Infinite Gangnam Style

This is really awesome. They cut the entire song into one-beat segments of sound and video, and then categorized each beat by similarity to other beats in the song, and then after each beat there's a random chance that, instead of playing the next beat, the playback will transition to a different but similar-sounding beat from elsewhere in the song.<p>More info at the author's blogpost: <a href="http://musicmachinery.com/2012/10/28/infinite-gangnam-style/" rel="nofollow">http://musicmachinery.com/2012/10/28/infinite-gangnam-style/</a>

This is a very clever hack and I adore it for that, but it's also a sneaky statement about meaning, and I adore that too. It's like the literature world's cut-up/exquisite corpse work: if you can disassemble an original like this and put it back together in a way that we humans are inclined to extract meaning from, does that change the meaning that you perceive in the original work?

<a href="http://static.echonest.com/InfiniteGangnamStyle/faq.html" rel="nofollow">http://static.echonest.com/InfiniteGangnamStyle/faq.html</a><p><i>Infinite Gangnam Style - Frequently Asked Questions</i><p><i>What is this?</i><p>- Infinite Gangnam Style is a web app that dynamically generates an ever changing and never ending version of the song 'Gangnam Style' by Psy.<p><i>It never stops?</i><p>- That's right. It will play forever.<p><i>How does it work?</i><p>- We use the Echo Nest analyzer to break the song into beats. We play the song beat by beat, but at every beat there's a chance that we will jump to a different part of song that happens to sound very similar to the current beat. For beat similarity we look at pitch, timbre, loudness, duration and the position of the beat within a bar.<p><i>How come this doesn't work in my browser?</i><p>The app requires the web audio APIs which are currently best supported in Chrome and Safari<p><i>What does Psy think about this?</i><p>I don't know. I hope he doesn't mind that we are using his music and images. We hope you check out his official video and his web site too (but really you probably already have).<p><i>Who made this?</i><p>Paul Lamere at Music Hack Day Reykyavik on October 28, 2012

Infinite Gangnam Style was built this weekend at Music Hack Day Reykjavik in Iceland. Check out the full list of hacks here:<p><a href="http://wiki.musichackday.org/index.php?title=Reykjav%C3%ADk_Hacks_2012" rel="nofollow">http://wiki.musichackday.org/index.php?title=Reykjav%C3%ADk_...</a>

I would be interested to see what happens when you do this to other types of music.

Madlibs for music. Peter Langston, whom I met at Sun while he was consulting on the *7 project, did an interesting paper in infinite music [1]. We built something akin to the Casio "smart beats" feature from their all-in-one keyboard products into the application so that we'd always have musical accompaniment in the UI. Of course that was before we realized that many (most?) people insanely hate UIs that make ambient noise :-)<p>The Echonest stuff, done over the selected works of an artist could make for some interesting mashups of their work.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.langston.com/Papers/amc.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.langston.com/Papers/amc.pdf</a>

My 4 year old sat and watched and sung along with this in delight for about 30 minutes (when we turned it off, cause like, enough already...)<p>Someone should analyze <i>why</i> this song is so catchy.

I know it's a bit borderline, but thinking about how this was done was pretty interesting for me, and I thought others might appreciate it too.<p>I also like the helpful visualization below that shows which part of the song it is currently using.

No one else noticed that this doesn't work on Firefox?<p><pre><code> Sorry, this app needs advanced web audio. Your browser doesn't support it. Try the latest version of Chrome</code></pre>

Clever. I wonder if the illusion is broken if you actually speak Korean. I would definitely notice if someone chopped and reassembled random words in English.

I have a habit of listening to a single song over and over again. I am able to do so for about 3 hours. Using such randomizer technology, this time will be dramatically prolonged...

Sort of relevant to the HN crowd, MIT Gangnam Style: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJtHNEDnrnY" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJtHNEDnrnY</a>

I'm a native speaker of Korean, and the song doesn't sound bizarre.

Seems like we're going back to "Built for Internet Explorer" days.

Done with bigger squares and optimized for a tablet, this would be a compelling UI for a live DJ performance.

On Chrome 22.0.1229.94 m on Windows 7 64-bit, it freezes then crashes the tab instantly, every time I open it. I can't play it.

Love the Web Audio API! <a href="https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/audio/raw-file/tip/webaudio/specification.html" rel="nofollow">https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/audio/raw-file/tip/webaudio/specifica...</a>

Anybody else hate these jumps in commercials to fit the 30s or whatever budget they have? Always makes me wonder if they think noone would notice? Duh, of course people do! :)<p>Btw, quick bug report: doesn't work for me if open in non-active tab in Chrome 22.0.1229.94 on Mac OS X 10.8.<p>Good fun and now do an automated version where ppl can paste their youtube links. Greetings, lx

When I minimize the window, the music becomes choppy. Anyone else has this?

Imagine this being done not with one song, but with an entire library of electronic music.<p>You would have to improve the program a little bit, but this concept being realized with a vast music library?<p>Sounds quite interesting...

The audio becomes very laggy when I switch to other tab in chrome. It is fine if I switch to other application so I guess it's chrome itself throttling the background tabs.<p>Anyone else experiencing this?

So I guess this works best because most of us can't understand the lyrics so if we did this with an english song or any song the native listener understands you might end up with nonsense lyrics. It doesn't sound like it's jump around making nonsense sounds, but it might string words together that are really bizarre as it bounces around the lyrics.

I took some time and transliterated the lyrics into English, but also to match the video and what goes on in it. This is almost as fantastic as that.<p>Warning: if you watch it, the lyrics will get stuck in your head. <a href="http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10101449851143489" rel="nofollow">http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10101449851143489</a>

It bugs and you can get trapped int the 40 boxes segment loop over and over again. (the last straight)

Ah some more chrome only stuff :)

My favourite thing about this is that you can basically make your own remix by clicking about the squares below, and you get an amusing chopped up video for free.

Hm... do they have a way to automatically do this to any song?

Interesting, that site crashed safari on my iPod.

cf. "You've been watching this for 0:00:37. Have another beer!" <a href="http://lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala.com" rel="nofollow">http://lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala.com</a>