Create Digital Music » In Bb 2.0: YouTube-Generated, Collaborative Music Remix

May 15 2009

In Bb 2.0: YouTube-Generated, Collaborative Music Remix

Play this track:

That sounds like the usual collection of meaningless YouTube buzzwords, but yet again, in the spirit of the YouTube-fueled musical genius of Kutiman and, more recently, Tan Dun and Internet orchestras, the combination of user-contributed videos turns out to be magical. Perhaps “You” are a star, after all.

In Bb also gives You, the viewer, some powers over the remix. As the name implies, everything will blend, so you can start the videos as you wish, and control volume with the volume sliders. It’s part of the ongoing evidence that sometimes simple ideas can be deeply musical and effective.

Now, you weren’t expecting to get any more work done on this Friday afternoon / evening / Saturday morning (depending on where you live), were you?

Creator and producer Darren Solomon (Science for Girls) – like Kutiman before him – is someone with some real musical and producing chops, too, so well worth checking out his other project. (Electronic Musician recently did a write-up). Here’s what he has to say:

In Bb 2.0 is a collaborative music and spoken word project conceived by Darren Solomon from Science for Girls.

The videos can be played simultaneously — the soundtracks will work together, and the mix can be adjusted with the individual volume sliders.

Participate! Create a video and send me the link! Here are some guidelines:

-Sing or play an instrument, in Bb major. Simple, floating textures work best, with no tempo or groove. Leave lots of silence between phrases.

-Record in a quiet environment, with as little background noise as possible.

-Wait about 5-10 seconds to start playing.

-Total length should be between 1-2 minutes.

-Thick chords or low instruments don’t work very well.

-Record at a low volume to match the other videos.

-You can listen to this mix on headphones while you record.

-After you upload to YouTube, play your video along with the other videos on this page to make sure the volume matches.

Update: Wow! This got bigger than I imagined! I greatly appreciate every submission, and I will watch everything, though I may not be able to reply to each. Also, I am being selective, in order to maintain the feel of the project. Many, many thanks to all who have submitted!

Thanks to for the tip, Mike Cohen!

http://www.inbflat.net/

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18 Comments

Birds Use Stars

Now, these things are very cool, but I’m concerned about how much youtube mashup can happen before it gets a bit played. Of course I’m too jaded for my own good.

May 15, 2009 @ 2:03 pm

Mike Cohen

glad to spread the sonic wealth.

I could probably listen to this all day changing it as I go.

May 15, 2009 @ 3:01 pm

number 9

This is beautiful!

May 15, 2009 @ 3:14 pm

Matt Verzola

great great great. thanks for sharing this!

May 15, 2009 @ 3:59 pm

Keats' Handwriting

Probably the coolest thing I have ever seen. Thansk for sharing, peter.

May 15, 2009 @ 8:41 pm

renzu

it’s neat, but the end result is limited to the kind of soupy rhythm-less monotone mishmash presented on that page, given the fact that there’s no precise control over synchronization upon playback. It’s basically a one-dimensional medium spanning “monotone harmony” to “dissonance”, so that page already presents the end-all-be-all.

May 16, 2009 @ 12:02 am

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May 16, 2009 @ 1:04 am

Darren Landrum

@renzu: That means the next step will be using Javascript to synchronize the start times of a large set of videos. Just let all the videos pre-load, then hit the big PLAY button.

So, there you go. One free idea, guaranteed to make you Internet-famous.

May 16, 2009 @ 5:15 am

Christopher Knight

I like the randomness created by the fact that you can never exactly start them at the right time. Nobody who watches this will hear the same thing as another person who watches it, and that in itself I think is pretty remarkable.

May 16, 2009 @ 5:40 am

Nick Lamberth

Big ditto on checking out Darren’s other project, Science for Girls. “Australia” will be stuck in your head for weeks.

Darren Solomon did a mix for the band I’m in and it was one of the best mixing jobs we’ve ever got.

May 16, 2009 @ 6:30 am

Waffle

No matter what you have playing, the bass guitar will make it sound better. Not a big fan of the DS Lite clip though.

May 16, 2009 @ 1:41 pm

combatdave

Agreed with Christopher Knight and Waffle. Add in the strings and it becomes awesome. That trumpet is just magnificent, too.

May 16, 2009 @ 1:43 pm

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May 17, 2009 @ 12:57 am

SkyRon™

kudos, darren! a beautiful, simple idea, elegantly executed. the spirit of john cage (with more than a touch of nam june paik) bubbles up through the intertoobs!

May 17, 2009 @ 10:22 am

compositecomposure

This is such a fun thing to play with I had similar thoughts about the next step which Darren Landrum has suggested; using javascript to sync start times of videos. It’d be like a online ableton clip view sorta thing where each video could be triggered individually. What would the sync source be though?

May 17, 2009 @ 11:59 pm

regulocastro

Hi!What a beautifull idea, sort of Terry Riley “In C” but on a colaboration enviroment.Great,I’m on my way to make my part.In my opinion Minimalism has become the best survivor XX century musical concept,and this goes out from a hard core serialism old school alumni.Nevertheless I’m with renzu in the fact that even minimalism eventually gets some development, but this is just a fun making encounter,kudos, keep going.

May 18, 2009 @ 8:11 am

in Bb 2.0

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