Blogs

Tags > composition

Pricing lessons learned from a publishing startup

In this TOC podcast, Demibooks CEO and co-founder Rafiq Ahmed talks about challenges in the ebook tools space and how his startup is handling pricing.

Pragmatic Design Patterns: Composition Over Inheritance

Many developers have the idea that design patterns are "nice to haves," something that you can add after the fact, if you have time to waste making your code academically appealing for no added benefit. At some level, I...

My Credo

"I Promise Never To Program A Computer To Play Something I Can't"

Composition and the Player Swapper

Around a year ago I was given the task to create an architecture for a syndicatable video player, capable of playing any video that might be served up by our different products. The first thing I had to do was...

Impossible Images

Variety is the spice of life, and it is certainly part of what I enjoy about photography. Having a camera is an excuse for being anywhere and examining anything. Those of you who follow my blog or my photostream on Flickr will know that my subjects range from kids and flowers through the night landscape. I'm also intrigued with the...

How Can Software Help You Create Music?

You're invited by a whacko group of entrepreneurs, developers, and artists in the music industry to fill out a survey about music creativity software, with a chance to win a prize.

Can Software Be a Substitute for Raw Musical Talent?

Yes. Software can help a musician uncover talent he didn't realize he had.

'Want to start composing music? Try rearranging someone else's first.

Learning to write good melodies is a great place to start. Let another composer provide the chord progressions and accompaniment for you, so that you can focus on nothing but a new melody.

A Ghoulish Deadline

A quick overview revealed the size of the task: I would have to produce about 4 hours of music, skit material and ambient sound to properly set the mood. In five days. With no wiggle room.

How Can a Programmer Help You Compose Music?

This first O'Reilly Digital Media blog by a 14-year veteran developer of musician software invites you to meet the musicians hiding in your computer, ready to help you compose and arrange your own music.

Revenge of the 3D Pumpkin

It's Halloween again, and what better way to set the mood than with a new soundscape album from Mark Greenfield, aka Darwin Chamber? Thanks to intelligent, computer-aided composition, it's much more immersive than the standard serving of ghost moans, melodramatic laughter, and werewolf howls.

Last Chance: Sennheiser Sonic Logo Contest

Sounds like . . . Sennheiser. While updating my business card the other day, I started to think it would be cool to have an audio logo as well as a graphic one. You've certainly heard these "earcons" — the THX Deep Note, the Duracell coppertop clank, the Intel Inside chimes. . . . With just a few notes and...

Apple Offers Free Songwriting Workshop

Everyone has a song inside. On March 22 and 24, Apple Stores around the country will show you how to get it out of your head and into an MP3 you can submit to American Idol. Apple promises, You don't have to know how to play an instrument, write a song, or even sing in tune. With GarageBand and...

Quiz: Good or Bad Background Music?

As part of today's feature article on making movies out of still photos, Michael W. and Debra Jean Dean whipped up this funny demonstration of good and bad background music. It contains five brief examples. See if you can figure out why each helps or hurts the presentation. Debra Jean reveals the answer after each segment. I burst out laughing...

A Sense Of Scale

When a photo is about pattern, the thrill of composition can come from a dissonance in size. Is the subject big or small? What is the sense of scale? In these kinds of photos, that which seems to be big is actually small, or that which appears to be small is actually big. The viewer gets a thrill when the...

From Reflections to Abstractions

I sometimes wonder how I end up with images that are elaborate photo composites, having more visually in common with paintings than photographs. These images are born of photographic parents but brought up differently. It is nature versus nurture. In this case, the influence of nurture is so obviously non-photographic that the resulting composites must stand or fall on their...