This album is a constraint-driven experiment infuenced by the French movement known as "Oulipo," which seeks to create works of art while operating under self-enforced constraints (like writing an entire novel and not using the letter "e").

How does that work in this playlist? 

1. This playlist consists of 26 songs, one for each letter of the English alphabet

2.. All songs were made in GarageBand; therefore, each song could only use loops that started with the same, single letter of the alphabet. For example, "Susie Asado" only uses loops whose name begin with the letter "Q." The loops for "Cut" could only use loops that begin with the letter "c." Etc.

3. One exception: there are no loops in GarageBand that begin with the letter "x." To accommodate the letter "x," which is the poem "She Had Some Horses" by Joy Harjo, I selected loops where the first or second word of the loop name included the letter "x," for example "Vortex Beat." I did not count common GarageBand designations such as "mix," "vox," or "FX" as available for use. The "x" had to be present in an uncommon word in the loop title.

4. Each song had to use the words of a published poem for its lyrics. In almost all cases, I selected poems and/or poets that would be immediately recognizable (or canonical) by most people familiar with western poetry. And just because I created this playlist, I used one of my own poems, "Liketown," which only uses loops that start with "a."

5. All of the voices in the songs had to be created by AI (artificial intelligence/algorithms)and be alterable (pitch, speed, style, etc.). All of the voices in the songs were created using murf.ai. Note: There are four exceptions where I used original audio of the poet reading, as they are electronic versions of analog audio recordings--Sylvia Plath, Gwendolyn Brooks, Adrienne Rich, and Lucille Clifton. Also, their voices were too good and musical not to use. (Check out Lucille Clifton.)

6. The artwork for each song had to be generated by an AI image maker. The image for each song was produced by Midjourney, where I used the full (of sometimes partial)text of each poem as the prompt to generate the images. Note: The image that represents the playlist as a whole was generated in Midjourney using lines from Eliot's "Prufrock," specifically, "I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled." Why the algorithm produced this particular image, I do not know.

7. Some of the songs also deviate from the additional text. Any deviations (other than song choruses) were generated by AI (I used "WriteSonic AI Writer"). In these instances, I entered the beginnings of the original poems (including my own)and asked WriteSonic to generate the rest. The best, and most easily recognizable example is Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."

8. The playlist had to be spread out as evenly as possible in terms of "beats per minute." There is one song in the 70's range, as well as one topping 130, and those single songs are the margins of where I am comfortable. The breakdown for this playlist's bpm is: 

71-79 bpm: 1 poem
80-89 bpm: 4 poems
90-99 bpm: 5 poems
100-110 bpm: 5 poems
111-119 bpm: 6 poems
120-129 bpm: 4 poems
130-139: 1 poem

9. Because I did all of this on my laptop, the playlist is organized by the left to right order designated by the "qwerty" keyboard.

So there you have it. A weird, musical experiment that was meant to set poety to music, operate under constraint as a condition of creation, and to produce in each instance some form of human and AI collaboration. A lot of beauty in the world in produced under constraint, so I thought I would honor that mode of creation.

for Doug Jankowski, do not go gentle, my friend

--Chuck Rybak

Alphabet Loops

Short version: Takes canonical poems and spins them into something you can dance to.

Long version: This album is a constraint-driven experiment infuenced by the French movement known as "Oulipo," which seeks to create works of art while operating under self-enforced constraints (like writing an entire novel and not using the letter "e").

How does that work in this playlist?

1. This playlist consists of 26 songs, one for each letter of the English alphabet

2.. All songs were made in GarageBand; therefore, each song could only use loops that started with the same, single letter of the alphabet. For example, "Susie Asado" only uses loops whose name begin with the letter "Q." The loops for "Cut" could only use loops that begin with the letter "c." Etc.

3. One exception: there are no loops in GarageBand that begin with the letter "x." To accommodate the letter "x," which is the poem "She Had Some Horses" by Joy Harjo, I selected loops where the first or second word of the loop name included the letter "x," for example "Vortex Beat." I did not count common GarageBand designations such as "mix," "vox," or "FX" as available for use. The "x" had to be present in an uncommon word in the loop title.

4. Each song had to use the words of a published poem for its lyrics. In almost all cases, I selected poems and/or poets that would be immediately recognizable (or canonical) by most people familiar with western poetry. And just because I created this playlist, I used one of my own poems, "Liketown," which only uses loops that start with "a."

5. All of the voices in the songs had to be created by AI (artificial intelligence/algorithms)and be alterable (pitch, speed, style, etc.). All of the voices in the songs were created using murf.ai. Note: There are four exceptions where I used original audio of the poet reading, as they are electronic versions of analog audio recordings--Sylvia Plath, Gwendolyn Brooks, Adrienne Rich, and Lucille Clifton. Also, their voices were too good and musical not to use. (Check out Lucille Clifton.)

6. The artwork for each song had to be generated by an AI image maker. The image for each song was produced by Midjourney, where I used the full (of sometimes partial)text of each poem as the prompt to generate the images. Note: The image that represents the playlist as a whole was generated in Midjourney using lines from Eliot's "Prufrock," specifically, "I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled." Why the algorithm produced this particular image, I do not know.

7. Some of the songs also deviate from the additional text. Any deviations (other than song choruses) were generated by AI (I used "WriteSonic AI Writer"). In these instances, I entered the beginnings of the original poems (including my own)and asked WriteSonic to generate the rest. The best, and most easily recognizable example is Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."

8. The playlist had to be spread out as evenly as possible in terms of "beats per minute." There is one song in the 70's range, as well as one topping 130, and those single songs are the margins of where I am comfortable. The breakdown for this playlist's bpm is:

71-79 bpm: 1 poem
80-89 bpm: 4 poems
90-99 bpm: 5 poems
100-110 bpm: 5 poems
111-119 bpm: 6 poems
120-129 bpm: 4 poems
130-139: 1 poem

9. Addendum: started doing some around word that appear in loop names, like "heart." So, yep, now there are more than 26 songs.

So there you have it. A weird, musical experiment that was meant to set poety to music, operate under constraint as a condition of creation, and to produce in each instance some form of human and AI collaboration. A lot of beauty in the world in produced under constraint, so I thought I would honor that mode of creation.

for Doug Jankowski, do not go gentle, my friend

--Chuck Rybak

Poetry You Can Dance To

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Remix (Had a little Jordan Peele "Get Out" in Mind, with some AI generated text.)

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening(Robert Frost; i Loops)

Hope is the Thing with Feathers (Emily Dickinson; E Loops)

A mix of a Langston Hughes poem. Contains samples from Louis Armstrong's classic, 'West End Blues."

Dream Variations (Langston Hughes; B Loops)

"When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be" Remix

When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be (John Keats; D Loops)

Rendition of Walt Whitman's "A Noiseless Patient Spider."

Contains two brief David Bowie samples: the word 'Blackstar' and some distorted piano notes from 'Ashes to Ashes.'

A Noiseless Patient Spider (Walt Whitman; K Loops)

A musical reading of Theodore Roethke's 'My Papa's Waltz.' Includes a sample from the brilliant Bill Evans's 'Waltz for Debbie.'

My Papa's Waltz (Theodore Roethke; W Loops)

Gertrude Stein's "Susie Asado" to a beat.

Susie Asado (Gertrude Stein; Q Loops)

Lucille Clifton's 'Homage to My Hips." The vocal is audio of her reading, with bits of her pre-reading introduction mixed in.

Homage To My Hips (Lucille Clifton; V Loops)

The Raven (Edgar Allen Poe; R Loops)

Pretty sure most people know "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas. This is the last track of this project, and given the theme of the poem, it calls for a last surge of energy.

Contains a brief sample from Rage Against the Machine's 'Killing in the Name Of."

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night (Dylan Thomas; T Loops)

Robert Creeley's poem "The Language" using only GarageBand Loops that include the word "love."

The Language (Robert Creeley; "Love" Loops)

Robert Frost's 'The Road Not Taken' with some sampled commentary.

The Road Not Taken (Never Going Back)

A rendition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sonnet "How Do I Love Thee"

How Do I Love Thee (Elizabeth Barrett Browning; "Heart" Loops)

Digging (Seamus Heaney; "Digging" or "Dig" Loops)

Emily Dickinson's 'Luck in not Chance' in a bit of a round.

Luck Is Not Chance (Emily Dickinson; "Luck" loops)

Robert Hayden's poem "Those Winter Sundays."
Uses GarageBand loops that only include the word "day."

Those Winter Sundays (Robert Hayden; "Day" Loops)

"A Psalm of Life" (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; "Life" loops)

A Psalm Of Life (H.W. Longfellow; "Life" loops)

Ozymandias (Percy Shelley; "King" Loops)

A mashup of William Carlos Williams' "The Widow's Lament in Springtime" and "This is Just to Say"

This Is Just to Say (William Carlos Williams; "North" loops)

The Snow Man (Wallace Stevens; "Cold" loops)

Allen Ginsberg's Howl, Part I (Loops begin with "h," "o," "w," or "l")

Howl

Rapcity In Blue

Just an average English professor and writer who spent a lot of my college years behind turntables in order to have a little spending money.

Sad Iron

Pinned to spotlight

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