Live data from Hacker News

Organ playing 639-year-long piece changes chord

bbc.com

21–30 of 76 posts

Re: Organ playing 639-year-long piece changes chord

#21

"Some people reportedly booked tickets years in advance to experience Monday's chord change" Clearly they're attention seekers—their rustling about in seats or asleep and snoring from boredom would be far more entertaining than the actual performance. One has to wonder what kind of people are drawn to a musical event where if it were compared with say Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue BWV 582 then the latter's performance…

It's like they're all afraid of admitting the obvious, because some "famous guy" will tell them they're wrong. If that's not a textbook example of the sin of human respect, I don't know what is.

Foolishness 1, Reason 0.

Re: Organ playing 639-year-long piece changes chord

#22

I heard that one night after a performance in college, John Cage returned to his room, where his roommate heard him laughing, “I did it! I fooled them again!” What a character.

I can appreciate mischief directed at bullshitters. John "Troll" Cage.

Re: Organ playing 639-year-long piece changes chord

#23
post #8

> His most famous piece, 4'33", is designed to be played by any combination of instruments - but musicians are instructed not to play them. This is even better played back from a digital recording. You need those gold audio cables to truly appreciate the silence.

You jest but there is still something to be heard if it's actually recorded (and not just generated as zeroes), be it in a studio or live. The settings of any performance are themselves part of the performance.

Re: Organ playing 639-year-long piece changes chord

#24

One quip: this piece is not "as slow as possible". One could write a piece of "music" that is one note to be played at the heat death of the universe, or a piece that is silence forever. It's fun to play with the definition of "music" like John Cage did his whole career, but the title of his piece is technically incorrect, the worst kind of incorrect.

You're misinterpreting it. It's not a descriptive title at all. It's a tempo indication and like all such is meant as an instruction to the player, also being a play on "as fast as possible" which is a perfectly legitimate tempo marking. Referring to a piece of music by its tempo marking is common.

Re: Organ playing 639-year-long piece changes chord

#25
post #8

> His most famous piece, 4'33", is designed to be played by any combination of instruments - but musicians are instructed not to play them. This is even better played back from a digital recording. You need those gold audio cables to truly appreciate the silence.

You jest but there is still something to be heard if it's actually recorded (and not just generated as zeroes), be it in a studio or live. The settings of any performance are themselves part of the performance.

I immediately think of the A Perfect Circle recording done at Red Rocks where the acoustics off the rock formations give an extra depth to the noise. Still one of my favorite live albums of all time.

Re: Organ playing 639-year-long piece changes chord

#26

The orbits of the Galilean moons form a perfectly-tuned triple octave, plus a slightly flat minor tenth (1:2:4:9.4). After a slight glissando, they will likely settle in a quadruple octave (1:2:4:8) and stop there, in about 1.5 Gyr. It's a cross-cutting phenomenon that the natural universe likes to self-arrange itself into chords [4] https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.01106 ( "Long-term evolution of the Galilean satellites:…

The music of the spheres.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musica_universalis

Re: Organ playing 639-year-long piece changes chord

#27
post #12

Its fascinating how the interest and energy around a project like this manages to be self-reinforcing. The idea on the face of it is quite nonsensical: building a machine to make continuous droning sounds for years at a time. How likely is it that the song actually would play to completion? The fascination is that it is not impossible that the effort will succeed, and its already gone far enough to be quite amazing i…

how is it nonsensical?

Re: Organ playing 639-year-long piece changes chord

#29

One quip: this piece is not "as slow as possible". One could write a piece of "music" that is one note to be played at the heat death of the universe, or a piece that is silence forever. It's fun to play with the definition of "music" like John Cage did his whole career, but the title of his piece is technically incorrect, the worst kind of incorrect.

It does depend on the definition of "music". A constant tone of infinite duration might not be considered music to all. In my opinion (just rendered now), music must have 20 BPM < tempo < 1000 BPM.

ambient music enters the chat.

Re: Organ playing 639-year-long piece changes chord

#30
post #17

It isn't 639 years but.. Radiohead - Pyramid Song 800% slower ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiKWfcy-Z70 )

I don't know what possessed me to make this, but here's the voice crack cover of 'Ocean Man' 320x slower (11 hours), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnEc0NZiNbY
Post reply on HN