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Worship Tech Web Tools Blog

4192093_illustration.gifThis is an ongoing blog of web tools and technology related to worship, music and church. The idea is to give you good web points and resources that you can go to. Some of it is just me cruising the net, others are favorites of friends.

Enjoy what you see here.  If you find an interesting, useful and technology related site or resource that deals with helping worship or musicians in general, please send us a note and we will check it out. Perhaps we can feature it here.

Thanks!

Enjoy! - Kim Gentes

Entries in website (2)

Internet, Music and Math: How to Waste Time With Three Fun Things (Kim Gentes / Worship Tech Blog)

DateWednesday, June 22, 2011 at 8:51PM

Remember the promises of science fiction? Well, things haven't turned out quite the way the Jetsons promised us. When they said "Flying cars, robotic servants, instant meals", we didn't know they meant "Southwest Airlines, automated sales calls to our cell phones, and McDonald's happy meals".  But who's to blame? Well certainly not Batuhan Bozkurt.

Batuhan is a "sound artist" and programmer living in Istanbul, Turkey.  And he has done his part in bringing forth the joyous reality of that fantasy of almost all great science fiction- the fusion of technology and art. But is it that hoped-for utopia where ones own thoughts of melodies were enough for mind-reading computers to generate the symphonic masterpeices of the future?  Mr. Bozkurt doesn't promise such glorious realities, but he takes the needed baby-steps for our neophite, web-connected world. He calls it Otomata.

Quite simply, Otomata, is a sound generation web application. It generates tones based on a 9x9 grid which contains any number of bouncing boxes. You start with a blank grid. You add your boxes. You click play. The fun begins.

This might seem trivial (and it is), but Otomata is based on the same rules of operation that most iOS apps and even the first video game (Pong) held to- collision and redirection.  The boxes you place on the grid all move, in any of the 4 directions you instruct them to. When they hit another  box or a wall they alter direction. When they hit a wall, they emit a sound. The grid is set up in a specific musical configuration so that notes ascend a scale from left to right. You get the idea quickly. You develop patterns that create sound loops for basic rhythm and meter. Add some melodic chaos notes (boxes) to overlay said patterns of rhythm.

But the more complex you make them, the less sure you are of a clean results, or one that sounds musical (instead of an explosion of computer sounding blurps).

But enough talk. Try it out! Otomata is online, for all to try (apparantly, phone apps are in the works as well). You can go here and get started:

http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/otomata

Now for the really cool part. Once you develop an interesting pattern on Otomata, click the "Copy piece link" and you have the URL to your musical/web/grid configuration. Share it with your friends, build on each other's patterns. All very fun, time wasting and addictive.  Real musos will initially bauk at this trivial tool, but finding the patterns is the key. Don't waste your time just throwing blocks on the board (at least don't keep doing it after 30 minutes or so). If you just do that, of course, you will be bored. Instead, start to develop a library of patterns that you can re-use for your bass end, your mid-chords and your high end rhythms.  Then, start to mix and match and see what happens.

The app is online for anyone who has a web browser. Oh, a real web browser I mean- this one is in Flash, so you can't play it on iPads or iPhones (at least until they add Flash).  However, the folks who wrote this online application have a great new port for the iOS devices and you can also download an app for your iPhone/iPod/iPad as well to take Otomata mobile.

Here are a couple patterns I worked on that I use as a base for more "compositions". Real music? Hmmm.. maybe not. But inventive, thoughtful, and certainly musical fun. You decide.

http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/otomata?q=4g3k5z4x0d0v7n7a8d8v

http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/otomata?q=3n4n5n3a4a5a8j0q177r

http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/otomata?q=3n4n5n3a4a5a8j0q

 

It's a fun time waster.. and your pattern recognition skills may just improve along the way!

Thanks Otomata! Thanks Batuhan Bozkurt!

 

Let's go people---

Go forth and blipify! 

Kim Gentes

 

 

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Tips for a New Blogger- Top 3 Things to Do and Top 3 Things to Avoid (Kim Gentes / Worship Tech Blog)

DateTuesday, May 31, 2011 at 9:14PM
Even though it seems like the Internet has been around forever, it's really just been about 15 years that most people have been online in some way in North America.  Various universities, government agencies and businesses were online earlier, but most of us didn't venture out until somewhere around 1996 or later.  As life would have it, I had the opportunity to explore the internet back in 1993. Everything was new, and over the next years blogging became a staple of Internet content and it remains so today.

If you have come here, you recognize the power of writing, have a value for blogs and are probably interested in making some of your own writing accessibe via the web. But to make the most of online access and the attention of your potential readers, you should be considerate of a number of important concepts. These ideas are considered "givens" for many people who have been online for years, but to the person entering the online blogging world, these might be fresh thoughts.

Before listing the top design considerations and things to avoid, let me say one thing-  write original content. Many people think that blogging, websites and social media will somehow magically bring an audience. Others try to use the web to market and hock their wares. None of these tacts have staying power. People ultimately understand value- they aren't interested in marketing, they are interested in unique content. So whatever you do, in developing your blog, or site, if you intend to build something of value, you must build unique content. Remember that. It will save you a lot of pain later on.

Now, assuming you have something worthwhile, unique and interesting to contribute via a blog, there are some basic design and content considerations you should make sure to attend to. I examine them below.

Design considerations:
  1. Clean - Keep things fairly clean, use white backgrounds, keep crisp focus on each page, and try not too have too many distracting things to draw attention away.
  2. Images - use nice, clean, well lit photos. Your photos don't have to be professional, but if they aren't, they should be impressive to people. Anything that smacks "amateur" means you lose credibility and readers. In my opinoin, no page should exist without some photo or visual. Even if it just anchors the text to a location around the photo.
  3. Social Media - use social media connectors. Quick buttons for liking/sharing/etc to Facebook/twitter, etc. Needed in this day.
  4. Simple Main Page - Nice front page banner/marque rotator. Make it CLEAR that when people hit the front page, they know exactly what the 2-4 things are that they can do. Easy, quick, one click.

Things I'd avoid:
  1. Freak show - Images in banners that rotate too quickly. People like change, but they don't want to feel like a site can't sit still long enough for them to drink in one page before it moves on. Make sure the time lapse of any photo rotation feels gentle enough to be interesting, but not constant motion.
  2. Ads - doubleclick and google ads. Ads aren't bad, but I wouldn't put them on a new site. I think they can serve a purpose once a site has some presence. And if that is the case, placing them might help to fund the site. If you are just starting out, however, I am guessing you don't enough traffic that the ads will bring in enough revenue to cover the site costs. I think ads generally degrade site value, especially when they don't relate to the site content. I'd remove them if it were me. If you feel storngly that you want to have ads, perhaps ads of related content, then you might add them once your site has more traffic would make more sense.
  3. No Touch - Be careful of having a site with no interaction. Leave ways for people to comment, feedback, or otherwise engage with your site. Not everywhere, but where it makes sense.

Some overall thoughts about sites, from my experience:

Purpose: Stay to your goals! As you develop an online presence, consider one very important question-- What is the purpose of the site? If it is to get to know you (as you mentioned), perhaps articles that include a bit longer entries where you are sharing your heart a bit more than a couple of sentences might be helpful. Be always wary of returning to the question--What is the purpose of the site?

I have found personally that I have gotten off target occasionally on websites. I have a tendency to try to do too much on a site, and sometimes to do things that I hope will impress people. That is why it is important to return to the question --What is the purpose of the site? If you keep asking yourself that question before adding each new part to your site, then you can help use that question to be a filter for keeping things off the site that might be nice, but don't pursue the real goal of the site.

Authenticity and Ethos: keep the site authentically you. Do things that represent who you really are. For example, I have been a software developer for years, so some of my site occasionally includes posts about software formulas that I have developed to help other coders. It might be quirky, but its me, and its a nuance that give the site my personality. Likewise, I love movies, music, books and eating out. So I have over a 100 reviews of various movies, music, books and restaurants on my site.. I keep things to what my personality and skill set can express, and hopefully in a way which is encouraging for others to know about. I don't talk about things like "being a handyman :)", because, well, I am not much a home repair or fix it guy...

Fresh Content: keep new content coming. The life of a site is in its ability to continue to breathe out new content. Be who you are, but keep a steady trickle of fresh new content adding to your site. Don't overextend, but do something manageable. If you can add a blog post once a month, do it. If once every couple weeks cool. Be careful not to start off doing one blog a day, because (unless you are marvelously prolific) most people can't sustain that without it being part of their occupation or daily routine. I'd err on the side of caution and shoot for something like a post every 2 weeks or so, maybe even once a month. That gives you time and thought to make each one work.

Re-use: As often as you can, re-use writing and work you may have done for other purposes as core content for your site/blog.  If you are a student, re-use strong papers or articles that are especially well done and offer some value to others. If you are a professional and write for your job, cull writing that is applicable and useful to others. This does many things, not the least of which is to save you huge amounts of time. Consider even that you may already be writing emails or encouraging documents suc has outlines to share in small groups or other contexts-- all of which may be good seeds for a post on your site. (for example, this very article originated from an email reply to a person who was asking about the topic--- re-use! Gotta love it!)

 
As you develop your blog/site and gain experience with your readers, don't hesitate to try new things. Returning to this list of ideas, however, may help guide you to see if your work is continuing to reflect your original purpose and do so in a quality manner.
Happy Blogging!

Kim Gentes
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