Posts tagged density

Tristan Perich’s Interval Studies are a set of speaker arrays that play with microtonal systems. These arrays take a conventional musical interval (like the perfect 4th from D1 to G1) and divide it up into very small intervals (so 99 steps from D to G instead of 4). Then (and this is the best part), the speakers play all of these steps simultaneously, allowing you to hear the space between the notes in a dense cloud. Imagine banging your fist on the piano, except that instead of hitting 4 adjacent notes, you can hit 99 in the same tonal space. Awesome, right? The work fits well into the rest of Tristan’s oeuvre: the tones emitted by the speakers are 1-bit pulse waves, and the economy of a simple array of bare speakers is quite aesthetically pleasing. Here is a little documentary+interview with Tristan about the project (it only plays the sound for a moment, but I bet it’s better to hear in person anyway. Also, this embed won’t work for RSS or dashboard readers): (via Networked Music Review)

Tristan Perich’s Interval Studies are a set of speaker arrays that play with microtonal systems. These arrays take a conventional musical interval (like the perfect 4th from D1 to G1) and divide it up into very small intervals (so 99 steps from D to G instead of 4). Then (and this is the best part), the speakers play all of these steps simultaneously, allowing you to hear the space between the notes in a dense cloud.

Imagine banging your fist on the piano, except that instead of hitting 4 adjacent notes, you can hit 99 in the same tonal space. Awesome, right?

The work fits well into the rest of Tristan’s oeuvre: the tones emitted by the speakers are 1-bit pulse waves, and the economy of a simple array of bare speakers is quite aesthetically pleasing.

Here is a little documentary+interview with Tristan about the project (it only plays the sound for a moment, but I bet it’s better to hear in person anyway. Also, this embed won’t work for RSS or dashboard readers):

(via Networked Music Review)

György Ligeti’s Poeme Symphonique is a piece for 100 metronomes. Set at various tempi, they’re all started at once, and then left to go until they wind down, eventually thinning out and producing rhythms from the dense and chaotic beginning. Classic Ligeti stuff here.

Click ahead to 1:30 in the video to see them start. (Although if I remember correctly, this is supposed to be the first piece in a concert, started before the doors are opened, so it runs as people are sitting down. The fancy starting contraption in the video is neat though!)

Another random fact I learned about this piece: it actually requires some practice to set up, because it is very easy to wind the metronomes up so far that they go for a very very long time.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

45 plays

Nick Seaver: Britney Study #5

Another Pop Study.

For this one, I was playing around with masses of sound—what happens if you play the same song 25 times at once? Britney Spears’ “Gimme More” provided the opportunity, and I provided song over and over, staggered and spread around the stereo field, layering and layering.

I imagined that this might have been the soundtrack inside her head back in her crazy days. (Yeah, more old pop material! This is the hazard with using contemporary source materials, I guess.)