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Square Roots 1800s Style — No, the Other 1800s[MindYourDecisions] presents a Babylonian tablet dating back to around 1800 BC that shows that the hypotenuse of a unit square is the square root of two or 1.41421. How did they know that? We don’t know for sure how they computed it, but experts think it is the same as the ancient Greek method written down by Hero. It is a specialized form of the Newton method. You can follow along and learn how it works in the video below.
The method is simple. You guess the answer first, then you compute the difference and use that to adjust your estimate. You keep repeating the process until the error becomes small enough for your purposes.For example, suppose you wanted to take the square root of 85. You can observe that 9 squared is 81, so the answer is sort of 9, right? But that’s off by 4 (85-81=4). So you take that number and divide it by the current answer (9) multiplied by two. In other words, the adjustment is 4/18 or 0.2222. Putting it together, our first answer is 9.2222.
If you square that, you get about 85.05 which is not too bad, but if you wanted closer you could repeat the process using 9.2222 in place of the 9. Repeat until the error is as low as you like. Our calculator tells us the real answer is 9.2195, so that first result is not bad. A second pass gives 9.2193, You could keep going, but that’s close enough for almost any purpose.
The video shows a geographical representation, and if you are a visual thinker, that might help you. We prefer to think of it algebraically. You are essentially creating each adjustment by adding the guess and the square divided by the guess and averaging them.
The ancients loved to estimate numbers. And Hero was into a lot of different things.Square Roots 1800s Style — No, the Other 1800s
hackaday.com[MindYourDecisions] presents a Babylonian tablet dating back to around 1800 BC that shows that the hypotenuse of a unit square is the square root of two or 1.41421. How did they know that? We don&#…
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Bandsintown High Notes 2024: 1 Week left to update Artist profiles!Bandsintown High Notes 2024, the popular live music year in review for both artists and fans, will be released early next month.
The post Bandsintown High Notes 2024: 1 Week left to update Artist profiles! appeared first on Hypebot.Bandsintown High Notes 2024: 1 Week left to update Artist profiles!
www.hypebot.comGet ready for Bandsintown High Notes 2024, the live music year in review. Artists can update profiles and share their live music journey
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Zerb and Sofiya Nzau on “Mwaki” and the power of a sample
Zerb and Sofiya Nzau discuss their unique collaboration on "Mwaki," insights into the production process, and more.Zerb and Sofiya Nzau on "Mwaki" and the Power of a Sample - Blog | Splice
splice.comZerb and Sofiya Nzau discuss their unique collaboration on "Mwaki," insights into the production process, and more.
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How To Identify Botted Playlists and Protect Your MusicLearn the signs of bot-boosted playlists, that are bound to waste your marketing efforts, and ensure your streams come from real listeners who matter.
The post How To Identify Botted Playlists and Protect Your Music appeared first on Hypebot.How To Identify Botted Playlists and Protect Your Music
www.hypebot.comAvoid streaming fraud and protect your music. Learn how to identify and avoid bot-boosted playlists that can harm your credibility.
Telepathic Instruments’ Orchid: All the details about Tame Impala’s new synth revealedAfter months of teasers, Tame Impala’s new instrument company, Telepathic Instruments, has officially announced Orchid, a digital synthesizer with an emphasis on chord generation.
Kevin Parker conceived Orchid over 10 years ago, according to the company, intending to create an instrument for songwriters to “find what’s on their mind”. The celebrated Aussie producer, multi-instrumentalist and Tame Impala mastermind co-founded Telepathic Instruments this year with a group of friends, and Orchid marks the brand’s debut product.
What is Orchid?
Telepathic Instruments’ Orchid. Image: Telepathic Instruments
Orchid is a 12-key, 16-voice polyphonic synth with three separate synth engines and a chord logic system for quickly building chords and chord progressions. A collection of onboard effects are onboard, including reverb, chorus and delay, plus four LFOs and envelope generators for modulation. There’s also a separate bass engine for low-end duties.
The synth was physically designed by one of Telepathic’s co-founders, Ignacio Germade, and also has a rechargeable battery and dual stereo built-in speakers for portable use.
Orchid’s chord generator comprises a matrix of eight chord-type selecting and chord-modifying keys. To play a chord, you play the root note on the keyboard and use the generator to trigger the chord, selecting its voicing and using a rotary encoder to re-pitch and reposition the chord. Check out the video below for a demonstration and a warning to not get too jazzy.You can play Orchid in a handful of ways. Five performance modes are on offer, plus MIDI connectivity for hooking Orchid up to your DAW and other instruments. The performance modes are Strum, Slop, Arpeggiator, Pattern and Harp. The latter mode “mimics a harp being strummed to the sound of a given chord across a four-octave range,” says the brand.
Meanwhile, a built-in Loop Mode lets you capture ideas and build upon them with overdub in a set loop.
You can, of course, also play Orchid like a keyboard with its 12 velocity-sensitive keys. Telepathic Instruments stresses that the chord generation system effectively expands the keyboard to a full-size keyboard, not just the 12 keys on the unit.
Telepathic Instruments’ Orchid. Image: Telepathic Instruments
When will Telepathic Instruments’ Orchid be released?
On 18 December 2024, Telepathic Instruments will make 1,000 units available to US customers. You’ll be able to order one at the Telepathic Instruments website.
This limited edition run gives the first 1,000 owners the option to join Telepathic’s online community, The Garden. Here, users can “shape and refine” Orchid before its wider release in 2025.
Telepathic Instruments’ Orchid. Image: Telepathic Instruments
How much is Telepathic Instruments’ Orchid?
The first 1,000 Orchids will be priced at $549 USD.
What has Tame Impala said about Orchid?
We’ve not heard any official word about the instrument from Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker, other than he and the team calling Orchid “an ideas machine”. The Telepathic Instruments brand was founded by Ignacio Germade, Chris Adams, Charl Laubscher, Tom Cosm and Kevin Parker.
Charl Laubscher has provided some insight:
“Orchid isn’t just about how much you know or don’t know — it’s about shaking up your creative process…It’s a tool for anyone who wants to step outside their musical comfort zone, to experiment and to find what’s on their mind.”
Telepathic Instruments’ Orchid. Image: Telepathic Instruments
Read more music technology news.
The post Telepathic Instruments’ Orchid: All the details about Tame Impala’s new synth revealed appeared first on MusicTech.Telepathic Instruments’ Orchid: All the details about Tame Impala’s new synth revealed
musictech.comTame Impala’s new instrument company, Telepathic Instruments, has officially announced Orchid, a digital synthesizer with an emphasis on chord generation.
- in the community space Music from Within
Grammy Camp Expands to New York, Miami and LAThe Grammy Museum has announced that the Grammy Camp is expanding with sessions in New York, Miami, and LA, opening doors for the next generation of emerging artists.
The post Grammy Camp Expands to New York, Miami and LA appeared first on Hypebot.Grammy Camp Expands to New York, Miami and LA
www.hypebot.comRhe expansion of Grammy Camp, offers aspiring high school students an immersive music industry experience in New York, Miami, and LA.
- in the community space Tools and Plugins
ProPatch 128R from Wolff Audio The ProPatch 128R manages to pack 128 patch points into a 1U chassis, and offers an electronics-free, ‘straight-wire’ signal path that’s been designed to deliver the most transparent sound possible.
ProPatch 128R from Wolff Audio
www.soundonsound.comThe ProPatch 128R manages to pack 128 patch points into a 1U chassis, and offers an electronics-free, ‘straight-wire’ signal path that’s been designed to deliver the most transparent sound possible.
Diplo says Major Lazer “would be cancelled before we started” if the project began in 2024Diplo feels that if Major Lazer were to start out today, they’d be “cancelled” from the get-go.
The project, which was launched in 2008 by both Diplo and London-based producer Switch, grew off the back of their work with M.I.A. Their first record, Guns Don’t Kill People… Lazers Do, landed 15 years ago, and was recorded in Jamaica. Influences of Jamaican dancehall music can be heard throughout, and Jamaican artists were featured on all tracks.READ MORE: Diplo shows off his analogue library and home studio on his 62-acre private estate in Portland, Jamaica
The album hosted hits such as Hold The Line and Pon De Floor, the latter of which was later sampled on Beyonce’s Run The World (Girls). In an interview with Billboard in honour of the debut’s anniversary, Switch recalls, “The first time in Jamaica there [were] a few raised eyebrows [laughs].”
Diplo adds, “In Jamaica there was a bunch of progressive producers at the time so they were doing interesting things, so people were actually leaning towards whatever stands out. Our records were really standing out. We would record them how we had them and then we’d go back in the studio and [Switch] was a pioneer at remixing his own records, so by version six or seven, it was totally insane music. For instance, Hold The Line, it just gets weirder and weirder and we [were] like, ‘okay, this is just weird enough. This is going to raise eyebrows.’”
Asked if the two ever felt like they were outsiders to the musical community that existed there already, Switch responds, “We heard Pon De Floor on the radio in the gas station, and that was a little moment…It was penetrating this market that we felt was very special.”
“We realised they were supporting us,” adds Diplo. “We were committed. We were going there a lot. We weren’t just dropping in, we were there every month.”
He later adds, “With our videos and everything we did, [Major Lazer] would be cancelled [nowadays] before we even started, because people wouldn’t have given us a chance. They would have been like ‘We don’t really understand this and this isn’t correct.’ But back then, nobody really gave a shit. They were like, ‘I like the way this sounds.’ Today there’s too many tastemakers and rules.”
In case you need a reminder of what Diplo is hinting at, you can check out the video for Pon De Floor below:The post Diplo says Major Lazer “would be cancelled before we started” if the project began in 2024 appeared first on MusicTech.
Diplo says Major Lazer “would be cancelled before we started” if the project began in 2024
musictech.comDiplo feels that if Major Lazer were to break out today, they’d be “cancelled” before they’d even started.
Anthrax drummer says “Spotify is where music goes to die”, and that Metallica were right about NapsterAnthrax’s drummer Charlie Benante has spoken out against music streaming platforms, arguing that they are where “music goes to die”.
Benante, who also plays as part of Pantera’s touring band, feels that musicians get financially taken advantage of the most out of any industry. Though understanding of the fact that times change, Benante wishes the move to digital hadn’t been so drastically different compared to the days of physical mediums only.READ MORE: Tool’s Maynard James Keenan feels they made a “mistake” by not being on streaming platforms sooner: “That’s the gateway into vinyl and CDs”
Speaking to The Irish Times, he says, “I don’t subscribe to Spotify. I think it is where music goes to die. We have the music on there because we have to play along with the fucking game, but I’m tired of playing the game.
“We get taken advantage of the most out of any industry. As artists, we have no health coverage, we have nothing. They fucked us so bad, I don’t know how we come out of it. You’d probably make more money selling lemonade on the corner.”
Further in the interview, Benante also shares solidarity with Metallica, who famously took peer-to-peer file sharing site Napster to court back in 2000, and faced backlash from music fans who believed them to be greedy. The lawsuit became known as the first highly publicised case of an artist suing a P2P company, just as tides were turning in the industry and music was becoming available online, rather than just on CD.“They were absolutely right about it,” says Benante. “You see where it went. All those people who said, ‘Fuck Metallica. They are rich bastards.’ They were protecting their art, their intellectual property so that some asshole does not come along and take your art. They make the money while you just make the art and you just give it away. People don’t know anything about this. Until you have lived the way we live and do what we have done, then you can comment on it,” he states.
As for the days when music was solely physical, Benante adds, “Those times were so important. You open it up and you can smell it. You are listening to it as you are reading the liner notes and everything that band or artist put into that record. It was so valid and it is not valid any more.”
The post Anthrax drummer says “Spotify is where music goes to die”, and that Metallica were right about Napster appeared first on MusicTech.Anthrax drummer says “Spotify is where music goes to die”, and that Metallica were right about Napster
musictech.comAnthrax’s drummer Charlie Benante has spoken out against music streaming platforms, arguing that they are where “music goes to die”.
- in the community space Tools and Plugins
EVE Audio introduce All Black SC205 & SC207 EVE Audio have announced that two of their popular ‘all-rounder’ SC-series studio monitor models are now available in a new matte black finish.
EVE Audio introduce All Black SC205 & SC207
www.soundonsound.comEVE Audio have announced that two of their popular ‘all-rounder’ SC-series studio monitor models are now available in a new matte black finish.
Entrepreneur Marc Lore on ‘founder mode,’ bad hires, and why avoiding risk is deadlyEntrepreneur Marc Lore has already sold two companies for billions of dollars, collectively. Now he plans to take his food delivery and take-out business Wonder public in a couple of years at an ambitious $40 billion valuation. We talked with Lore in person in New York recently about Wonder and its ultimate aim of making […]
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.Entrepreneur Marc Lore on 'founder mode,' bad hires, and why avoiding risk is deadly | TechCrunch
techcrunch.comEntrepreneur Marc Lore has already sold two companies for billions of dollars, collectively. Now he plans to take his food delivery and take-out business
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Tip Jar: Mark Maxwell . . . “If You’re in a Band”If there is any one human being that knows about the trials and tribulations of living a musical life it is Mark Maxwell. The 50-something lead vocalist for Louisville, Kentucky band The Crashers and owner of Maxwell’s House of Music in Jeffersonville, IN grew up in a musical family. His father Marvin was a drummer in Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars and also owned a music store. And his older brother Max is a 30-year veteran of the Louisville music scene and drummer in The Crashers as well.“I was around a lot of good people and met some interesting players that worked with my dad,” recalls Maxwell on his formative years. “I had no choice but to fall into this thing. I worked in my dad’s music store at 18 years old. And for 40 years I’ve worked in a music store and played in original and cover bands.”Being immersed in the music world, Maxwell garnered a ton of experience that he wanted to share with his customers and his immediate music community at large. He had developed a strong business sense as well as a creative one as a vocalist and guitarist. Undoubtedly, a major turning point in his musical career happened 16 years ago when he formed The Crashers.“We’re just a fun cover band that is comprised of the same six guys who started it,” says Maxwell. “The best thing we did was, when we got together, we sat around a table and got to know each other. We knew we were good players, but could we live with each other for the rest of our lives? Once we determined that, we discussed what were our goals? And then we came up with these lofty goals and hit each one within three and a half years.”Over the years The Crashers have become one of the premier cover bands in the Louisville area, warming up for major acts, playing lucrative municipal, private and corporate events and doing feature shows in Mexico and the Caribbean. The affable singer and front man has learned a lot along the way and wanted to simply pay it forward.About six months ago Maxwell consulted with his store videographer about the notion of starting a series on their website offering tidbits on aspects of being in, and running a band, that would help other established and musicians in their town. “Everybody knows The Crashers in Louisville and we’ve built one of the most stable businesses in this town,” says Maxwell. “And everybody started doing the same thing we were because I kept saying this is what you oughta do.”So, Maxwell began posting 30 to 60 second videos on maxwellshouseofmusic.com that soon got added to Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and throughout the social media universe. The series is called If You’re in a Band and features Maxwell casually positioned in various sections of his store nonchalantly extolling tips on musical performance, practice methods, audience interaction, marketing, etc. Initially, as with anything new, there was some push back from the public. But then the tide began to quickly turn in a favorable direction.“After about a month or so of me posting these videos the world started biting in,” says Maxwell. “People from Hawaii, Colorado, Canada, Israel, New Zealand and Australia started buying into, and loving, the series. And once that happened, all of the naysayers in town, for the most part, had stopped.”If You’re in a Band comes out every morning 8 a.m. Monday-Friday EST. And, despite the phenomenal success that Maxwell has personally had through his band and related exploits as a music merchandiser, he humbly maintains his motivation for doing the series and offering real world advice comes from a place of empathy, and is organic and real.“We’re just a local music store that is solid in our foundation in what we’re trying to do to help musicians,” says Maxwell. “We’re here to help you get to wherever you need to go, with whatever gear and whatever ideas. I never once say you should buy this drum set, guitar, bass or amplifier. But this is the big key. When you don’t try to do something and you just do it for the right reasons, which was just to share this with my little town, things blow up! I never tried to sell anybody anything. But it’s the algorithm that connected with musicians and brought everyone here.”Maxwell is living proof that if you remain dedicated to your craft, develop a game plan, keep open lines of communication fluid with your band mates and keep dreaming big anyone can attain whatever level of success in the music business, or life for that matter, they want to achieve.“Being in a band is more like playing chess than checkers,” says Maxwell. “And I think most of the bands in the world are playing checkers—meaning I get one, you get one. It takes a moment to realize that the first move you make affects the eighth move you make, or the third move affects the 12th. So, if you can stop and readjust the way you make these moves it will change your thought process on how to run a band. And I don’t see a whole lot of people doing this.”The series If You’re in a Band is on all social media platforms. But to go to the source, visit maxwellshouseofmusic.com.The post Tip Jar: Mark Maxwell . . . “If You’re in a Band” first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.
Tip Jar: Mark Maxwell . . . “If You’re in a Band”
www.musicconnection.comIf there is any one human being that knows about the trials and tribulations of living a musical life it is Mark Maxwell. The 50-something lead vocalist for Louisville, Kentucky band The Crashers and owner of Maxwell’s House of Music in Jeffersonville, IN grew up in a musical family. His father Marvin was a drummer
Double Your Analog Oscilloscope Fun with this Retro Beam SplitterThese days, oscilloscope hacking is all about enabling features that the manufacturer baked into the hardware but locked out in the firmware. Those hacks are cool, of course, but back in the days of analog scopes, unlocking new features required a decidedly more hardware-based approach.
For an example of this, take a look at this oscilloscope beam splitter by [Lockdown Electronics]. It’s a simple way to turn a single-channel scope into a dual-channel scope using what amounts to time-division multiplexing. A 555 timer is set up as an astable oscillator generating a 2.5-kHz square wave. That’s fed into the bases of a pair of transistors, one NPN and the other PNP. The collectors of each transistor are connected to the two input signals, each biased to either the positive or negative rail of the power supply. As the 555 swings back and forth it alternately applies each input signal to the output of the beam splitter, which goes to the scope. The result is two independent traces on the analog scope, like magic.
More after the break…If you’re wondering how this would work on a modern digital scope, so was [Lockdown Electronics]. He gave it a go with his little handheld scope meter and the results were surprisingly good and illustrative of how the thing works. You can clearly see the 555’s square wave on the digital scope sandwiched between the two different input sine waves. Analog scopes always have trouble showing these rising and falling edges, which explains why the beam splitter looks so good on the CRT versus the LCD.
Does this circuit serve any practical purpose these days? Probably not, although you could probably use the same principle to double the number of channels on your digital scope. Eight channels on a four-channel scope for the price of a 555? Sounds like a bargain to us.Double Your Analog Oscilloscope Fun with this Retro Beam Splitter
hackaday.comThese days, oscilloscope hacking is all about enabling features that the manufacturer baked into the hardware but locked out in the firmware. Those hacks are cool, of course, but back in the days o…
Flyback, Done RightA common part used to create a high voltage is a CRT flyback transformer, having been a ubiquitous junk pile component. So many attempts to use them rely on brute force, with power transistors in simple feedback oscillators dropping high currents into hand-wound primaries, so it’s refreshing to see a much more nuanced approach from [Alex Lungu]. His flyback driver board drives the transformer as it’s meant to be used, in flyback mode relying on the sudden collapse of a magnetic field to generate an output voltage pulse rather than simply trying to create as much field as possible. It’s thus far more efficient than all those free running oscillators.
On the PCB is a UC3844 switch mode power supply controller driving the transformer at about 25 kHz through an IGBT. We’d be curious to know how closely the spec of the transformer is tied to the around 15 kHz it would have been run at in a typical TV, and thus what frequency would be the most efficient for it. The result as far as we can see it a stable and adjustable high voltage source with out all the high-current and over heating, something of which we approve.
Need to understand more about free running versus flyback? Read on.Flyback, Done Right
hackaday.comA common part used to create a high voltage is a CRT flyback transformer, having been a ubiquitous junk pile component. So many attempts to use them rely on brute force, with power transistors in s…
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Madrona Labs release Sumu Following an extensive Early Access programme, Madrona Labs have announced that their latest software instrument is now available to all.
Madrona Labs release Sumu
www.soundonsound.comFollowing an extensive Early Access programme, Madrona Labs have announced that their latest software instrument is now available to all.
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