Playmuse x Notahash

Last week, Playmuse founder Vladislav interviewed service partners — Notahash.

We have gathered the main ideas for you in this longread. Enjoy reading! And, of course, listen to the release, the link is at the very bottom.

How did the idea of creating music, inspired by the values of hash, first come about?

We had known Sasha for a long time, worked together in a Deep House project, I was responsible for promoting and branding the group, liaising with festival organizers, and organizing some performances. Despite the small income at the time, I enjoyed it, was immersed in the music scene, and never picked up an instrument; I was mainly focused on the visual aspect.

At some point, our paths diverged, I hopped from company to company working in UX/UI design. Then I worked for a corporation and realized my life had become repetitive; I harbored various ideas and suggestions at work, but no matter how hard I tried, no one was interested. There was a moment when we brainstormed for the functionality of an app, conducted research, the results were interesting, but after connecting two people to work on this idea, I was sidelined. I felt a bit dimmed, I desired some form of creativity; ideas came, but I put them aside, unsure about them.

At the time, I pondered on the concept that any event, any matter, any phenomenon has an original code, an underlying mathematical state. I constantly heard from acquaintances and friends about NFT, periodically browsed different collections, and digital art. I wanted to create something unique and was searching for ideas, avoiding another collection of avatars for Twitter.

At one point, after many years, Sasha and I coincidentally met in Gorky Park (after that, we constantly met there by chance; I lived nearby and frequently cycled in the area). During one casual encounter, we were walking and exchanging news, he talked about memory training methods, and plugins he wrote for music software. It occurred to me that it would be interesting to do something related to music and art. One evening, we met at my place and brainstormed; I thought it would be cool to take the addresses of hash values ​​of various blockchain events and people who influenced the history of this technology, and Sanya already used the conversion method in his creative work.

We compiled what we considered historically significant 6 hash values, and after that, the debut album Source was born, where the initial and first track was the Genesis block code.

How does track conversion work? Tell those who are unfamiliar with your work format.

At that time, Sasha was already using a method of writing music through number conversion; he was tired of composing music by ear, and from the Solar System album, he began writing music through a score, taking paper and pen.

When you write music using an instrument, muscle memory works; it limits you, all patterns are already ingrained in your hands. When he decided to write an album dedicated to the oceans, he felt it would be too selfish to write music from mental representations.

Since Sasha had a physical-mathematical education, he decided to take a slightly different path. He took 4 ocean parameters: Area, Volume, Maximum area, Average depth.

He drew a rectangle, divided into four rows with five columns, and filled in the numbers from the parameter values, removing 0 from the values since it is a constant and makes no sound. Then he threw a die (game cube), the cube landed on one of the squares where a number was recorded; the number that fell on the dice and was recorded in the square was taken.

For example, the value of the game dice 6 fell on the square with the number 1, the numbers 1 and 6 were recorded. As is well known, there are 7 notes, each note has an ordinal number, where 1 is C, 2 is D. After the 7th note, the system repeats, so when we use numbers from 1 to 9, the system repeats, and 8 corresponds to C, and 9 corresponds to D.

We used the same formula in writing the Source album (only without playing dice). However, in the 16-based wallet hash calculation system on Ethereum, in addition to numbers from 1 to 9, there are also letters from A to F, which are used in jazz music.

In the case of writing the recent track P. Durov’s Ton Wallet, we used a slightly different conversion because the TON hash system has more letters, so we took the ordinal number of the letter. For example, the letter R - 18th in line, so we divided 18 into 1 and 8, where the 1st note is F and the 2nd note is also F because the system repeats after the 7th note.

What is the favorite track out of all the tracks released? Why? What is its significance?

My favorite one is dedicated to Pavel Durov's wallet. In this track, an organ point is embedded in the throat singing part; it represents stability, which corresponds to Pavel's personality.

Is it important to you that people simply listen to you as musicians, or do you want people to understand what lies behind this music and how it is created?

It's important to us that people understand what lies behind the music. You can just live, or you can study physics and understand how the world works.

How long does it take to create one track?

It always varies, but it usually takes three to four days, if Sasha is not on tour and has access to a studio.

Why did you decide to partner with Playmuse? What drew you to the service? How has it been working with us?

We've tried many different types of services; often, web3 services have very poor UX. For example, streaming services that pay royalties for listening are poorly made and are primarily focused on artists rather than end-users who will listen or buy NFTs. They could simply use existing music listening patterns of the likes of Spotify with web3 nuances.

Marketplaces are also often not well-focused from the feedback point of view. If there's an issue or a bug with collections or art, likely, the response will come after a month or may not come at all, and it's usually up to the user to figure it out.

In our partnership, everything is smooth, there is fast feedback, and any emerging questions are quickly resolved, which is encouraging. For many, providing feedback to marketplaces is a separate pain. We also see how transparent everything is; we see the team, we see progress. Often, we don't know who stands behind marketplaces and what they do, and many do not have a roadmap formed, and those that do often fail to meet deadlines for a year or more, leaving all the promised functionality on paper. It's also important to us that you are open to any ideas, which is important for creativity.

What is your most ambitious dream?

We really want to organize a symphonic concert in Paris. We see this as a fusion of classical music and electronics, as well as interactive art. At the moment, we are exploring this possibility – it truly is ambitious, we are aware of the costs and complexities involved in organizing such an event.

Right now, we've met Kreypt Music, whose founder Samuel Sene is a theater director, pianist, and French conductor, a recipient of 4 French musical theater awards. He is excited to collaborate with us and is eager to bring it to life.

Another dream is to work in collaborations with various well-known artists. Soon, a track converted based on the genesis block of DogeCoin will be released, called TWIT COIN. This is a collaboration with hip-hop artist Pan Amsterdam, who often works with French musician GUTS. Pan Amsterdam's real name is Leron Thomas; he is Iggy Pop's musical director and works under his own name on funk compositions. His most famous is «Man Funk», with 32,000,000 listens on Spotify. We have ideas to work with other artists, and through our friend Leron, there are contacts with some interesting performers, including the iconic Iggy. We are currently awaiting approval to work on a remix of one of Leron and Iggy Pop's joint works.

You released a track related to Telegram. Did you coordinate with Durov? How did it happen?

Not so long ago, there was news everywhere that Pavel Durov's TON wallet had been found. This wallet is public for the masses and people send various things to it :) We know there are other wallets, but this is the most public one.

We wrote the track and shared it in our chat group, but since we used the recognizable sound of the Telegram notification in the track, we were afraid that music platforms might remove the track due to copyright issues. The solution came from you, for which we thank you: we officially asked for permission from Pavel to use the sound, and he approved.

Music, art — all of this accompanies people at different periods in life. As authors, how would you like to be listened to? What kind of people and in what circumstances?

We don't think about how our audience will listen and in what periods of life. Notahash is a pure experiment that we enjoy in the process. Notahash's music covers different genres, where the mood and genre of the track dictate the event or character in the blockchain.

For the interview viewers and listeners who have been inspired — how can they interact with you? What albums are we waiting for, what NFTs are we buying, what should fans do if they realize they are your fans?

We will launch the next collection on Playmuse, it will be dedicated to a track based on Pavel Durov's wallet. These NFTs will allow entry into a closed group where we will interact with our fans, and NFTs will provide participation in a drawing.

What is the drawing? The main prize will be writing a track based on the hash address of the fan's wallet. The winner will also be given the opportunity to attend future concerts for the duration of the project. By the way, it doesn't have to be a wallet; it can be a smart contract on the TON blockchain.

The process will take place as follows: after the collection is sold, we will announce the drawing in our closed group and conduct an AMA session, where we will randomly select one of those who have the NFT. Then we will need time to write the track and release it on all music platforms.

For those who haven't listened to the release yet — the link is right here.

Add it to your playlists and share your feedback, it's important to us 🎧