Music
Introduction
Welcome to the OLPC Music portal. The following information relate to music-related projects associated with the XO, including both software and content.
Getting involved
We are always interested in getting in touch and collaborating with people who share our passion with music. There are no particular requirements for participating in our project. Your inclination to music and your desire to learn more and share your knowledge make you a perfect contributor to our cause.
If you are interested in getting involved with music-related projects of OLPC, take the initiative and include yourself in the list of the people working on similar issues.
Music teams
Music content
Available formats of free music
- Midi
Before computers got big enough and fast enough to handle real-time multi-track sound recording and playback, but small enough to put into synthesizers, MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) made it possible to encode music as a low data rate stream of commands (to select instruments, for example) and events such as note on, note off, pitch bend, and others. MIDI was originally most suited to keyboards and guitars, where a string is activated by striking or picking, and then the sound evolves without any further intervention until it is cut off by dampers or releasing the string. Later additions to MIDI made it usable for string and wind instruments, by sending a stream of loudness commands. However, the wide range of timbre of an acoustic instrument could not be duplicated. MIDI has considerable advantages for students. For example, the tempo of a piece can be changed without changing pitches or expression. Any track can be silenced to create a do-it-yourself equivalent of Music Minus One, where the student plays the missing track to a complete accompaniment.
Although MIDIs are no longer the center of electronic musicmaking, there are many MIDI files still available on the Net, and a variety of Free Software for recording, playing, and editing MIDI files, and converting them to other formats.
- MIDI DataBase Rock Pop Themes Rap Dance Punk Blues Country MIDI Search
- The Classical Archives MIDIs and some MP3s
and many more.
- Sound files
There are numerous formats for sound files, including .wav, .mp3, and ogg Vorbis. The MP3 format is the most widely used for sound and music. Since it is encumbered by patents, many Free Software sound programs use the Free ogg Vorbis format instead. Among the well-known sources for MP3 files are iTunes and e-music. The Vorbis.com Web site has a page of links to sources of free files in ogg format.
- Sheet Music
The Free Software application for creating musical scores and printing sheet music is Lilypond. There are [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_OCR music OCR programs for capturing music from scanned pages and converting to MIDI or other formats, and utilities to convert between MIDI and several score formats. The process generally requires manual editing, since music notation is complex, and can be difficult to interpret and to lay out in a pleasing as well as functional manner.
You can find a Directory of music score sites here.
Groups curating free music
Free Music Project
The Free Music Project, sponsored by the Free Culture society, is putting together a collection of iconic music from cultures and genres around the world. Their initial target is the OLPC audience of children and teachers; see freemusic.freeculture.org for details.
This group is working with Antenna Alliance and Jamendo to curate global collections for children.
Antenna Alliance
The Antenna Alliance is helping produce and record free music by offering free recording space and technical support to groups that record freely licensed music. See their site for further details.
Tempostand
TempoStand is a group testing out using CC-BY-SA music for all of their remixes and as backgrounds for other productions, out of India. All the music on their site is cc-by-sa: Tempostand.com
Sources of Curated Music
- DJ C
- Miss Fairchild
- DJ Spooky / Paul D. Miller
- The Juan Maclean
- Wayne&Wax
- DJ/Rupture -- Maga Bo / Filastine
- Astronaut
- FGV Brazil -- Axial / Luisa Manda Um Beijo
- Tempostand (various groups)
- ApniDhun (various groups)
Spreading the music
Below you can find a list of music that could be included in our libraries. We are willing to find freely licensed copies of this music to be included in the XOs and the school server. Feel free to recommend music, which could be associated with the OLPC project and its educational mission.
- Classical
Western:
- Britten : Young People's Guide to the Orchestra
- Peter and the Wolf : with narration. music is available (us/sr split)
- Saint-Saens : Carnival of the Animals, words by Ogden Nash
- Other:
- Jacque Hibert : Divertissement
- Gershwin : An American in Paris
- Mozart : Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
- Aaron Copeland : El Salon Mexico
- contact @ sony (cf joel & martin)
Indian:
- Stark
- Pop
Music sharing
- Jamendo
Remixed
- DJ Spooky
Music software
Public Csound
- is available for use on the laptop.
- Available Interfaces
There are a variety of interfaces to Csound. There is a C based API, a Python API and a Csound Server that currently allows for communication via TCP/IP. The Csound Server is the recommended method for interacting with Csound on the XO. Csound can also be run from the command-line.
More Information on the Csound Server can be found here:
More information on Csound:
- Audio Applications
FMSynth - a basic FM synthesis emulator built using Csound and the Csound Server.