Introduction
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This is part 1 of my seventh post/article on my newsletter! The other two parts will be published later today. It started as one post but became too big for emails, so I had to break it into three parts. This part is just one big ole disclaimer, so you may want to just skip it and wait for the next two parts! LOL It’s the fourth in the series on Music Discovery, where I use Python, statistics/probability, music theory, the Python Library Module MUSIC21, and the notation and playback software MuseScore to explore the infinite space of musical points. Before continuing, let me, as done in most of my previous articles, stress that I am a nonmusician. I play no instruments and have only a rudimentary knowledge of music theory. How did I end up writing about music? Well, years ago (maybe 30?), when the video rental stores were popular, I thought about making some educational videos. The first thing I realized was that I needed some background music and being aware of copyright and patent law, I decided to make my own music. I bought a guitar and signed up for lessons. I was a terrible student and quit after a month or two. I was fascinated by the music theory but was not too keen on learning to play an instrument. Fast forward to 2014, the year I tried some C programming to create music in the format of a wave file. This was fun but a lot of work! Then I discovered the notation and playback software MuseScore. All I needed to produce music then was a little theory! I used this tool to create musical photo albums, which I posted in my Blogger site and also on Facebook. Fast forward to present times … I’m retired and decide to post some more musical photo albums. I post one and Facebook partially mutes one of the songs on the video claiming it may be violating copyright law. Then it sends me a notice saying I can either delete it or let them mute the questionable piece of music.
I couldn’t click on any of the options because they were greyed out and they stayed that way for days. Eventually, they took down the video. The link provided above was useless. I finally submitted my own complaint of copyright violation: I claimed they were violating my copyrights and I wanted to know who their “copyright police software” claimed owned the music that I created. They replied back that it was only muted in certain areas. No further information was provided. I searched the Internet for more information but only heard crazy stories like a post of a beaver flapping his tail being partially muted. I did find out about the software Shazam, which allows one to upload a music segment and it will match it to some published song. I tested it on the music being played at the IHOP restaurant and it worked quite well, so I decided to test it with the 1-minute, 36-second music from my video. It struggled (it actually told me this one was difficult) but finally suggested that it may be the following:
This music sounded nothing like my music. You compare. Here’s my music in dispute:
I’m sure you’ll agree they are nothing alike. Anyway, the problem is that Facebook is letting their magical software make final decisions without you having any recourse. I sent them my music sheet and explained I composed it. I also asked again who. They just ignored me. This is what Facebook has become! I reposted it several times and it finally stuck for me, but probably not anyone else!
Continuing on with the story, I started wondering how software could recognize a piece of music and this led me to several articles, one explaining how Shazam works. This in turn started me thinking about the nature of music; that is, what makes music good or bad. I figured the best place to start was to create some music like I had done in 2015, but this time come up with a procedure for creating music that would be straightforward and fast and hopefully less trial-and-error. I had planned to create some video games using GODOT and continuing my engineering/mathematics YouTube videos in retirement. Background music would be needed for both. Then I found out about Substack, which would allow me to write articles, another planned activity during retirement. So, here I am, using Substack to create a diary of my journey searching for answers to what music really is and how to make it. That’s my story!
In this article, my past articles, and my future articles on Music, you should take what I write with a “grain of salt”. That is, all that is written is coming from the brain of an engineer, mathematician, and outdoorsman who has absolutely no credentials in music!
Summary
This is the first article that I have spent the entire article with a big ole disclaimer! I think I will refer readers to this article in the future. I’m getting tired of telling you that “Hey, what do I know? Read with caution!”. I’m sure you’re tired of reading them, too! OK, no more disclaimers! LOL. However, I do believe it’s important to let your readers know your background and credentials. I used to think to do so was bragging and if you didn’t list your credentials or motivations, then you really weren’t qualified to be talking about the subject. Damned if you do: Damned if you do!