Related link: http://www.zzz.ch/
Zzz Annoying Groove is aptly named. This Mac dashboard widget does nothing but play an irritating electric bass loop until you quit it or click the info button—and it has a seemingly endless supply of grooves. (You can download it here.)
Because the entire widget is only 44KB, I wondered where all that noise was coming from. Was it a Mod file? So I peeked inside the file by Control-clicking on it and selecting “Show Package Contents” from the pop-up menu. It turns out the audio files are actually pulled from the author’s site, www.zzz.ch, with the line
<embed id="zzzGroove" src="http://www.zzz.ch/zomatix/snd/random_embed.php"
type="text/html">.
The PHP script on that page returns the more detailed embedding code
<embed id='zzzGroove' src='http://www.zzz.ch/zomatix/snd/zom357.aiff'
type='audio/mp3' controller='true' autoplay=true loop=true height='20' width='17'>
...where the random number in the AIFF file name refers to one of hundreds of audio files. (Refresh the page to hear a new file.)
Exploring the site further, I read that the author is a 30-something physician named Tristan Zand who creates his bass loops with a Lexicon JamMan. What really grabbed me was his description of how the loops came to be: As an experiment, he decided to record a new improvised bass groove every day for a whole year. “It was real fun, a great exercise, and something I’m happy I have done,” Zand reports. You can access all 364 grooves from the previous link, or buy a CD with higher-quality files.
Inspired by the daily grooving, Zand decided to try recording brief improvised songs every day for half a year—and he did it, as you can hear on this page. They’re also available on CD.
I am just awed by his commitment to daily creativity, even if the results are sometimes annoying. It reminds me of what BT said when I asked him how he was able to stay focused: “I feel like a really important part of the creative process is follow-through. If you let yourself off the hook, it deters you from finishing anything. So the most important thing in my life in terms of creativity is finishing absolutely everything.” (If you have an Amazon account, you can read the whole interview passage here.)
Hmm. I realize I started this blog three months ago. Progress!
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Read More Entries by David Battino.
Programmer Zand wrote to tell me he’s cooked up another groove widget: Drilx-o-matic. He says it’s based on technoid works from 2000 and 2001, and “hopefully a little less annoying.” Definitely! Lots of throaty, morphing sounds in the grooves I heard.
If you want a rock sound instead, check out the Daily Guitar Jam widget. The widget’s JavaScript code contains an interesting function that makes it pulse in tempo.