Technological and Computer-based Projects
Living Albums: A dynamically self-modifying musical delivery format
proposed project/product
It is a wonderful thing, coming to know an album's every note, every texture, every moment. The list of albums I've come to know this intimately includes: The Beatles' Abbey Road, Radiohead's In Rainbows, The Postal Service's Give Up, Neutral Milk Hotel's In The Aeroplane Over The Sea; and from my youth in music, Apollo 18 by They Might Be Giants and Blood Sugar Sex Magik by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Coming back again and again to the same recordings can be a comfort, an aural rock to lean on. Seeing how different meanings creep into the songs at different points in my life, even as the recordings themselves stay constant also helps bring me self-awareness about my past and present states of mind.
Sometimes, though, especially when I've listened to an album several times in a week (or in a day) and am reaching the "burn-out" point on it, I wonder what the recording sessions might have been like. Surely that guitar solo wasn't note-for-note the same in each and every take? Did the group try out other vocal harmonies, different from the ones that made it onto the record? Perhaps a song was tracked with a different form, or a guest artist, or maybe one section was repeated, halved or omitted? Maybe their tempi varied slightly, depending on the day's mood?
And then there's the matter of jazz and progressive rock, genres I've come to appreciate more recently: the genre's vibe leads me to presume many of these artists would jump at the opportunity to present to listeners not a single interpretation, frozen in zeros and ones as the definitive edition, not the lone urtext of a song, but rather an experience closer to a live concert— to give some of the spontaneity that comes from a range of possibilities, from never knowing exactly what you're going to get, but with none of the drawbacks: mediocre sound, crowd noise, smoke[1] and overpriced beer, among others. Not to mention the risk of a less-than-stellar night on the performer's end.
Living Albums is a proposed software-based delivery format for music, in which a listener will hear a carefully-crafted mix, as well-produced as any traditional album on CD, but one that will change on repeated listening; sometimes subtly, sometimes obviously, using alternate takes and different song structures transparently, and in the background, as the album "runs" locally on the user's computer.
The means of creating an album in this fashion are straightforward; "mix" options wouldn't even have to be decided in advance of recording— a normal recording and mix session usually results in more than enough extra material to put together a Living Album. Max/MSP software is easily capable of hosting the "brain" of the operation and building an application; any developer tools could create a standard package for distribution. Commercial delivery would require a few extra steps: Artists[2] will not want their stem mixes available to the general public via a simple "right-click and Show-Package-Contents", so an encrypted build would be necessary. Additionally, since the product runs as software, this would be an opportunity for the record industry to make one more grasp at copy-protected music. (One hopes that relatively cool heads will prevail and the artistic potential of this technology will not be killed by avarice.)
The artist, mixer and software engineer would then work together in establishing where the music might change upon repetition, and then prepare alternate mixes of those sections of the song. As an easy-to-describe example, let's say the lead guitarist wants to include twenty different options for her favorite guitar solo. Most of the time, though, she wants one of her favorites to be heard; only occasionally should "alternate takes" or "other solos" come into play. Together with the engineer, they decide on a 40% probability for each of the two main solos, with the remaining 20% being split into a 15% chance that an "alternate take" will be heard, only leaving once in twenty times listening to the album that a wildly different solo will be heard.
The engineer has two choices: The first is to mix each of the twenty guitar solos with the tracks from the rest of the band twenty times in the studio, resulting in twenty ready-to-play audio files; then have the software simply pick from among those files based on the probability assigned each, creating the proper crossfades indicated in the file's metadata to seamlessly transition in and out of that section. The other choice would be to create a file for each of the solos alone, and have the software layer it with the band's backing tracks at runtime. In this relatively simple scenario— twenty solos, all of the same length, with no change in what the band plays in response to the solo— there's really no reason to favor one over the other, except for the small amount (one solo's-length, from not having a file of backing-tracks-alone) of disk space saved by the first option.
Either way, this example is a relatively conservative construction— much of the time the result will sound just like a normal album, but from time to time it will depart on its own. Another artist might choose nearly the opposite strategy, assigning an equal chance that any of twenty chord voicings, brass licks, bass lines or keyboard tones will be played. Still more radical options exist, and are hardly more difficult to attain than a simple alternate-take guitar solo.
The example that immediately springs to mind is the glitchy electronics[3] Radiohead has used in albums and live shows since Kid A (2000), generated by Max/MSP patches written by the band[4]. These involve live-processing and chance operations, and will therefore be different (subtly and/or radically) in every live show the band plays. Why not apply these parameters during playback of the album, instead of permanently fixing one example of representative output? The difference between listening to live glitches that change every time they play, versus listening to a static recording of glitches seems to be like the difference between watching a living butterfly in a meadow, and seeing a butterfly pinned under glass. This seems like an option that would be both popular with the band's intensely loyal fans, and artistically fulfilling for the musicians themselves.
More to talk about
Like FLY[5], Living Albums could also take environment into consideration (audio & video from computer's microphone and webcam, with situational processing discussed in the FLY proposal) and make "jam-out" arrangements, for example, if it detects lots of movement going on (i.e. a party) but more concise versions if careful attention is being paid (quiet environment with little movement).
Other commercializations for Living Albums include options for the user to buy "bonus packs" of extra material, similar to the way a video game may separately package extra levels or play material; or the way "deluxe edition" is sometimes released of CD albums, with bonus tracks, videos, or alternate takes.
Lastly, there is the obvious possibility, when delivering music to people via computers, of adding video. If video is included, this could be a good arena for use of the live video-editing algorithms and interface detailed in Auto Video[6]. Users could easily specify their own local video files and frame offsets, and then watch a video being made in real-time to their new favorite song.
2. Record labels, mostly. [jump back up]
3. see http://www.ateaseweb.com/2004/05/22/jonny-interview-in-computer-music-journal/ and, i.e. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjV9dud_NY0&NR=1 [jump back up]
4. Mostly Johnny Greenwood, it should be said. [jump back up]
5. See "FLY" on http://charliewilliams.org/tech/fly.html [jump back up]
6. See "Auto Video" on http://charliewilliams.org/tech/autovideo.html [jump back up]
1. In Germany, Italy, and France. Also in the USA outside of major metropolitan areas. [jump back up]