You don’t need to know anything about music to compose your own songs any more. Songsmith, a new computer program developed by Microsoft Research, will automatically chose chords as the user sings into a microphone, creating an entire song in the process.

The software analyzes the singer’s voice using a technique called autocorrelation. This data is then used to choose chords to accompany the notes. Songsmith uses a database of roughly 300 popular songs to decide which chords sound good together. Since there are many different chord sequences to choose from, the user can use “happy” and “jazzy” sliders to explore the different possibilities.

While many see Songsmith as no more than a musical toy, the researchers behind the project say music professionals can use it as an “intelligent scratchpad” or to explore new melodies. Jonathan Darley, lead singer for the England-based band This Eden, says the program seems constricted.

“The only thing it actually allows you to try is chords that are played behind the song,” says Darley. “The chords it selects are controlled by sliders that change the mood; however, the mood changes feel very artificial and lifeless.”

He says the song-style options remove a lot of the creativity of actual instrument composition, limiting your thoughts to the instruments it has programmed into that set music genre.

“On both personal and musical grounds, I would say that it wouldn’t be a worthy replacement for writing your own music,” says Darley.

The thought of computers creating entire musical numbers is satirized in many science fiction works.

“One of the ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ books mentions how a machine was devised to compose and play music, and the skill of the musician then became how entertaining a performance they could make out of pushing the ‘on’ button,” says This Eden member Sam Darley.

“I take objection to a great deal of the ‘by-the-numbers’ music that is around, where songs are written and composed to a set formula. I feel that further removing human input from this process would only diminish the end product.”

An entire symphony recorded by a computer may exist in works of science fiction, but Mohawk College Music Professor Darcy Hepner says that’s where the idea will stay, at least for now.

“We’re many, many years away from that eventuality,” says Hepner. “I doubt that they’ll ever be able to replace somebody sitting down and actually writing, because it is algorithm based, so in terms of professional use it would not be probably ever a mainstay, but that doesn’t mean it might not be an interesting tool to get a different point of view.”

Where Songsmith may actually shine is as a tool for musicians to explore new ideas, at least as a starting point to something more complex. Microsoft Research’s Sumit Basu, a musician and one of the researchers behind Songsmith, says that’s just what they intended. He says many musicians sit down with their instrument of choice and try chord after chord until they find the perfect fit, but this is time consuming.

“This just let’s you explore that space very quickly,” says Basu. “It’s a really good way to quickly explore a whole bunch of possible chord sequences that might work for your melody, and I think that’s pretty valuable.”

He says the relationship between the melody and the chord is quite strong in Western music, so the software is very good at finding the appropriate accompaniment for the given melody.

While many users of the software object to the creative process becoming even somewhat automated, Basu says that is not what Songsmith is about.

“It is not going to make songs for you,” he says. “You really have to provide the melody and really that’s the creative aspect of song writing. In no way are we trying to replace that.”

But there is more to writing a song than figuring out a melody and chords. Hepner, who has performed with such artists as BB King and Aretha Franklin and has toured with Blood Sweat and Tears, says that one aspect that the software is unable to analyze is lyrics, an essential part of song writing.

“Often what happens when you’re writing a song is you get the lyrics to the song, and you try to make the melody and the chords support the lyrics,” he says, “If there’s a turn in the phrase of the lyrics, then the melody should also move with that. A program like this would never recognize this because it is not concerned with the lyrics, only the melody.”

And the lyrics will never be analyzed by Songsmith. While researcher Basu says that the team is continually looking at ways of working with more complex chord sequences, there are no plans to develop the program any further. It is as complex now as it may ever become.

“I doubt that we’re going to see genius coming from a computer for a while,” says Hepner. ”You‘re not going to see ‘Yesterday’ or some of those classic McCartney things coming out of one of these.”

(Photo by Riley McLeod, Ryerson Free Press)

Thousands of students continue to rally in Toronto and all over the province against rising tuition fees

Students rolled out thousands of petitions onto the lawn of Ontario’s legislature in Toronto, and presented tens of thousands to Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s constituency office in Ottawa.

Increased tuition fees, insufficient funding, and the current economic crisis have motivated over 50,000 students to send in signatures.

“Reaching Higher,” McGuinty’s post-secondary framework, was one of the topics addressed in the petition.

The provincial government has increased funding for post-secondary education, but many students and lobby groups say this isn’t enough.“No one would deny that the Ontario government has sunk more money into post-secondary education,” said Shelley Melanson, Ontario chairperson for the Canadian Federation of Students, Canada’s largest student lobby group.

Still, tuition rates continue to rise, and students are graduating with more debt than ever before.

The petitions delivered on Oct. 22 call on the government to reduce tuition and ancillary fees for all students in the province. They also ask that a portion of all student loans be converted into grants.

“We knew the government was going to be making an announcement on the state of the economy and giving an update on the budget,” said Melanson. “Like many places in the world, Ontario is facing an economic downturn. What we are trying to argue is that one of the best ways to alleviate a poor economy and to strengthen it is to invest in post-secondary education.”

Statistics Canada released a report in early October that said tuition fees in Ontario increased at the highest dollar amount in Canada. This has pushed Ontario’s tuition fees for an undergraduate degree to the second highest in the country, after Nova Scotia.

She says federal and provincial funding was cut during the 1990s, and tuition fees have gone up by 350 per cent since 1991, four times the rate of inflation.

Melanson says the biggest issue with McGuinty’s “Reaching Higher” plan is increased tuition fees along with increased loan limits.

“I guess the theory the government has is that by increasing loan limits, you’re increasing access, because people have the ability to cover the new cost of education,” she said. “The problem is [the plan] creates a significant graduation debt. For most students, the average debt for a four-year degree is quickly approaching $28,000.”

She says Canada is experiencing enormous job losses within the manufacturing industry and a shift toward a knowledge-based economy. Most new listed jobs in Canada require some form of post-secondary education.

While fees go up, class sizes are increasing as well, says McMaster University professor Richard Day, an expert in the quality of undergraduate education.

“We have much larger classes in most institutions now. We haven’t had the amount of funding from the government that would allow us to do faculty renewal,” said Day.

He says that while more funding is needed, the quality of education hasn’t changed.

“If you look at what a quality education means, it is always dependant on the effort the student puts in to learn things, and I don’t think that has changed over the years at all,” said Day.

On Nov. 5, the Canadian Federation of Students will be hosting an Ontario-wide Day of Action to call for accessible post-secondary education. Marches and rallies will take place across the province.

“Students are going to continue to escalate until we see our demands met,” said Melanson. “It’s really important for us that we take this opportunity now to address these issues before they get completely out of control.”

Image courtesy of SXC.HU

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was passed in 1994. With the formation of the world’s largest free trade area, economic growth was soon to follow. Farmers would be exporting more than ever before, and consumers would be paying less. It would mean easier, cheaper trade for everyone involved! Well, that was the plan.

So, what happened? Why are farmers losing money every single year, while larger corporations are reporting higher profits?   One of the side effects of the agreement was that many of the laws that protected farmers no longer held true. Instead, huge farming conglomerates now set prices with which local farmers have no chance of competing. The small farming families are slowly being pushed out of the business—a business they’ve been cultivating their entire lives.

Since NAFTA, the number of Canadian farms claiming bankruptcies has increased 500%. Farmers’ income declined 19% by 1999, even though prices skyrocketed. Something wasn’t working. The plan didn’t live up to its hype. Who was pushing this thing, anyway?

Another interesting part of the agreement includes patents. Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. now have to issue patents on seed and plant varieties, since they now count as intellectual property. Large agribusinesses can now subjugate the local farmers and consumers in an even more underhanded way. If a corporate bio-prospector collects a seed and patents it, anyone using that seed must pay an annual license fee. There are several cases where indigenous farmers have had to pay to use their own seeds, saved for generations, because they were collected and patented.

This led to a huge mess in 2004, where a company called Monsanto sued 68-year-old farmer Percy Schmeise for illegally growing their genetically modified seeds. Schmeise claimed the wind blew it onto his fields.

The genetically modified seeds produce plants immune to the company’s own herbicide. So, they can thrive in an environment saturated in the stuff, killing everything other than Monsanto’s plant. The catch? It costs farmers money each and every year for the seeds—they’ve been made entirely sterile. Turns out, Schmeise was more than just an aging farmer fighting an uphill battle against commercial farming companies. He had some spunk left in him. After all, he had made three separate attempts to climb Mount Everest. The courts eventually forced Schmeise to surrender the seeds and plants, but he did not have to pay the company anything.

It was an historic case: an epic battle. It also raised issues as to whether one could patent an organism.

So, how has all of this affected us all the way over here in 2008?  What does the slow, eventual death of local farmers mean for the average consumer? What’s wrong with buying produce that has been modified and mutated to get the greatest yield per harvest?

The answers should be clear. Aside from buying your produce at farmers markets in your city, if you can find them, there really is no easy way of knowing where the food you’re eating comes from.

There is little support for local farmers, although agriculture is something we should be thriving on as a country. Agriculture is one of our biggest industries.

In 2000, Canada spent about $4.6 billion on support for the industry, but most of that money went into areas that didn’t directly enhance the economy, such as disaster relief or research.  A large portion of the money also went into subsidies worth less than 5% of the value of the crops they were intended for.

So, while it would appear money is going toward the farming industry at first glance, it’s not going to the right people or places. Our neighbours to the south are even preparing to dump $700 billion in order to bail out large financial corporations. How long have the smaller, local workers been drowning because of policies and changes that only benefit the big fish? Why is the U.S. government so quick to consider this strategy of a nation-wide bailout, when it was the shady practices of some of these Wall Street firms that caused the problem in the first place? It would cost only $1 billion to bail out the family farms in the States.

Instead, we are ignoring the issue. Farmers are still struggling, corporations are still thriving, and consumers are still being squeezed for more and more every year. Let’s quit shoveling tax dollars into the laps of the irresponsible, and let’s begin putting it into the hands of the irreplaceable.

One of the first things we are taught, along with remaining objective, is to establish and maintain your credibility. There is an inherent trust between the reader and a medium; one which is very easily shattered. With every act of falsehood, journalists everywhere take the fall. Much like lawyers, we’re subjected to a tired cliche: journalists cannot be trusted.

In reality, most journalists work behind a mandate of trust and reliability. If someone tells you something in confidence, chances are you will keep that in confidence. If you find something that would make a great story, you’ll verify your facts before sending it to your editor.

At least, one would think so. In 2004, the Rathergate ordeal reminded us all just how fragile the line of trust between the public and the media is. Much like a spider’s silk thread, on its own, the line is difficult to see, breakable, and insignificant. When inter weaved together, the gestalt creates a stronger, more permanent form.

So, every underhanded act, every careless use of information, and every misrepresentation by the media not only harms the publication, but it also hurts the industry as a whole. When we come together and act honourably, keeping in mind those simple points of integrity, the media is a stronger force.

With Rathergate, CBS should have verified the integrity of the documents before going public with the story. It was a thoughtless move that cost several people their careers, and it could have easily been prevented. The people who first reviewed the Killian documents were surely taught about journalistic credibility years ago, and it would have served them had they simply applied that simple principle.

The future of journalism is dead, according to some instructors. Mike Hogan thinks that people no longer want to be told what is going on. He says that Journalism is just noise and gossip–noise that accompany events that would still take place regardless. The digital communication age is near and “old-fashioned journalists” aren’t needed anymore. We have Youtube. We have Google. We have the world at our fingertips, and we don’t need ye ol’ Gatekeeper deciding what we need to know or how much of it to divulge.

So, what’s the big deal? Does the really mean that the future of journalism is dead, or did Hogan really just want to stir up some decent discussion for once?

It’s true that journalism is like gossip, but this is a simile. They share some characteristics, but the one key element that sets journalism apart is objectivity. Gossip is merely the discussion of people, while Journalism is the discussion of events and how they [i]affect[/i] people. Eleanor Roosevelt once said that great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people.

The “digital era of journalists” aren’t real journalists. What they practice cannot be considered legitimate journalism. They are taking part in an elaborate, virtual form of gossip. They’re just another version of chatty cafeteria teens, except this time they’ve got broadband.

To liken journalism to loud noise accompanying events, events that would happen without it, is just academic verbal vomit. What does that even imply? I suppose Hogan is saying that a war will go on whether there’s a journalist covering the story or not, so the extra clutter and noise brought about by media coverage only clouds what’s really happening. What he’s described there is poor journalism, not the craft itself. A good journalist doesn’t contribute just noise to an event. He adds context. He adds a level of exploration that would not normally be evident without the careful research and analysis that goes into the art.

Perhaps a better way for Hogan to stir up discussion in is classroom would be to say, “citizen journalism has no future.” People want to be told, but they don’t want to hear it from some redneck with a camcorder. 50% of the content on Youtube is garbage, 49% is just gossip, and there’s a small, lonely 1% that is screaming to the world, “This is the mass communication device we’ve been waiting for.” Maybe we should start using it to share something important, useful, and thought-provoking, instead of sensationalism or the latest Internet meme.

If you had an essay assignment 50 years ago, there was a pretty standard way of getting your information. Go to the library, pour through journals, track down books, and find the information you’re looking for.

Today, this process is generally the same, but we go about it in a different way. If you want a journal article, those same resources are available online or at least searchable online. Libraries have computer search engines in place of enormous cabinets of file cards. I don’t think Melvil Dewey expected his Decimal system to ever get this many hits.

There is also an ever-increasing amount of information exclusively available on the Internet. The pubic encyclopedia Wikipedia is a great example of a source that might offer some info not available anywhere else.

So, is all of this too much? Are we experiencing an information overload? Can we handle the sheer enormity of resources at our fingertips at any time of day? I think so.

What’s great about resources online is that they don’t overload the reader, because the resources aren’t there without input from the reader. A website doesn’t popup unless you type in it’s address. You won’t see a document unless you open it yourself. The information is there, but you need to access it yourself.

The challenge is to be able to sort through the garbage and find the useful bits. Analyzing sources, especially those online, is a key skill in anyone’s arsenal but especially in a journalist’s. The information is out there, hidden away somewhere, but you’ll need to find it and decide if it’s credible and relevant. Is that so different than some poor schmuck buried in 30 pounds of books in the dusty library stacks on a friday night?

“We know there is a vast morass of information out there that our audiences want us to try to make sense of. The danger consists in trying to leap above it, not by getting more dramatic or salient or verifiable facts, but by analyzing, speculating, predicting, interpreting – by drawing definitive conclusions while the bodies are still warm.”
Paul Knox, The Globe and Mail

The above quote stresses the importance of accuracy and research in reporting. It’s not enough just to report on the facts, telling the audience what happened and when. A good reporter analyzes and interprets the facts based on careful research.

Journalistic analysis has nothing to do with injecting your own beliefs into the mix. Predictions and speculations are only valid when they are the result of research. This can be through experts in the subject that provide information leading to these conclusions.

If a journalist simply jumps to conclusions after hearing a sensational story, the consequences can be disastrous. The CRTC and other regulatory bodies work to ensure journalists maintain credibility, but it’s generally up to the journalist to ensure everything checks out. There are severe consequences far beyond a simple correction, and there is no hand holding along the way. It pays to be aware of your sources, your facts, and how you are using your information. Any analysis, speculation, or predictions should come as a result of careful research, instead of hype and sensationalism.

These days, you can find the information in under a minute. An Internet search engine will point you in exactly the right direction, but how can you be sure it’s reliable and accurate? There’s virtually (no pun intended) no sweat and tears involved in an Internet search, so does this undermine the quality of the results?

Like any type of research, it depends on the source. Just like going to a library or making a phone call, you could end up with a shoddy source. Chances are, clicking on the top result of a Google search and trusting what you see is a recipe for academic disaster, but there are reliable methods of finding quality, factual information using the Internet.

I’ve used online journal databases before. Many of the periodicals that theBrain uses for its searches are shared among schools across Canada and the world. When I was doing essays for my English degree, I spent a lot of time sifting through articles in Jstore, Lion, and other databases. I have found that the information is credible and useful, but the articles are almost always available as a hard copy as well. Using the online version is faster, as you can use keywords and phrases to find exactly what you need, but not everything is available in its full-text online. I find the main benefit to having this information online is the ability to work at any time of the day. My local library closes at 9pm. If I need to find something at 2am, the Internet is always open. In the end, it’s like all resources: if you’re thorough and you use the right tools, you can find useful information.

Unfortunately, it’s not always as easy as it sounds. Sometimes, a seemingly trustworthy source of information could have hidden motives that harm the credibility of the research you are doing. If you are using a particular website as a source for a story about gun safety, and you find out the site is funded by a national gun club, the site obviously has a clear bias.

What about Wikipedia.org? It is proclaimed as an unbiased, extensive online encyclopedia. Supporters say that because absolutely anyone can edit the content, it is unbiased. Well, it may seem that way on the surface.

Recently, the website came under fire by thousands of users. Co-founder Jimmy Wales became involved in a relationship with Canadian media figure Rachel Marsden. She had contacted him by E-mail, asking if he could review her bio on Wikipedia, saying that it portrayed her unfairly.

Wikipedia prides itself on being the world’s largest, impartial encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Wales is accused of inappropriately moderating the article about Marsden, severely damaging the credibility of the site itself.

Later, Wales reportedly broke up with Marsden via an announcement on the website. Marsden responded in kind.

“It was such a classy move that I was inspired to do something equally classy myself, so I’m selling a couple of items of clothing he left behind… Jimbo was obviously supposed to come visit me in a couple of weeks and pick up some of his stuff, but obviously that won’t be happening now,” said Marsden in the same eBay posting.

So, how credible do you think Wikipedia is now? There is sufficient evidence to suggest that Wales edited an article on Wikipedia because his girlfriend did not like the way she was being portrayed. What other articles are moderated in this fashion for hidden motives? It isn’t always clear what sites are completely credible, and when you are researching a story you need to be sure your source is exactly who they say they are. When you’re in the byline of a story, it’s your name on the line.

It’s no big secret that photographs are spruced up before they grace the glossy pages of Men’s Health or Cosmo, but are pictures in the “news media” also doctored? If it’s fine to touch up a photograph for a human interest story, is it fine to do it for hard news? Where do we draw the line?

I’m not sure there is a difference. If we can’t change quotes, facts, or events in our writing, why are we going to change the visuals of the story as well? Journalism is all about story telling—whether it be through the words in the limited space available or through the black and white photograph above them. Readers should be able to look at a photograph in a newspaper and say, “That’s exactly what the scene looked like.” He shouldn’t wonder if the editor photoshop’d someone out of the background to make a better composition.

When you allow doctored photographs, you introduce a slippery slope. If it’s acceptable here, why not in this situation? If it’s acceptable in that situation, then surely it will be fine for this. And if for this, why not that? Suddenly, there is no line, and everything is fair game.

I don’t think a simple “Policy for Original Photographs” will do. This is a binary decision. It’s either allowed, or it’s not.

The picture below surfaced shortly after 9/11. It was supposed to have been found on a camera in the rubble of Ground Zero. The man’s name: Péter Guzli.

The picture is fake. It won a “Best 9/11 Photoshop” contest. The picture doesn’t exactly display a mastery of photoshop skill, or even a general knowledge of the direction the planes hit the towers, but the photo created such a buzz that people are still referring to the “Tourist Guy.”

What about political photos? They can be doctored for the good or the bad. Take this one for example:

During the 2004 Presidential primaries, this photograph made its rounds. Was John Kerry really standing next to Anti-War Activist Jane Fonda? Well, thanks to the magic of photoshop and the motives of the alterer, two separate pictures taken one year apart are put together to damage Kerry’s campaign. Kerry’s image is from the Register for Peace Rally in 1971, while Fonda’s photo was at a political rally in 1972.

One of these things is not like the other…

Well, if you’re an undergraduate reading the application for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, you’re being duped. University officials inserted a black student’s face into the football scene to portray a more racially diverse campus.

There are many more examples out there. My point is that altering photographs is rarely simply about removing a blemish or a love-handle. There is almost always a motive, and our job as journalists is to tell the story as it happened, not as someone wants it to have happened. That goes for photos too.

Fast forward to your early teens and things start to change a bit. Today, we’ve got the technology to make things a lot more interesting.

In Utah, some teenagers were caught trading nude pictures of themselves using picture-messaging—they were 13 and 14 years old. When one of the kids’ parents found out, they called the cops. Really? The cops?

I understand the dangers behind what the kids were doing. They told their parents it was all meant as a joke, but now charges may be filed. Is this really something the parents had to involve the police with? It’s not like these kids were trading naked pictures of some unwilling third party. It sounds like some middle-school kids mooning their friends with their cell-phones.

Check out the KUTV website, where they found this newsworthy enough to publish. What’s more interesting is the comment forum, where posters are discussing the issue. Actually, it’s mostly just “Loving Mom 2″ discussing the issue.. with herself.

She calls the phenomenon “sex-texting.” Very catchy, Mom! She even urges KUTV reporters to contact her to hear the “real scoop” about what kids are doing with their cell-phones these days.

“Loving Mom 2″ thinks she is pretty tech savy. I mean, she knows “for a fact” that kids text each other an average of 20,000 times per month. She also says taking away the child’s cell-phone won’t help. They’ll just go use store display phones to do their dirty work.

So, here’s how they must do it. Kid walks up to the Rogers booth in the mall, picks up the newest Razr on display (There’s no battery and its display is just a sticker, but that doesn’t stop these no-good kids!), takes a picture of their junk, and sends it off to their friends! You can’t stop em!

“What I know first hand is this isn’t “just a joke” as so many teens say, or “I didn’t take it” etc. They know exactly what they are doing, who they are sending it to, the reasons, which including uploading them to many websites. “

I know the reasons too: teenage kids want to see each other naked. How is this news? I fully understand that they are breaking the law here, child pornography, consenting or not, is against the law. But should the parents have called the cops upon finding these pictures or should they have sat down with their kids and discussed their actions? The kids could be charged with felony charges. Is that what the parents want? I guess we’ll see.

In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy a wholesome, non-violent video-game that “Loving Mom 2″ would surely approve of.