I was taking to a woman at a party a couple of years ago (an event related to a choir composition that my wife had done), and at some point she mentioned her son was a developer, specifically that he made video games. When I asked if she knew which games he worked on, she said Crash Bandicoot and suddenly I felt like I was talking to Ned royalty. I gushed a bit about what I had read on this blog post, but kept the conversation going so as not to dwell on it.
>Nano Banana is terrible at style transfer even with prompt engineering shenanigans
My context: I'm kind of fixated on visualizing my neighborhood as it would have appeared in the 18th century. I've been doing it in Sketchup, and then in Twinmotion, but neither of those produce "photorealistic" images... Twinmotion can get pretty close with a lot of work, but that's easier with modern architecture than it is with the more hand-made, brick-by-brick structures I'm modeling out.
As different AI image generators have emerged, I've tried them all in an effort to add the proverbial rough edges to snapshots of the models I've created, and it was not until Nano Banana that I ever saw anything even remotely workable.
Nano Banana manages to maintain the geometry of the scene, while applying new styles to it. Sometimes I do this with my Twinmotion renders, but what's really been cool to see is how well it takes a drawing, or engraving, or watercolor - and with as simple a prompt as "make this into a photo" it generates phenomenal results.
Similarly to the Paladin/Starbucks/Pirate example in the link though, I find that sometimes I need to misdirect a little bit, because if I'm peppering the prompt with details about the 18th century, I sometimes get a painterly image back. Instead, I'll tell it I want it to look like a photograph of a well preserved historic neighborhood, or a scene from a period film set in the 18th century.
As fantastic as the results can be, I'm not abandoning my manual modeling of these buildings and scenes. However, Nano Banana's interpretation of contemporary illustrations has helped me reshape how I think about some of the assumptions I made in my own models.
Fair enough! I suppose I've avoided that kind of "style transfer" for a variety of reasons, it hadn't even occurred to me that people were still interested in that. And I don't say that to open up debate on the topic, just explaining away my own ignorance/misinterpretation. Thanks
It boggles my mind when, despite my general avoidance of advertising online, I see the language being used. Call me old fashioned, but "viral" is a bad thing to me. "Addictive" is a bad thing. "Tricks" are bad! But this is the language being used to attract customers, and I suppose it works well enough.
I don't know what series of events transpired that resulted in common, slightly irregular use of the word "kindly" by scammers, but I'm glad it happened. Immediate red flag, every time.
Philadelphia has an underground pedestrian concourse in center city. It is, however, not clean, well lit, nor as actively policed. In some alternate timeline, the stalls would be filled with shops, and it would be a great alternative to walking the streets when it's too hot, too precipitous, too cold. But we struggle to even keep our public transit system funded, let alone something like this, which is a shame.
I hope I live to see Philadelphia's infrastructure get rehydrated with some of that GDP it generates for the rest of the state, and region.
I eventually gave up on this, but I always favored it because a period with two spaces after it very clearly designated the end of a sentence, as opposed to something like an abbreviation. It made parsing English just a little bit easier.
Knowing my audience, I've blocked entire countries to stop the pain. Even that was a bit of whack-a-mole. Blocking China cooled off the traffic for a few days, then it came roaring back via Singapore. Blocked Singapore, had a reprieve for a while, and then it was India, with a vengeance.
Cloudflare has been a godsend for protecting my crusty old forum from this malicious, wasteful behavior.
Folks, in case it wasn't clear, I was complaining about people downvoting a critical opinion, I was not myself downvoting a critical opinion. I'm glad to see the trend on the original comment has reversed.
It doesn't have drums or their approximation, but Saunder Choi's "The New Colossus" is a very rhythmic and emotional work. The words are from Emma Lazarus' poem engraved on a plaque on the Statue of Liberty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RUtWfSNRRY
Another rhythmic piece that comes to mind is Wild Embers by Melissa Dunphy, setting the words of Nikita Gill, who started off as an Instagram poet. Lots of videos of this one, I'm picking one at random: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCSjvGPERKQ
Another piece by Melissa Dunphy, "Dancing in Buses" is from American DREAMers. It begins with a nod to reggaeton, and tells the story of a kid crossing the border, with the bus coming under gunfire.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcfNiHDefBw
My wife is a successful Australian-American choral composer, and riding shotgun as her career has taken off, if I were to make a few observations right before I turn in for the night:
"Choral music is harder to appreciate than say either symphonies or chamber music" - unlike orchestras and smaller string ensembles, choirs are champions of new music. The end of the article cites opera's growing popularity (an idea I'm not sure I buy into) but opera companies are famously stuck in rep from 100-300 year old, because that's what the donor class wants to hear.
The perspective painted by this article isn't all that different from the boomer who thinks there hasn't been good rock n' roll since the Beatles and the Stones. It's out there, all around you - you're just not looking in the right places. Choir music has a built-in network effect; when one choir sings a piece that goes over well, often times there are members who are in one or two other choirs, or are even choir directors themselves. There's a very dynamic scene, not even touching on religious choirs. And to people who think it's not that exciting, again I think you might just not be going to the right concerts. I've seen a choir reduce an entire audience to tears, and I've heard choral pieces that send the hair up on the back of my neck. I say this as someone who normally listens to Nine Inch Nails, Fever Ray, Queens of the Stone Age, Autechre, Aphex Twin... Some of my favorite choral works have very catchy rhythms, others border on math rock.
Choral organizations could do with better marketing; it's hard to compete in today's media landscape. One of my favorite groups, the St Louis Chamber Chorus, performs new and old works, and makes it a point to perform in unique spaces all around the St Louis area - part of the attraction to a concert is getting to go into that church you've always wondered about, or an old theater that's been brought back to life by the community. The Mid-Columbia Master Singers have performed in the Hanford B reactor site in the Tri-Cities area of Washington state. Or even seeing The King's Singers perform with Voces8 in an old mainstay like Royal Albert Hall, it's a sensory experience that can't be replicated.
And again, it's a community thing. You meet other people who appreciate this stuff when you go to the concerts and stay for the receptions. If you feel like you could make things better, become a subscriber, a major donor, join the board of one of these things. It's incredibly rewarding.
Back to marketing: outside of a few long-running groups like Chanticleer, Cantus, Voces8, the King's Singers, and so on, it's really challenging to build a brand around choral music. The industry's just not there for it. But seek out local choral concerts, talk to some strangers there, and you'll find a whole ecosystem that operates is more typically consumed live and in person, than it is via recording.
Going back to the title of the article, I suppose that does make it harder to appreciate than something you've heard in movie trailers and can stream from Spotify.
