Why not? Making music is a unique experience. Whether you are an accomplished composer, dj, or songwriter OR you simply like to sing in the shower (watch the whole thing, it’s worth it) or showcase your desk drumming skills, hearing and experiencing something you have created is profoundly personal. Even just remixing other people’s music or – one of my favorites – singing karaoke…it forces you to listen to music in a new way: not passively. It forces your brain to process music in a different way. In a more stimulating way.
Although primarily an auditory experience, adding other sensory elements to the equation can complement or completely change how you experience music. Adding a visual element certainly enhances your perception of a song compared to the song by itself – Disney’s Fantasia comes to mind as an early (1940) example of the power of the audio-visual experience. Think of the pulsing lights at a rave or concert and how they can entirely change how a song affects you (unless of course you are already in an altered state of mind for other reasons).
Similarly, music can affect the visual experience significantly. Imagine if you remove the soundtrack for a battle scene in Gladiator, for example, and replace it with, say, a John Mayer song? Suddenly it’ll seem like a farce. The auditory element accompanying the visual can completely invalidate the intended mood of the scene. Conversely, sometimes the juxtaposition of two unlikely things makes for an even more unique experience. And therein lies the beauty of experimentation.
Here at MixMatchMusic, we want people to explore and push the boundaries of how music is created and experienced. We want people to not only watch as the music evolves, but to be a part of the (r)evolution. The following is a great example of some smart people thinking outside the box and tapping into the multi-facetedness of a musical experience. And this is just something that a couple of kids at Berkeley put together for a class project. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you…
The Bubblegum Sequencer:
For a full explanation of how this works, click here. Amazingly, because “the output is generated in the form of MIDI events, the Bubblegum Sequencer can be used to control any kind of audio hardware or software”. And it’s in real time.
