Participatory Music

I really had to think hard about the title for this one, but I think "Participatory Music" really captures the essence of this little project.

In Bb 2.0 is a project that explains itself, but here's the idea: Invite people to submit a video of themselves playing music in Bb, but with no set tempo or groove. Provide a backbone idea of what to play, but let the submissions take their own course. The end result is a collection of videos with mostly random notes being played....yet they all strangely fit together nicely. ...But at this point, it's just the "typical" web-produced music thing. Which is itself neat, but this takes it one step further...

The truly amazing part of this is that the listener can choose to begin, stop, skip, change the volume etc. of each video at their own will. But because of the style of music and the type of submissions that have been made, the "listener mix" always works! I've played around with making specific trumpet notes come in at my own will. This type of work is really quite inspiring.

I've seen "listener mix" type of websites before, but those ones are essentially just a collection of on/off button for different instruments in the track. In those websites, the tempo and groove remain the same, so the song is really just the same thing with different volume levels. This project however, really lets you move around the different instruments at will...yet it will always work. Awesome.

To check it out yourself, go to their website here . Unless you have a kickass computer and high-speed internet, I would suggest closing all your windows before though, because you're about to load 12+ youtube videos at once.

Enjoy!

(Thanks to Brian for the link)