Wikimusica

Wikimusica is the name of a project by Brendan Collins for MUSI205: American Musical Mavericks. It is based on the concept of open source, which includes wiki sites and collaborative process.

Overview

The project is based around open source, a term coined to originally refer to software where the source code was available to the public. This type of software could be modified by any user to improve or change any part of it the user wanted. The term has since grown to encompass non-software processes (such as open source politics, open source journalism - or blogging - etc.). is the most famous example of the wild success of open source software.

Wikimusica takes that idea and puts it into physical shape. The concept is the same - the process of creation by consensus - except that Wikimusica is tangible, allowing users to "compose" music through physical arrangements.

There is one a possible huge glitch with wiki platforms, though - the information written is entirely up to the last user to edit the wiki. If that user wants the music to be sixteen bars of a sustained fortissimo "G" note, then so be it. However, the great thing about wikis is that they are constantly policed by good and righteous people to ensure that they stay realistic and accurate.

How to Write the Piece

Wikimusica is different than other "composed" pieces, because the music is written by potentially anyone.

The process is simple. The wiki is made of a cork board with four parallel lines of elastic string held in place by metal tacks. As well, there are four vertical elastic strings held in place the same way (metal tacks). There are a number of extra tacks, either transparent or metal, that can be used to post up the strings (any of them) in any way that the user wants.

The only caveat is that the horizontal strings must remain tacked down, but a user can move them so that they are shorter or longer. The vertical strings can be removed entirely, if the user wishes.

I placed the cork board out in Clemons Library for about three hours. I left a note saying "arrange the tacks in the cork board in any way you want, but leave the horizontal strings must always be there (but you can move them left or right). You may add or remove as many tacks as you want." That was it. I placed the board out with a "control group" arrangement of tacks, so that people would have a rough idea of what to do. The result was very different from what I'd originally put on the board.

Since almost everything about the piece is up in the air, each permutation (should) sound quite different. But the process is an organic one more often than not - the evolution of the pieces changes a little bit with each new user. I stopped in to check on it every half hour or so, and

The horizontal elastic strings are the "notes" of the music. When the piece is "complete" (i.e. when I had to notate the music), I placed homemade musical notation paper over the strings. The vertical elastic strings represent the measures, and however many tacks appear on the horizontal string in between each "measure" bar dictated the time signature (4/4, 3/4, etc.).

The dynamics of the piece were dictated by the order of tacks on each horizontal string. To do so, I designated that each transparent tack meant the dynamics shifted down one level - forte to mezzo forte, piano to pianissimo, and so forth. The metal tack shifts the volume up one level. Each piece starts out automatically at mezzo piano, for simplicity's sake.

As for the tempo, I tied it directly to the length of the horizontal strings. Unfortunately, nobody touched the horizontal string length, so all four lines of music are at the same tempo (about 80 or 90 bpm, with the quarter note getting the beat).

As for rests - they are present if there were no tacks between a set of two vertical strings. Stretches of notes were given legato bars if the notes continue to move up or down in pitch, and aren't the first note in a stretch to have changed "direction."

The time signature was designated by distance between the notes. I tended to give the quarter note the beat, just for simplicity. As for the tacks themselves, ideally I wanted like 10 different kinds of tacks (to represent 10 different musical possibilities), but Charlottesville is seriously lacking in its tack variety. I took some creative license with the notation - for instance, the final note of the piece has an accent (>) on it just to make the ending sound better. After all, aren't I part of the collaborative process too?

Instrumentation

Since the piece is a collaborative effort, it seems only right to have the instrumentation be collaborative as well. So, I propose that the piece be played with a wide variety of instruments, both mainstream and obscure - I'm thinking from trumpet to theremin. Orchestra size would be appropriate, like 80 instruments or so. Or, what you could do is have different instruments play different notes. So the really high stuff could be covered by the theremin, and the incredibly low bass could be electric bass or something.

The Music

I've attached it, in the wax paper bag from Kinko's. The different strips should be arranged from Lines 1 to 4, descending. I've also included the cork board itself, still with the original piece in place.

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See Also

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