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A composer wrote a three-hour piano piece using just one note
- b6 9y agoAlong the same lines, "Four Violins": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY9RTSXki8E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY9RTSXki8E IIRC, this stuff influenced the Velvet Underground.
- teh_klev 9y agoIf you play "Four Violins" alongside Four Pillars you get quite a pleasing result.
- crdb 9y agoIf you'd like to explore the ideas further: Carter's 8 etudes and a fantasy's 7th etude is just the note G (1949) and Ligeti's Musica ricercata's (1951-3) first movement almost only A (the entire work explores having a limited number of notes). In terms of playing with harmonics, the spectralists (starting with Grisey and Murail in the 1970s) originated the idea formally whilst it is informally explored by many minimalists (the most relevant to this article's piece would be Terry Riley's In C, 1964). In terms of mammoth piano works, seek out Sorabji's Opus clavicembalisticum (1930, 4 hours) by John Ogdon.
- keehun 9y ago>> Ligeti's Musica ricercata's (1951-3) first movement almost only A (the entire work explores having a limited number of notes). Just to clarify regarding Ligeti's Musica Ricercata, each successive movement incorporates a new interval. First movement only deals with unisons (and octaves), the 2nd movement adds minor 2nds, and so forth.
- Sevores 9y agoAlso worth mentioning Terre Thaemlitz, who wrote a nearly 30 hour piece with two chords. "The resulting MP3 file is an edit of a 31+ hour piano solo recorded in sittings averaging 4 to 6 hours in length. The theme is "Meditation on Wage Labor and the Death of the Album."" You can listen to an excerpt here: http://www.comatonse.com/writings/2012_soulnessless.html#c5 http://www.comatonse.com/writings/2012_soulnessless.html#c5 And here's the sheet music: http://i.imgur.com/DoD1Ew4.jpg http://i.imgur.com/DoD1Ew4.jpg
- ajnin 9y agoAll sound samples on the page start playing at once when visiting it. A bit disconcerting but I guess that counts as involuntary experimental music in itself.
- andybak 9y agoIt's quite pleasant and I can imagine listening to this for pleasure occasionally. Equate it with a piece for untuned percussion and then maybe it's not quite so unusual. The first sections of Steve Reich's Drumming are pitchless and very listenable. It's composing purely with rhythm.
- blt 9y agosee also: lots of techno music
- logicallee 9y agoSo, there are two sides to every story and maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle. What follows is just a counterpoint to your experience: I put the piece on and after realizing it is quite suited to background music I switched tasks and did something else, intending to have it on in the background. For me it failed this usage, because despite my initial impression I had to stop it after a few minutes. I rarely have to do that with any music I put on in the background - so it's not like I have high standards. On a different note: when I read the title I imagined it being a percussive use of the note, like drums, with a repetitive techno-like approach - so I thought it would be quite easy to fill three hours with just the one note. The part I listened to had no such percussive beat either. So within the constraints of the I suspect someone else might take a wildly different and end up with something in some sense better. I know, I know, "everyone's a critic..."
- averagewall 9y agoIt turns out it's really 7 notes, not one. If you're not already good at identifying tones, there no one-ness about it at all.
- MrDosu 9y agoYeah, this is pure semantics. We attached certain names to certain frequencies in western culture and made rules about 'proper music'. It is quite fascinating how culturally influenced we are on what is beautiful sound. Other cultures will have different frequencies and composition rules they consider good or artistic. Seven different D notes is how you say 7 unique frequencies, not one.
- uxp100 9y agoCan you point me to a culture whose music doesn't acknowledge octaves? It sounds interesting.
- watwut 9y agoChina I think.
- watwut 9y agoWhy was this downvoted? I was right. Traditional Chinese music is in pentatonic scale.
- baddox 9y agoI'm no expert on Chinese music, but every Chinese scale I'm aware of is still based on the harmonic series and still observes octave equivalence.
- skj 9y agoIn context, "have octaves" mean treating notes whose frequencies are powers of two as the "same", just shifted up. I believe the pentatonic scale still has this feature.
- jszymborski 9y agoFor a great, down-to-earth discussion on another great minimalist piece, check-out this great episode of Classical Classroom where they discuss Steve Reich's "Piano Phase"[0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-iIHUBpYTc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-iIHUBpYTc
- johan_larson 9y agoChrist. Grind out two drably mediocre bits of three-chord moon-June-soon pop for no greater purpose than to fill out an album, and they will be better than that piece.
- bitwize 9y agoNot if they are sung by Katy Perry!
- libeclipse 9y agoIt truly does sound horrid. Not sure why it's noteworthy. > Let's only use a single note. > But it might sound terrible. > Let's do it anyway.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- posterboy 9y ago> noteworthy Even the author thought it wasn't notesworthy. 490
- logicallee 9y agoyes, you said in a few words what I hemmed and hawed at.
- Kenji 9y agoUtterly mediocre. As expected.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- boneheadmed 9y agoThat's odd. I heard my four year old playing this piece just the other day.
- odbol 9y agoYeah I'm pretty sure I composed this same piece like 30 years ago. Edit: the real art is being able to get published in the NY Times with this boring music.
- boneheadmed 9y agoThat's odd. I heard my four year old playing this piece just the other day.
- blairanderson 9y agoI listened for 4 minutes and it sounded like the same note for 4 minutes.
- natch 9y agoOne note? So indulgent. How about zero notes? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cage
- gpvos 9y agoBandcamp page with the music: http://recordings.irritablehedgehog.com/album/randy-gibson-the-four-pillars-appearing-from-the-equal-d-under-resonating-apparitions-of-the-eternal-process-in-the-midwinter-starfield-16-viii-10-kansas-city http://recordings.irritablehedgehog.com/album/randy-gibson-t...
- coldcode 9y agoIn college orchestration class we were required to write a piece using one note (octaves like this piece) for whatever instruments we had in the class, which in this case were three string basses and a violin. It really does require a lot of thought process with such sparse harmony.
- meggar 9y agoIt sounds like a recording of a piano tuning.
- moogly 9y agoAlong with the other contemporary examples, here's another one, though from a completely different genre: Spastic Ink's "See, and It's Sharp!" (1994) consists of only C and C# notes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY11_tgAhQs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY11_tgAhQs
- aisofteng 9y agoAtrocious title.
- Markoff 9y agorecommended for fans of minimalistic music, very good to play in background while working: Arvo part - Alina (1999) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4RmJaP683A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4RmJaP683A Can anyone recommend something else minimalistic and so beautiful? I am fan of instrumental music but it is really difficult to find something really minimalistic, for instance Max Richter is great (Perfect Sense score for instance) but far from minimalism. EDIT: seem Olafur Arnalds is relatively minimalistic, Tony Anderson not so much but very nice
- devuo 9y agoSure, here's a few I quite like: Nils Frahm, Phillip Glass, Peter Broderick, Ólafur Arnalds, Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Dustin O'Halloran A few highlighted tracks: "Eyes Closed and Travelling" — Peter Broderick "20:17" — Ólafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm "Opus 20" — Dustin O'Halloran "Improvisation for Coughs and a Cell Phone" — Nils Frahm
- Markoff 9y agoyeah, I was doing yesterday more research into this, end up downloading Light & Motion which sounds best from what I heard, not that minimalistic but nice optimistic and Tony Anderson was also pretty good I will check few of those I haven't heard, thank you
- nickburlett 9y agoIt's a different kind of minimalism, but I've found Philip Glass' Akhnaten (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAiv-LU82t4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAiv-LU82t4) and Piano Etudes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Pe7Lelts8g&list=PLVyiUXw5EDNM05LcTmcTtwwn6Rve8gotB https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Pe7Lelts8g&list=PLVyiUXw5ED...) to be excellent background listening.
- Markoff 9y agoI am familiar with Glass, was listening him already like 10-15 years ago, but it's not really minimalistic as I would like to find btw. that 1st link you posted is pretty much opposite of minimalism, very complex
- jancsika 9y agoThe overture of Wagner's Das Rheingold comes to mind. Since it's only one chord, it's a great score to read to learn about orchestration.
- jancsika 9y agoAlso, Alvin Lucier's "Silver Streetcar for Orchestra" for amplified triangle. You really have to hear it live to get a sense of what's going on.
- rijoja 9y agoPulse Width Modification
- twic 9y agoMeanwhile, at the shallow end of the meme pool, this entry from the baffling but, to me, fascinating microgenre of "'All Star' by Smash Mouth but", in which case the entire song is in one note: https://soundcloud.com/vagidictoris/all-star-by-smash-mouth-but-all-notes-are-in-c https://soundcloud.com/vagidictoris/all-star-by-smash-mouth-... The thing that surprised me is how much it sounds like 'real' music, like this could have been an entirely deliberate and valid choice by a composer. It has a sort of surly, menacing urgency to it that i'm sure i've heard in some kind of rock/metal music, although i can't think of any examples.
- phamilton 9y agoLooking for a Peano joke here.