Dedd Pixel

The Google homepage today featured a sweet audio logo celebrating the electric guitar pioneer Les Paul.  In addition to spelling out ‘Google’ you could drag your mouse across it and actually play guitar sounding music.  Moreover, google allowed you to record your riff and save it!

My song.

MTA.me features a musical rendition of the New York City subway map.   It may not show you which train you need to board but it provides a unique view (sound?) of the data.  As you load the page, the system begins by drawing any trains that left a minute before you arrive.  It then progresses rapidly through a 24 hour cycle, drawing new train lines and playing a note whenever lines cross.  The viewer is free to collaborate with the system music by clicking and dragging through existing lines to play additional notes.  The sound each line makes varies, depending on the length of the line.

It’s similar to the laser harp, only more digital and dynamic.

I often hear voice over snippets in music.  Snippets from movies, other songs, or telephone conversations.

I stumbled across One Hello World today and am very intrigued by this new take on voice recordings in music.  Rather than just playing a voice snippet as background fodder, One Hello World does something different, the music is not only inspired by the voice and the message, but it is the focal point of the song.

The site describes itself as simply a ‘collection of voicemail set to music.’  You call a number, leave a voicemail, and the artist writes some music to play in the background.

But it’s more than that.  Listening to the samples, callers have left messages revealing very personal, intimate details of their lives, almost like confessions.  They’re messages to themselves or to other people in their lives.  Yet, they’ve called an anonymous number, knowing that the result will be a very public display of their very private thoughts.

The music created fits perfectly.  Since most of the messages are sad in nature, the songs skewed that way but there are exceptions.  In addition to writing a ‘soundtrack to your thoughts,’ the artist also included a short response, showing concern for the subjects.  It’s a natural reaction, as in creating something inspired by their emotions, the artist has developed a connection to them.  Just like a friend who lends an ear.

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