Three Poems In Progress (Writing In The Classroom)

intricate rhythm stick

During free-writing in class yesterday, I worked on some quick poems as they were writing all sorts of things, from comics to stories to letters to their own poems.

Four/Four

A set of drums
Fast pedal clock click
His hands hitting cymbals
An intricate rhythm stick

In near perfect balance
An intricate rhythm stick
In four-four time
The drummer never quits

Each note becomes another
Drive it home, forward
His hands hitting cymbals
The beat of feet

The guitar is gone
The bass drops out
The singer now sits
The drummer never quits

a variation on a 4×4 poem via Open Write

Voices spill out
beneath the door,
sound as shafts of light —
in escape,
shadows wait for more,

for us to linger
a little longer, our ears
pressed against the wood —
if only we could
drop beneath the eaves,

maybe then we’d believe

Dry mouth soil
savors these rains,
nearly forgotten by brittle Earth —

we were warned, remember,
about the flames,
the first spark ignites the dark
as the monsters came —
subsumed by an act of madness,
the kind only nature brings

Yet here we were, singing
the praise songs again,
the clouds dropping gifts up us

the rain
the rain
the rain

Peace (in verse),
Kevin

Book Covers: Student Stories

Book Covers 2024

I always try to have some extension activities ready and available for students who finish longer assignments early, or to give more time to those who are working hard at the original assignment. My sixth graders are working to complete an adventure story (narrative story writing), and one of the extension activities is to design a book cover for their story, which then gets placed on a Virtual Book Shelf. For this collage (which is not the shelf), I took off their names as a way to share out their creative work. These are all done in Google Slides, with a template I give them.

Peace (between the pages),
Kevin

Smattering Of Morning Poems

Just gathering some words together. I write these each morning, often with prompts off Mastodon.

Peace (and poems),
Kevin

Further Bird Song(ing): Deep Fake

Printed Circuit Bird, 2021 from Kelly Heaton on Vimeo.

“Deep Fake Birdsong unites art with science to inquire about the electrical nature of lifeforms and to push the envelope of artificial intelligence. ”— Kelly Heaton and Johann Diedrick, 2020

I’ve recently wrapped up some explorations of bird song, music composition and AI. In my various inquiry travels, I stumbled across this post about a project that I found pretty fascinating. It’s called Deep Fake Birdsong, a project by Kelly Heaton and Johann Diedrick. It’s fascinating, and involves circuit boards and programming to emulate the song of birds.

Kelly Heaton explain the project a bit here in this talk entitled: Hacking Nature’s Musicians

It’s all interesting, these intersections. To me, anyway.

Check out this circuit board from their project:

Schematic for “Breadbird #1,” 2019. (Updated in 2020 to reflect minor changes) by Kelly Heaton

Peace (and song),
Kevin

Bird Song: A Wood Thrush Composition

Wood Thrush Notation and Code

It seems as if my latest journey platform-jumping AI tools was always going to lead me here, to a place where I would “collaborate” with AI on the theme of bird song and music composition, and work to compose and record a piece of music using AI and my own musical skills.

Let me back up, in case you have not been following along with me over the last week or two. This is the fifth post in a series of inquiry dives where I am exploring various AI platforms on the theme of personal curiosity: how music composers have used bird songs to inspire music (sparked, in part, by Atlas Obscura’s newest book).

  • In the first post, I used Google’s Learn About platform to, well, learn more on the topic of bird song and music composers
  • In the second post, I took some information from Learn About and moved it into NotebookLM, and did more research and thinking
  • In the third post, I took the AI voice podcast generated in NotebookLM and cut it up, and remixed it, turning those synthetic voices into more of an audio collage with a repeating refrain
  • In my fourth post, I took ideas from that audio collage and asked Suno to write me a folk song

Which brings me here.

For this iteration, there were definitely more steps to take and more involvement on my part, as the human collaborator. I was really curious about how I might put some of the previous inquiry into action, by creating a piece of music that incorporated bird sounds but also with the help of AI collaboration.

The video down below is the result, but here are the steps to my mad process:

  • First, I went into Claude AI platform (my top choice these days, for its safety and privacy features, and relative transparency) and asked it to generate a piece of music manuscript inspired by the song of birds. Honestly, I didn’t think it would be able to generate anything useful for me. But, surprise, it did, and in fact, it generated an entire page of computer code that then became a short piece of musical manuscript.
  • Second, I realized that I wasn’t specific enough so I asked it to re-compose, with a Wood Thrush as its source. Again, it created a set of coded instructions that generated a few measures of musical notes, annotated with trills and slides and other bird-centered techniques, as far as I could tell. (see image at top of this post)
  • Third, I realized I had to find a way to play the notes, but as a bird, singing. So I went and found a downloadable file of Wood Thrush songs, and grabbed it. Then I took that file and went into Soundtrap (my go-to musical recording platform) and used its Sampler tool to create a Wood Thrush sound that I could use as a single note, so that every time I hit a keyboard note, it would sound like the Wood Thrush. Plus, I added some effects.
  • Fourth, I played the composition generated by Claude on my keyboard in Soundtrap, with the Wood Thrush as the sound generated by my playing as I read Claude’s manuscript. That was cool, but it still wasn’t enough.
  • Finally, I composed my own keyboard and synth background parts to complement the Wood Thrush song, and then layered in some more of the original bird audio, creating an audio tapestry of sorts that, I think, sounds pretty interesting.

And while the final piece is rather simple in its sound, it has a lot of complexities built into the process, and I see it as a creative intersection driven by my own interests, using AI as a collaborator and teacher at points along the way. It seems important to me that I ended up in a place where I was actually making something, instead of just having the algorithms spit results of queries out to me.

Peace (sounds like birds),
Kevin

Bird Song: Suno and The Cuckoo

Suno Screenshot: And Then There's The Cuckoo

In this fourth iteration of exploration of bird song, AI platforms and music composition (see post one — post two — post three), I took some of the concepts of bird song sounds and music composition into the AI song-making platform, Suno, and gave it instructions about making a gentle folk song, with the And Then There’s The Cuckoo title from yesterday’s podcast remix, added some of the informational text from my earlier use of Google’s Learn About and NotebookLM, and hit “create”.

You can take a listen to the song it created.

I mean, Suno does a decent job with that I gave it. Each time I use Suno, I get the same sense that this is pretty amazing (and that the quality improves every few months) and also, I worry about whose sounds have been gulped into the machine to create this AI music. The vocals here sound familiar to my ear, but I can’t quite place whose voice it sounds like. The piano is rather lovely, too. And there are little touches here and there that make it for an interesting listen.

The lyrics below are what the Suno AI generated with my prompt.

And Then There’s The Cuckoo

[Verse]
In the hush of dawn’s first light
Where oak and willow stand tall
Composers find their dreams alight
With the thrush’s beck and call

[Verse 2]
A robin weaves a melody
So raw
Untouched by man
Its notes inspire symphony
In hearts where dreams began

[Chorus]
And then there’s the cuckoo’s sound
Echoing through the wood
In its song
A truth is found
Where nature’s voice stood

[Verse 3]
The blackbird’s tune
A haunting thread
A whisper of days gone by
Its cadence fills the heart with dread
Yet lifts it to the sky

[Verse 4]
Beneath the lark’s ascending glee
A composer pens his line
Caught in the wild’s euphony
Where thoughts of rapture twine

[Chorus]
And then there’s the cuckoo’s call
A note so pure and clear
It rings within the concert hall
And chases away the fear

Peace (and song),
Kevin

Finding Balance: Falling Off The X (finally)

balances
balances flickr photo by EN NOIR & BLANC shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0)

Perhaps it took me longer than others in my networks to finally pull the plug on what was once Twitter. I had reduced my presence significantly since Musk bought it and ruined it with his ego and money, and turned it into a right wing spigotry funnel of bs and disinformation.

But I still had some connections that I was worried about losing, via CLMOOC and the National Writing Project and the DS106 crew, and so kept my toes in.

I took my toes out this week. Enough is enough.

If Musk wants X to be a megaphone for the incoming disaster, I am all out. I downloaded all of my data (about 2 gigs, so lots there from the years I was posting regularly, for whatever good that will do me) and I went to hit the delete button, only to find out there is no delete button. It’s a 30 day pause button. Then my account gets deleted. It had better.

I don’t have it in me right now to write a long elegy to what Twitter meant for many years. I will just say, it was meaningful for many projects and connections. I learned from many others how to become a better educator. My work there enriched my life. It was meaningful. And then it wasn’t.

Now it’s not at all.

I have been active on Mastodon for some time during this transitional period, although it is not nearly the same atmosphere as the good Twitter years. It’s less educational-oriented, as far as I can see, but I do enjoy the writing community and the makers who are there, and the activists from around the world, and the open technology folks, and some of my DS106 friends are active. It’s been a good place to be, overall. Here is my account on Mastodon, if you want to connect: https://mastodon.social/deck/@dogtrax

Meanwhile, I just jumped into BlueSky, which feels like it could be more like the old Twitter, and so I am working to get myself established with old friends and new connections, and we’ll see where that goes. There’s clearly an active and growing circle of educators there. Check out the #edusky hashtag. Here is my account on BlueSky, if you are there and want to connect: https://bsky.app/profile/dogtrax.bsky.social

I’m trying to find the right beam on which to balance (which hopefully explains the image I chose for this post!)

Peace (out),
Kevin

Bird Song: Voice Remix (And Then There’s The Cuckoo)

This is my third iteration of some explorations I am doing with Google’s AI Platforms and with an inquiry into how music composers have used bird songs for inspiration. I started in Google’s Learn About (see post) and then moved into NotebookLM (see post) and now I have taken the voices from the AI podcast file and remixed some of what they were saying into a short remix piece.

I loved the phrase “And then there’s the cuckoo” so I used it as a sort of refrain, with a sound of the cuckoo, calling back every time the male’s voice says it.

I have at least one more iteration to explore, with a more song-focused concept. I don’t know how it will go. And in my head, I have a future project, too, where I work to compose a bird song myself, using the knowledge I have been gathering in my inquiry explorations. That may require more thinking. But I want this to go beyond playing with AI tools — I want to take what I have found and move the idea forward, on a human scale (but bird-song-influenced).

Peace (calling it out),
Kevin

Bird Song: Jumping AI Platforms

Bird Song - NotebookLM

The other day, I wrote about using Google’s Learn About AI platform, with a focus on how bird songs influenced music composers. I took my notes from that Learn About platform and moved some of it into Google’s NotebookLM to do some further inquiry (and to save my notes, as Learn About refreshes each time you exit). The result was a sort of ancillary notebook of ideas, as NotebookLM both gathered my research and then expanded on it a bit more. I am still intent to dive even further and look into how to compose music, with bird song as the backdrop.

I like that in NotebookLM I could create an outline of the main elements of the resources and look at a timeline of discoveries and creation of music. For example, I am now curious to further investigate how David Rothenberg (I don’t know of him) created a jazz piece with a thrush.

Here is the timeline:

This timeline focuses on the use of birdsong in Western music, as the provided sources are limited in their scope regarding other musical traditions.

13th Century:

  • c. 1250: “Sumer is icumen in,” an English song, becomes likely the earliest instance of notated birdsong, featuring the cuckoo’s call.

14th Century:

  • Composers like Jean Vaillant begin quoting birdsong in their compositions, marking a growing interest in incorporating natural sounds into music.

17th Century:

  • 1650: Athanasius Kircher publishes Musurgia Universalis, an encyclopedia that includes musical notation of several bird calls, demonstrating an early attempt at systematic transcription of birdsong.
  • c. 1669: Heinrich Biber composes Sonata Representiva, featuring sections named after birds and animals. He uses string techniques to imitate bird sounds, including the nightingale, cuckoo, and chicken.

18th Century:

  • c. 1715: John Walsh publishes Bird Fancyer’s Delight, a collection of short musical phrases labeled with bird names intended for teaching caged birds to sing.

19th Century:

  • Composers like Beethoven, Delius, Handel, and Vivaldi prominently feature birdsong, particularly the cuckoo and nightingale, in their works.

20th Century:

  • 1924: Cellist Beatrice Harrison performs a live BBC radio broadcast with nightingales, marking the first outside broadcast for the BBC and highlighting the potential for musical interplay between humans and birds.
  • 1923-1924: Ottorino Respighi composes Pines of Rome, possibly the first piece to incorporate pre-recorded birdsong.
  • Late 1920s: Respighi composes Gli Uccelli (“The Birds”), based on Baroque pieces imitating various birds.
  • Mid-20th Century: Olivier Messiaen extensively utilizes birdsong in his compositions, including Catalogue d’oiseaux and Réveil des oiseaux, pioneering a detailed approach to integrating birdsong into music.
  • 1960s-1970s: Popular music bands like Pink Floyd and singers like Kate Bush begin incorporating birdsong sound effects into their albums.

21st Century:

  • 2000: Jazz musician David Rothenberg improvises a duet with a laughing thrush, exploring the musical connection between humans and birds and challenging the traditional definition of music.
  • 2003: Jonathan Harvey’s Bird Concerto with Piano Song premieres, utilizing slowed-down recordings of American West Coast bird songs to reveal their intricate musicality.
  • 2017: Hollis Taylor publishes a book arguing that the vocalizations of the pied butcherbird are music, using musical transcriptions and field recordings to support her claim.

Of course, I had to try the AI Podcast creator, but since I have so many sources and notes, the audio is pretty long (about 15 minutes).

Listen, if you are curious.

My next step is a bit of remix of those voices. That will be coming soon.

Peace (in explorations),
Kevin