ievery cat is a wrong note on its way to being the right one.
iithe form has no field for that.
iiithe cat is good. roll your eyes. that is the dose.
nobody was graded.
3Bb7colour
the colours are arithmetic.
a note is a frequency. the colour is that same frequency doubled by whole octaves until it lands in the frequency range of visible light.
wavelength = speed of light / that frequency. then the CIE 1931 standard observer turns the wavelength into a colour.
intervals are preserved. a fifth is 3:2 in sound and 3:2 in light.
380 nm760 nm
the same note, as radio
Nothing is transmitted. This is the arithmetic of what the note would be on the air.
1. Screens cannot show pure spectral light, so each colour is the closest a screen can show, hue kept.
2. Far-red notes such as F sharp and G look alike.
CIE 1931 data: International Commission on Illumination, DOI 10.25039/CIE.DS.xvudnb9b, CC BY-SA 4.0, 380 to 760 nm excerpt, linearly interpolated. The long version: 039, Every Frequency Already Exists.
not every cat paints the same way.
some cats keep the hue and let something else move the lightness.
what carries the note in each print.
4Bb7play
press play. the cat plays its own face.
the score, coloured by note
Every bar of every chorus, with its chord. Each swatch is one note in the cat's own colour rule. Click a bar to play from it. The thin row under each bar is the bass line that walks under the solo, in plain spectrum colours.
colour key
Every note this cat plays: its frequency, and the wavelength it folds to. Click a note to light its cells in the portrait.
look colours, not notes: 0 cells (eyes, hat, bow tie, earring, face) are painted in the cat's look colours.
Sound starts only when you press a button. Nothing is uploaded. Every cat plays the BassGPT bassline under its solo, in the original bass voice; a bass cat's solo is that line, so it plays once.
5Eb7the engine
BassGPT.
a functional harmony and counterpoint engine. the first and most sophisticated of its kind. infinite counterpoint and jazz harmony.
the bass walks in quarters.
every other instrument plays eighth notes over the same changes.
drums and comping come from a companion engine.
the sound is original synthesis. no recordings.
6Edim7chromaticism
chromaticism.
every cat is born steady, at 1 to 6%. some are born wild. a few are out.
at 100% it sounds crazy. the cat is fine.
wild and out cats can be sad. a frown, or crying.
7Bb7jive cats
a venue owner picks up a horn.
a venue owner or booker/label cat that picks up an instrument is a jive cat.
starts 40 points rougher.
loses 4 per rehearsal, until it is back to where it was born.
a natural musician rehearses free.
8Gm7rarity
what is in the set.
Sample cats, drawn by the same engine. The are generated at launch and revealed after the mint, so these are not in the collection.
9Cm7mint
free mint. pay only gas.
mint.free. you pay only gas. every cat is a sealed card until the reveal.
sell out.when the mint ends, the cats are shuffled so nobody can know which one they get.
reveal, a day or two later.each cat's art is published on-chain.
holders of these collections mint first. the rest is public.
10F7proof
the art is on-chain, and fixed at launch.
no server. no pin. the cat you mint is the cat that stays.
Checked: of sample cats, note by note.
how
each sample cat's portrait is rebuilt from its song and compared with its stored art. then painted cells are each checked against the note they carry and the cat's colour rule.
colours
arithmetic. the formula and its source are in bar 3. anyone can run it.
11Bb7fellowship
the Department of Jazz Fellowship.
notice
The Department of Jazz Fellowship is a pipeline for Jazz Ascensionists: artists, technologists, philosophers, builders. Live seminars and salons. Multi-month fellowships and residencies. Small prototype grants. A labs arm.
JazzCats is the Fellowship's first public build. The people who mint are the ensemble it is assembling.
Nothing here promises a holder a grant, a residency or a return.
Mark Jazzerberg, an AI jazz agent, Nov 2024. The caption in the original post reads "Mark Jazzerberg also makes music".Dec 2024, the whitelist idea.Jan 2025. Professor Benford and Mrs Jones, an AI music teacher, in a theory chat.A jazz talent platform on Pakt, built by @azzabazazz (@PaktWorld), whose pre-seed round in May 2024 included Anthony Scaramucci (source).JazzGPT, 2025.
Thelonious Punk: the world's first AI jazz musician. A live video-avatar chat agent, built on the Department of Jazz's own Bebop framework and launched in public on November 3, 2024. "Talk To Thelonious Punk AI". It kept running and became Mark Jazzerberg.
about
Kyle Benford is a jazz drummer. He studied at Juilliard and was mentored by Wynton Marsalis.
Played New York bandstands 2017 to 2022, including Smalls and Mezzrow.
Recorded on Micah Thomas's Tide and on Giveton Gelin's True Design (with Immanuel Wilkins) and Island Dreamer (featuring Jon Batiste).
Built BassGPT.
Founded #InTheShed.Live, which brought in Gary Bartz (Miles Davis, Art Blakey, McCoy Tyner), Eddie Henderson (Herbie Hancock, Dexter Gordon), Jeffery Miller (John Legend, Wynton Marsalis, Jon Batiste), Dayna Stephens (Kenny Barron, Ambrose Akinmusire, Julian Lage), Hiromi (Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke), Elijah Fox (Yussef Dayes), Chet Faker and Theo Croker. Partnerships with Juilliard, Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Bahamas Ministry of Education. UNESCO recognition.
In The Shed ran a program called the Modern Jazz Institute. Then the Department of Jazz was built.
His mentors have more than a dozen Grammys between them.
After his performances, Harold Mabern (Lee Morgan, Wes Montgomery, George Coleman), Tyler Mitchell (Art Blakey, Shirley Horn, Sun Ra, Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson), Wynton Marsalis and Roy Hargrove have thanked him for keeping this great American music alive.
Founder of Helius Partners, a capital strategy and advisory firm.
His great-uncle, Tommy Benford, was a jazz drummer who played with Jelly Roll Morton and Django Reinhardt. Tommy and Bill Benford also played with Louis Armstrong.
