In B-Flat | Hacker News Reader

In B-Flat

inbflat.net

430 pointssdenton443 comments

This is one of my all-time favorite things on the internet. I was so inspired by it that I did a sort of half-formed "installation art" piece using it for a college class back in 2011. I projected the site onto a wall, hooked up some speakers, and prompted people to touch any of the videos, but I didn't explain anything else beforehand. When someone touched one of the videos, it would start, and when someone touched the same one, it would pause — just like a large touchscreen.

It's amazing what you can create yourself with this, but imagine what it's like when you have a large group "composing" it together, and then collectively deciding when to end it (or not!). Watching people go "ah ha" and then starting to communicate wordlessly to create their own piece, unique to their particular group, was so rewarding.

In hindsight, I wish I'd recorded it! (And if I were to do it again, I'd definitely want to get in touch with the creators and get their permission first.)

It'd be funny to record it and then add that as a submission to the site.

Sounds really inspiring and beautiful!

This appears to reference Terry Riley's In C:

> In C consists of 53 short, numbered musical phrases, lasting from half a beat to 32 beats; each phrase may be repeated an arbitrary number of times. Each musician has control over which phrase they play: players are encouraged to play the phrases starting at different times, even if they are playing the same phrase. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_C)

Indeed; the FAQ gives a shout to Terry Riley.

A Rainbow in Curved Air is one of my favourite compositions

This is a great example to use when people claim they don't possess musical talent. Or believe that the only way to enjoying creating music is going the traditional route of studying an instrument.

Grab a guitar or piano and Garage Band and lay down a track with just one, two or three notes. Then layer on top of that another track with one or two of those notes and a new third one. Rinse and repeat. You're almost guaranteed to surprise yourself.

>people claim they don't possess musical talent

I firmly believe everyone has musical talent, it's a spectrum more than an on/off switch. It can be fostered though there are cases where someone is just always is gonna sing out of tune (but hey, are they having fun?)

Yes, its a great example. This project is pretty much similar to an interactive, pre-recorded jam session. In order to take part of a jam session, all one has to do is play one instrument (your "voice" is also an instrument, or scratching, or just tapping on a table with your fingers). Some instruments are easy to learn, difficult to master. That is to say, you'll quickly and easily get to an adequate level required to join the jam session. And if you make mistakes, learn from then. That's what life's all about. The only wasted mistake, is the one you didn't want to learn from.

I imagine this was discovered via Kotaku's writeup of the game Gorogoa, posted the other day (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15931495), where the game's composer cited it as an influence.

Gorogoa is definitely worth checking out if you like creative things like this.

Reminds me of Kutiman, an artist who made a full album of mashed-up YouTube videos like these

https://youtu.be/tprMEs-zfQA

Thru-you was absolutely fantastic even just on its own, but the fact that it was all just samples of work from random people on YouTube made it completely amazing.

It's definitely worth a listen, the whole album is very solid and there are lots of different musical styles (track 3—I'm New—is my favorite). All the tracks are listed at http://thru-you.com/

He also:

Never changed the original keys

Tried not to use popular videos

Did the whole thing in Vegas Pro (iirc)

Absolutely wonderful.

I had an idea that I have never acted on (yet) to create in-c.net, which I imagined as a fully randomized performance/arrangement of the original Riley piece. This feels much more at home on the internet though. I love that it's all just YouTube videos. Amazing job.

If you're near San Francisco, their Museum of Modern Art had an amazing exhibit with like 15 projectors each playing a different artist from a large piece called The Visitors. I'm not sure if it's still on, but if it is, it's totally worth seeing. It's really amazing:

https://www.sfmoma.org/publication/soundtracks/ragnar-kjarta...

I was there last weekend and it was still there.

Wonderful. The end result was totally unexpectedly beautiful! The "spoken word" part (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=35&v=w5IERp2OdJs) makes it really feel like a proper track.

I recently discovered this awesome presentation on generative music: https://teropa.info/loop

Another awesome project by the same composer: http://www.markermusic.com/

I love this. I'd say it needs two features though;

1. Record your composition and share it through a URL. I imagine that when you click "record" it starts a timer to capture when you play/pause a specific sound.

2. Have a "Random" button that randomly plays sounds indefinitely (probably no more than 5 or so at the same time).

Honestly I feel like adding social sharing features and randomization sort of misses the point of the art piece (or at least what I got out of it). The takeaways I got were: literally anyone can create or arrange beautiful music, music doesn't have to be made by traditional means or a process, music doesn't have to be predetermined, and improvisation can be a part of any stage of the creation process. The actual soundscape a user creates is entirely secondary to the experimentation they do to get there. With no instruction besides 'play these in literally whatever way you want,' I think those additional features might change the focus to 'randomization as a musical tool' and 'how can I create the coolest soundscape?" If I was linked to the project via someone else's premade composition I would have had an entirely different experiment.

I discovered this yesterday in this story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15931495

I wanted to hate this as being a gimmick but instead love it so much.

I had fun trying to beatmatch these.

Got me thinking if one could build a site / tool to aide with beatmatching youtube videos. Would be a fun side project.

Can you even beatmatch these? They don't appear to play any coherent rhythm or uniform tempo. They will however create a beautiful soundscape regardless of how you time them.

Over time, music has become easier to jam without higher organization. (Classical -> Jazz -> Ambient Soundscapes) Over time, machine learning has been climbing up the higher-organization staircase. (image statistics -> convolution with kernels -> CNNs). And then?

Great stuff, too bad it doesn’t work on the iPad :-(

Or iPhone as far as I can tell. But it did lead to finding this https://youtu.be/w5IERp2OdJs which is sort of amazing IMO :).

i love this so much

Me too. Reminded me of some of the post rock stuff done in the early 2000's.

You might like hammock: shop.hammockmusic.com

This has some beautiful and magical synchronicities in it.

This is gorgeous.

Please do one in Dm, the saddest of all keys

Was a thoroughly enjoyable distraction

I love it!! incredible

What is B-Flat here?

The key is B flat major

It is a certain subset of seven notes (from the usual 12) known as a scale. Using only notes from a single scale is supposed to make it easier to match the music. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_scale

He means notes.

>Using only notes from a single scale is supposed to make it easier to match the music.

Supposed?

Accidentals (notes not indicated in the current key) are common in most styles of music. It's not even mandatory to stick to the 12 notes of the western scale, even in western music. We are attuned to hear notes in twelve-tone equal temperament, but this is only one possible way of subdividing frequency.

Musicians playing in the English, Irish, African and American folk traditions often use third, fifth and seventh notes that are substantially flat relative to standard western tuning. Barbershop quartets and other acapella ensembles tend to use just intonation rather than equal temperament. Arabic musicians use a tone system with 24 subdivisions per octave; their scales (maqams) habitually employ the neutral second, an interval that exists halfway between the western major and minor second.

Music theory is a useful explanatory framework, but it isn't a wholly accurate representation of musical practice.

The key that all (or most? I've not played them all) the videos start out in.

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