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We've improved the Backing Tracks offered on the BernardChinn subsite Over the weekend we made a major improvement to the backing tracks we offer on our BernardChinn subsite. We are now providing a downloadable MP3 track to go along with the MIDI sequences that we were offering till now. I think we have all of the bases covered now for those who are learning to play tunes and improvise over their changes. Our customers can directly play the MP3s we provide from the web page we give them access to. They can be downloaded and copied to an MP3 player or burned to a CD and played on their stereo. The MIDI sequences we provide can be loaded into a music editor or sequencer for their own study or composition work. (Do we have any GarageBanders out there?). The GIF images provided in concert key, and transposed for Bb and Eb instruments can be loaded into a word processor or picture editor to be printed. Now accepting music MP3s - we've removed the impediments A number of the composers who have submitted MIDI sequences and scores the Our Composers section have also wanted to provide MP3 recordings of their work. Before now there was always something in the way that prevented it. At first the storage space on the SongTrellis server prevented it. We typically ran disk space down to a few hundred Mb of space. Just 100 mp3 submissions would have jammed the server so tight that we couldn't run. I relaxed that constraint earlier this year when we upgraded our server which typically runs with 250Gb free. That should be room enough to store 20,000 tunes in MP3 format. Once we got that we were stymied by performance limits within the Frontier/Manila software upon which runs our webserver scripts. It took more than six months to manuever past this roadblock, but we're finally free of it and can serve mp3s nicely. The bloody technical details of the solution follow. My son Greg who has been learning to program for the last year recently told me that he finally understands that programmers are simply compelled to describe to others the stuff they solve. Read if you're interested and skip if you start to glaze. The Bloody Details SongTrellis runs what is called a dynamic webserver which answers most webserver requests by running a script which constructs the response page on the fly as the user waits. Usually SongTrellis users don't wait very long. Recent statistics show that our average response is faster than 95% of other sites on the web. Running as a dynamic site allows me maximum flexibilty as a web developer. However, there is a dark side to this flexibility. There was an awful performance consequence when it was necessary to send a large data object like a multi-megabyte MP3 back to a SongTrellis user. Clicking on a 15 or 20 megabyte MP3 would cause the server to grind to a near halt for half a minute or more. The user requesting the file would get frustrated and I, as the equally frustrated webmaster, would tear my hair out. Many times the SongTrellis server would dawdle for so long that the requester's web browser would time out and give up. At first I could do nothing about this performance glitch because the code responsible was compiled into the Frontier application. As with most commercial software, customers have no right or capability to look inside to see how their purchased application operates. Fortunately for us, Userland, the company which markets Frontier, recently decided that the kernel of their product would be better supported as an open source software project. This Frontier Kernel was the compiled application that I couldn't see into which I suspected was causing the performance problem when MP3s were served. Dave Winer, the brilliant software developer and proto-blogger who wrote Frontier and founded Userland, gave me permission to look at kernel sources even before they were made public. That was like being given a very big bag and after hours access to a candy store. I suddenly could watch my webserver scripts run and could figure out where the kernel was taking its time when I asked it to serve a large mp3 from disk. In a few days time, I discovered the culprit and with helpful consultation with folks who had previously worked at Userland, I crafted two small pieces of code that completely eliminate the wait times that previously occurred when mp3s were touched. I've run with the kernel changes for more than three weeks. They run beautifully. A new deal for composers who post on SongTrellis Here's the deal that's been in place for SongTrellis composers since 1999: I promised perpetual carriage to any composer who wished to post their work on SongTrellis in MIDI format and who wished to provide scores to their work in printable GIF format. With our new capability to serve MP3s quickly, I will now allow composers to post their work in MP3 format. I ask that they still provide an equivalent MIDI sequence as before, since MP3s cannot be easily played as a background sound by a web browser. The page that is built when they submit their MIDI sequence is the page that shows up in the index of their music on SongTrellis within the Our Composers section. They can load their mp3 as a document and then provide a download link for it from the MIDI page. Wonderful Count Basie online exhibit The Insitute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University is one of the world's leading centers for jazz scholarship. Their centennial celebration of Count Basie's life online at their website, One More Once, is worth your time. At the same time they are presenting Mary Lou Williams: Soul On Soul, Fats Waller Forever, and Benny Carter: Eight Decades in American Music. These folks were all gigantic figures in American music and lived very interesting lives. You'll learn a lot at the IJS. Oliver Messiaen and his organ Messiaen, the great French composer who wrote "L'Ascension", "The Quartet For the End Of Time", the "Turangalila Symphony" and "Chronochromie", improvised at organ services throughout his entire career. Many of his compositional ideas were tested out during his improvisations. I just found this recollection of Messiaen by Oliver Glandaz, an organ builder who was his friend. blog comments powered by Disqus
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Last update: Sunday, October 31, 2004 at 9:13 AM. |
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