones that this definitely is or definitely isn't, and whether they're related to that other one that so-and-so plays, or just similar - all of that is what we call conversation.
Oracular consultations are something other than conversation - a marvel, to be sure, but a one-sided one, and traditionally always as misleading as they are correct.
You have completely missed the point (and usefulness) of Tunepal. The point is not about getting the name of a tune (a trivial factoid as you rightly point out), but its about acquiring repertoire. This is what I and the majority of Tunepal users use it for. In the old days, if I heard a cool tune at a session I wanted to learn, I used to tape it (and later minidisk it). Now what I do is tunepal it, get the name and score and save it to My Tunes. Then when I want to practice at home - rather than playing the same old tunes, I go through the tunes I have I have in Tunepal and learn them.
Time was, when I used to ask the name of the tune and then it would disappear into the ether never to be learned. Now I get the name and store it so I can learn the tune later.
No tacit ban here, Tunepal adds to the experience except with grumps who want today's learners to find it as hard as they did.
And down the track, maybe a long way, any chance of a version you can keep running for a period of time (all night is OK!) and it detects tune changes and cycles the tunes through the process automatically as they happen, ending up with a list of names along with a snippet of each recorded tune? What's that, you want to have time to get married and have children, fair point...
Yep it works on Macs with at least Snow Leopard or Lion, but not Leopard as it doesnt have full support for Java - and it worn work on Firefox on a Mac, it must be Safari or Chrome. I use it on my Mac book pro all the time
Bryan - I don't think I've missed the point at all. If your purpose is to cram as many tunes in your head as possible, as quickly as possible, and not to miss any of them, and to know all of their names, then yes, it's a fine thing.
But then you're learning tunes, essentially, because you know their names. If that suits you, then fine, that's lovely and I'm glad you have a tool for that. (and again, it's a very cool tool)
I'm not interested in plowing over this ground again, but this sort of musical lepidoptery seems to me tedious and absurd. What you're shortcutting your way around is the process of learning a tune from someone. Having to stop playing and listen to what someone else does is not a bad thing. Having a tune linked in your mind to a number of different occasions is a very good thing, and having a tune linked in your mind to a few people who played it, who you learned it from - that's exactly what tunes are for, to me. Having a tune linked in your mind to the database where you got it from is a bit horrifying.
So to me, the use of Tunepal as you describe it is basically antisocial, where sessions are basically social occasions.
"Time was, when I used to ask the name of the tune and then it would disappear into the ether never to be learned."
Meaning, "not to be learned this week". I suggest a bit of patience.
"rather than playing the same old tunes, I go through the tunes I have I have in Tunepal and learn them."
And what's wrong with playing the same old tunes? It seems a waste of time to learn tunes at all, if you're not going to want to play them once you've learned them.
"Tunepal adds to the experience except with grumps who want today's learners to find it as hard as they did"
"Hard" or "easy" isn't the point. The point is that learning a tune from a person is a social interaction, and learning a tune from a database is marking an item off your to-do list.
"Adds to the experience" how? What do you gain from knowing the name besides the ability to unearth the corpse of that tune's ancestor when you get home, and examine its dry bones?
"And down the track, maybe a long way, any chance of a version you can keep running for a period of time (all night is OK!) and it detects tune changes and cycles the tunes through the process automatically as they happen, ending up with a list of names along with a snippet of each recorded tune?"
And, just for laughs, let's analyze which tunes go together most often and generate sets. And then we can put our iphones on the table, and they can start sets, play them, listen to each other, and "play along", while we sit around drinking beer.
I'm reminded of a Norman Spinrad novella called "Journals of the Plague Years" - worth reading, even though it's a bit dated now.
Jon, I'm with you on the part about learning tunes from a face is much, much better than learning from a computer screen. However, I do think the ability to find a tune's name and be able to find different settings (in audio or by the dots) can be quite enlightening about how to approach a tune or how it may be different in different areas.
I suppose from your perspective, it seems as if Tunepal is the dream tool for the tune lepidopterist, something which can save you from the social interaction of asking about tunes. Because I know Bryan, I know it's not like that at all, and however others may use the software, that's definitely not his intention and not how he uses the software,
I don't know how sessions in Mass are, but in Glasgow and other places, people don't often know the names of tunes and don't play the same ones from week to week. So if someone plays a cool tune and they have no idea what it's called, I'm stuffed, as I don't have Tunepal due to lack of iPhone or other crackberry-type device. Maybe they'll play the same thing the next week, or the next, or not, and if they play it every single week at a session I might pick it up eventually, but chances are they won't even be at the session next week, much less play the same tunes! Also, are you one of those people who can pick up a tune on the fly after hearing it only three times through and remember it the next day? I'm not.
And to answer your question about what's wrong with old tunes, I think it's positive to keep adding to your repertoire. Keeps things interesting. Keeps things interesting at the session when people aren't playing the same damned thing every week.
To be clear, I certainly don't think the intent of the app was to remove the sociability from sessions. I just think it's the outcome. There's two things going on here - one is the idea of getting a name so you can go home and learn the tune. I've talked about that a little - I don't really care if I hear a tune once and never again. I won't learn that one. If I really like a tune, there's something I really like about it, and I'll try to remember that, or I'll at least ask the person who played it to remember which one it was, and play it for me again some time.
Often, they do - and then they have another way of remembering the tune (oh, the one that Jon likes, yeah, let's play that). I have tunes like that - tunes I can remember a name for, but mostly I remember them as "the one that David likes". And now the tune is tied, in my head, to a world of people. Sometimes the tunes come back to me - I heard someone play a familiar tune once, and after the set I asked them what it was. They said, oh, I got it from so-and-so, and they got it from you. Ah. Okay, I remember now.
To me, that seems like the right way to do things - takes longer, but it's worth it.
The other problem is simple logistics: people who are staring at their phones are bad company. I don't want to be around them, because they have nothing to say and they apparently don't want to be around me because, while they're sitting in physical proximity, they're finding some virtual world to be much more enlightening. So the fact that you have to become an antisocial prick for a little while to use this thing is also problematic. If you record the session and look up the tunes later, I guess that problem's solved, but I really hate it when someone stops a conversation to diddle around with their phone. Sort of tells me "look, I like you, but this gadget is much more interesting than you... so just wait a while and I'll get back with you, maybe".
I don't think the sociability thing goes away when people have an iPhone app. A lot of the folk I play with are absolute technical luddites and would run screaming in horror from an iPhone so a good bit of the session population doesn't have them anyway. When I've seen people using Tunepal, it involves only a small amount of faff with the technology, while the tune is going and conversation isn't. Far less of a serious offense than sitting in a session looking at Facebook on your phone.
Like I said, it's nice to ask but if people don't know the name, it's bloody hard to find the tune so you can go learn it. Names are useful for tracking down recordings.
The wonders of Tunepal !!!!
The wonders of Tunepal !!!!
We play the tune “Autumn Sky” a lot in sessions round these parts & I have often wondered why it was not on the session.org. I have just played it into tunepal and it came up with “Ciel D'automne” the French title. It was there all the time, hiding there since 2009 it had only been added to 8 people playlists. Nobody had thought to add the English name of the tune to “Also known as..” at the session which I have now done..
http://tunepal.org/tunepal/show_tune.php?tunepalid=10119-90.abc-1-Ciel%7ED%7Eautomne
Thank you Tunepal you are amazing!!
# Posted on July 29th 2011 by mikk
Re: The wonders of Tunepal !!!!
Frankly and despite being fascinated by it when it first appeared, I'm starting to get a bit bored with Tunepal now. It causes quite a few hold ups at sessions whan some pedant insists on making a player play a part of a tune after a set so that a name ( or a %age chance of the right name) can be ascertained.
And also the time it takes for all those that haven't seen in in action before to experience it and wonder at it.
At the Wig Museum, Claire (tune name expert!) got sick of people always asking her (e.g), 'What was the second tune called?'. She said she have all the tune names on banners on sticks so she could just hold them up at the end of a set. I've suggested that they install a 'rack mounted' version, leave it on all the time and have the display up on the big tele. Then there could be a continuous update for all to see as tyhe music goes on. (And yes! I know currently it doesn't work live, topically or on line. It relies on analysing a recording- which is what takes up the time)
# Posted on July 29th 2011 by yhaalhouse
Re: The wonders of Tunepal !!!!
Why don't the people using it just use it whilst the set is being played? They don't need to wait until afterwards to ask it to be played by a solo instrument.
# Posted on July 29th 2011 by No Cause For Alarm
Re: The wonders of Tunepal !!!!
yhaalhouse - Yep, the best thing to do if you want to name a tune someone is playing is to use Tunepal while the person is playing. It usually works. I put a lot of time coming up with an algorithm to extract the melody from the background noise of a session.
FYI Tunepal users:
New version of the Tunepal apps will be released in August. there will be loads of new features, but the main one I am working on is the ability to store transcriptions when you have a poor or no internet connection so you can identify them later when you go online. If anyone has any other suggestions, post them on the Facebook page and I'll see what I can do. August is Tunepal coding month for me, so now is your chance!
http://facebook.com/tunepal
Bryan
# Posted on July 29th 2011 by skooter500
Re: The wonders of Tunepal !!!!
does tunepal work on mac ox 10.6? which browser works best?
# Posted on July 29th 2011 by Reeds Munson
Re: The wonders of Tunepal !!!!
If you want to know the name of the tune, the best thing to do, in my opinion, is to learn the tune, and then play it at sessions and ask everyone if they know the name. This avoids the inherently isolating and desocializing effect of retreating into your pocket marvel, turning your metaphorical back on your fellow musicians to disappear into the depths of the interwebs, in search of what has now become a trivial factoid, stale dated and faintly embarrassing in the meantime, as everyone has been stuck in a conversational eddy while you obsessively pursue a bit of knowledge that adds nothing to your life or anyone else's.
My solution also involves playing tunes, which seems more in tune with the session as I understand it.
I still think TunePal is a marvelous piece of computer science, and if I could have written it, I'd be a much better programmer than I am, but as a cultural artifact, I'm glad it seems to be under some sort of tacit ban around here.
Talking about what the tune might be called, what it definitely isn't called, and what tunes have similar names to the ones that this definitely is or definitely isn't, and whether they're related to that other one that so-and-so plays, or just similar - all of that is what we call conversation.
Oracular consultations are something other than conversation - a marvel, to be sure, but a one-sided one, and traditionally always as misleading as they are correct.
# Posted on July 29th 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: The wonders of Tunepal !!!!
Jon
You have completely missed the point (and usefulness) of Tunepal. The point is not about getting the name of a tune (a trivial factoid as you rightly point out), but its about acquiring repertoire. This is what I and the majority of Tunepal users use it for. In the old days, if I heard a cool tune at a session I wanted to learn, I used to tape it (and later minidisk it). Now what I do is tunepal it, get the name and score and save it to My Tunes. Then when I want to practice at home - rather than playing the same old tunes, I go through the tunes I have I have in Tunepal and learn them.
Time was, when I used to ask the name of the tune and then it would disappear into the ether never to be learned. Now I get the name and store it so I can learn the tune later.
Bryan
# Posted on July 30th 2011 by skooter500
Re: The wonders of Tunepal !!!!
and can it work on macs?
# Posted on July 30th 2011 by Reeds Munson
Re: The wonders of Tunepal !!!!
No tacit ban here, Tunepal adds to the experience except with grumps who want today's learners to find it as hard as they did.
And down the track, maybe a long way, any chance of a version you can keep running for a period of time (all night is OK!) and it detects tune changes and cycles the tunes through the process automatically as they happen, ending up with a list of names along with a snippet of each recorded tune? What's that, you want to have time to get married and have children, fair point...
# Posted on July 31st 2011 by cag
Re: The wonders of Tunepal !!!!
Yep it works on Macs with at least Snow Leopard or Lion, but not Leopard as it doesnt have full support for Java - and it worn work on Firefox on a Mac, it must be Safari or Chrome. I use it on my Mac book pro all the time
# Posted on July 31st 2011 by skooter500
Re: The wonders of Tunepal !!!!
Bryan - I don't think I've missed the point at all. If your purpose is to cram as many tunes in your head as possible, as quickly as possible, and not to miss any of them, and to know all of their names, then yes, it's a fine thing.
But then you're learning tunes, essentially, because you know their names. If that suits you, then fine, that's lovely and I'm glad you have a tool for that. (and again, it's a very cool tool)
I'm not interested in plowing over this ground again, but this sort of musical lepidoptery seems to me tedious and absurd. What you're shortcutting your way around is the process of learning a tune from someone. Having to stop playing and listen to what someone else does is not a bad thing. Having a tune linked in your mind to a number of different occasions is a very good thing, and having a tune linked in your mind to a few people who played it, who you learned it from - that's exactly what tunes are for, to me. Having a tune linked in your mind to the database where you got it from is a bit horrifying.
So to me, the use of Tunepal as you describe it is basically antisocial, where sessions are basically social occasions.
"Time was, when I used to ask the name of the tune and then it would disappear into the ether never to be learned."
Meaning, "not to be learned this week". I suggest a bit of patience.
"rather than playing the same old tunes, I go through the tunes I have I have in Tunepal and learn them."
And what's wrong with playing the same old tunes? It seems a waste of time to learn tunes at all, if you're not going to want to play them once you've learned them.
# Posted on July 31st 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: The wonders of Tunepal !!!!
"Tunepal adds to the experience except with grumps who want today's learners to find it as hard as they did"
"Hard" or "easy" isn't the point. The point is that learning a tune from a person is a social interaction, and learning a tune from a database is marking an item off your to-do list.
"Adds to the experience" how? What do you gain from knowing the name besides the ability to unearth the corpse of that tune's ancestor when you get home, and examine its dry bones?
"And down the track, maybe a long way, any chance of a version you can keep running for a period of time (all night is OK!) and it detects tune changes and cycles the tunes through the process automatically as they happen, ending up with a list of names along with a snippet of each recorded tune?"
And, just for laughs, let's analyze which tunes go together most often and generate sets. And then we can put our iphones on the table, and they can start sets, play them, listen to each other, and "play along", while we sit around drinking beer.
I'm reminded of a Norman Spinrad novella called "Journals of the Plague Years" - worth reading, even though it's a bit dated now.
# Posted on July 31st 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: The wonders of Tunepal !!!!
Jon, I'm with you on the part about learning tunes from a face is much, much better than learning from a computer screen. However, I do think the ability to find a tune's name and be able to find different settings (in audio or by the dots) can be quite enlightening about how to approach a tune or how it may be different in different areas.
# Posted on July 31st 2011 by banshee misfortune
Re: The wonders of Tunepal !!!!
I suppose from your perspective, it seems as if Tunepal is the dream tool for the tune lepidopterist, something which can save you from the social interaction of asking about tunes. Because I know Bryan, I know it's not like that at all, and however others may use the software, that's definitely not his intention and not how he uses the software,
I don't know how sessions in Mass are, but in Glasgow and other places, people don't often know the names of tunes and don't play the same ones from week to week. So if someone plays a cool tune and they have no idea what it's called, I'm stuffed, as I don't have Tunepal due to lack of iPhone or other crackberry-type device. Maybe they'll play the same thing the next week, or the next, or not, and if they play it every single week at a session I might pick it up eventually, but chances are they won't even be at the session next week, much less play the same tunes! Also, are you one of those people who can pick up a tune on the fly after hearing it only three times through and remember it the next day? I'm not.
And to answer your question about what's wrong with old tunes, I think it's positive to keep adding to your repertoire. Keeps things interesting. Keeps things interesting at the session when people aren't playing the same damned thing every week.
# Posted on July 31st 2011 by DrSilverSpear
Re: The wonders of Tunepal !!!!
To be clear, I certainly don't think the intent of the app was to remove the sociability from sessions. I just think it's the outcome. There's two things going on here - one is the idea of getting a name so you can go home and learn the tune. I've talked about that a little - I don't really care if I hear a tune once and never again. I won't learn that one. If I really like a tune, there's something I really like about it, and I'll try to remember that, or I'll at least ask the person who played it to remember which one it was, and play it for me again some time.
Often, they do - and then they have another way of remembering the tune (oh, the one that Jon likes, yeah, let's play that). I have tunes like that - tunes I can remember a name for, but mostly I remember them as "the one that David likes". And now the tune is tied, in my head, to a world of people. Sometimes the tunes come back to me - I heard someone play a familiar tune once, and after the set I asked them what it was. They said, oh, I got it from so-and-so, and they got it from you. Ah. Okay, I remember now.
To me, that seems like the right way to do things - takes longer, but it's worth it.
The other problem is simple logistics: people who are staring at their phones are bad company. I don't want to be around them, because they have nothing to say and they apparently don't want to be around me because, while they're sitting in physical proximity, they're finding some virtual world to be much more enlightening. So the fact that you have to become an antisocial prick for a little while to use this thing is also problematic. If you record the session and look up the tunes later, I guess that problem's solved, but I really hate it when someone stops a conversation to diddle around with their phone. Sort of tells me "look, I like you, but this gadget is much more interesting than you... so just wait a while and I'll get back with you, maybe".
# Posted on July 31st 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: The wonders of Tunepal !!!!
I don't think the sociability thing goes away when people have an iPhone app. A lot of the folk I play with are absolute technical luddites and would run screaming in horror from an iPhone so a good bit of the session population doesn't have them anyway. When I've seen people using Tunepal, it involves only a small amount of faff with the technology, while the tune is going and conversation isn't. Far less of a serious offense than sitting in a session looking at Facebook on your phone.
Like I said, it's nice to ask but if people don't know the name, it's bloody hard to find the tune so you can go learn it. Names are useful for tracking down recordings.
# Posted on July 31st 2011 by DrSilverSpear