So here’s the setup:
I’m at work, and i want to send someone an ecard. I google it and pick a random ecard website, discover that you can’t turn off music on their cards by default, decide to move to the next one.
Go to the next one. Find a card i like, try to open that card up in firefox, but for some reason the flash part isn’t unblocking from my flashblock plugin – i’m just getting a blank screen. So i grab the link, copy it into Chrome, try it there. Loads up no problems.
Halfway through the card, i want to see if there’s music playing in the background of the card, so i put in one of my earbuds that is permanently attached to the headphone jack of my work computer. Yes there’s music, but it’s fairly unobtrusive, basically piano only, a melody that’s moving in a slight triplet swing and a bass line that’s somewhat mimicking that. single note melody, single note bass, pretty minimal, although the swing feel and the harmonies are a little strange, but whatever.
So i go to the next page in Chrome, where i have to say who i’m sending to, give a custom message, &c. The card itself isn’t on that page, but the music is still going. a quarter of a second later i notice that half of the music i was listening to before was missing. and then i get it. Even though the visual part of the flash card in Firefox wasn’t running, the card still at least somewhat loaded because it was playing the music from the card in the background. When i was listening to the card in my earbuds, i was listening to it playing twice in an accidental canon, offset by a few beats and a rough eighth note triplet.
and it was fantastic. i mean, for the purpose of the ecard, the single simpler version was much better because it was much less intrusive. but first hearing it in accidental canon and thinking that that’s what was supposed to happen? outstanding. it kind of makes me want to write a piece of music composed entirely of samples of crappy ecard music. file that away for “way in the future” since i have about four other pieces i’m trying to get done before the spring of 2013.