Comments on: Metafilter Orchestra - Pandora's Music Box

Metafilter Orchestra - Pandora's Music Box

Karlos the Jackal — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 21:19:56 -0800

Metafilter Music Collaboration #2 is finished! This song involves 20 MeFites collaborating on an original song -- Exquisite Corpse style, which means that each contributor only got to hear one other contribution. Full credits and details inside.

This project started over a year ago with this post. We ended up with 20 contributors (and about the same number of people who ended up dropping out -- not a bad percentage, I think, given, you know, musicians). You can see the flowchart here (and my working version here). Each participant heard only the contribution of the person before them -- not all contributions up to that point, but only their immediate predecessor's. For instance, if you refer to the flowchart, you can see that uncleozzy heard only jpdoane's contribution, but not wanderingmind's contribution (which, in turn, was the only thing that jpdoane heard). In order of appearance (in the song, not in order that things were recorded): Karlos (me!): Pling Plong (DIY Music Box) snsranch: guitar wanderingmind: synth burnmp3s:drum program univac: bass uncleozzy: Edge-style guitar umbú: easy-going guitar chococat: strummed acoustic guitar flapjax at midnight: jaw harp, vocalizations TwoWordReview: jagged electric guitar bunnytricks: bass smartyboots: slide guitar nanojath: percussion, boingy sounds ORthey: banjo equalpants: electric guitar xorry: ocarina InfidelZombie: quarter-note electric guitar on right side god hates math: glockenspiel naju: techno beats & synth jpdoane: rock-star guitar on left side It's very, let's say, "through-composed" as opposed to having a traditional song structure, in part due to wanting to get everyone in there. Some people got nearly their whole submission used, and some people only got little parts in. My biggest regret is leaving out nanojath's entire vocal part (although if you listen closely, you can hear his intake of breath in preparation, looped over and over again), but perhaps someone will do another mix using that as a basis. The toughest part was trying to figure out what to do with the key changes -- one branch ended up in D while everyone else was in C. I thought about pitch-shifting everyone into the same key but decided against it -- I like the modular aspect of everything being compatible, but decided it was more important to keep everyone's contribution "pure" for this version. I'm going to try and set up something tomorrow to host all the parts so that anyone who wants to can put together ther own version. Feel free to ask any questions you like about the process!

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 21:27:50 -0800

Woo-hoo!

By: equalpants

equalpants — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:17:44 -0800

Excellent! Looking forward to the individual parts; I wanna see what happens when you match up people who are 2-3 steps apart...

By: ORthey

ORthey — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:40:15 -0800

I love this. I think it should be the soundtrack to a very strange, surreal, wordless short animation.

By: smartyboots

smartyboots — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:44:18 -0800

That is quite an achievement of mix... mixolo... mixiness. Sir, I salute you!

By: hellojed

hellojed — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:51:10 -0800

Wonderful!

By: friendlyjuan

friendlyjuan — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:22:10 -0800

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this. I liked it far better than I thought that I would. Things like this are what make Metafilter great.

By: winna

winna — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 01:19:12 -0800

I am listening with a huge grin on my face. This is great.

By: Happy Dave

Happy Dave — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 03:19:04 -0800

Fantastic bit of work, both on the original submissions and the editing. Cracking.

By: umbú

umbú — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 03:21:04 -0800

Finally! Thanks for putting this together, Karlos. I like how it ends as the credits sequence to a 1980s road movie, with a car carrying a ragtag crew disappearing off into the sunset.

By: burnmp3s

burnmp3s — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 04:50:01 -0800

Very cool. I thought the end result would be more chaotic but all of the submissions really go well with each other. Thanks for sticking with this project over the last year and putting together the mix, Karlos.

By: iconomy

iconomy — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 05:35:19 -0800

That was fantastic!

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 06:40:35 -0800

This came out great. Nice work, everybody, Karlos doubly so.

By: cjorgensen

cjorgensen — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 06:43:49 -0800

Fish heads fish heads,
Roly poly fish heads,
Fish heads fish heads,
Eat them up yum

I took a fish head,
Out to see a movie,
Didn't have to pay
To get it in

-Dr.Demento - Fish Heads

You can kinda sorta make these lyrics work.

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 06:53:07 -0800

That was specifically a tune by the group Barnes & Barnes, half of which was none other than a between-scifi-alsostardoms Bill Mumy. And it is one of the greatest songs in the history of music.

By: metaBugs

metaBugs — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 08:05:31 -0800

Well this is just awesome. Not just beacuse it's a cool idea (it is) but becase it's actually good to listen to. I've always loved music that starts off simple and grows into a complex, multi-layered monstrosity and your piece has all that and just enough of a thread to hang all the parts together. Admittedly a few of the transitions between sections feel quite jarring to me but, on balance, I'm sticking with "awesome".

ORthey - I love this. I think it should be the soundtrack to a very strange, surreal, wordless short animation.
Ooh, yes. Someone with more talent than me should definitely do this.

By: uncleozzy

uncleozzy — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 08:44:25 -0800

Wow, I had completely forgotten about this. (I had forgotten which part I heard, actually... then the glockenspiel came in and I though, ohh, that's it.) Thanks for following through, Karlos. This is really cool.

By: snsranch

snsranch — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:04:05 -0800

WOW this is excellent, really fun and interesting to listen to. Everybody sounds really good!

Thanks Karlos! This rocks!

By: umbú

umbú — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:10:21 -0800

I'd just like to say that I've never heard an ocarina rock so hard.

By: zennie

zennie — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:26:09 -0800

Has a wonderfully mellow, playful vibe. Great work.

By: nosila

nosila — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:19:01 -0800

The chococat/flapjax/umbú trio is particularly delightful to me, and the mix sounds great. Way to go, everybody!

By: wanderingmind

wanderingmind — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:52:23 -0800

Oh, this is just plain awesome - great job, Karlos. Glad I could I be part of it. And apparently when you put us all together you get early Mike Oldfield. Who knew?

By: chococat

chococat — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:57:10 -0800

Wow, great job on what must have been a Herculean editing task.
The temptation to pair consecutively-recorded tracks must have been huge...but it seems like you changed it up quite a bit. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't but that's the fun of listening, as everything changes into something else. I laughed out loud a few times.
Thanks for doing this!

By: Corduroy

Corduroy — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 13:51:53 -0800

/clapping

By: BrnP84

BrnP84 — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:05:07 -0800

Great job all, this is really cool and if it goes down again I defintely wants in.

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:24:41 -0800

Nice work! Your corpse is exquisite.

By: Stonestock Relentless

Stonestock Relentless — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:47:46 -0800

See Roast Beef in the last frame of this Achewood strip? That is my reaction to this track.

By: xorry

xorry — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 17:40:38 -0800

Haha, this is great! I'm glad you could do something with my track. It was a bit strange.

By: xorry

xorry — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 17:44:11 -0800

Oh wow! It's absolutely amazing with headphones!

By: Alterscape

Alterscape — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 17:45:04 -0800

[this is good]

By: chococat

chococat — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 19:26:20 -0800

Sounds strangely like the Pee Wee's Playhouse theme at around 3:11 when the slide comes in.
Also I love the Rock Star guitar. Kind of ironically but kind of not. You know how it is.

By: Karlos the Jackal

Karlos the Jackal — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:48:49 -0800

Hello!

So here is what I did: I set up a "Metafilter Orchestra" page over at bandcamp. Here it is.

Click on the "severed parts" link on the right side of that page (or here). There's a list of everyone!

Click on someone's name to bring up downloading options for their track, including mp3s, AAC, Ogg, FLAC, and Apple lossless. Download what you want and have at it. Let me know if something is wonky. Unfortunately, there's no WAV format; if someone really wants this stuff in WAVs, let me know and I can send you a physical CD. (It's about 360MB.)

I uploaded everything under a Creative Commons "Attribution only" license. Individual tracks can have different licenses if the creator so desires.

I set it up so that new "complete song" versions can, if you want, be added to the "Exquisite Corpse (Entire Bodies)" "album." In addition, it will be easy in the future (assuming bandcamp remains stable and free) to add new "albums" with tracks from other stuff; for instance, a new "album" could be set up with all of the tracks from MMC#1 ("It's the End of the World...").

You need the username and password to upload stuff; memail me for that, or I can...just announce it here? I'm not sure why it shouldn't just be public knowledge, at least to MetaFilter members.

I have no intentions, here, of being a gatekeeper or in setting up anything that pretends to be official; this just seemed like the easiest way to do this right this very second. Let me know if there's a better way, or a more permanent way, or anything that you would find prefereable.

By: bettafish

bettafish — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:06:17 -0800

This is surreal and wonderful and exactly what MeFi is about.

By: InfidelZombie

InfidelZombie — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:02:55 -0800

That was really great-- I love the way it goes off in the middle, then comes back together in the end to mirror the feel of the begining. Very nice work.

By: blenderfish

blenderfish — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:38:25 -0800

Exquisite dead guy,
rotating in his display case,
exquisite dead guy,
swear I saw his mouth move.

By: Ian A.T.

Ian A.T. — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:37:31 -0800

Fantastic! Stylistically, it reminds me a bit of Kutiman. (Did you consider using the mother of all funk chords?)

By: Effigy2000

Effigy2000 — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:40:55 -0800

Holy crap, this is good stuff. Fun, uplifting, surreal, wonderful and rockin', all at the same time. Everyone involved should be proud of the magnificent work they've created here.

Side thought: I could see it working well in a user created level of Little Big Planet, for some reason.

By: misozaki

misozaki — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:19:13 -0800

Fun! I expected something more... er, experimental? I rarely come to the Music section but if this is the norm over here, I'm missing out on a lot!

By: Effigy2000

Effigy2000 — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 04:28:04 -0800

Another thing; no matter how many times I listen to this, I love, love, love jpdoane's guitar near the end there. Fucking fantastic. Gives me chills, I kid you not. Perfect way to end the track.

By: Karlos the Jackal

Karlos the Jackal — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:45:59 -0800

Another thing; no matter how many times I listen to this, I love, love, love jpdoane's guitar near the end there. Fucking fantastic. Gives me chills, I kid you not. Perfect way to end the track.

Yes! I knew I'd use is as the ending the first time I heard it. Somehow it reminded me of the coda of "Layla" although I'm not sure why.

By: hapax_legomenon

hapax_legomenon — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 16:12:45 -0800

Wow. Just...wow.

By: univac

univac — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:47:23 -0800

Finally! Good work, everyone, and thanks to KTJ for organizing it.

By: jpdoane

jpdoane — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 12:39:59 -0800

Karlos: Thanks for putting this all together!

Effigy2000: Thanks!!

By: sequin

sequin — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:24:36 -0800

me likey! bualadh bos láidir (mighty applause)

By: usonian

usonian — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:08:30 -0800

This is great! Any plans on doing another?

By: Karlos the Jackal

Karlos the Jackal — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:37:17 -0800

This is great! Any plans on doing another?

Not from me, at least not for a very long time.

But as far as Massive Metafilter Collaborations, there's this.

By: Navelgazer

Navelgazer — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:46:31 -0800

I don't know why it took me so long to listen to this, but I'm addicted now. As people have said, it sort of falls apart in the middle, but strangely, in a good way. Like the whole thing is so fragile that it's just barely holding itself together, and then InfidelZombie's guitar comes in, and everything from that point forward is absolutely triumphant. Great work to all. Kudos!

By: edlundart

edlundart — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 22:47:29 -0800

I'm pretty blown away. It's cohesive and there are some parts that are really fragile and sensitive, which I wouldn't really expect given the parameters. Thanks to everyone involved.