How to play my own music snippets randomly and endlessly?

February 14, 2014 8:03 AM

I want to listen to very brief snippets of my son's ukulele strumming, over and over and over, randomly shuffled. (Think of a sort of Buddha Machine that I can populate.) Hardware, software, whatever. Does this exist already? If not, how can I do it?

I love the gentle sounds of my son noodling around on his uke. I would listen to it all day in the background, but he never plays as long as I would like. :7) I know there are a bunch of web sites that will play combinations of nature sounds that I select from a menu & mix, but can I do that with short MP3s of his aimless strumming?

An iPhone app or a Mac app or a web app would all be fine. Something that exports to a long MP3 would also be nice. A hardware device would be acceptable, too.

Or should I just buy the cheapest hardware MP3 player I can find and set it to shuffle?

posted by wenestvedt to Media & Arts (4 answers total)

Why not just take your short MP3s and put them in iTunes (on your Mac or phone) and just hit shuffle and repeat?
posted by Admiral Haddock at 8:17 AM on February 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

Garage band is super easy. Drag each mp3 into a single track on a garage band file. Presto: one long song of a bunch of different noodles in a row. It won't be random any more though.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:32 AM on February 14, 2014

In Ableton Live you can add all the different snippets as clips, and tell Ableton to play a random clip at the end of each clip. I have used this to make endlessly shuffled beats.

But probably an mp3 player with gapless playback would be a lot easier.
posted by Jairus at 9:35 AM on February 14, 2014

You should try infinite jukebox. It lets you upload your own mp3s, finds similar sounding parts and then jumps between those parts randomly and mostly seamlessly, forever.
posted by metaphorever at 9:54 AM on February 14, 2014