songs in B Flat major

screenshot of the In B Flat website

My accomplice recently brought BlipFM to my attention, which basically allows a user to construct their own radio station by creating playlists from songs hosted on YouTube. This same seamless use of YouTube files was also found in the original iteration of the much-loved, much-missed Muxtape site, which ended up changing its focus (to strictly band-submitted files) to avoid being scuttled upon the rocks of copyright infringement.

This creative use of YouTube is now being pushed a little further by musicians creating collage pieces (witness the very cool content created by Kutiman, whose "Mother of All Funk Chords" went viral this year), or those musicians who are putting the songwriting largely in the hands of the user.

On that front, I recently stumbled upon a project by Darren Solomon, called In B Flat, which allows users to create their own collage-based musical piece from a set of 20 videos hosted on YouTube. The project reminds me a little of the Buddha Machine, which also allows users to create a seemingly endless variety of pieces from a simple subset of loops, however, In B Flat offers far more textural variety for the user simply because there are more options to choose from.

These recent, user-and-accident-generated projects touch on the same ideas that Brian Eno put forward in his Generative Music discussions, where simple musical motifs are developed over time to create multi-layered, endlessly shifting tonal landscapes.

However, beyond such smarty-pants hoo-haw, In B Flat offers something interesting, fun and genuinely moving for a layman with one functioning finger. I recommend you check it out and play with the start / stop times of each video. Also, I find that if you trigger enough pieces to cause cut-outs in your internet connection, you can create another unique layer to your pieces.

Good fun!

Amon Tobin - Foley Room

Amon Tobin
Foley Room
Ninja Tune, 2007

A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to get a guided tour of CBC’s Foley studio from the resident sound technician. It was pretty incredible. She explained how she created the sound of many oars in a lake with a bathtub, some baffles, and a few strategically placed microphones. She took me down a long, gravel-filled hallway, noting how the echo deadened as we walked further, until the crunching sound underneath us was completely isolated. The craziest thing, though, was she said she is so attuned to listening for sounds-within-sounds that she can wake up and know whether it is going to rain or not by the sound of the trains by her house; the sound of the train differs, she explained, depending on the barometric pressure.

When she said this, the only sound in the room was my mind being blown.

So it is with Amon Tobin’s latest release, Foley Room. Recorded in various settings around various cities, the album shows Tobin utilizing different source material for his experimental, head-nodding electronics. After many years of success cutting and re-sampling, this album marks Tobin’s first attempts to make an electronically-inspired album that combines found sound and “real” instruments. The concept is not especially new, as Tobin acknowledges on the DVD that accompanies the disc, but I have a lot of respect for an artist who is willing to push themselves toward change, and broaden their sound. And Tobin’s previous work informs Foley Room as well: there are thickly thudding bass sounds, high-end twitters and whirs, and an overall drive that seems out of keeping with such an experimental album. However, on this release, those electro sounds are provided by Kronos Quartet, the Bell Orchestre and field recordings from silos, farms and other non-traditional recording spaces.

My only complaint about Foley Room is that it seems to still root itself firmly on the dance floor, whereas I would have liked more tracks that let the sounds grr and whorl in their own beauty. However, this is merely a matter of taste (aaaaand the fact I almost never go dancing), and Foley Room remains an interesting, texturally rich album worth exploring.

On tour through europe now.