by Christine Bougie | March 8th, 2010
Dafydd Hughes and I are working on a new project (a follow-up to our album This Is Awesome), tentatively called “Shuffle.”
Here are some excerpts from the fancy project description we crafted together:
This project is a playful reaction to the effect that the iPod has had on our listening habits – more and more, we don’t sit down and listen to a complete album; we’re far more likely to arrange our favourite songs in a playlist or press “shuffle” and have our music chosen for us at random.
Instead of a traditional album consisting of 8-10 songs, we plan to compose a collection of very short musical ideas, ranging from 10-60 seconds in length, that can be arranged in any order and number to create a completely new listening experience each time. Each piece will connect to any other through either a melodic line, a rhythmic part, or sonically. Because of the short length of each piece, it’s more useful to think of the entire piece as one large composition, rather than 40 or 50 individual, very small ones.
A couple short ideas I have so far:
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These two could be connected easily since the tempos and feel both match up, as well as the key. This is the easiest, most obvious way to connect two ideas. Also, the second idea doesn’t yet have a melody, it’s just about the pulse and mood.
We plan to record and release Shuffle in two formats: First, as a traditional mp3/FLAC downloadable album that allows listeners to create their own compositions on their mp3 players, and second as an interactive website. Listeners will be able to drag and drop segments into any order (or allow the site to randomly choose an order for them) and listen to the resulting song streamed over the internet.
What do you think?
(Photo by Tanja Tiziana)
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Awesome idea! Way to make good of those baby ideas that are hard to “complete” too
I miss the album experience though and have been making a point of listening to entire albums (even in iTunes).
This is a GREAT idea. I love it. I was talking to Dafydd about it. It reminds me of a similar experiment Julio Cortazar did with his novel Hopscotch. The idea of the book being that you could read it front to back, in his suggested order or in any other way you would like, to make your own book.
The idea of the website is great!
Lovely, and timely. Look forward to hearing it.
I love the idea!!!!
Cool, sounds very Avant-Garde!
And “Shuffle” just so happens to be the name of the very most basic tap-dance step. It’s #1 in a tap-dancer’s vocabulary of sounds and is used as a bridge linking other sounds together.
So I vote for “Shuffle” even though it sounds like it’s up-in-the-air.
Choose Your Own Adventure for music. Wicked idea, I love it. Sort of also a little like the John Zorn cue card approach, except that you replace John Zorn with an ipod. This Is Awesome remains in steady rotation on my ipod, so I can definitely picture the Angela Bower sound in a short-song shuffle-play incarnation.
The second sketch is cool! I like how the guitar and bass parts sort of fill in the gaps for each other.
Totally brilliant!!!
very cool idea.
I was at the Bolton Re-Store and picked up some cassettes for 25c. each: my Honda still has a tape deck, so it’s been fun to listen to music that way for a change.I shuffle 30 per cent of the time i use an iPod. It helps to uncover tunes you wouldn’t normally dial up but are grateful to hear!