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Challenge: Random Article Into A Composition


ChristianPerrotta

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Well, here's the thing. Go to Wikipedia's main page "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page". Then, on the left column, click on "Random article". Check the name of the article. This title will generate your musical material. Follow these steps:

 

1) From the title, get all the letters that have equivalents in our musical system (C = do; D = re; E = mi etc.)
  Ex1: Article title: "Del Hall". I'll get: D, E, H (if adopting german system), A.

  Ex2: Article title: "Last Days of Humanity". I'll take "A, D, A, F, H, A".

 

2) Each note will have the same length: one beat. If we have letters that do not correspond to any notes, we must add the quantity of letters in beats to the previous musical note. Spaces mean pause.

  Ex1: "Dell Hall" > D, E, H, A > D (1 beat), E (1 beat + 2 beats, due to the "L", "L" after it), pause (1 beat), H (1 beat), A (1 beat + 2 beats, due to the "L", "L").

So, having: D1, E3, Pause1, H1, A3 (the number is the duration).

 

Ex2: "Last Days of Humanity" > "A, D, A, F, H, A".

The first letter has no musical note, so it'll be a pause of 1 beat.

Pause1, A3, D1, A4, F1, H3, A4.

 

3) Use the result as your theme/motive/subject and make a musical composition from it. You can also divide all the note values, so that you'll not have beat > beat > beat all the time, but beat > off-beat > beat > off-beat.

 

4) If there's a number in the article title, interpret it as an interval from the previous note.

 

5) If there's any kind of diacritics on a letter, consider it an accidental (chose it freely).

 

6) Read the whole article and try to make it's content be the main idea of the composition. It'd be also nice to put the compositions name after the article.

 

7) On the bottom of the page, there's an "Uptade date" (like: This page was last modified on 3 February 2013 at 15:50.). Try to get the time signature(s) from this line, freely! (ex: 3 February = 3/2; 2013 = after 20 bars, I'll change it into 13/8; at 15:50 = the tempo will be "155 bpm"). Be creative.

 

There are no deadlines or prizes or winners. This is just a fun/algorithmic way of composing music when run out material!

 

If you have enough spare time ti try this, share with us the precedures you've taken on each step^^

 

Anyone want to give it a try? :D

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