About 18 months ago, I created a make-believe band that plays make-believe shows around the world. There are no actual songs, lyrics, or music. I come up with song names, a tour itinerary, and an algorithm produces the setlist for each night. Read more about the algorithm here and there’s a very long explanation here if you’d like to learn more about the band.
Today I’d like to talk about the green, red, and black dots up above. There are 11 rows, which represent the first 11 songs the band ever wrote. (Now they’re up to 104 songs) The columns represent shows, and there are 148 in total. The most recent shows happened a few weeks ago in Brazil.
Red dots mean the song is unpopular or played poorly, green dots mean the song was played well, black means average, and light grey means the song wasn’t played at all.
The first song
The first song is not good. It was played a lot in the early shows, but it mostly scored red dots. Eventually the band stopped playing it, for good reason.
The third song
This is one of the band’s biggest hits. The first two shows were rough, but after that it has had an unbroken streak of green dots. A real crowd-pleaser.
The ninth song
This one is third from the bottom. It mostly scored black dots early on, but more recently it’s scored a solid green every performance. This one is interesting because it’s turned into a bit of a dark horse.
Here’s a screenshot of all the songs over time. It’s fun seeing the patterns they make. I’m looking forward to fine-tuning these more soon.
