News Release

World's first album of Twitter music available now

Business Announcement

Queen Mary University of London

For the first time, you can now download an album of digital music written exclusively for Twitter.

Entitled sc140, this unique collection has been curated by Dan Stowell, a composer and computer scientist at Queen Mary, University of London.

It may be nearly Christmas, but Stowell explained that this isn't the kind of album that would be appreciated by your average relative: "My granny might raise her eyebrows if I gave her sc140 for Christmas, but if yours is the Aphex Twin type, then she'd definitely love it."

Messages on micro-blogging site Twitter are limited to 140 characters - barely enough room for an articulate sentence. However, a new breed of cutting-edge composers are coming up with programming tricks to squeeze as much as five minutes of music into those 140 characters.

"It all started a few months ago," said Stowell, who is studying for his PhD in Queen Mary's Centre for Digital Music (C4DM). "I was writing in a programming language - called SuperCollider - that tells a computer what sounds to make and posted a tweet containing the instructions to create a sound like waves crashing on the shore. The next thing I knew people were tweeting back with sounds and music of their own."

He went on: "Some of the tweets made such great music that I couldn't just let them vanish into the ether. So I brought all the best ones together in an online album, called sc140, which anyone can download for free."

Musicians can already collaborate online by sending audio recordings to each other, but this new project may lead to the traditionally solitary process of composition becoming the latest craze of social activity. The speed of social network messaging could take musical collaborations to a new level, like a 'hive mind' of composing inspiration.

"For computer scientists and composers alike, it's an interesting challenge," said Stowell. "Musicians often enjoy the challenge of working within limitations, and in our research group we investigate new ways of making music and communicating artistically."

Dan Stowell and his colleagues in the C4DM work to apply computer science and audio signal processing to help analyse music and create new ways to enjoy music. Since its founding members joined Queen Mary in 2001, the Centre has grown to become arguably the UK's leading Digital Music research group.

Here's what Ode To Joy would look like if Beethoven had used twitter:

{b="GGHJJHGECCEG".ascii.stutter;f=Duty.kr(0.15,0,Dseq([b,71!3,69!5,b,69!3,67!5,0].flat.midicps))*[1,2];LFCub.ar(f)/9}.play

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The album sc140 is freely available at http://supercollider.sf.net/sc140

For more information, contact:
Simon Levey
Communications Officer | Queen Mary, University of London
t: +44 (0) 20 7882 5404
e: s.levey@qmul.ac.uk
tw: twitter.com/QMUL
w: www.qmul.ac.uk

Notes to Editors

Centre for Digitial Music (C4DM)

For more information about Queen Mary's Centre for Digital Music (C4DM), visit http://www.elec.qmul.ac.uk/digitalmusic

More about Dan Stowell's research can be found at: http://www.elec.qmul.ac.uk/digitalmusic/people/dans.htm and his personal and artistic interests at: http://www.mcld.co.uk/

Queen Mary, University of London

Queen Mary, University of London is one of the UK's leading research-focused higher education institutions with some 15,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Amongst the largest of the colleges of the University of London, Queen Mary's 3,000 staff deliver world class degree programmes and research across 21 academic departments and institutes, within three sectors: Science and Engineering; Humanities, Social Sciences and Laws; and the School of Medicine and Dentistry.

Ranked 11th in the UK according to the Guardian analysis of the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, Queen Mary has been described as 'the biggest star among the research-intensive institutions' by the Times Higher Education and also won the 'Most Improved Student Experience' award for 2009, reflecting the superb academic and social experience offered to all students at the College. The College has a strong international reputation, with around 20 per cent of students coming from over 100 countries.

Queen Mary has an annual turnover of £220 million, research income worth £61 million, and generates employment and output worth £600 million to the UK economy each year.

As a member of the 1994 Group of research-focused universities, Queen Mary has made a strategic commitment to the highest quality of research, but also to the best possible educational, cultural and social experience for its students.

The College is unique amongst London's universities in being able to offer a completely integrated residential campus, with a 2,000-bed award-winning Student Village on its Mile End campus.

Website: www.qmul.ac.uk

NOISE

Stowell is also part of a scheme called NOISE (New Outlooks In Science & Engineering), which is a UK-wide campaign funded by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). By providing media and public engagement training, the initiative aims to provide early-career researchers with the tools to communicate their work effectively and to engage people with science and engineering. www.epsrc.ac.uk


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