Friday, February 18, 2011

How to Find the Song of Your Life

It's been ages since I've written a blog. If you're a fan of my blogs, then I'm sorry for my absence, but motivation has been scarce as of late. Anyway, I've decided to write an entry about this 'formula' that I concocted to find the song of your life; the song that you were born to listen to. The truth is, the song you end up with doesn't define your life, but it's fun to pretend that it does.

I was recently browsing Wikipedia, and after frequently ending up on disambiguation pages, I thought to myself "Wow; there are so many album pages on Wikipedia, even really obscure albums that belong to niche genres." This gave me an idea. I would begin on a particular year, then find an album that was released in that year, and then randomly pick a song from that album. All of this would be decided by chance, and the song that fate selects for me would become the song of my life.

Things you will need to carry out this formula: 
* This website: http://www.psychicscience.org/random.aspx
* A die (dice) with letters instead of dots, or this website: http://letterdice.speedymarks.com/
* Wikipedia.

STEP 1:
Go to the website http://www.psychicscience.org/random.aspx. You need to generate 1 random integer between 19 and 20 in order to decide whether the album comes from the 20th or 21st century. Make sure the preference is set to 'Open Sequence'.  Press 'GO' when done (duh!).
STEP 2:
Use the same website to generate 1 random integer between 0 and 99. This will determine the final two numbers in your year. Depending on whether you were given a year in the 20th or 21st century, you may have to submit your search a few times to find a year where Wikipedia determines that albums were released. E.g. There is no Wikipedia category for '1933 albums', and we aren't in the year 2022 yet.

STEP 3:
Now that you've determined the year that your album/song was released, you need to use Wikipedia to narrow down the album that the song of your life comes from. For the sake of this blog entry, let's just say your year is 1986. Start at this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Albums_by_year and click on '1986 albums'. Here's where your letter die becomes handy. Roll the die. Whatever letter you get is the first letter of your album. Let's just say you roll a 'C'. The song of your life will come from an album that begins with 'C', and was released in 1986. Keep rolling the die to narrow down the spelling of your album title. Let's just say the second letter you roll is an 'R', and the third letter you roll is an 'O'. In this case, you are left with only one album - Crowded House by Crowded House. Sorry, couldn't help but use my favourite band for the example. For albums that begin with a numeral, e.g. 3 Doors Down by 3 Doors Down, you can either discard them completely (like I did, admittedly), or spell out the numeral as a word, e.g. three instead of 3 (duh!). Once your album has been spelled out, click on it.

STEP 4:
Finally, to discover the song of your life, you'll need to return to the website that you began with (http://www.psychicscience.org/random.aspx). Crowded House features 11 tracks, so I would generate 1 integer between 1 and 11. Hence, 1 integer between 1 and [final track number], for whatever album fate provides you with. The generated number is then corresponded with the album's track listing to reveal the song of your life!

For those interested, the song of my life is Pieces of Quiet by Khanate, from their self-titled album. Trust me to be given a song that goes for 13 minutes and 24 seconds! I listened to it all, and I hate it. It belongs to the 'drone metal' genre. Here are the lyrics to the song:

Under a bed, a leg and a saw, red teeth gnaw
No more whine, no more whine, quiet time
No more whine
Metal teeth red, red teeth gnaw, leg and saw
Under a bed, a leg and a saw, red teeth gnaw
Silence, while I strip - bones (gnaw, so quiet)
Dark - and quiet, we go...into quiet time
No more whine
...your bones...

THOSE ARE THE ONLY LYRICS IN A SONG THAT GOES FOR 13:24!!!!!!!

Here is the complete song:


Well, I hope you enjoy discovering the song of your life. If you're bothered, share this formula with your family and friends. Perhaps you could make a playlist of the songs that your friends ended up with. Be creative! 

Regards,
Steven