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!