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

don't be an idiot and conceal everything about your idea from those who are trying to help you

We all hord ideas

Hording ideas is a common practice of any aspiring entreprenuer. Looking at my current ideas list - I use Asana - that I began in August last year, I have posted a total of 29 ideas. In less than 6 months I have horded a fair number of ideas that will sit there for some time to come, helping no-one, hoping that one day I will find the time (or the even skills for some of them) to see them to completion.

I am no superhuman, I can only work on one or two ideas at once if I am to see them done properly, so I have a whole handful of ideas which need a home. Some of the ideas aren't even in my own field of expertise, so they definitely aren't going to magically make themeselves into real products. We need to be honest with ourselves when we look at our large idea lists, for due to time contsraints or skills required some of those ideas will never be created by us, but could they be created by someone else?

The open world

Cliche as it sounds, most things in the world are moving toward becoming more transparent. Goverments and other agencies can no longer hide the dirty secrets quite so easily as they used to. A few years ago no-one would have dared place such personal info on Facebook as they currently do. How about ideas? I think people are moving away from the realms of secrecy, and will be more open to sharing their ideas as time goes on.

My first shared idea

So lots of talk, can I live up to it? Heres my first shared idea. The idea for this blog post originated from an idea I wrote on my list in August titled "GitHub for ideas". As a developer, GitHub is the perfect means to collaborate on and share code, so my first instinct was to think of GitHub when I wanted to create a website to collaborate and share ideas.

The idea for this blog post originated from an idea I wrote on my list in August titled "GitHub for ideas"

For anyone who has used GitHub you know what I mean. For those who don't, here is a quick explaination.

Sites already doing this

After a quick Google search, I cam accross one site that grabbed my attention.

Idea Share. This side was similar to what I was imagining in an online idea platform, apart from one thing. It's for your company. Thats great, and very beneficial to any company that uses it I am sure, but I want to share my ideas with the world.

If you know of any other sites which I have missed (very likely) please let me know mail@benwigley.com.