http://jordanbalagot.com/blog Just another WordPress weblog Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:30:26 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Today I figured out how to easily turn the rock band drum set for Wii into a MIDI drum controller: I did this with Junxion, a program that allows you to transform USB and wireless game controller input into MIDI data. I've seen demos of other MIDI rock band instruments online, ... http://jordanbalagot.com/blog/2008/06/29/turn-wii-rock-band-instruments-into-real-instruments-with-junxion/ I've been using this site I found about about, GCM Travel Stats, for predicting and analyzing Chicago traffic a lot lately. It works pretty well unless you get an unprecedented freak traffic spike like I did today: It took me almost two hours to get from Midway to Uptown. I think ... http://jordanbalagot.com/blog/2008/06/23/chicago-traffic-traffic-statistics-and-the-one-museum-park-building/ I started admiring this tree off of I-55 about a year and a half ago on my many trips to and from St. Louis from Chicago. I noticed it for its odd asymmetry and for its placement (all alone in a beautiful field on a farm). It reminded me ... http://jordanbalagot.com/blog/2008/06/23/crazy-shawshank-redemption-tree/ I've had two realizations about reality and the way the mind works. Sorry if this post is too random or metaphysical; they've been rattling around in my brain and I'd rather have them written down. The first is that we typically think of knowledge as a tree: We are born as ... http://jordanbalagot.com/blog/2008/05/30/reality-thoughts-human-memory-sparks-and-refresh-rates/ I'm redesigning my front page but meanwhile here are some more videos from the past couple months. These are more orchestrations of Persichetti, Bartók and Faith rescored to a popular film: Rural Games   Night Discovery Both pieces were performed by members of the Chicago Civic Orchestra and conducted by Cliff Colnot. http://jordanbalagot.com/blog/2008/05/29/new-youtube-videos-part-2/ Here are some new videos of work I've done. I'm trying to think of ways of altering the original videos that I'm rescoring so that they seem fresh again. Here is another original video: One idea I had was to overlay the video with an inset of the recording session and a ... http://jordanbalagot.com/blog/2008/05/22/new-youtube-videos-part-1/ In the orchestration class I'm taking we have some very strict guidelines on how our sheet music should be formatted. I'm writing some scripts to detect notational errors in my scores based on these guidelines. The first one I wrote detects if tuplets are marked below the staff. Our conductor requires ... http://jordanbalagot.com/blog/2008/04/28/find-tuplets-below-the-staff-in-finale-files-via-music-xml/ (Warning: Loud) Seun Kuti is going on tour and coming to the House of Blues in Chicago June 30. You can bet I will be there. I have been a Fela Kuti fan for a long time, and saw a Femi Kuti concert a couple years ago which was one of ... http://jordanbalagot.com/blog/2008/04/27/seun-kuti-is-going-on-tour/ Hmm, this is fun, I've added a new 'song ripoffs' category. Musiq's "Girl Next Door": Beck's "Debra": -edit- Found the sample, it's Ramsey Lewis's My Love For You. http://jordanbalagot.com/blog/2008/04/17/musiqs-girl-next-door-and-becks-debra-use-the-same-bass-line-sample/ I recently heard Fort Minor's Where'd You Go and thought it was pretty powerful and effective, until I realized it was the exact same song as Where Is The Love by The Black Eyed Peas. Same chord progression, same downtempo well produced beats, same simple female vocal chorus, same good ... http://jordanbalagot.com/blog/2008/04/17/whered-you-go-and-where-is-the-love-are-the-same-song/