Tuesday, February 19, 2019

Re-writing a Wrong

This blog has had its ups and downs, and there are many cool things I've created that never went as viral as I might've hoped. But, for better or for worse, two fairly straightforward animations of Bach canons (from The Musical Offering) have consistently been my "best sellers." Well, I don't actually get paid or anything, but these two videos have racked up literally hundreds of thousands of views.

So, wouldn't you know, one of them has had two wrong notes all along (in score and audio). I've known this for a long time since YouTube commenters are not shy about offering critiques. (This one happens to be a very fair critique). Unfortunately, it's not possible simply to fix the original video, with its 180,000-plus views, and as the years I've gone by, I'm a few computers and software programs away from how I did the original animation. So, this to-do project has sat on my virtual shelf for all these years - until now.

Finally, over the past couple of days (aided by a lovely school vacation week), I've righted this wrong by re-writing this song canon so that it matches what Bach actually wrote. If you're curious, the wrong note occurs first in m.4 of the lower part in this old version - that D-flat should be a D-natural. Because this canon is simply a melody heard in reverse against itself, the same mistake shows up in m.15 in the top part.

Otherwise, I've left the style pretty close to the original, though the pixel resolution is a bit better and the crabs (!) slightly more animated. We'll see how long it takes to get this up to 180,000 views.



The original March 2008 blog post is here. And the other, even more oft-viewed canonimation is here. That one has over 300,000 views, so please don't find any mistakes.

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