Yes, Halfbakers, it is time for yet another Headcleaner idea. This one concerns something else I've observed and dubbed the personality-specific carrier sequence. No, I'm not sure why I call it this, when I might as well call it good voodoo. Here's the story first, and then the Idea.
I used to be
a rather popular and innovative DJ for a local teen club, where I designed a new system for music delivery involving a computer, standard studio audio gear, phase inverters, modulators, signal generators, and a rather powerful amplifier. At the time, I simply wanted complete control over every aspect of the sound - I did not anticipate the effects I would later become interested in.
As my music collection grew with the radio syndication service CDs that we received every month, I was also busy collecting music for my personal tastes. I began to notice a certain correlation in the songs I liked. All of these songs contained an element that I could not quantify, but dubbed a "carrier", after the radio term.
As I began to experiment with cross-generated playlists containing my personal favorites and the favorites of the patrons, I noticed that some of the most well-received pop songs were related at a musical level, depending on the type of audience that liked them. Could this be my carrier phenomenon?
I later determined that the specific carrier that attracted me consisted of the sub-bass area surrounding 22 hertz and harmonic multiples of this area, with sustain exceeding 700 ms and complex sequential repetition. The building housing the club happened to resonate around 26 hertz and along its even harmonics. The songs most requested had an average sub-bass sequence of 24-30 hertz, sustain around 500 ms, simplified sequential repetition.
I began to have the most harebrained idea regarding the music and the resonance of the building, so I spent 5 hours digging through my music library with an oscilloscope connected across my speaker leads set to a 52 hertz refresh rate. I identified several songs of varying genres that contained the appropriate frequencies and sequences to please the majority of the patrons. (I loved that job.)
To make a long story shorter, I deployed the playlist the next Friday night, with 1200 watts going exclusively to frequencies below 30 hertz. For the rest of the songs, I very slightly amplitude-modulated the output with the 26 hertz frequency, pulsed at 500 ms with a repetitive 50% on-off sequence. The patrons became so excited by midway through the night that a riot nearly broke out on the dance floor. I observed manic behavior, a dramatic increase in flirting and overt sexual behaviors, and at least one underage female baring her breasts.
It occurred to me later as I watched the Handycam footage of the response that some people simply weren't feeling it. I came to the later realization that there were "different strokes for different folks" - some people had a certain sequence they responded to. I could also not adequately explain the violent and sexual responses, surely it can't be because of bass alone, can it?
Apparently not. The music that best fit the profile mostly consisted of heavy and obscene rap music, laced with violent and sexual themes. That's when something clicked in my head. I could indeed call this a personality-specific carrier sequence, because it is making people more suggestible to lyrics!
Again using myself as a guinea pig, I saw this to be true. Sad lyrics played over music with this sequence made me sad, and did not do the same in the songs they came from. Same for happy lyrics.
Therefore, my proposal is a computer program that plays different sequences and frequencies, and, by monitoring your preferences using a slick and user-friendly AI (is this a WIBNI?), determines the sequence for maximum enjoyment. You can then have the computer program dissect songs you like and assemble them with this new sequence, in the form of drums/bassline/whatever. This process of reassembly is already being developed for commercial use, but so far nothing has been done to enable the end-user to create the perfect songs for themselves using voodoo musical carrier science. Alternatively, this could be used to create music with lyrics that you want to have affect you, e.g., music that helps you stop smoking or eliminate that pesky urge to murder prostitutes/use custard in sex acts/rob liquor stores.
This could also be used by musicians to create great hits. The possibilities are endless!