1: It’s how we acquire!
Foresight was not one of Regio Boniti’s faculties, though if you were to tell him that, you’d be going toe to toe. A neglectful man, who often lost himself in recreation. He gave up on his studies nearly a week into his first semester. He’d just as well knock back a six then go to class, but if you rang him on it, you’d hear all sorts of sass. He makes up his mind in a sort of way,
‘Look, I read a book today! Who can say I wasn’t productive? Besides, some of the teachers are terribly boring!’ Regio slips a nugget into his classmates’ pocket in exchange for a 20$ bill. They smile at each other and part ways. Walking towards the cafeteria, he sees Carl, a science student, waving and hand-signalling him from far down the hall. Carl and Regio have known each other since grad year; in fact, Carl hooked Regio up with a date one time. They were mutual. They approach;
‘Hey dude, I need a 7, can you help me, like, asap?
‘I have to go back to my car. I can meet you again in 10 minutes.’ Regio confirmed
‘Here, take the money and come to room 306, just wave at me from the door, I’ll leave my lab.’
Regio shook on it and left his word with Carl. He heads back to his car. Regio liked to stay stocked, but carrying too much would get him busted. This was the plan: stay in school, deal drugs. The only way Regio was going to get the gears going on his next project, DJing, was by bringing in the stacks! He was living the life.
After grabbing the seven, Regio texts his girl Sophie, Be home in 1 hour. It was a short day for Regio, he thinks to himself while walking up the stairwell. Less than 3 hours, and he sold out. He approaches the lab and sees not a single person there. Curiously enough, Regio opens the door and takes two steps into the room. He briskly inhales a lemon scent, the smell of the floor cleaner. He steps past the mop bucket and towards the center of the room, where he finds a presentation table, overseeing a bunch of disc-shaped objects. The room had a high-tech sort of feel, with an incompleteness in design. ‘Carl was nowhere,’ Regio thought. He looks at the discs, and there are several of them on the table; they all appear incomplete or unassembled, except for one. There is a pamphlet beside it. The Rift ~Musicians User Manual. ‘This is some music hardware! Neat! What does it do?’ He pondered..
He seemingly pressed the power button on the top of the disc, as an image screen lit up on the surface. ‘Ah! A touch interface!’ Regio chooses a preselect, and the disc starts playing a rock tune; he can’t help but bend his knees and sway. If only he could light a doobie, what an awesome tune!
Feeling weary of the time passing and his missed rendezvous, Regio cautiously puts down the technology and heads back to the exit. He gets to the door, and he stops… he turns around and walks back to these disc-shaped objects and picks them up again. He holds it up before him. It was called The Rift. He drops his backpack to the ground, ‘I am just going to borrow this, he says to himself. He slips the Rift in with his other gear and heads out. Things always worked out for Regio, at least in his own way. Besides, he had a productive day. He thinks to himself as he walks back to his car ‘I wonder what happened to Carl. Dude's going to have to wait for sure now. Sophie will get mad; I need to lie to her because I have to bring this back. Hmmm… maybe I will bring it back. For now, let's see what it can do.’ He connects with the passenger side in his Civic, and he starts toggling through menu features of the Rift, where he finds the composition section and draft pages for lyrics, vocal rendering, and instrument parts. The Rift, while becoming apparent to Regio, was no more a DJ Tool than it was sound production equipment. He learned that with it, you could assemble drum parts, piano, guitar, bass, and a notable feature in its design: you can program your book of rhyme. All in the virtual theatre. The hardware has inherent capabilities to harmonize and time the melodic scale with verse and provide original music, soundtracks, and scores to boast. Regio was guessing what to do. He made up a rhyme on the spot;
This is the YO Train, we are in… the brain!
This will be your pain! Get ma game?!
No one is ever going to care what he named the song. Sitting in his car, Regio is bopping and improvising rap off the templates when a group of students make a passing observation of him. He turns stale in his seat. Closing up the program, he hops over into the driver’s seat, turns the ignition, then steers it home for the day.
2: A Missing Project
An hour later, Dr. Hernes, a musical technology teacher at the college, returns to his classroom 206 with a cowbell, set to lecture an easily impressed group. He lectures them satisfyingly, but he is dimly aware that not too long ago, he had been squandered by a young college rebel. And even if he were aware, should Regio be worried?
‘And that concludes our musical presentation for today, students! Have a great evening! And stay safe!’ Dr. Hernes picks up a completed Rift from the presentation table. That’s odd. He thinks to himself. Where is the other?
3: The Plan
Sophie really dug the disc thing. Regio smiles to himself, proud of his newly acquired possession. She even began to program some of her own poetry into the disc. They plugged the Rift into an audio interface, and with a microphone, Sophie began reciting her rhymes.
‘I smell the rain, I tell you my friend, and this love undone does move me
In ampleness, and forever bliss, I am pained by what is moving
If my mind were to miss, a connectedness
Then we shall part
Though if I count you in, don’t call me out, I’d regret that you might use me!’
She was actually pretty good. Regio dated her for a year and never knew much about her poetry, mind you, his interest was aside. It was a shame that with so much in common, they never tried to use their skills together before, to create original compositions. The rift really bridged a gap in their design as musicians. It was like their higher brain. Regio selected bongos, blues guitar, surfer rock drum beat; clicked save, and named the track ‘the _ desperation _ of _ a _ madman’. ‘This is so easy to use!’ Regio snarled. He hit play, and now they were listening to mainstream music of their own design.
‘This is really amazing! How’d you get a black chick to sing my lyrics?’ Sophie was in awe of the power and output of this disc-shaped technology. ‘It’s in the interface… right here, select vocalist style…’ Regio led her on; they were both amused and high. They uploaded their track to soundcloud.com, and it duly caused some stir.
‘Let’s do another track, something more club-like, a good house track. Do you have any lyrics, Sophie?’ One song was not enough for Regio; the user design and built-in support features of the Rift were upping the game tremendously, he felt like he had some raw creation power, and he wanted to exercise it. ‘I want something gripping!’
‘I’ll take a look. House, you say?’ Sophie sweeps past several pages and comes to a stop on some strange artwork, accompanied by lyrics to the side. ‘Here we go, I wrote this around the time I was into clubbing, it was just after grad, right before we met, I even drew this picture I wanted as a tattoo. I actually stopped writing at that point too…’ Sophie drifts for a few seconds ‘Maybe you’ll like this, what kind of melody do you have in mind?’
Regio stares at her mindlessly; he is waiting for the lyrics.
‘Ok… play a beat so I can sing along to something,’ she glamours.
Regio gets the disc going, and they start to jam, weaving together a new track for their own delight and amusement. 20 minutes later, and they have the file saved, titled, and uploaded to Bandcamp. It hasn't even been another 20 minutes since the two have worked towards their newest creation, when their Bandcamp page sends them a notification.
‘Cool, we already made 50 digital sales in 25 minutes!!’ Regio was loving the breakthrough he was on, but his mind kept wandering. Musical systems never came to him, and now they never had to. This technology, the rift, held answers; it knew secrets. It was superior to Regio, and therefore… he wanted no one to know about it. Could the lyrics save him from universal criticism if anyone discovered the truth about his music-making, but then again, that would just be his other secret. If anyone knew, would any of the music belong to Regio Bonito at the end of the day? Will he even be known as the guy who pressed play? He needed something to happen. And not a second later as he ponders this, Sophie blurts out,
’Honey! Reg, babe, I got us a gig at a house party this weekend in TO. You down?’
‘Yeah, I’m down! This is how we are going to make it! Good job taking the initiative!’
4: A New Idea
‘Hahahah… Hahahahah’
‘What’s so funny?’ asks the lab assistant
‘Well… let’s just say that if I’ve been ripped off… they’ll pay!’ responds Dr. Hernes
‘Oh! You’ve found out who took your life’s work?’
‘No. But I encoded the programming so I know the harmonic resonance of the A.I. frequency it registers in, so with this new algorithm I have made, I can track all the streaming platform services for any songs that register in the same frequency as the Rift.’
While edgy, Dr. Hernes was established in musical software programming; he was on the brink of some unheard-of gadgets. The Rift auto-arranges the orchestra to accompany the lyrics, and Dr. Hernes knew the real beauty was in its ability to improvise according to the lyrics. The user actually did nothing but decide on preselects, and the song built itself off some clever cursive A.I., given there was a Poet to get the whole thing going in the first place.
‘What if someone stole it, but doesn’t intend to use it?’ the lab assistant asked
‘That wouldn’t be why they took it! Trust me on this… Now we wait… Dr. Hernes and his colleague discuss the nature of the incident as the search results close down.
‘How long will this take?’ The assistant raised attention. They stare at the progress bar on the computer screen for an eternity ~it just barely hit 1%.
‘Maybe if I narrow it to new releases… I only lost it a few days ago.’
The status comes up red hot within a minute. Three new tracks uploaded; one a remix, all by DJ Drugzilla.
5: The Highlife
Regio and Sophie continued to hit it off on the rift. They showed their new songs off and began to get the attention of other DJs and producers. Friday approached fast, and much like they planned, they were stoked to perform at the house party. Sophie, however, made up her mind that she wanted to do things differently. ‘Reg. If you don’t mind… I’d like to personally sing my lyrics this evening. I don’t want to be dancing by your side while you hit buttons. I wrote these songs; I want more involvement.’ Sophie looked square right into Regio’s eye. She could cry, but only if he said something to her.
‘Sure.’ He replied. He couldn’t tell her no. Besides, it swept the trail behind them on their origin, giving them more stage presence. ‘That would be perfect, actually! I am glad you want to take the spotlight!’
‘Thanks, Reg! Let’s do the two songs we wrote, then improvise for the rest of the night.’
‘Uhh…. Improvise… no!’ We do two songs, then go home! Simple and sweet!’
‘What!’ she replied, ‘Don’t you want to show off your gadget? That is how we make fame! By showing people our construction process!’
‘Maybe for you, with your lyrics…’ Regio couldn’t tell her, at least not yet. ‘But I am keeping my creative processes to myself… and I certainly didn’t bring the Rift with me this evening to show it off. In fact, I didn’t bring it at all. I loaded our tracks onto an MP3 player, and I am simply going to hit the play button and dance like a robot… Ok? We clear?’
Sophie snapped on Regio. ‘What?! How could you?! You said you would let me sing tonight?? What about the pre-recorded voices on the MP3 file?’ Sophie was in hysteria
‘Well, wait… well yeah…sorry. I just can’t have anyone find out about the Rift. It’s not mine…’ Regio reaches over to hold Sophie’s hand.
‘WHY! You used someone for their genius, and you used my poetry… You can keep the money you made from our Bandcamp page. I knew you were a hack, and I went behind your back and got signed with a DJ from the Big Apple! How do you think this whole gig even happened? Also! I began to write again! And I don’t need you!’ Sophie storms out with her Montreal sass… maybe she would make it in New York, but this left Regio with a lot of angst. He loved her, and needed her…
Nonetheless, he went on. Regio pressed the play button that evening, and then he danced for a bit. When he got home, he didn’t expect he’d have a visitor.
6: Now we part!
When Regio returns to his home, his door is wide open. Regio scales the steps, and as he enters, he hears a clutter and some conversation.
‘Who are you? I am going to call the police!’ Regio yelled into the hallway.
‘Or maybe it is I!? Who should call the police on you!? This is stolen property! My Property! The man is clearly holding the disc. ‘I want you to take down your compositions! You used my algorithm…. Hah, you know what! See how far you get.’ The professor pincers him with loathing, and then slams the apartment door, taking off in the car with the rift, and Regio couldn’t deliberate or apologize… or even get his name… Guy must be busy, Regio Bonito thought.
7: Product of Experience
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