Rob's all-purpose Writing Blog

Songware? It seems odd that a great live band like the Who would find itself promoting software-generated songs, but apparently Pete Townshend has been working - nay dreaming - about this for 30 years. Who's next grew out of Lifehouse - Pete's idea of a connectedness that expressed itself through songs... and was for Pete a glimpse of a future world where connectedness was pervasive, electronic and creative. Which brings us to The Method, software that apparently takes personal data like a birthdate, a photo, an audio file and a beat and produces music.

Pete talks about it here on MP3.com... The legendary Who guitarist and songwriter said... that he is set to launch a new Web site that he has been thinking about for nearly 30 years. Dubbed The Method, Townsend said the site will use music composition software to take a person's physical attributes and compose a brand new, personalized piece of music for that person.

"I've been thinking about this for such a long time," he said. "The gathering that the Internet offers is meditation. You lose yourself when you're listening to good music." Townshend said he hopes the site will provoke more people to take advantage of the immediacy of the Web.

And Yahoo! says this: Rocker Pete Townshend on Wednesday unveiled an Internet-based software program that will help music fans compose personalised tracks at the click of a button. The Who guitarist/songwriter said that with a voice recording, a digital image and a rhythm clapped into a microphone, his new "Method" software will create spontaneous digital music and allow anyone to be a composer, and possibly a rock star. "You can put data in and get a piece of music out. It's as simple as that," said Townshend, a technical wizard who pioneered the use of the synthesiser more than 35 years ago on the classic tunes "Won't Get Fooled Again" and "Baba O'Riley." The project, which started percolating during his art school days in the 1960s, was developed by mathematician/composer Lawrence Ball and software developer Dave Snowdon.

From May 1, users will be able to get free access to the Web site (http://www.lifehouse-method.com) for three months, and will be able to compose instrumental tracks that they can e-mail or post on their Web sites. From August 1, it will become a subscription-based service.

Sounds intriguing, anyway.

Labels: software, the who, townshend

One more blogging-tool-with-RSS-aggregator is never enough. If you want a sure fire way to get a blog started and don't want to get your hands dirty with templates, try tumblr. (Presumably tumbler is taken.) Mind you, you can still play dirty, as I have done here: http://gtveloce.tumblr.com/

Labels: links, tumblr

The 14th to 19th century humanists believed that the study of the arts, including philosophy, should be conducted in an informal, conversational style, through conversation, debate and gentle discussion. Let's look at the intellectual ideas of four of these philosophers - Kierkegaard, Sartre, Heidegger and Camus - yes, that Camus, the writer (there had to be a link here somewhere!).

Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) wrote with a rare poetic beauty, while suffering from severe anxiety and depression. He worked through his troubles by developing his philosophic ideas. Indeed he came to see anxiety, rather than doubt, as the chief tool of philosophical questioning. He also rebelled against the abstract philosophy of Hegel, ensuring instead that his ideas - his underlying philosophy - is grounded in the concrete existence of the individual. He championed the idea that individuals are always in relationship with themselves, their environment and each other - for better or worse setting up anxieties that resonated within. It was this intermingling of challenge and change that Kierkegaard saw as the very basis for philosophical constructs. In this way Kierkegaard has influenced psychology and theology as well as philosophy itself.

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), emphasises the freedom and responsibility of the individual over all else. His "existential" philosophy, that "man is nothing but what he makes of himself" - became increasingly popular after the Second World War. It expressed and supported the cause of freedom for human beings, to make choices and to assume responsibility for themselves in a post-war world of relativism. Existentialists believe that to treat people "objectively", one step removed as it were, as mere "victims" of physical, biological or environmental circumstance - is to rob them of their essential humanity. Indeed, in Sartre's view, individuals should be accorded the respect that accrues from their unbounded possibility, rather than straightjacketed into mere roles.

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was a controversial figure in the history of philosophy, if only for his commitment to German National Socialism, provoking the question as to how someone can be so philosophically insightful yet so blind at the same time. He is seen as a "systematic" existential philosopher but one whose influence extends beyond the bounds of existentialism alone.

And onto the writer - this is a writing blog after all. Albert Camus (1913-1960) was a French Algerian journalist, novelist and philosopher - and perhaps the most enduring novelist of his time. He used novels such as The Outsider, The Plague and The Fall to explore the consequences of existentialism, often taking things to extremes of absurdity to prove his point. The famous confrontation between Camus and Sartre dominated Parisian intellectual life for years and is sorely missed.

Labels: Camus, Heidegger, humanism, kierkegaard, philosophy, Sartre