The result? Have a listen.

For one thing, you can't dance to it. In some ways, it's reminiscent of some of the more dissonant musical studies my late father-in-law David Cornwall used to compose. It's rather slow, with strings and keyboards plodding along at a modest tempo, while a bass and piano interject themselves at inopportune moments. There are very few chords - mostly individual notes from each instrument overlaid with each other. I can't decide if it sounds like Morton Feldman revved up or Conlon Nancarrow slowed down. The first minute or so doesn't do much for me, but then it gets a bit more coherent, as several instruments fade away and elements of bassoon and marimba pop up, but in a very minimalist way. There's also a haunting, high-pitched whistle that weaves through the piece, not unlike a theremin. Fascinating stuff, but probably not for everyone.

Thanks again to Pete and his colleagues for letting me experiment with it. -andy

Before the interview, I put together around a dozen questions, including a mix of my own and some from suggestions posted to the blog. In the end, we got around to tackling only half of them, due to his long responses and our time being cut short by a few minutes. Nonetheless, I feel like we covered some interesting ground, including these questions:

You alluded earlier to the effects of media concentration and cross-ownership on journalism and civic discourse. Could you say a bit more about the effects of media concentration at both the local and national level?

If the relationship between media, corporations and politicians has gotten too cozy as you have suggested, how can the system change for the benefit of the public interest, given the fact that it's not in their interest to change the system?

In your talk today you lamented what you described "the ability to be anonymous and say scurrilous things" on blogs. How do you balance this with the role played by anonymous bloggers in places like China and Zimbabwe, who feel forced to blog anonymously to speak truth to power? Are there times when anonymity is the only solution?

Can you picture yourself ever publishing your own blog?

Video blogger Josh Wolf has been spent just over 200 days in jail for contempt of court for refusing to turn over footage he shot during a protest, with prosecutors arguing that his is not a "real" journalist. In France, they've just introduced a new law that would criminalize citizens from recording or broadcasting acts of violence if they're not accredited journalists. Do you see a growing clash between governments and citizen journalists, and if so, why now?

Do you worry that the public lacks the media literacy skills to recognize when bloggers have ulterior motives and when they don't? Has the rise of the blogosphere made media literacy even more important? (Built upon a question suggested by Shava Nerad)

You also talked today of one of the roles of a journalist is to hold politicians accountable. Do they have a similar role in holding their peers accountable, given the coziness you alluded to between beltway journalists and politicians?

Again, sorry about the crappy audio. What can I say; I'm a video guy. But I'll try to get a better version of the audio online later. Enjoy the new version of the podcast. -andy

Here's part one of the podcast. -andy

Okay, not exactly. It was actually with Pete's computer.

I can see you're skeptical, so I better provide some context. To do that, we're gonna have to go all the way back to 1971, the year I was born. Because that was when Townshend began work on a musical project known as Lifehouse.

The Who had just found great success with their rock opera, Tommy, and Townshend was now working on a new musical project called Lifehouse. A science fiction story in which the world has suffered an ecological disaster, Lifehouse included a major plot line based around the idea that the world's music was controlled by a small group of powerful media conglomerates, which in turn pumped its mediocre muzak into the minds of humanity. (In some ways it's similar to Rush's 2112 album, which came out in the late 70s, without the Ayn Rand influence.)

Pete explains:

"The essence of the story-line was a kind a futuristic scene.... It's a fantasy set at a time when rock 'n' roll didn't exist. The world was completely collapsing and the only experience that anybody ever had was through test tubes. They lived TV programs, in a way. Everything was programmed. The enemies were people who gave us entertainment intravenously, and the heroes were savages who'd kept rock 'n' roll as a primitive force and had gone to live with it in the woods. The story was about these two sides coming together and having a brief battle."

As part of their revolutionary struggle, the heroes of the story utilized a technological weapon called The Method, which would combat the soulless music they were literally being force-fed.

"What Lifehouse was about, at its root, was to reaffirm that what's important is that music reflects its audience as absolutely and completely as possible," Townshend explains on his website. In the early 70s, he was exploring Sufi mysticism, which no doubt put him in touch with qawwali music, like that of the famed Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, whom I got to interview in 1992. Qawwali concerts, which often extend to four hours or more, intend to use the trance-like power of lengthy musical performances to bring the performers and audience into a state of spiritual ecstasy. This, of course, is often a complete contrast to rock concerts, where performers and the audience show up, do their thing and leave. Townshend says:

Standing on stage and waving your arms about is wearing a bit thin, I think. There's going to have to be a way of listening to music which doesn't mean that you're going to have to face in a particular direction, there's going to have to be a way of listening to music that doesn't mean that you have to go out to a concert hall between eight and ten in the evening. I've seen moments in Who concerts where the vibrations were becoming so pure that I thought the world was just going to stop, the whole thing was just becoming so unified. But you could never reach that state because in the back of their minds everybody knew that the group was going to have to stop soon, or they'd got to get home or catch the last bus or something - it's a ridiculous situation.

For various reasons, Lifehouse didn't come together as planned, even though Townshend composed many songs for the rock opera. Instead, these songs were published as part of the album Who's Next, arguably one of the greatest rock albums of all time. But Lifehouse - and the musical weapon known as The Method - never fully vanished from Townshend's creative consciousness.

This brings us to last February, when Townshend was wrapping up work on his novel, The Boy Who Heard Music. The novel was released chapter-by-chapter on a blog, and he invited the public to comment on the story and help improve it. When the novel was complete, Townshend announced that some of the bloggers who participated in the story's development would be invited to participate in his next project - the rebirth of The Method as online software that would interpret the images and sounds submitted by a person and convert it into music.

As I explained on my blog:

A partnership between Townshend, programmer Dave Snowdon and composer Lawrence Ball, The Method will perform musical works generated by a computer based on interactions with a real person, referred to by Townshend as a "sitter." Initially the website will feature works generated by The Method through interactions with Lawrence Ball and others, but Townshend plans to invite bloggers to "sit" with The Method and generate music of their own. At least that's the way I understand it from his description on his blog. From what I've heard of Lawrence Ball's work, his music is reminsicent of Erik Satie and Arvo Part. Adding Pete Townshend to the mix, along with a community of 500 bloggers, will hopefully lead to some exciting, unusual results.

Yesterday, I received an email informing me that I was being invited to serve as one of the first beta-testers of The Method. I'd have a chance to "sit" and have three musical portraits painted for me. So this afternoon, I logged into and gave it a shot. The website asked me to upload a series of original audio clips, as well as a photo. This data would then be interpreted by the website to create an original electronic composition. I wasn't sure if it would take the content I gave it and sample it, or just be inspired by it. First, I supplied it with a photo of me from my honeymoon. I then gave it three audio clips:

• A loop of me saying "The moving walkway is ending; please look down."
  
• A sample of me doing babytalk to Kayleigh, and her response.
  
• A loop of a Tunisian malouf trio I recorded in Tunisia last year.

Once this was done, The Method went to work, composing an original work based on my inputs. The result is this song. It's just over five minutes long, and is very reminiscent of the work of Terry Riley, Michael Nyman and Phillip Glass, each of whom often utilize electronic-like repetition in their compositions. Personally, I like the piece a lot, though I can see how people might dismiss it as being too repetitive. (It also has some crackle noises at the beginning, which must have occurred when The Method saved the mp3 file.) I'll be very curious to see if my future experiments with The Method produce similar results. I'll have to go out of my way to submit a photo and audio samples that are very different from the ones I just used.

So what's next? For one thing, The Method is still in beta, so it's not totally ready for prime time yet. Eventually, more people will be invited to sit for musical portraits, and even be invited back repeatedly to work with Townshend and his collaborators to expand them into major works. They'll also take their show on the road, doing live performances of some of the compositions, with sitters like me invited to attend and potentially participate.

Meanwhile, any musical works produced by The Method will be co-owned by Townshend and the sitter. For all practical purposes, that means that if you sit for a musical portrait, you can do whatever you choose with the results, as can Townshend. We just can't veto the other's uses of it. That way, we can both use it, refine it, sample it, license it and perform it. Not like I would ever say no to Pete if he wanted to incorporate it into a concert or anything like that. :-)

So that's the result of my first experienced with networked musical composition. I can't wait to do it again. -andy

a full Baroque fugue in four parts, written according to the rules of counterpoint espoused by Bach. This piece begins and ends in C Major, but modulates into many major and minor keys during its episodic development.... Each of four voices state the main theme in a different part of the scale, until all are intertwining in the harmonic glory of fugue.

The recording is far from perfect, captured on a digital camera and performed by an organist who had almost no time to practice. But Dave would have still loved it. -andy

Today's been a better day than yesterday for Dave.... His temperature and white count are down, while his lungs and kidneys seem to be working relatively better. He's awake for several hours a day, and can communicate by nodding or blinking his eyes. There is no doubt about his alertness; as long as his strength holds, he doesn't hesitate to respond to yes or no questions. Having said all that, the doctors have made it clear that it will take a miracle for his body to recover from the massive infection that's overtaken him.

I'm sitting here in the ICU waiting room with Kayleigh and Susanne's cousin Mike. The rest of the family is spending time with Dave while he sleeps. The waiting room, by coincidence, is adjacent to Dave's room. Sometimes when it's quiet in here I can hear Dave's music, particularly when his Parade of the Wedding Party - the orchestral version of the string quartet he composed for our wedding ceremony - reaches its crescendo. And sometimes when I'm visiting him, talking about his music, I can hear Kayleigh crying in the waiting room.

Because Kayleigh is so young, the doctors will not allow her in the ICU. And Dave is too weak to leave his room and visit her somewhere safe. Only a wall separates them, but I fear it may be a wall that wall never be breeched.

I would give anything for a sledgehammer. -andy

While he was awake, Susanne asked him if he wanted to listen to his music. As many of you know, Dave started composing classical music after his retirement and has written dozens of pieces, including the wedding march for when Susanne and I got married. We're playing a copy of it in his room in the ICU right now. Here's a podcast of it, performed by a string quartet from the Denver University Lamont School of Music.

All in all, the situation is very touch-and-go, and he has an uphill battle ahead of him. Any forms of prayer, good thoughts, karmic energy, etc, would be most appreciated by Susanne and her family during this difficult hour.