This is in response to a PBS program titled “Ghost in your genes“ which originally aired October 16, 2007. The program describes the role of epigenomes in something called ‘gene expression’. There was a great part on the history of the Human Genome Project that I would like to focus on and run with here:

WOLF REIK (The Babraham Institute): The human genome is like a bible where everything was written down. The hope and the expectation was that once we had that book in front of us, and all the letters, we could just read down the pages and we would understand how the body was put together.

NARRATOR: Once the code was deciphered, scientists hoped to find the genetic cause and cure for every disease. They estimated that the human genome, the book of life, would contain around 100,000 genes.

MICHAEL SKINNER (Washington State University): And then when they started sequencing…and it popped down to 60. And then it popped down to 50. And, slowly, it went down to a much smaller number.

NARRATOR: Thirty thousand, twenty-five thousand…as the mapping drew to an end, it appeared that humans had about the same number of genes as fish and mice.

MICHAEL SKINNER: In fact, we found out that the human genome is probably not as complex and doesn’t have as many genes as plants do. So that, then, made us really question, “Well, if the genome has less genes in this species versus this species, and we’re more complex potentially, what’s going on here?”

NARRATOR: So few genes didn’t appear enough to explain human complexity. Even more startling, it turned out the same key genes that make a fruitfly, a worm or a mouse also make a human. Chimpanzees share 98.9 percent of our genome. So what accounts for the vast differences between species? Might genes not be the whole story?

Good stuff.

Now let’s take a look at the Human inspired Music Genome Project, which “set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level.” This is another instance of, in the words of Wolf Reik, “a bible where everything was written down.”

I’d have to imagine that the people involved in the Music Genome Project had a similarly head scratching moment as the people involved in the Human Genome Project. I’m not really concerned here with why exactly that may be. It seems clear that the music genome has limitations and there is a fair amount of criticism floating around for those interested.

A final quote from “Ghost in your genes”:

NARRATOR: What distinguishes cells is not their genes, but how these genes are switched on or off by epigenetics.

The human genome and the music genome are obviously two extremely different things, one examines how attributes are arrived at and the other catalogues attributes. They do, however, share two out of their three word titles and their core intentions of cataloging are very similar.

My question to you is: if the Human Genome Project hit a dead end and led to an intense study of epigenetics, what would the equivalent for this be for the Music Genome Project? If the human genome proved inadequate in explaining our differences and complexity as a species, what leaps would make the music genome more meaningful than the current list of musical attributes?

This site is now running the latest stable version of WordPress (Version 2.5.1).

The following is a quote from ccmixer, a community music remixing site featuring remixes and samples licensed under Creative Commons licenses. This snippet works as a fine English translation of the type of contest rules (legal contracts) that typically accompany legal remixes of material under copywrite.

Most sampling or mash-up contests on the Internet stipulate that you will never own the samples you use in the contest and that after the contest is run you forgo your rights even to the new song you created.

After the contest has been judged, all entries that are not commercially published are essentially useless because rights to the song are given up upon entry and access to files. Typically in these contests there is one winner who has the chance to get the remix published alongside the original track, whether that be on vinyl or on iTunes. Every other contest entry, whether that be 5 or 5,000, belongs to whoever is issuing the competition and are never released.

In using material featured at remixing sites like ccmixer, the products of the material can be used in many other ways, provided that it is for noncommercial purposes. You could, for example, create a remix and enter it into a contest, and then feature the remix on your website or play it on your internet radio station.

So there are alternatives. Remix culture does not have to be a stark white wall. One downside to the creative commons direction, however, has to do with why remixes are desirable in the first place. It’s nice to be able to identify a remix on first listen and to know what is being remixed. This would be an unlikely occurrence with CC material because it doesn’t have the same sort of airplay that other music does. The stuff people know about and would be able to identify is protected by 10,000 armies.

image: ©2006 morguefile.com

On the subject of internet radio. The traditional model is that a show is broadcasted at a certain time each week or day. This poses a problem for the potential listener who can’t make it to their computer at the designated time slot.

Having previous show archives available at all hours of the day help the situation. This way no one will leave unsatisfied who makes the effort to visit the website for the show. If, however, the show broadcasts commercial material then all of the restrictions that apply to the live broadcasts (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) apply also to the archives.

One way around all this is to create mixes that link to music that is already available for free. This could be tunes under a copyleft license, ‘legal music downloads’ like the ones discussed in the previous post, or anything in the public domain. Here I would like to present one of these playlists. Each track will need to be downloaded separately and will involve two clicks (sorry) — you are also welcome to stream these songs first.

“The Best of Will’s Meekly”

1. Radio Citizen - The Hop

2. Unagi - Sacred Music

3. Steve Spacek - Dollar

4. MF Doom - Live From Planet X!

5. Beat Chemist - I Wanna Tell The World

6. Foreign Exchange - All That You Are

Will’s Meekly was a radio program I hosted that ran for 25 weeks. The show was created from a love for beatboxing and good production. It was broadcasted live online via Free Radio SAIC and operated on a annual budget of zero dollars. Although no longer with us, Will’s Meekly had a good run. Thanks everyone for supporting! There may be some ‘never before seen’ content lying around that would be appropriate to publish on starschreck.

After hosting the show for a while it began to morph into something unexpected. Finding quality tunes each week, after I had already played everything that I had initially intended to, began to require more resources. The show survived with the help of recommendation services (like Pandora and Amazon), intersecting playlists (iTunes, Download.com, UGHH.com, etc.), and user recommendation and feedback.

Ultimately it came to a point where I realized that internet radio sucks so the show went off the air. There was, however, a lot of good research and strategies that came out of it.

It turns out that a lot of commercial music is available online for free. It has now become even more of a standard part of marketing. Singles are available on artist websites and also on sites specifically devoted to that purpose. If you are interested in some of these sites check out: download.com, better propaganda, and epitonic. For a lengthy and complete discussion of this topic visit Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads.