Musical Maps

Last time I mentioned a musical map, I brought up the wonderful example of Ishkur's Guide To Electronic Music, set in rings akin to those indicating the age in a tree. I was inspired by that map to get on terms with what western music has been up to for the last 100 years (not just electronic music), and truly, there was and still is SO MUCH going on. Really, it's like, if you've just been listening to what's on the radio and MTV, you're missing a whole damn universe of musical colours- and as I began mapping it out realised that with each decade, this musical explosion increases exponentially.

So I based my take on musical history on Ishkur's model, big, concentric rings that mark each decade, beginning with everything before the 40's, extending into the end of this decade. Music's a fuzzy business, you can't create clear-cut boundaries between genres and the labels given to a genre can change over the decades when people look back to older music. Also, I wanted to show music more or less like a web of influences; just like disco got it's flavours from funk, soul and apparently a bit of salsa, funk roots itself in psychedelic rock, soul (again) and jazz. I knew though that I'd have to work on the layout, otherwise it'd be so messy and hard to read that nobody would bother. It's tricky, specially when after the sixties, music exploded into a myriad of styles.

Perhaps too I should have looked at some other examples before embarking on a journey only a few nutty people embark. I looked around the web and found some pretty interesting ways other people have been doing similar things. How does one represent something fuzzy, subjective and ever-changing like music? Maybe the Information Is Beautiful blog has a few things to teach us about clearly visualising information. Here are a few maps from around the web (click on images) :

So, to begin, I found this one here focusing on the relationships between different kinds of electronic dance music. It leans heavily on the artistic side, but that's not bad at all. Sadly, it's an image I found aaages ago and kept it because I found it pretty, but I never knew out who made it or where I could find it again. But for the meantime, we can marvel at the psychedelic colour mixtures and funky lines linking each genre-bubble.

INTONE, a music-based marketing company has this particularly interesting layout, genres are like stops on the London underground system, connected to each other by colours representing a similar sound or evolution. I quite like it because of its simplicity; it's easy to read and make immediate connections, some dating to thousands of years (see ''The Drum'', the big black circle bottom-left). Definitely, a good deal of research and careful design planning went into this. It's good for those making the most evident connections, but if you're deep into music connections, it might be a bit too simplistic.

On a very similar approach, the blokes at The Guardian attempted to map out 100 years of musical evolution, again on a London-tube underground map. This one differs on its approach in that it has artist names instead of styles of music, but the different 'paths' in different colours carry different styles of music. This one focuses solely on western music, particularly Anglo-American music, so don't go looking for merengue, salsa, shibuya-kei or kwaito. Allegedly, this focus was to prevent the editor's head from exploding. Yes, it would look awful with so much. I found it linked here.

This next, the ''Tourist Map of Music'', impressed me. Unlike all the previous ones, it's actually interactive. You type the name of a band/artist, and in a minimalist blue screen the name you typed appears, and around it the names of similar artists will gravitate and organise themselves, the closer they are to the central name, the bigger the likelihood that fans of the artist/band you typed listen to that too. Pretty awesome! How do they do that?!? I think that with a bit of streamlining, this could definitely be the tool of future music consumers helping them to discover new sounds, because of its ease of use. In the words of the creator, Marek Gibney, ''Gnod'', the system on which this monster thing works, ''is my experiment in the field of artificial intelligence. Its a self-adapting system, living on this server and 'talking' to everyone who comes along. Gnods intention is to learn about the outer world and to learn 'understanding' its visitors. This enables gnod to share all its wisdom with you in an intuitive and efficient way. You might call it a search-engine to find things you don't know about.''

These following two are also interactive and actually let you listen to music in an interactive map-like way. The first one, Musicovery, is everything Yahoo! Radio wasn't. In a deceptively simple set of controls (shown to the left), you can navigate through the emotional and energetic spectrum that is music, through mood (positive to negative) and amount of energy in the music. You can also browse through decades and select genres to be more nit-picky. There are a few other features (like a search bar which doesn't actually show what you're looking for) and other things which you'll have to figure out :D. This last 'map' on the right, the SOM-enhanced JukeBox system (SOMeJB) analyses your mp3 files and interprets their sonic properties, namely dynamic range and yeah, how it sounds. Then as seen here, it plots different areas for each style, arranging them according to sound related to each other. That's why classical music and heavy metal are on opposite extremes. See how you can make playlists interactively, taking these paths through different soundscapes!

(Click for higher resolution and all that nice stuff)

Finally, I could have probably learned a few lessons from the examples above before embarking on the fuzzy history of western music and its genres, but I was trying to be a bit 'different'. Yes, lot's o' nodes and lines connecting stuff, like neurones in a brain, though both frighteningly complicated and somehow organised. Also, I marked all I saw fit into large categories into different colours. Red for rock music, green for jazz. the usual stuff. Yellow for break-beat (that kind of music that was born when hip-hop artists stringed different drum breaks from old funk records and gave birth to a billion things, and blue for 4-to-the-floor, which is simply that basic rhythm where the kick marks the 4 beats in a bar, which was popular in rock but really took off when disco music became the bomb. Also, you might be wondering why in my map, punk (in red) gave birth to this thing I call ''Oh no, you didn't!''. Yeah, I'm being biased there, but I don't think any serious person thinks great things about crunkcore and emo... I'll leave that for a future post on punk music.

''Out on the edges they're mixin' the colors some they don't like it but me, I don' t mind in every city they' re mixing the colors different shades for the whole countryside''
Mixin' The Colors - Iggy Pop

Edit:
Apparently this cool map here escaped my search: Map of Metal
A really cool flash-based map of the history of heavy metal and it's different genres, loaded with tons of music samples and descriptons. Also, it looks like jeans, leather, badass buttons and chains. What else could you ask for?

The Chilean Army's Changing Outfit

I found this advert on a university magazine a while back. I thought that it was an interesting way to portray how the Chilean military (like that of any country anyway), has always been changing throughout these 200 years. Note how the original inhabitants of this land, the Mapuche, seemed to have minimalist military outfits (of course that's not true, perhaps they dressed like that all the time), and the colonials had some unwieldy outfits that probably made them really inefficient for combat. Colours fade to greys and then to the typical greens & browns of modern outfits. Seems funny, back then, was the idea that they had to look nice, or as bombastic as possible or what? ''Hey! Look at me! I'm bright blue and red! I'm very well camouflaged among... uh, my fellow soldiers!''

(click for larger view)

Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music

Trance? Techno? House? Jungle? Hardcore? What's the difference between them anyway? They all sound like un-tss un-tss because all electronic dance music does so. I found this neat little (massive) guide to electronic music made by some mysterious person by the alias 'Ishkur'. Pretty cool, years are like the rings inside a tree trunk and different music styles that split and form nodes and crazy lumps and things and you can hear examples of each style of music and learn how sounds change through the ages and travel different cultures. Although in the last 10 years there has been an explosion of new styles of music (dubstep, reggaeton that has actually been around for a while, this new trancey DnB sound and a resurgence of electro), the guide still kicks ass an is not that out of date. How much work was put into it!

http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/

Noah's Ark

I was gonna go through some crazy silly theory someone used to explain Pangaea according to the Bible and all... but I couldn't bother.

Instead, I'm gonna put these 3 videos making funny stuff out of the story of Noah's Ark. Amen.

The World Was Close to the Edge

Back in 1983 the world could have taken a really different turn from that which led to our reality. Of course: with the Cold War and all that, two warring parties, often envisaged in maps as blue and red were waist-deep in gasoline, both threatening to use one of the many matches they held in their hands if the other did any sudden movements. Mutually assured destruction was close many times, notably during the Cuban Missile Crisis. However, there was another moment in history (a lot less known) that could have been a lot worse. I don't know if it has any name, but it has a year: 1983.

You can find all the details out there. I don't even know how much of this tiny slice of history is actually true or if it is just a really really good story. However, the story roughly goes like this:

In the Soviet Union, a lieutenant colonel by the name of Stanislav Petrov (supposedly) averted a global-scale nuclear war. When working at an early warning satellite network system codenamed 'Oko', the system erroneously displayed missiles coming in from outside, and Mr. Petrov, in a deviation from standard protocol identified the error and averted a cataclysm. That kind of situation is likely to be a real nerve-wracker. Now, think that if you don't know if it's a system error or a real warning, you have two choices with four possible outcomes:

The first and second outcomes - You genuinely think that there are inbound missiles so you react to the warning and decide to retaliate with your missiles. If there were really missiles coming in, you just ensured a global nuclear war by answering. If there were no missiles coming, you still triggered a world war that would kill billions because now the hair-trigger systems elsewhere in the world will retaliate just like you did. Hooray we all die.

The third outcome: You identify the warning as an error. It wasn't. You probably aren't alive today to tell the story.

The fourth outcome: It really is an error and you know it. You and I are here today and you are reading this.

Okay. So where am I going with this? Oh yea. A crazy bunch o' dudes took the time to flesh out an alternative reality where Mr. Petrov didn't avert the nuclear disaster. He was sent to another base and some incompetent nincompoop pretty much screwed up when the false alarm appeared on his screen. 1983:Doomsday seems to be an interesting project in the making. Just the imagery of what happened that day 27 years ago is frightening, but like any good story, it shows glimpses of hope for the future, where after almost 30 years the world is rebuilding and seeking to make ammends. Countries and unions like the Celtic Union (say what?!?), the ANZC (Commonwealth of Australia and New Zealand) and the South American Confederation lead the new world order, mostly flipped upside down due to the devastation of much of the northern hemisphere!

I kinda cringe at some entries where at least the spelling could be better than ''seperate'' and stuff but it's on its way.

Am I done here? No. I have one more thing to tie into this topic: the irony of 1983. 1983 is the same year Samantha Smith, a young American girl wrote a letter to the then Russian leader, Mr. Andropov. Here's something about her:

(taken from http://www.samanthasmith.info/History1.htm )

"Actually, the whole thing started when I asked my mother if there was going to be a war. There was always something on television about missiles and nuclear bombs. Once I watched a science show on public television and the scientists said that a nuclear war would wreck the Earth and destroy the atmosphere. Nobody would win a nuclear war. I remembered that I woke up one morning and wondered if this was going to be the last day of the Earth.

I asked my mother who would start a war and why. She showed me a news magazine with a story about America and Russia, one that had a picture of the new Russian leader, Yuri Andropov, on the cover. We read it together. It seemed that the people in both Russia and America were worried that the other country would start a nuclear war. It all seemed so dumb to me. I had learned about the awful things that had happened during World War II, so I thought that nobody would ever want to have another war. I told Mom that she should write to Mr. Andropov to find out who was causing all the trouble. She said, "Why don't you write to him?" So I did."

The letter she wrote Andropov was the following:

Dear Mr. Andropov,

My name is Samantha Smith. I am ten years old. Congratulations on your new job. I have been worrying about Russia and the United States getting into a nuclear war. Are you going to vote to have a war or not? If you aren't please tell me how you are going to help to not have a war. This question you do not have to answer, but I would like to know why you want to conquer the world or at least our country. God made the world for us to live together in peace and not to fight.

Sincerely,

"Samantha Smith"

This heartwarming letter from Samantha got eventually this answer from Yuri Andropov:

Dear Samantha,

I received your letter, which is like many others that have reached me recently from your country and from other countries around the world.

It seems to me – I can tell by your letter – that you are a courageous and honest girl, resembling Becky, the friend of Tom Sawyer in the famous book of your compatriot Mark Twain. This book is well known and loved in our country by all boys and girls.

You write that you are anxious about whether there will be a nuclear war between our two countries. And you ask are we doing anything so that war will not break out.

Your question is the most important of those that every thinking man can pose. I will reply to you seriously and honestly.

Yes, Samantha, we in the Soviet Union are trying to do everything so that there will not be war on Earth. This is what every Soviet man wants. This is what the great founder of our state, Vladimir Lenin, taught us.

Soviet people well know what a terrible thing war is. Forty-two years ago, Nazi Germany, which strove for supremacy over the whole world, attacked our country, burned and destroyed many thousands of our towns and villages, killed millions of Soviet men, women and children.

In that war, which ended with our victory, we were in alliance with the United States: together we fought for the liberation of many people from the Nazi invaders. I hope that you know about this from your history lessons in school. And today we want very much to live in peace, to trade and cooperate with all our neighbors on this earth—with those far away and those near by. And certainly with such a great country as the United States of America.

In America and in our country there are nuclear weapons—terrible weapons that can kill millions of people in an instant. But we do not want them to be ever used. That's precisely why the Soviet Union solemnly declared throughout the entire world that never–never–will it use nuclear weapons first against any country. In general we propose to discontinue further production of them and to proceed to the abolition of all the stockpiles on Earth.

It seems to me that this is a sufficient answer to your second question: 'Why do you want to wage war against the whole world or at least the United States?' We want nothing of the kind. No one in our country– neither workers, peasants, writers nor doctors, neither grown-ups nor children, nor members of the government–want either a big or 'little' war.

We want peace—there is something that we are occupied with: growing wheat, building and inventing, writing books and flying into space. We want peace for ourselves and for all peoples of the planet. For our children and for you, Samantha.

I invite you, if your parents will let you, to come to our country, the best time being this summer. You will find out about our country, meet with your contemporaries, visit an international children's camp – 'Artek' – on the sea. And see for yourself: in the Soviet Union, everyone is for peace and friendship among peoples.

Thank you for your letter. I wish you all the best in your young life.

"Y. Andropov"

While I don't see his letter as dishonest or anything when it comes to intentions, it flies in the face of what I've been going at during the first part of this post! That same year a few months later the world almost became lit with thousands of radioactive mushroom clouds that would then be followed by decades of darkness. He didn't know, of course, we all assume that things that can go really really bad won't go really super bad. Like BP and their black death spill.

Rest in peace Samantha Smith. I think that probably you were a reminder of the things in this world we have to protect and nurture. You became a hero of sorts in Russia and people there loved you while back in your country the whole thing was seen suspiciously like a political stunt. Sad. (1972-1985)