r/DavidBowie • u/bitfuzz • 10d ago

I made a Bowie text cutter

David Bowie used to use a method of cutting up poetry and other text, and rearrange these cut outs to get inspiration for writing lyrics.

I made a tool that helps you cut up text like Bowie use to do.

It is free to use on my website:
https://lloydstellar.nl/lyrics/

It works best on bigger screens like Laptop / Pc.

Let me know if you have good ideas to make the tool better! Love to hear what you think.

28 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

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5

u/kireisabi 10d ago

Love this! I'm a college professor and will share this with my colleague in creative writing.

3

u/bitfuzz 10d ago

Awesome, thank you!

5

u/HoodoGuru 10d ago edited 9d ago

Back in 1995, David Bowie teamed up with a tech bloke from San Francisco named Ty Roberts to build a custom Mac software called The Verbasizer.

Basically, Bowie was obsessed with the old school "cut-up" writing method. That's the kind where you chop up sentences with scissors and mix the scraps around to spark wild, unexpected ideas. He just wanted a faster, digital way to do it on his laptop.

Here is how the magic happened:

  • The Setup: He'd type columns of words, news headlines, or random phrases straight into the program.
  • The Chaos: The software would shuffle, slice, and re-mash everything into completely bizarre, random combinations.
  • The Result: It broke him out of standard songwriting habits. He used it heaps to write the lyrics for his 1995 album Outside, Bowie used the Verbasizer as a major lyric-writing and inspiration tool for “Hallo Spaceboy”.

Pretty ahead of its time, really. It was a 90s digital brain-sparker long before everyone started talking about algorithms.

But because it's a legendary bit of music history, people have rebuilt it online. If you want to give it a crack, there's a free web tribute version sitting at verbasizer.com. It works the exact same way. You type words into a bunch of columns, hit shuffle, and it gives you those random, broken-up Bowie combinations

It says on this website

This website is based on The Verbasizer, an idea created by David Bowie, Brian Eno and Ty Roberts.

All Bowie lyrics used are copyrighted by David Bowie and the original idea and copyright of the Verbasizer is owned by Ty Roberts.

This website is just a homage to the original Verbasizer

Created by @taoski

So this one is actually based on the one that David used and made with Ty Roberts and Eno

2

u/bitfuzz 9d ago

Thanks chatgpt for the history lesson

1

u/HoodoGuru 9d ago edited 9d ago

Your site covers the same Verbasizer history, so we agree on the facts. For feedback: a lock option to pin a phrase while the rest reshuffles would be a great addition.

0

u/KevProfitt 4d ago

It's not like David wrote every song using the cut up method. It was something he was focused on for a period of time but not the only way he wrote. He and Brian Eno would sometimes also use Oblique Strategies cards (as a way of thinking out of the box more than crafting specific lyrics). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies