I talked about a small music-scale exploration sub-project in the previous couple of posts. It's not completely done yet, but I thought I should just pen down some of the crazier things that I found while doing the preparatory coding work.
There are two main ways of doing this: either start from the pitch-class set and then identify the associated intervals as part of the scale (which, incidentally, is similar to assigning degrees to the intervals a la 简谱 or cipher notation with associated accidentals as needed), or start from the ``standard'' 7-degrees of intervals that form a scale and apply accidentals accordingly to derive the set of pitch-classes, eliminating repeated ones. An example of a repeated set could be something like {1,♭2,♭3,♭4,♭5,♭6,♭7}---this is the same as {1,♯1,♯2,♯3,♯4,♯5,♯6}, assuming 12-tone equal temperament.
I haven't started the exploration part yet, but have been doing preparatory coding. And one of the problems I was facing was identifying the intervals (relative to the tonic) by name. I coded up something while at the library at NEX yesterday, but I didn't like the result. I was trying to be clever when there was no need to do so, simply because the sizes of the input we were looking at was that small.
And so I wrote a much simpler brute force way with associated preference scoring (prefer intervals with larger numbers of degree-names used, prefer using one accidental over a mix of both accidentals, do not prefer the dreaded ``double flat'' (can appear as 𝄫3, 𝄫6, or 𝄫7), avoid running into the next octave (i.e. prefer 7 over ♭1′)). The results were much better, especially after applying the conversion to 简谱 from the identified intervals.
I will probably work more on it over time.
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I procrastinated against reading Deep Learning by reading a few more chapters of Genesis from the ESV Study Bible. For those who are not familiar, a study bible is like the regular bible (in this case, the English Standard Version of the Protestant bible), but augmented with many footnotes, endnotes, and articles to explain the context and provide references to other parts of the bible for the annotated verse. Think of it as the extended version of English literature notes that one had to take back in the day when trying to study a book for the examinations, except in this case we are looking at 66 books instead of just 1. And yes, I am seeing this as a multi-year undertaking.
It's okay, if something is worth doing, it is worth over-doing, which segues into a reason why I know that I had to take a sabbatical to think about what I am doing with my so-called career.
I am a computer scientist by training, a software engineer/data analytics engineer by practice. There is this word, engineer, that comes with it the concept of ethics, but sadly, in my industry, such ethics are treated as bullshit. There are two levels of ethics violations that impinge upon my conscience: the I-won't-be-around-to-run-this-in-five-years-anyway mentality, and the degradation of humans into milkable products for peddling more useless crap.
For the former, I am referring to the tendency for programs (or ``apps'' to use the modern parlance) to be written slap-dashedly to meet business mandated deadlines, at the level of quality that would make a civil engineer blush. Even for those that are well-written and are feature complete, we see ever-increasing nonsensical ``updates'' that are to milk more cash instead of actually improving things---the most egregious of all are the so-called UI/UX updates that are completely tone-deaf to the actual needs of the users.
For the latter, I am talking about the incessant tracking and infringement of basic human rights through forced participation of such tracking schemes. I say ``forced participation'' because while it is possible to technically operate without any digital tracking devices like smartphones or even email accounts, from a practicality perspective, it would be impossible to do so, especially if one were to want to luxuriate in urban living. The social contract has been altered over the past twenty years to this point---participate in the digital economy, or forego your rights as a citizen of the world.
I don't mind using data analytics on machinery data to improve the operation of the machines. But I mind a lot when we are starting to treat people's movements and words/actions as machine-like input for a central committee to control---there is something inherently wrong with this approach. It's like after the Internet has percolated down to the masses that suddenly no one remembers what morality is, and what a good conscience means, and that everyone requires The Law just to behave.
It makes me sad, downright depressed actually. When I started writing my first computer program when I was thirteen years old, I thought how much fun it would be to continue writing clever computer programs that do computation for things that were simultaneously fun and can help people. Now, looking back from a position of twenty-three years later, I just feel bad for myself.
Everything that was good, has been corrupted.
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On slightly less depressing matters, I had this urge to play some Tyrian 2000. And I did. It is a space-shooter that has some light level-up/upgrade elements. It is fun.
And that's all I have for today. Till the next update.
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