All the Tired Horses (Bob Dylan)
Copyright Big Sky Music
Arranged by Scott Weiser
Scott Weiser – Vocals, Instruments, System Design, Programming
CJ Johnson — Background vocals
Mr. Bobo – Background meows
Mei Lin Heirendt – Vocals, Mandolin
Robert Heirendt – Vocals, Mbira
All the Tired Horses is the first track on Bob Dylan’s Self Portrait album. For Dylan fans, it was also perhaps the most shocking as it features a female studio vocalists singing one line over and over – “All the tired horses in the sun. How am I supposed to get any riding done” over the backdrop of contrapuntal strings. It was the opposite of what Dylan is known for – repetitive – few words – slick production. A warning from the get-go – “This album is going to be different than you expect”.
Scott Weiser has created a generative music system website for All the Tired Horses. The version of the song which appears on the Self Portraits album, is one instance of a randomly generated version of the tune – created by Scott’s system. You can check out this system on his interactive website linked below.
“I knew what I wanted to do for this project as soon as I first heard All the Tired Horses. The looping, repetitive nature of the song is a perfect fit for a generative music system. I have built similar systems in the past for art installations that needed ‘infinite’ music, and I always had it in the back of mind to do one as a website. The system is relatively simple. A collection of schedulers randomly add and remove layers to and from the piece over time. The layers come from a pool of pre-recorded tracks prepared by myself and a few collaborators. In the future, I hope to expand the system and reuse it for different projects.”
Scott Weiser is a musician, software developer, and audio engineer living in Oakland, CA by way of Maine. His sounds have been heard in major motion pictures, art installations, audiobooks, and on records. He currently makes noise in the two piece band Mount Desert.
Websites: https://mountdesert.bandcamp.com/ https://travstw.github.io/horses/
