Favorite songs

Every now, usually 5 to 10 times per year, I come accross a song that totally gets me. A song that is so damn awesome, I feel the need to send around a YouTube link to anyone who I think will care. I will then play the song way too many times, and before you know it, I'll have gotten over it, and things will be back to the way they were. Sure, I still like the track, and if I hear it again in a few months I will be like "Hey, this song! I love this song!". But what if we didn't have to get sick of our favorite songs so soon? What if our songs morphed with every new listen?

what if we didn't have to get sick of our favorite songs so soon? What if our songs morphed with every new listen?

Extra studio takes

In my sketch book I have dubbed the term, Programmable Music, and it works like this:

Musicians record their song in the studio, and they will usually take at least 10 takes of each part, be it guitar, drums, vocals etc. They then choose their favorite, or 'best' take to use on the finished record.

So thats great. We end up with a polished version of the song, and everything sounds amazing...but its the same song every time you listen to it. The idea of programmable music is to utilize all of the seconds takes that were thrown away in the studio, via a computer program that randomly chooses a take from a list of 20 or so.

The idea of programmable music is to utilize all of the seconds takes that were thrown away in the studio.

The maths

Now take a very basic rock song with vocals, drums, bass, and 2 guitar tracks (rythym and lead). Lets say a musican records 10 takes for each track (and each track extends the entire song). We input all 10 takes into the programmable music software, so thats 10 takes per track. There are 5 different instrument tracks, so 5 times 50 equals 50 unique takes in our very basic song.

Now our programmable music software will randomly select which take to play, which means there will be 2,500 (50 x 50) possible variations of this song. Now there is a song that will be harder to overplay on your radio station.

Potential names

How about a name for this song box, off the top of my head:

• Music Morph
• Song Junkie
• Track Mash
• Song Mesh
• Sound Web