Inventions I Want #1: The Song Longer

Fifteen or twenty years ago I thought of the idea of combining a cash machine with a gas pump so that you don’t have to go inside to pay. Now such hybrid machines are everywhere.

Here’s another invention I want: I call it, The Song Longer.

You know how there are some songs that are just too good to be so short? There are even some parts of songs that are too good to be so short. Well, the song longer is meant to remedy that problem. Here’s how it works: You load a song into your computer and then The Song Longer makes it . . . longer. It does this in a number of ways:

1. Basic mode: If you simply want the song as a whole longer, it identifies the bridge of the song (the middle part between the intro and the outro) and repeats it as many times as you desire.

2. Advanced mode: After the user identifies particular parts of the bridge for special emphasis, lengthens the song by resequencing these segments in a more complex manner (i.e., so the middle of the song isn’t just played twice through).

3. Superadvanced mode: Like advanced mode, except The Song Longer modulates the pitch and speed of different song elements so that they are transposed up an octive, down an octave and played faster or slower so that there is more variety as the song gets longer.

4. Superduperadvanced mode: The Song Longer composes new segments in the same style and based on the same melody and sequences them into the mix.

5. Extrasuperduperadvanced mode: The Song Longer composes new lyrics to go in the new segments.

Wouldn’t that be great????

The thing is, we already have the technology to do most of this. A good sound editing package can let you accomplish modes 1-3, you’d just have to do it all by hand. The Song Longer would automate the process and make it easy enough for your grandmother to do (even if she doesn’t have a sound engineering degree), while still letting the user have the flexibility to customize the outcome of the song.

Modes 4 and 5 aren’t beyond our reach, either. There are already programs that do both of these, though they may not yet be ready for prime time.

So there you have it: The Song Longer, ending the plague of songs and song moments that are just too short.

(Like that one moment in Dvorak’s New World Symphony where the violins really soar . . . Oh! It’s a crime against the humanities that that moment doesn’t just go on and on and on.)

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

16 thoughts on “Inventions I Want #1: The Song Longer”

  1. Ughh! I would leave such decisions to the composer. Instead how about a DVD player that will re-edit Casablanca or Citizen Kane to get rid of all those boring talking parts and extend the action sequences, even adding a car chase or an explicit sex scene or two?

  2. I think the fugue from Beethoven’s 9th (mv. 4) and the solo in Stairway to Heaven could stand to be longer. =)

  3. No – this is perfect! For example Jupiter from Holst’s the Planets doesn’t go on long enough, or the major swell on the theme “Tis a Gift to be Simple” from Appalachian Spring isn’t the end of the song – and ought to go on forever. Or the little snippet bits that Rose Maybud sings in the finale of Act I of Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Ruddigore” – it’s a shame a whole theme/aria isn’t composed around those chord-defying bits. Just because the composer’s brilliant doesn’t mean he can’t make mistakes. (Look at the Magic Flute!)

  4. And while were at it why not Pachebel’s PERPETUAL Canon! Why should that smooth Baroque goodness ever have to end?

  7. I’ve thought that the “ache” we feel that a song isn’t longer is a kind of longing for heaven. Because the song can’t be any longer without losing its overall beauty that comes from proportion. It’s like tinkering with the smile of the Mona Lisa. She’d have a big smile — too big for the face. Trying to make the beauty last is like making heaven real. It doesn’t work. The “great moments” work by giving us that “ache.” They pass. We wish they didn’t. We want more.

  8. Chris – thanks!
    Craig – yes and no. I’m thinking of such songs that bring me that ache – in fact, I’m listening to a playlist of them right now, mostly neo-Celtic stuff (“Going to the West,” “E Horo,” with the incongruous “Aranjuez” and “My Immortal”). All these songs arouse in me that longing you’re speaking of – but the song arrangements are perfectly symmetrical, they have a rising tone and a conclusion, they have form – I don’t need them to be “longered.” But the song longer is needed perhaps to correct those pieces (Appalachian Spring is one of my main offenders) in and of themselves. I know what you’re talking about – it’s like the poet rhapsodizing about the unkissed kiss in “Ode to a Grecian Urn” – I’m just pointing out that not all wonder comes from incompleteness.
    Right. Back to *sigh* work….

  9. D.U.P.: Sorry, don’t really have a list. I mentioned the violin-soaring moment in Dvorak’s New World Symphony, but a whole lot of others don’t spring to mind. I’ve encountered such moments and songs often; they’re just not springing to mind.
    One place where there’s something like The Song Longer is in Gilber & Sullivan operas. Some of the numbers are so popular (particularly the patter songs) that after you watch them the cast will do a reprise of the song, frequently with new lyrics that have been written specially for the local version.
    I’ve got an *excellent* 3-DVD set of The Mikado, Pirates of Penzance, and Iolanthe by the Stratford Festival of Canada which is just WAAAAAYYY cool and which reprises all the right songs. (I’ll blog about the set soon.)
    There’s one number in The Mikado called “Here’s a Howdy-Doo!” that the cast sings through and then, as they’re exiting the stage, the ultra-cute female lead (a character named Yum-Yum) does a tiny little waggle of her finger and everybody springs back in to reprise the number.
    Every time I see that I just *siiiiigh.* She’s so beautiful, all she has to do is waggle her finger and the universe reorders itself.

  12. BTW, just to give credit where credit is due, I should mention that the name “The Song Longer” is based on a name I picked up from elsewhere:
    There’s an episode of Futurama (like The Simpsons, but set in the 31st century) where Prof. Farnsworth (an inventor) contemplates inventing an invention he calls “The Fing-longer.”
    It’s basically an incredibly long artificial finger that you fit over your real finger to reach things your real finger can’t reach.

  14. Jimmy, In B16’s “On the Way to Jesus Christ” which was published last yr, he mentions the ache brought on, in his case, from attending a classical concert. Its in the chapter on Beauty & how that leads us to the Kingdom of heaven. I think he did a good job describing what this thread is refering to. GB

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