How might a lonely robot, disconnected from the network, try to communicate with other robots? By singing in ASCII code, of course! This song was created by taking the ASCII code for the phrase “I am all alone.” as well as other variants capitalized differently, and using them as MIDI note numbers. The robot sings that encoded phrase over and over in melody and chords to any other robots that may be within hearing range.
You may be puzzled why this song does not sound sad. It doesn’t sound sad to you because you are not a robot (unless you’ve been lying every time you fill out a captcha form). If you are a robot, this song will sound very sad. To my human ears, it sounds more frantic than sad.
I briefly went down the cheese-covered path of a heavily synthesized robotic voice rapping B.B. King-inspired lyrics I rebooted this morning to a 12-bar blues progression. You should be grateful I deleted that effort early on
I wrote a more thorough description of how this piece came together on my blog at composed-bits.org/2018/05/i-am-all-alone/
