Read Muse shares story behind ‘Hey There Delilah’ by Mike Celizic (TODAY.com)
As a nationally ranked runner and an Olympic hopeful, Delilah DiCrescenzo is used to being chased — but by other athletes, not by pop singers from Chicago. But, she said on Wednesday, she doesn’t mind the attention the chase has brought her. “What I really hope through all of this is that it spotlights track and field, and it gives the sport a face, which is really important to us athletes i
Read after hearing song on radio this afternoon and remembering the Olympics coming up.

🎧 ‘Take My Hand, Precious Lord’ | NPR

Listened to 'Take My Hand, Precious Lord' by Linda Wertheimer from NPR.org
Sung at the funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" is the most-recorded gospel song ever. NPR's Linda Wertheimer speaks with Dr. Michael Harris, a professor of history at Union Theological Seminary, who has written extensively about the song's author, gospel musician Thomas Andrew Dorsey. NPR 100 Fact Sheet: Artist: Words/music by Thomas A. Dorsey; Interviewees: Michael Harris, Union Theological Seminary; Recordings Used: Take My Hand Precious Lord, Mahalia Jackson
A stunning bit of history in this little mini episode. I always find myself wishing they’d do about 10-15 minutes of the history and a bit less of the song, though this episode did rightly have several covers of it.

📺 The Marvel Symphonic Universe | Every Frame a Painting on YouTube

Watched The Marvel Symphonic Universe by Every Frame a PaintingEvery Frame a Painting from YouTube

Off the top of your head, could you sing the theme from Star Wars? How about James Bond? Or Harry Potter? But here’s the kicker: can you sing any theme from a Marvel film? Despite 13 films and 10 billion dollars at the box office, the Marvel Cinematic Universe lacks a distinctive musical identity or approach. So let’s try to answer the question: what is missing from Marvel music?

🔖 Stamp for music playlist portability

Bookmarked Stamp | FREE YOUR MUSIC (Stamp)
Stamp moves tracks and playlists across various services - Apple Music, Spotify, Google Music and others!
How awesome this portends to be! I’ve been wanting this type of functionality for a long time. I’m curious how long it stays up?

Too many music services don’t make it easy to transport your playlists as it’s one of the methods they use to lock you into their service (and their recurring subscription fees). It looks like it supports .csv formats, but it would be nice if there were a better standardized data format to let users own all of their own data. How great would it be if I could maintain my own playlist on my own website and then authorize services to access it to play what I wanted? Then I could have one central repository and take it to any subscription service out there.

It looks like it supports Spotify, Apple Music, Google Music, Pandora (Pro only?), Amazon Music, Groove, YouTube, rdio, Deezer, and Tidal.

Stamp | Free Your Music

👓 If SoundCloud Disappears, What Happens to Its Music Culture? | New York Times

Read If SoundCloud Disappears, What Happens to Its Music Culture? by Jenna Wortham (New York Times)
The platform offered a public space with monetization as an afterthought. Now it could simply be deleted.
Jace Clayton, musician and the author of Uproot: Travels in 21st-Century Music and Digital Culture
in If SoundCloud Disappears, What Happens to Its Music Culture? in the New York Times

 

An Information Theory Playlist on Spotify

In honor of tomorrow’s release of Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman’s book A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age, I’ve created an Information Theory playlist on Spotify.

Songs about communication, telephones, conversation, satellites, love, auto-tune and even one about a typewriter! They all relate at least tangentially to the topic at hand. To up the ante, everyone should realize that digital music would be impossible without Shannon’s seminal work.

Let me know in the comments or by replying to one of the syndicated copies listed below if there are any great tunes that the list is missing.

Enjoy the list and the book!

👓 SoundCloud, Which Rose to Stardom on Indie Talent, Lays Off 173 | NYTimes

Read SoundCloud, Which Rose to Stardom on Indie Talent, Lays Off 173 by Ben Sisario (New York Times)
The layoffs cut the streaming music site’s work force by about 40 percent and could be a way to make it more attractive to a buyer.
Yet another reminder to own your own data and have your own website. Exporting and hosting all this data won’t be easy and if it goes under, it’s a huge hole in the internet.

👓 Exoplanet Puzzle Cracked by Jazz Musicians | Quanta Magazine

Read Exoplanet Puzzle Cracked by Jazz Musicians by Joshua Sokol (Quanta Magazine)
A system of seven Earth-like exoplanets appeared to be unstable. Now their orbits have been rewritten in the music of the spheres.
I’m not sure there’s necessarily a correlation between the physics and the music other than that it’s a relationship. Perhaps there’s some interesting example one could drag out for category theory perhaps?

🔖 SoundCloud Downloader

Bookmarked SoundCloud Downloader (http://scdownloader.net/)
SoundCloud Downloader is a simple online tool for downloading any music tracks from SoundCloud. It's free and very easy to use and you get high quality mp3 for any track. Just paste the track page link in URL field above and hit the download button. It extracts the track uri(hosted on SoundCloud's server) from which you can directly download or save the mp3 track in one click. Make sure you paste only one url at a time, in the above input box.
This fits into the same category of scraper as Ryan Barrett‘s tool that extracts audio from video for bookmarking and listening to via Huffduffer.

Hopkins in Hollywood | Johns Hopkins Alumni Event on 1-12-17

I’ve been invited to participate in a panel discussion as part of an Intersession course by the Johns Hopkins Film and Media Studies Program. I hope fellow alumni in the entertainment and media sectors will come out and join us in Culver City on Thursday.


Join the Hopkins in Hollywood Affinity Group (AEME LA) as they welcome Linda DeLibero, Director of the JHU Film and Media Studies Program, and current students of the program for a dynamic evening of networking which features an alumni panel of industry experts.
Open to alumni, students, and friends of Hopkins, this event is sponsored by Donald Kurz (A&S ’77), Johns Hopkins University Emeritus Trustee and School of Arts and Sciences Advisory Board Member, and the Hopkins in Hollywood (AEME LA) Affinity Group.
Event Date: Thursday, January 12, 2017
Start Time: 6:30pm
End Time: 8:30pm

Panelists

Donald Kurz, A&S ’77
Moderator

Donald Kurz is Chairman and CEO of Omelet LLC, an innovative new media and marketing services firm based in Los Angeles.   Previously, Mr. Kurz was co-founder and CEO of hedge fund Artemis Capital Partners.  Between 1990 and 2005, Mr. Kurz was Chairman, President, and CEO of EMAK Worldwide, Inc, a global, NASDAQ-traded company providing Fortune 500 companies with strategic and marketing services internationally. Mr. Kurz’s 25 years’ experience in senior leadership includes management positions with Willis Towers Watson, PwC, and the J.C. Penney Company. Mr. Kurz is a Trustee Emeritus of the Johns Hopkins University, having served for 12 years on the Hopkins board.  He received an MBA from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business and a BA from Johns Hopkins University.

J Altman

Jason Altman, A&S ’99

Jason Altman is an Executive Producer at Activision working on the Skylanders franchise and new development projects.  Prior to Activision, he spent the past 5 years at Ubisoft Paris in different leadership roles, most recently as the Executive Producer of Just Dance, the music video game franchise.  He is a veteran game producer who loves the industry, and is a proud graduate of the media studies program at Johns Hopkins.

Boardman

Paul Harris Boardman, A&S ’89

Paul Boardman wrote The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005) and Devil’s Knot (2014), both of which he also produced, and Deliver Us From Evil (2014), which he also executive produced.  In 2008, Paul produced The Day the Earth Stood Still for Fox, and he did production rewrites on Poltergeist, Scream 4, The Messengers, and Dracula 2000, as well as writing and directing the second unit for Hellraiser:  Inferno (2000) and writing Urban Legends:  Final Cut (2000).  Paul has written screenplays for various studios and production companies, including Trimark, TriStar, Phoenix Pictures, Miramax/Dimension, Disney, Bruckheimer Films, IEG, APG, Sony, Lakeshore, Screen Gems, Universal and MGM.

D Chivvis

Devon Chivvis, A&S ’96

Devon Chivvis is a showrunner/director/producer of narrative and non-fiction television and film. Inspired by a life-long passion for visual storytelling combined with a love of adventure and the exploration of other cultures, Devon has made travel a priority through her work in film and television. Devon holds a B.A. from Johns Hopkins University in International Relations and French, with a minor in Italian.

Chris Aldrich

Chris Aldrich, Engr ’96

Chris started his career at Hopkins while running several movie groups on campus and was responsible for over $200,000 of renovations in Shriver Hall including installing a new screen, sound system, and 35mm projection while also running the 29th Annual Milton S. Eisenhower Symposium “Framing Society: A Century of Cinema” on the 100th anniversary of the moving picture.
Following Hopkins he joined Creative Artists Agency where he worked in Motion Picture Talent and also did work in music-crossover. He later joined Davis Entertainment with a deal at 20th Century Fox where he worked on the productions of Heartbreakers, Dr. Dolittle 2, Behind Enemy Lines as well as acquisition and development of Alien v. Predator, Paycheck, Flight of the Phoenix, Garfield, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., I, Robot and countless others.
Missing the faster pace of representation, he later joined Writers & Artists Agency for several years working in their talent, literary, and book departments. Since that time he’s had his own management company focusing on actors, writers, authors, and directors. Last year he started Boffo Socko Books, an independent publishing company and recently put out the book Amerikan Krazy.

Source: Hopkins in Hollywood | Johns Hopkins Alumni

 

Register Here

More information Office of Alumni Relations
800-JHU-JHU1 (548-5481)
alumevents@jhu.edu

Part of the course:

The Entertainment Industry in Contemporary Hollywood

Students will have the opportunity to spend one week in Los Angeles with Film and Media Studies Director Linda DeLibero. Students will meet and network with JHU alums in the entertainment industry, as well as heads of studios and talent agencies, screenwriters, directors, producers, and various other individuals in film and television. Associated fee with this intersession course is $1400 (financial support is available for those who qualify). Permission of Linda DeLibero is required. Film and Media Studies seniors and juniors will be given preference for the eight available slots, followed by senior minors.Students are expected to arrive in Los Angeles on January 8. The actual course runs January 9-13 with lodging check-in on January 8 and check-out on January 14.

Course Number: AS.061.377.60
Credits: 1
Distribution: H
Days:  Monday 1/9/2017 – Friday 1/13/2017
Times:  M – TBA | Tu- TBA | W- TBA | Th- TBA | F- TBA
Instructor: Linda DeLibero

Dave Brubeck – Time Series

Listened to Time Series by Dave Brubeck

Including Time Out, Time Further Out, Time Changes, Countdown: Time in Outer Space, and Time In, this series of albums commonly known as the Time Series from Dave Brubeck and the Dave Brubeck Quartet is a masterclass in how important time is in music as well as how it can evolve.

Here you’ll find Brubeck experimenting with time signatures including recordings of “Take Five” in 5/4 time, “Pick Up Sticks” in 6/4, “Unsquare Dance” in 7/4, “World’s Fair” in 13/4, and “Blue Rondo à la Turk” in 9/8.

This is a great way to spend the day/night when you have some active listening time.

The Math That Connects Pluto to DNA — NOVA Next | PBS

Bookmarked The Math That Connects Pluto to DNA by Alex RileyAlex Riley (NOVA Next | PBS)
How a mathematical breakthrough from the 1960s now powers everything from spacecraft to cell phones.
Concurrent with the recent Pluto fly by, Alex Riley has a great popular science article on PBS that helps put the application of information theory and biology into perspective for the common person. Like a science version of “The Princess Bride”, this story has a little bit of everything that could be good and entertaining: information theory, biology, DNA, Reed-Solomon codes, fossils, interplanetary exploration, mathematics, music, genetics, computers, and even paleontology. Fans of Big History are sure to love the interconnections presented here.

Reed-Solomon codes correct for common transmission errors, including missing pixels (white), false signals (black), and paused transmissions (the white stripe).
Reed-Solomon codes correct for common transmission errors, including missing pixels (white), false signals (black), and paused transmissions (the white stripe).

Microscopic view of glass DNA storage beads

A Mathematical Symphony

Robert B. Ash, mathematician
in A Primer of Abstract Mathematics (The Mathematical Association of America, 1998)

 

A Primer of Abstract Mathematics by Robert B. Ash
A Primer of Abstract Mathematics by Robert B. Ash