the timboucher experience

I have been trying for the past week or so to develop a repetoire of songs that I know all the lyrics, guitar chords and melodies for which I can perform on command. Putting myself into the mindset to absorb all of that information - and more importantly to make it all stick - has necessitated that I develop a certain workflow utilizing multiple aspects of the internet.

It goes something like this:

1. I hear or randomly think of some song I think might be cool to play, to know, or to be associated with.
2. I look up the title of that song (without quotes) in Google, followed by the keyword “chords”.
3. I do a dry run through the piece without hearing it first. This is develop recall for melodies and rhythms you’ve heard hundreds of times. After a while of exercising this skills, it becomes much easier to go back and remember how these things go.
4. Then I go to YouTube, which is usually the fastest info source for an “official” version of the tune I’m trying to learn. I’ll listen to it at least once all the way through, and may break it down into sections to listen to over and over again. Then I go back and try the piece again, and will flip back and forth between these while I’m learning it.
5. At the end of that process, I will do one of two things. I will go back and start the process all over again with a new song, or I will commence to recording and publishing a cover version of me doing that song on YouTube - though this happens less frequently.

As to what songs I pick and how often I practice them, I’m being totally haphazard about it: whatever springs to mind, whatever seems to fit. I’ll try out a song, and if I think of it again, I’ll come back and practice it again. If it doesn’t come to mind again, I just let it go.

As a result though, about a core eight or so keep recurring at this point. My competency with them, and my memory for the chords and lyrics are improving along with my performance. Experientially, every time I practice one of these songs (until I make the leap to off-book), I pull up the video and chords/lyrics page for the song.

It would be nice if there were a way of facilitating this from a bunch of different directions. From software which works like a karaoke machine and displays the line of lyric I’m up to, along with chord changes mapped to a customizable tempo. Showing chord fingerings would be cool as well. If this information could all be automatically calculated off of an audio file or song title or something - and everything would work behind the scenes with retrieving files and info, that would be awesome.

Additionally, I’d like to be able to have my web browsing experience somehow sort of “remember” that I have these like 8-12 songs that I’m messing with, and have files or URLs associated with them clustered together in little bundles at the ready, so I can seamlessly switch gears into that activity.

This would help me in my web writing as well, because I could have on-going focal points (keyword-based to start), which I add to, subtract from, modulate and connect to other fragments. Information genetics. Something like that. A little petri dish I can experiment in. But nothing hierarchical or linear. Just connectors and clouds and easy ways to re-arrange things.

That sort of nether-realm of information would be almost like a “field of actualization” for various projects I’m working on. Like certain files or subject matters would be “closer” to my internet persona than others at a certain point on the timelines. The information aura which would then follow me would be both productive and consumptive.

But I get to decide what appears in this field, and how I interact with it. Should be amenable to any system or methodology of interface. Must be completely flexible at even the most base layer.

• you look good wearing my future
• Angelic Software Intelligences & Distributed Agencies
• Another Simple Wex Example #SEO
• JV Meat Market
• BitTorrent As Business Model