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Organ playing 639-year-long piece changes chord
- tomcam 3y agoThat was a the catchiest part so far but I am waiting for the Marshmello remix, which he’s releasing promptly on the 2640 Ryan Seacrest New Year’s show
- saalweachter 3y agoI wonder how Seacrest feels about already being "the old guy who has hosted New Year's since forever".
- toast0 3y agoPretty sure he's a robot or a clone. Cause he took New Year's Eve from Dick Clark, American Top 40 from Casey Kasem, American Idol, and now he's taking over the Wheel from Pat Sajak. Although he did give up ABC's Live with whomever.
- labster 3y agoAt long last, humanity has discovered a more useless use of energy than Bitcoin.
- skullfrog 3y agoa truly techie comment
- krsna 3y agoReminds me of the Clock of the Long Now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_of_the_Long_Now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_of_the_Long_Now
- mseepgood 3y agoOr this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeitpyramide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeitpyramide
- coldtea 3y ago>The longest - and slowest - music composition in existence had a big day on Monday - it changed chord for the first time in two years. That's faster than some pop "music" acts change chords.
- jacquesm 3y agoHehe, that's funny :)
- perihelions 3y agoThe 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 https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.01106 ("Long-term evolution of the Galilean satellites: the capture of Callisto into resonance") via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galilean_moons#Origin_and_evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galilean_moons#Origin_and_evol...
- HPsquared 3y agoThe music of the spheres. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musica_universalis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musica_universalis
- osigurdson 3y ago>> began in 2001. A little clickbaity. I could change chords on a million year long piece (that started 30 seconds ago).
- framapotari 3y agoHow is that clickbaity? It's playing a 639-year-long piece. You could change chords on a million year long piece (that started 30 seconds ago), but no one would care. This has been playing for 23 years.
- osigurdson 3y agoPrecisely. It doesn't matter how long it is intended to play for. What matters is how long it has been playing. A non clickbait title would have focused on the latter.
- simpaticoder 3y agoOne 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.
- osigurdson 3y agoIt 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.
- datashaman 3y agoambient music enters the chat.
- inimino 3y agoYou'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.
- zellyn 3y agoI mean, you could play his piece at a speed designed to spread it out evenly from the present until the (predicted) moment when the universe can no longer support the mechanism used to play it. That would literally be "as slow as possible", and seems technically fine.
- koolba 3y ago> 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.
- speed_spread 3y agoYou 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.
- rho138 3y agoI 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.
- omoikane 3y agoJohn Cage's 4'33" is probably one of the best jokes in music. I personally learned about 4'33" in a music class, where it was performed live -- basically it was 4'33" of ambient noise, but there was a lot of tension if you didn't know what to expect. During the final exam for the class, the professor would play some recording and we were supposed to identify the music, and all of us would start writing "John Cage's 4 minutes 33 seconds" when the professor was too slow to start the next song. There was also an incident where apparently Mike Batt copied 4'33" and named his song "A One Minute Silence", which resulted in an 6-figure court settlement[1], although later news said it was just £1000[2]. I also heard a version of the story that they didn't settle at all, because John Cage's publishers couldn't prove which minute out of the 4'33" was copied. [1] https://edition.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/23/uk.silence/ https://edition.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/23/uk.silence/ [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hampshire-11964995 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hampshire-11964995
- ahazred8ta 3y ago
- ashton314 3y agoI 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.
- lo_zamoyski 3y agoI can appreciate mischief directed at bullshitters. John "Troll" Cage.
- dzdt 3y agoIts 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 in the attempt. And in the process its achieved a completely new way to experience music. That last part is both shallow (its a pretty boring way to experience music, and its hard to call it music at that time scale) and deep (with this performance, a chord change is opportunity for ceremony and news releases: its an event!).
- lo_zamoyski 3y agoThe human capacity to stretch credulity never ceases to amaze me.
- skullfrog 3y agohow is it nonsensical?
- bigstrat2003 3y agoBecause it's not something which will ever be pleasant to listen to, and thus is missing the entire point of music. All for some weird novelty thing.
- skullfrog 3y agoto you, maybe
- noman-land 3y agoNot all music is pleasant, nor should it be.
- dustyleary 3y agoI would still argue that this is not music. It's definitely Art, in that it is making a statement, provoking a response, etc. But, it's just a nearly continuous sound, except for the pitch change every few years. It's a Sound, but it's not Music. If you were to argue that it is Music, I would ask, "Which part of the piece is your favorite? Why do you prefer it to the other parts?" Trying to answer these questions with a straight face becomes difficult. If this is Music, then is it possible to make an art installation which has making Sound as its primary focus, and have it not be Music?
- tdeck 3y ago> While the composition officially started in 2001 - it began with 18 months of silence, and the first notes only rang out in 2003. That's one way to launch an MVP!
- hilbert42 3y ago"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 would be seen as a prestissimo running at relativistic speeds. Perhaps social scientists have insights into such strange behavior. Of course, it's those who've booked tickets who are the center of attention here, such antics have always been expected of Cage.
- lo_zamoyski 3y agoIt'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.
- hilbert42 3y ago"Foolishness 1, Reason 0." A variation on the Emperor's new clothes methinks.
- spencerflem 3y agoIts fun! Why are people so excited about eclipses or cicadas? I don't think everyone is being performative or doing it for attention (what attention)
- Grokker 3y agoThat piece's name? Slow Ass Debussy
- wayeq 3y agoIt isn't 639 years but.. Radiohead - Pyramid Song 800% slower (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiKWfcy-Z70 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiKWfcy-Z70)
- ryankrage77 3y agoI 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnEc0NZiNbY
- 8bitsrule 3y agoWhen I first found a routine that would slow music down without any of the pitches changing, I spent hours slowing down favorite songs to see for how long they'd still be recognizable.
- zw123456 3y agoFastest organ piece ever... https://youtu.be/yypr7J4any0 https://youtu.be/yypr7J4any0 53 seconds !
- tgv 3y agoThat may be the fastest performance of The Flight of the Bumblebee on organ, but that's it. It is fast, but what's the fastest piece? In the context of this article, it is about length, so any organ piece under 53 seconds would be faster (and there are plenty). You could also look at notes per second, but I'm not sure this one would win. There are some crazy dense passages in the organ literature.
- declan_roberts 3y agoThis is funny.
- jiveturkey 3y agoI also recommend Lecture on Nothing
- colordrops 3y agoWas a bit disappointed to find that the organ is manually manipulated. I was under the assumption that it was automated.
- globular-toast 3y agoActually that makes it considerably more funny for me. There is already an automated piece called Longplayer in London.
- tapper 3y agoI am sorry, but this is just dumb to me!
- JoeDaDude 3y agoThe closest thing I can think of is the strange art of bell ringing in peals [1], aka change ringing, in which bells in church towers are rung in every possible order. One of the very longest takes 18 hours. [1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peal
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoClearly nonsense. But some in the art world give it attention? Do they mean to be ridiculed? A 'piece' is fundamentally something to be played, or something to be heard. This silly exercise violates both of those. It's not music, it's a stunt, that's clear. Appeals to some folks' sense of wonder, I suppose.