356-winter-2023/etude1

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Programming Etude #1: "Poets of Sound and Time"

Music and AI (Music356/CS470) | Winter 2023 | by Ge Wang

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In this programming etude, you are to write two chuck programs to help you create some experimental poetry involving text, sound, and time.

Due Date

  • Etude #1: due Wednesday (1/18, 11:59pm) see "Deliverables" below
  • Presentation: be prepared to share your work in class on Thursday (1/19)

Put the Disco in Discord

  • please direct any questions, rumination, outputs/interesting mistakes to our Discord server!

Tools to Play With

  • first, download the latest official ChucK release -- This will install both command line chuckand the graphical IDE miniAudicle (on macOS and Windows).
  • next, get the latest bleeding edge secret chuck build for this course -- Some important things to note:
    • this is the command line chuck, which you will need for this etude (you can use miniAudicle as a text editor only, as it does not have the new functionalities we need); you can either put the bleeding-edge chuck in your homework folder or (if you are feeling brave) you can overwrite your installed command line chuck. Depending on where you put this bleeding-edge build, you will need to explicitly run it (for example, > ./chuck program.ck will explicitly run chuck from the current directory, rather than the system-installed chuck).
    • NOTE: using command line chuck makes it possible to get console input, which is not available from the miniAudicle IDE.
    • NOTE: Windows users can either use the default cmd command prompt, or might consider downloading a terminal emulator.
  • also, a Zoom recording of the ChucK tutorial from 2023.01.13

The Word Embedding Model

  • lastly, you'll need to download three sets of pre-trained word vectors
    • glove-wiki-gigaword-50.txt -- pre-trained word vectors from Stanford GloVe (400,000 words x 50 dimensions)
    • glove-wiki-gigaword-50-pca-3.txt -- dimensionally reduced model using PCA (400,000 words x 3 dimensions)
    • glove-wiki-gigaword-50-tsne-2.txt -- dimensionally reduced model using t-SNE (400,000 words x 2 dimensions)
  • each of these has their tradeoffs:
    • the 50D has the best similarity accuracy (i.e., tends to get better search results) -- but searching is more computationally intensive (and may introduce glitches in real-time audio when querying for similarity)
    • the PCA-3D version is a greatly dimensionally-reduced (from 50 to 3) version of the above, making it much faster to do similarity retrieval (moreover the lower dimensionality in this case means it's feasible to use space partitioning techniques like KD-trees to significantly speed up the search); in addition to being real-time-audio friendly, the three dimensions can be readily mapped to control audio parameters (frequency, volume, rate, timbre, etc.) -- however, the quality of the similarity retrieval is noticeably weaker, as seemingly unrelated words will show up in the results.
    • the t-SNE-2D version, despite having one less dimension than the PCA-3D version, actually performs as well or better in terms of similarity compared to PCA-3D (partially due to the non-linear optimization of t-SNE compared with PCA's linear mapping of higher dimensions to lower dimensions); like 2D, 3D is friendly for mapping to audio parameters (and for visualization).
    • we recommend exploring word embeddings first using the 50D model, before moving on to the 3D and 2D versions for mapping and for real-time audio. It is also possible to first generate text, stored the generated text, and then render it and the audio in real-time. This approach effectively removes the real-time constraints by separating the processing into a generative stage and an efficient rendering stage; however, this also means that real-time interactions (e.g., to influence the generative processes) will be limited.

Starter Code and Examples

  • free to incorporate these or use them as starting points
  • you can find starter code here
  • we will be added a few more examples over the weekend (but don't wait, start "practicing" your etude)

Things to Think With

Express Yourself!

Using the ChucK/ChAI starter code for Word2Vec...

  • write code to help you create some experimental poetry involving text, sound, and time.
    • text: use the Word2Vec object in ChucK and one of the datasets to help you generate some poetry
    • sound: use sound synthesis and map the words (e.g., using their vectors to control parameters such as pitch, volume, timbre, etc.) to sound
    • time: don't forget about time! make words appear when you want them to; synchronize words with sound; visually and sonically "rap" the words in time!
  • create two poetic programs / works / performances:
    • make them as different as possible
    • for example one poem can be fully generated (you only need to run the chuck code, and the poem starts) and the other one interactive (incorporates input from the user, either through a a text prompt, or another means of input such as mouse / keypresses)

Some Prompts and Bad Ideas

  • a poem can be about anything; hint: try starting with how you feel about a particular thing, person, or event
  • starting with an existing poem and use word2vec to morph it over time
  • an experimental love poem
  • stream of consciousness
  • remember "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll? maybe your poem doesn't need to make sense to everyone
  • HINT: try to take advantage of the medium: in addition to printing out text to a terminal (both a limitation and a creative constraint/opportunity) you have control over sound and time at your disposal
  • HINT: experiment with the medium to embody your message -- for example, a poem about chaos where the words gradually become disjointed and nonsensical

Reflections

  • write ~250 words of reflection on your etude. It can be about your process, or the product, or the medium, or anything else. For example, how did your poems make you feel? Did you show them to a friend? What was their reaction? What makes something "poetry" (versus, say, "prose")?

Deliverables

  • create a CCRMA webpage for this etude
  • your Etude #1 webpage is to include
    • a title and short description of the exercise (free free to link to this wiki page)
    • your poems in some form (this will depend on what you chose to do; since sound and time are involved, you could include a screen capture with sound)
    • your ChucK code
    • your 250-word reflection
    • any acknowledgements (people, code, or other things that helped you through this)
  • submit to Canvas only your webpage URL
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