Taking the Cling out of Static Music: Bronze Format

           As I stated previously I am a huge fan of new and innovative ways to make music. There have been some unusual ideas the past few years, but this one may take the cake. I give you Bronze Format, an idea so lame it’s sure to catch on. This is a brand new (just came out last week) type of composition tool, available as an app download on mac, that allows you to “generate endless interpretations of a piece at the touch of a button…” It works by taking a song that you like and opening it in their Bronze Player. The program then applies rules, at random, to the various different streams of sound resulting in a completely different listening experience every time you listen to a track. Essentially you will never hear a song played the same way twice.

            From a technical side I can see how this could be a big deal to most. The buzz seems to hint that a lot of musicians across many genres of music have embraced this new formant. My last post dealt with a guy who took a subway map and devised a system of which musical notes could be made by crossing paths from the different train lines. It had no expectations to be anything other than what it was: just a serious of random pings and pops that isn’t considered music by 99.9% of the population. That seems very creative to me, but I’m having a hard time seeing the creativity from this. I believe this to be a creativity drainer.

Something like this would seem to take away any incentive of creating anything decent. You could essentially write any old garbage and put it though the program giving you sometimes favorable, and sometimes unfavorable, results. Luck of the draw! What does this do for the sake of art preservation? Can you imagine a world where you or I write the most beautiful song ever heard only to have it sent through an audio manipulator that changes every aspect? I would be concerned if this ever caught on enough to be featured in a program like iTunes where people can take your song and listen to it in a completely unintentional manner. A step in the wrong direction, for sure!