THE UNSUNG MACHINE

I was looking for a meaningful way to incorporate language into music that bypassed the convention of hearing words being said or sung, so I built The Unsung Machine.

The Unsung Machine is an experimental interface that introduces aleatoric events into music through the act of entering words on the device.

The innumerable combination of letters provide an endless randomisation of musical parameters, and in this way the machine becomes a kind of co-producer, sitting between me and the synthesisers.

This demonstration video explains in detail how the machine works, and there are example videos using Dot Allison’s lyrics here and Kathryn Joseph’s lyrics here. You can also read an article about the machine here in Electronic Sound magazine.

For this project I’m collecting ‘unsung’ written material with a view to creating musical outcomes. I want give people the opportunity to submit short lines of poetry, prose or lyrics, but recognising that not everyone is a writer or lyricist, there is also an option to submit secrets. By embedding secrets into the music I’ll explore the alternate meaning of the word ‘unsung’.

I’ll read all the submissions and the ones that resonate with me the most will then be fed into the machine and become part of the music making process. I’ll be making videos of my progress and posting it to my YouTube channel. Anyone is welcome to take part in either or both projects. Just click on the buttons below and you’ll be taken to a webpage with more information and a simple submission form.

See how the machine works in this video…

*Massive thanks to Simon Kirby for coding up The Unsung Machine, as well as his valuable input in to the behaviour of the machine. He makes incredible art and music that you can check out here.