Pi for a minute

I finally managed to convert the .wav of the first minute of the Pi music into an mp3 and here it is :-

(Warning - it is about 0.8 MB as I did it at 128 kbs)

PianoPi2.mp3

Apologies for the bad cut off at the end; I didn't get to the fader in time.

I started on an interactive version of Six Pianos last night but I need to get a better timing mechanism as it sounds a bit hesitant at the moment like someone learning to play the piano. The first program I wrote which used the Midi control was simply a random playing of notes from all along the scale with no set key, just all the notes, black and white. I had the idea then of starting with the program playing this random set of notes at random intervals and gradually fading from this to a set key and time signature as if the machine was learning how to play melodiously and rhythmically. All this is of course a build up to the self-playing version of In C.

There are some pictures of Gwyneth Paltrow as Sylvia Plath at the BBC news site. Compare this with the picture on the first page of the Sylvia Plath Forum. The actor playing Ted Hughes is Daniel Craig who I have not seen in anything but he looks the part. I do hope the cinema get the aspect-ratio correct. When we went to see Mrs Brown, it was projected wrong and I was the one who had to go and tell the projectionist as no-one else seemed to bother - or notice. So many people have wide-screen TVs these days and leave them on the widescreen setting for all programmes so everyone appears to be stretched out to the side. True Widescreen is only broadcast through digital transmissions and it annoys me that so many people either don't notice the obvious distortion or just can't be bothered. I know that television in genjeral is a distortion of reality but at least the cameramen make and effort to make the image appear pleasing to the eye. Since we got the Digital and can watch true widescreen, I have noticed how many broadcasts are actually far more aesthetically 'right' when seen as they were filmed. Drowning by Numbers from what I remember used great paintings as the basis for many of the shots and another Peter Greenaway film The Draughtsman's Contract relied so much on the widescreen format that it almost seems odd that TV was originally done almost square when our view of the world is extended left and right compared with the vertical field of view. Maybe 'square' TV has compacted our view of the world. It is almost as if the wide vistas of real life are too much for us to take and we have to squeeze everything down and then at the last moment unsqueeze it so something which normally takes up only a small part of our view becomes all that we can see, a distorted parody of reality - or is that just Eastenders?