Mea Vita: Carpe Diem: music

Showing posts with label music. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 25, 2025

AI Meets Expectations: Personal Turing Test

Left: What I got. Right:What it should look like

I’ve had two personal tests that I’ve applied to every new AI model, and for years none of them passed.

One test was to generate an image of an absinthe fountain with glasses and absinthe spoons. Last year, AI got this right.

The other test was to take a multi-hours MP3 that I recorded at monthly jazz jam sessions and break it into individual tracks based on either silence between the songs or applause. This week, ChatGPT finally got it right, but I have yet to see success with other AI models.

Sunday, March 29, 2020

COVID-19 Soundtrack

The purpose of a soundtrack is to pair the mood to events through music. My favorite composer of the late 20th century is Philip Glass. His compositions arouse deep, longing emotions. When listening, I envision a great hero reaching for the heavens but falling painfully short.

Until the number of active cases dramatically decreases, this will get worse before it gets better. What gets me through each day is the knowledge that there's absolutely no doubt this first wave will end by summer. At one point, either enough people have contracted COVID-19 so there are no new hosts to infect, or we contain it through isolation and quarantine. Regardless, each day puts us one day closer to the peak and one day closer to resuming social activities.

COVID-19 Soundtrack

Looking back at how much better off we were last week elicits Opening:
http://mobile.joemoreno.com/Opening.mp3

Thinking about this current week evokes Facades:
http://mobile.joemoreno.com/Facades.mp3

Wondering about next week feels like Closing: http://mobile.joemoreno.com/Closing.mp3

Here are all three compositions, just shy of 20 minutes, in a single track:
http://mobile.joemoreno.com/CovidSoundtrack.m4a

Saturday, February 8, 2020

Music in my Soul

Today, I gained back a piece of my soul.

Five weeks ago all of my music (iTunes/Music) playlists went missing.

My music was in my library, but my playlists were all duplicated, in name. One playlist had all of my music and the other was empty. After opening and closing the macOS Music app several times, the duplicate playlists remained. So, I deleted the empty playlists... all 85 of them. Over the course of the next ten minutes, all of my playlists disappeared on my iPhone, iPad, TV, and HomePods (thanks to iTunes Match, Apple's music cloud syncing service). My playlists remained on my Mac, but clearly there was a problem, so I called AppleCare for support. While I was on the phone with them, all of the playlists disappeared from my Music app on my Mac. That's nearly two decades of curated music that went missing an all of my devices.

The senior Apple advisor I was talking to was extremely sympathetic to my issue. Over the course of a couple hours, we tried a number of different things, including recovering my music library from my Time Machine backups. But, to no avail. It seems iTunes music libraries used to get backed up via Time Machine, but the new macOS Music app, released in October 2019, doesn't backup the library.

Over the following few weeks, things were a mess as I was transferred around amongst different senior advisors throughout AppleCare. There was a lot of confusion over the proper description of the issue in my trouble ticket. Many were describing it as "missing music" instead of "missing playlists."

Throughout these steps, there were times when I could restore an iTunes music library playlist into the macOS music app. But, while the playlists remained, all of the music in the playlist would quickly disappear (within in a minute or two) as iTunes Match thought the playlists were stale, and deleted them.

Playlist Solution

I finally figured out a somewhat tedious workaround to restoring my playlists that AppleCare confirmed with me as my best option on our next, and final call.

1. Uncheck Sync Library in macOS Music General preferences.

2. Close the Music app.

3. Restore my last iTunes music library backup, from September 2019.

4. While holding down the Option key, open the Music app and choose the old iTunes music library. My playlists appear, although, without any songs.

5. Choose each playlist, individually, and choose File –> Library –> Export Playlist. (I had to do this 85 times.)

6. Once complete, I went back to my Music General preferences in step one and checked Sync Library (and then my playlists disappeared).

7. I then imported all 85 playlists, one at a time, by clicking File –> Library –> Import Playlist. Here's what that looked like.

One gotcha was that, when I double clicked on most songs in my playlist, a modal window popped up saying that Music couldn't locate that song. Once I clicked cancel, to dismiss this modal, all was fine.

The other gotcha was that I lost any playlist updates between September 2019 and the beginning of January. Luckily, that was a small amount of edit, especially compared to the last 19 years.

On 3 Jan 2020, I lost all of my macOS Music playlists. That's 19 years of curated music that was wiped out on all of my devices since iTune Match syncs my music.

https://youtu.be/xkL_f4KVSsw

Thursday, July 12, 2018

The Story of an Artist

Pure art is nothing more than an expression of human consciousness for others to experience.
– Me

Update: Daniel Johnston passed away September 10, 2019.

Apple announced upgraded MacBook Pros, this morning. That lead me to noticing their new commercial that's part of their "Behind The Mac" marketing campaign. Apple commercials sometimes have sticky songs such as in "The City," featuring "Sing to Me." (Both videos tell a story about a deep, curious, and budding love.)

What's unusual about this most recent "Behind The Mac" ad, embedded below, is the naive, lo-fi recording that accompanies the commercial; the song is "The Story Of An Artist," by the musician Daniel Johnston.

Johnston suffers from debilitating mental health issues. At one point, in his late 20s, when he was flying in a small plane piloted by his father, he removed the key from the ignition and threw it out the window. Amazingly, they escaped from their crash landing, in a forest, with only minor injuries.

For those of us who are older, it's the subtle, yet authentic, quality of Johnston's cassette tape recordings that bring a wave of something more than nostalgia; it brings saudade. We remember making the same recordings on our cassette players in our bedrooms and basements. Press play and record at the same time --- and don't forget to break off the tab if you don't want to mistakenly record over it.

Johnston's songs have a hauntingly raw simplicity underneath a sad kindness, as they are performed by a man whose sufferings are difficult to understand, let alone imagine. His lyrics aren't his words, instead, they're his unfiltered thoughts, feelings, and experiences --- candid and exposed --- yet endearingly palatable in their message.

Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Us and Them

Tonight, my cousin said that "Us and Them," from The Dark Side of the Moon, was, "...my favorite Pink Floyd song. So, so beautiful."

My reply was...

Mine too. It's a beautiful song about an officer in war. He stands with his troops during the battles, with the cannon fodder taking the brunt of the casualties. "'Forward,' he cried, from the [relative safety of the] rear, and the front rank died."

The generals weren't even near the fighting. "The general sat while the lines on the map moved from side to side."

The war was futile. "In the end it's only round and round."

Then the officer becomes a recruiter with the battle call...
"Haven't you heard it's a battle of words?"

And he recruits new enlistees for war.
"'Listen, son,' said the man with the gun, 'there's room for you inside.'"

And, before you know it, the war's long over and the old officer is forgotten and homeless, dying on the street. "For want of the price of tea and a slice, the old man died."

That's my take on this song.