Ok listen up-- I had a wonderful idea today riding home from work on the train..
I was reading an article about open-source software.. about how many people many miles apart can collaborate and self-organize to create free software that is better than the same software sold by large companies.. or think about Wiki's - websites that can be updated/edited/added to by any user at any time.. for example WikiPedia.com has surpassed any other website as the web's leading encyclopedia. And it is arguably the best because it is a massive collaboration of minds, skills, and knowledge. Thats also what open source software is.. a massive collaboration of minds, skills and knowledge.
This brings me to the idea i had today on the train..
Why not employ the same grass-roots theory of the open-source, self-organizing collaboration to create music that is better than most if not all released by large companies and studios? A song is so similar to both a piece of software and a Wiki-like website and so forth.. software is a language expressed through computer operations and machine functionality.. wiki-like collaborations is language expressed in words and ideas.. Music is a language expressed through sounds and rythms..
So here is what i am proposing as an experiment: We (the masses of talented electronic producers out there and those who just do it as a passtime) engage in an open-source style project to create a song that should theoretically be awesome since there will be so many minds at work on it.. To start i'll call it Musiki in the honor of the Wiki and blogging tradition on the internet..
And what better place to start than on Myspace which has so many talented musicians, producers, composers, singers, and DJs!
In terms of the details in how to get it off the ground I am thinking about this and would love your input whether or not you plan to be an active author/editor in this project. But here are 10 things which i propose at least to start..
1. The song should be electronic in genre and be 135 bpm just to standardize things

2. To start it will be 10 min of 135 bpm space , but I am sure this 10 min length will expand as more people attach themselves to the project and compose and create more

3. The final and in-between results are free of any copyright and nobody is to profit from this project, though individual notorioty and reputation can be achieved of course

4. Anybody may freely download any portion of the song and add to it in anyway as long as that addition is consistant with the other elements already included

5. Anybody may freely edit any portion of the song in order to improve upon any element of the song. This may include something like adding a little reverb here, adding a crescendo there, inserting 40 bars of new music inspired by what just came before, creating whole new sections, adding a vocals track over certain elemtns, transitioning elementstogether, etc. etc. etc.

6. All input on this project must be original work. No use of copyrighted materials or elements will be accepted as additions or improvements to the song. Public domain is accepted of course.

7. All participants who edit or add to or otherwise change or lengthen the existing song at any stage must not delete anything prior, save the old file u downloaded and also the edited file with date/time/and participant name

8. When an edit or addition has been made the new file or piece of that file will be emailed or otherwise posted somewhere online where all other participants can review it and peer-review it. Peer-review will be a very important factor in which elements stay, which go, which edits are best, etc etc.

9. We need a song-editing format that is fairly standardized so as many participants as possible can create/edit/listen. I propose MIDI as the primary means of composition and sequencing.. and perhaps Reason as the primary raw sequencer file format since most producers I know at least have some version of reason and you can re-wire it into other software/hardware and then back again.

10. Everybody has fun. This is not about money nor egos nor fame nor any one individual. Rather the end result should be an electronic track that surpasses the work of any one individual and is the creative mesh of many many minds.

Please, please, please write me back with any ideas and input on this project as this isn't my project specifically but everyone who wants to participate.

I will probably want to set up a web site .. maybe Musiki.com or something so if anyone is webhosting at the moment that would be fantastic.

~Haze 8)