Summer provided some time to begin working on the initial Android implementation of kanjoto. The following entries are a step-by-step look at how this implementation was created and where this implementation is headed.
Don’t want to lose my focus.
Am I using my time to serve You?
Went back to a previously-found project that helps with generating MIDI on Android: android-midi-lib. This is a really easy-to-use library (albeit with code-only documentation) that makes it easy to generate MIDI on Android.
I ended up trying out one of the examples included with the android-midi-lib project in a new Android application called Generate. This application then generated a simple MIDI file that could then be read by my earlier-created prototype of a MIDI playback application.
Found a nice article on generating MIDI files in Java (while not using the Java Sound API, which does not appear to be included with Android) at this link:
Generating simple MIDI files using Java, without using the Java Sound API
From that article, I began to learn about:
Found a way to play back MIDI files by using MediaPlayer class based off of this tutorial:
A simple exercise to play MIDI audio using MediaPlayer
And that tutorial was found via the breadcrumbs from this Stack Overflow post:
How to play changing midi on Android – jetPlayer
where a user named @dorien was previously asking about similar MIDI playback functionality (and evidently went on to create an Android application that generates counterpoint-focused music.) The paper on this app creation process can be found here:
So at this point I am able to play back pre-generated MIDI files in a basic Android app, and have created a prototype Android application named Playback.
After many attempts, I’ve settled on version 9.x for the Calling of Simon mix. The goal of this mix was to create more separation between the various instruments and tracks. That goal continues to elude me… but my ears want to tell me I’m getting closer.
The biggest change in this final version (as compared to the almost-final-version that was posted originally on FB,) is the piano track. I wish I could keep the crisp, original track as it was recorded for the final version of this song’s mix… but for whatever reason (frequency fights, velocity problems, etc.) I found myself getting tired of hearing the harsh, repetitive pinging of notes from a sampled instrument. In an effort to avoid these problems, I ended up reshaping the piano tone into something different… and from what I can tell, the change in tone has helped to better separate the piano from the rest of the tracks. But there is still more that could be done!
The song (and lyrics) can be found on the Music Scrapbook… or on SoundCloud (for the time being.)
With the mixing of Calling of Simon, I’ve been trying to branch out into different mixing techniques (“different” as in: not trying to hide the mix in a glossy, mid-range mess…)
These techniques have involved:
But I’ve faced problems with:
Finally had the opportunity to finish up the latest mix for the first (of five) songs from the end of last year. School got in the way of finishing these sooner… but I wanted to try to have these mixes sound easier on the ears than any previous recording I’ve had the opportunity to mix. Though even after spending so much time on the arrangement and mix, I still wish certain parts could be done differently…
The first song, Calling of Andrew, is from the album The Calling and follows the events of John 1:35-42 where Andrew meets Jesus and soon invites his brother (Simon) to meet Jesus.
The song (and lyrics) can be found on the Music Scrapbook… or on SoundCloud (for the time being.)
Phrases that use いい加減 (e.g. いい加減にしろ！) have often been a mystery to me. According to one dictionary, at least, there were so many possible meanings this phrase could have:
But which meaning makes the most sense in general usage?
It wasn’t until just recently that I’ve noticed that when 加減 is used in the phrase: 手加減をしない (when used as a way to explain the phrase: 容赦ない,) it appears to be used to indicate “not [going] easy on someone” or “not [being] reasonable“.
When used in this way, the phrase いい加減にしろ！ seems to make more sense in that the particle に is helping to indicate that the speaker using the phrase wants the listener to “make [it] reasonable!”
In this way, narrowing down the context of how and when a phrase is used can begin to help with piecing together language puzzles such as いい加減.
In my studies, lately, I’ve been realizing how widely used the combination: verb (V) + 〜ている really is within the Japanese language. When I was younger, I mostly understood this combination to be a way to say phrases that end in “ing” (i.e. eat-ing, drink-ing… where the actual act is happening at that very moment… something short term,) without truly realizing that this combination is used for much more. These other meanings, however, are easily absorbed (indirectly) over time through common and set phrases… to the extent that it can be easy to gloss over the usefulness of this sort of grammatical combination.
Most recently, however, I’ve been amazed at just how common this V + 〜ている form is within Japanese. For example, if I want to say “I remember”, I would probably use something like 覚えている. Seeing and hearing the V + 〜ている combination is pretty common… but for some reason it has taken me many years to come to this realization: V + 〜ている can often be used for (relatively) long term purposes, as well as short term purposes…