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Saturday, May 29, 2010

Python music hack makes any song... Swing!

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You can hack many things... but music? Really? I know that technology plays a big part in music mixing in a synths sense -- but as a procedural, Python-scripted way... that's news to me!

Enter The Swinger, which was coded last week at the Music Hack Day event in San Francisco. It makes music swing: it abuses the time-stretching capabilities of Echo Nest's open-source Remix SDK to create strangely pleasant swing remixes of songs. Press play on the music player above; Guns N' Roses has never sounded so chirpy!

Given that the script was written by Tristan Jehan, the prodigious doctor of the bleeding-edge 'Hyperinstruments Group' at MIT, I shouldn't really be surprised that it exists. Digging a little further (check the Music Hack Day timetable), it looks like music hacking is a quickly-developing arena that cracks open an interesting kettle of fish.

While personalized music streams like Pandora are nothing new, imagine a service that also detects your preference for faster or slower beats. Imagine being able to select a fast or slow version of your favourite playlist, depending on your mood. That would be cool -- and only the beginning of what we'll see in 'next-gen' music.

[If you want to convert some songs into sultry swing (it can un-swing songs too!), grab the Remix SDK linked above and locate swinger.py in the Examples directory. You'll need Python installed.]
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Python music hack makes any song... Swing! originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 24 May 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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