Autocomplete Music

Use a search engine’s autocomplete function to produce instructions for a piece of music.

For instance:

Make music with strangers
Make music with balls
Make music with shapes
Make music with python
Make music with your mind
It sounds like your cable is unplugged
It sounds like fun
It sounds like something is in my ear
It sounds like I’m underwater
It sounds like Deadmau5
It sounds like meaning
Tune to drop D
Tune to E!
Tune to open G
Tune to win

Play a note online
Play a note on guitar
Play a note in C#
Keep going until you hit the spot
Keep going until we stop
Keep going until your hat floats
Make a sound like a dove
Make a sound like a cat
Make a sound like a dying giraffe
Make a sound like James Brown

1 .

One person is to play all the numbers in the day of their birth followed
by all the numbers corresponding to every subsequent birthday
up to the present time.

The other person is to play the sound of the wind on the day they
first fell in love.

2 .

One person is to play with their eyes closed and in a bad mood.
The other person is to play with their eyes open and in a sensitive,
forgiving mood.

3 .

One person knows the way.
The other does not.

4 .

One person is to play in a situation which is physically awkward
for them. The space may be very cramped, there may be weights
on their arms or items obstructing parts of their instrument, or any
number of other such encumbrances.
The other person is to play on drugs.

5 .

One person is to play lying down.
The other person is to play running on the spot.

Start a Band

Start a band which documents each of its performances meticulously
but never records in a studio.
Start a band which only performs its songs after turning up separately
at open-mic or karaoke events and pretending not to know
each other.
Start a band one of the permanent members of which is not a
musician but an expert at something else, say, a butcher, a baker,
a candlestick maker. And their part in the group’s performances
is simply to slice meat, bake bread, or make candlesticks, as their
profession dictates.
Start a band which writes and performs catchy dance-pop songs
without using tonality, nor any simple or compound time signatures.
Start a band which takes its influence exclusively from the very newest
and most modern sounding music of which you are aware, and
the very oldest and most traditional sounding. Try to erase any trace
of anything that happened in between.
Start a band which instead of smashing their instruments at the end
of each performance, mends other people’s.

Start a band in which all of the music is pre-recorded before the
performance. Each recorded instrument is fed to a different loudspeaker
and each loudspeaker is mounted on a different airborne
remote control device (like a remote control helicopter, for instance).
A given ‘live’ performance, then, will consist of the various members
of the group steering one of these airborne speakers each
around the performance space, above the heads of the audience.
Start a band in which all the music is generated by algorithms programmed
into a computer and all the lyrics are similarly generated
using a process based around Markov chains drawing from a database
of well-known popular songs. Play these songs live as though
they expressed your deepest and most heartfelt emotions.
Start a band which has not just a story, some loose background
narrative which establishes who the members are, where they come
from, how they met, and so on; but a fully-worked out plot. Every
concert, every interview, every public appearance by the band is
to follow a carefully worked out script (with, inevitably, room for
improvisation – so long as it doesn’t alter the basic structure of
the story). You might consider following a classic three-act structure
as per the screenwriting textbooks of Syd Field, Robert McKee,
etc. There should be exposition, plot points, conflict, and finally a
resolution. The end of the group should be known and decided upon
in advance, but not revealed to the audience (you wouldn’t want
to spoil the plot).
Start a band which performs only cover songs by an artist from the
past who does not exist and never has existed. Make whatever steps
you can towards the falsification of history with the aim of bringing
this fictional artist, retrospectively, into existence.
Start a band which auctions the copyright to their own songs at the
end of each performance.
Start a band which only ever plays one song.
Start a band which only ever plays one note.

Excerpted from Music in Text, by Bobby Barry, 2014. Published by Bläck Charm Nostalgi Vassa Tänder.