J.S. Bach - Crab Canon on a Möbius Strip 

That was good 😂

you are a terrible person

Joseph Peddie We’re making paper-thin jokes here. I’m pretty sure you meant “tearable”.

And it might put you on edge too.

@@jaromtoy7128 That just doesn't cut it.

Congratulations :)

OH HI IM ALSO A PERSON< TOTALLY NOT A ROBOT HAHA AHA ERROR

[_] I am not a robot.

snap woohoo

that's a human person

There are even people who dislike cats and distrust sex.

Stop. Please.

Funny.

well done

I..I honestly laughed out loud.

Actually it goes round and round.

TheJaredtheJaredlong // I can admire the “twist” (pun intended) but just listening to it - not that captivating.

@@magicmulder I actually think it's really beautiful, not just about how brilliantly he composed it. It sounds so beautiful and captivating to me.

@@magicmulder if you read the background of "the musical offering" (that this is part of) it was response to a challenge to demonstrate his technical skill. His most captivating stuff to me are the cantatas which you can hear by searching BWV 1 through 200

JSB is not human!!! He's a divine archangel!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

fish and banana Bach was merely a creation of God, and if I daresay, one the very best creations, for he has given humanity such gifts that endure to this day! And I'm quite sure his music is played in heaven.

just middle of Germany :D

We did this piece in our Music advanced course in school back in the day because our teacher was a real big fan and after understanding the whole thing we all sat there with our mouths open.

@@quondamchoir6615 Heaven is perfect and changeless, therefore timeless, therefore without music. I think I'll go to Hell for preference.

he had a son?

@@Spades7009 he had 20 sons. 7 with his first wife and 13 with his second wife.

@@정건-o1e they were all boys?

Is this true?

@@Spades7009 sorry, 20 children not 20 sons.

Aah, come on, you are making me blush :D

It's stuff like this that always makes it hard to pick Beethoven over Bach as my favorite composer. Th genius displayed in this composition is otherworldly.

lol

Luciano AquiNo I know

MY BOI YOU LIVIN????

comment of the year

No its Patrick

Art thou feeling it now Mr. Krabs?

I love you for this comment

im feeling it spongebob PATRICK THAT'S NOT A RIDE

Beethoven is a close second in my opinion

As I say above, this genius by Bach almost totally convinces me that Bach, perhaps along with Beethoven and other geniuses who seem to defy what we consider to be 'modern realities', were in fact advanced human life forms visiting us from the future. The work of Steven Greer, Bob Lazar, and Professor Michael P Masters, along with Robert Temple's 2022 book 'A New Science Of Heaven' (about plasma energies and higher intelligence, etc, and much more - actually infinitely more) correlates; as do the teachings in the Bible and other religious scriptures. Ball Lightning = the 'burning bush' for example. Supernatural phenomena, hypnotism, remote viewing... Join the dots. Thanks and love, Alan Chapman (Live Wild Live Free, etc) - incidentally that's followed by a period then the abbreviation for organisation. Also my name and the period and most common global extension. I write it like this because otherwise the algorithms on this somewhat selectively oriented platform refuse to allow my comments :)

The mobius strip can literally be embedded in 3 dimensions lmfao

You must be a Redditor LMAO @@HilbertXVI

That could be a simple explanation

@@Mr.Oblivian And you must be a child LMAO

i'm a complete idiot when it comes to music AND math, mind explaining how it's brilliant?

But what does that have to do with a Mobius strip? "Two players starting at the same place on the strip and travelling in opposite directions" would play the same thing if it were just a normal loop of paper. I see no reason to add the twist to make it a Mobius strip. What is that supposed to represent? Also, why is it so hard to write counterpoint that works when played both directions simultaneously? I would have expected it to be quite easy to do that, since many tunes naturally sound nice when played backwards. Separate such a tune into its two voices and place them one after another and you have one of these.

No, that's not what I meant. I wasn't saying take any song that sounds good and play it backward and forward simultaneously. I was saying if you take a song that *already* has counterpoint and sounds nice backwards (and there are a number of those), then all you have to do is separate the two voices and put those two voices back-to-back. Now when you play *that* backwards and forwards at the same time, you get the original song and then the original song backwards, which should sound fine. And it should also sound nice by itself since good counterpoint generally involves making each voice sound good in its own right.

Xezlec I assume you've never written counterpoint before if you think it is easy to write a piece that adheres to contrapuntal methodology and accomplishes a pleasing melody in both directions and while played simultaneously in opposite directions.

Well it's a given that it has to be on a mobius strip to play the whole piece. If it were a simple ring which you describe, it would play half the piece forwards and backwards simultaneously which probably doesn't harmonize correctly. I get it's not what your talking about but I'm saying it's the only way for it to make sense, the math behind it means everything perectly fits into a mobius strip, in ANY order. If you try and do something else, you'll have to figure out something else for it...

*lol*

Underrated comment

What a great math joke!

Lmfaoooo ahahhahaha hehehe

He did a Klein bottle version too. I know it inside out.

To be fair the graphic in the video is kinda unnecessary and more like "oo look how cool it looks", but still very :o indeed

Further proof Bach was not human

Do you mean ö

This guy is ahead of his time

Mobius put a name a previous idea!

Half a Klein bottle?

Just found my french edition copy in a card box full of books I got back from stuff left at my deceased little sister's house. She left us at age 37. I'm still happy to have my book back but hope you won't have to go through such a loss to find yours. Friendship and much love.

PS1897 there is no doubt in that.

PS1897 His mirror fugue from the Art of Fugue prove it better; they are astonishingly well done

What this proves is, without MUSIC, there would be NO MATHEMATICS!!! This is also a proof that the Creator of the universe is a being of ORDER, not chaos. God SPOKE (organized vibration) the universe into existence. By God setting everything into motion in an organized manner, sound/music could only be a medium which would require organized, orderly thinking to unlock its construction. Humans developed "tools" (a way of thinking) to "dis"-cover/uncover the perfect system that created not only music, but the order of creation itself.

@@deliseovpstudio2978 big brain time

@@deliseovpstudio2978 pretty sure mathematical laws were in place before music was a thing. Otherwise the sound waves would be pretty wack.

"Is this chicken, what I have, or is this fish? I know it's tuna, but it says 'Chicken by the Sea.'" - Jessica Simpson

No, no, no, if it is chicken by the sea it still a chicken, but the can says: Chicken of the Sea; therefore tuna. Which now a days is probably tuna flavored pollock the real chicken of the sea.....is Jessica Simpson worthy of being quoted wouldn't Lisa Simpson be better? Just Kidding..................lol

Bach wasn't very successful at his time. People didn't begin to see Bach's compositions as art before the 19th century: long time after his death.

Depends how you define success. Fame is one thing but composing over a thousand pieces which are musically perfect another thing. I don't have the knowledge to explain Bach's perfection but just listen to his music, every bar is different and sounds unique.

Bach was wrong. Either he underestimated the achievement of his music, or the talent that he had. I suspect the latter, as he was a Christian.

Derpin MacDerperonton plz do, , it is much needed.

Same. I'm assuming a genius wouldn't react to it. They'd just start playing.

I feel this so hard

You're not an atheist if you believe in Bach.

the holy trinity: bach, motzart and chopin.

@@tennisracket6987 Bach and Beethoven.The rest are merely prophets.

@@historicwine1283 If you ever diligently listened to entire Mozart catalog, most of Beethoven themes are straight rips from Mozart. Sure he expanded on them but IMO he borrowed the most of ideas out of all the greats. So who is the prophet?

RawRiffRock But he's not really remembered for it, like he's remembered for his paintings and other visual art.

Bach to music as Newton to phisycs

Da Vinci is especially rememberd for revolutionizing medicine. In the early 16th century it was forbidden from the church to harm anyones dead body, meaning it was impossible to make an autopsy and see why the person actually died (also nobody knew how the inside of a human looked). Da Vinci did not care and became the first to do a forensical autopsy and created what we today call human anatomy.

@@RobespierreThePoof Da Vinci lived before vesalius. ???

Bach is the bach of music...

Compooooser

also musician :D

oh bullshit

John Dunstable, Josquin Desprez, Carlo Gesualdo, J.P. Sweelinck, Dietrich Buxtehude - a few names, J.S. Bach would have mentioned!

All composers are musicians, but not all musicians are composers. So, saying that he is the best musician of all times is much more than just saying he is the best composer of all times.

No, not exactly. He just wanted to grab atention to his music not in the same ofl hum diddle dee dumb dumb melody line plus thumpity thump bas. once you start fiddling around with this technique, it becomes fun. So not a genius. Just a good notemaker. haha!

STOP

Nope. Genius.

Daniele Martinelli . Pure genius

"I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well." - Bach

J.S. Bach - Crab Canon on a Möbius Strip 0212am 17.11.23 i like this - one piece of music added to a Mobius strip... played forward and played back in one fell swoop then the opposing sides play at the same time... then you can slow the mirrored piece down as you speed the original score up... ahaha...

Well, two things. First, I'm not aware of any Bach contemporary who did something like this to a composition of theirs. Second, in order to do this, it was suggested in your post that a song could be cut in half, inverted, glued, and looped in the same way and it would work. I've considered this, and it's probably true. But Bach didn't do that. It went straight to music composition paper. And he already knew what the result was going to be. For 1747, that wasn't too shabby. Today, I seriously doubt the masses who write music even remotely consider composing such a canon which made it a once in a lifetime endeavor. Those in the industry might think about it for a moment, then clang their glasses in toast to "Hail Herr Bach" for a job well done!

Oh, I don't deny Bach's talent...he was able to compose things in his head, as you say. Ah, it's hard to put into words what I'm trying to say. All I really meant to say was, the depiction of a mobius strip is just the animator's choice, it's not a reflection of Bach's special property. The animator could have used a regular circle or a figure 8 or anything else and it would have worked for this song. The song is not innately _like_ a mobius strip in any particular way. When I say, take a song, cut it in half, flip it etc., I'm not giving instructions on how to make a song like Bach's. Rather, I'm giving instructions on how to make this animation. And you could do this animation with a Miley Cyrus pop song (just leave out the backwards-moving bit) but that doesn't mean Miley Cyrus writes songs with a special "mobius strip" like property. There are two bars playing at once, in reverse directions along the loop. _That_ was Bach's property, that the song is played forwards and backwards at once, and that couldn't be done with another song without some special preparation and skill. The animator could have, after cutting it in half, flipped the second half _left for right_ instead of up for down, and then glued. Then he could just play both sides at once, in a single direction. That would visually demonstrate the property. But I'm just nitpicking. I actually do like this animation for what it is. The reason I commented was because I noticed that it suggests the possibility of actual mobius-like songs, with pitch inversions like I said...

Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨Ʒ Ha! I see what you were saying! I've had known this piece for years and found this animation intriguing but beautiful. As you said, I did find the animation somewhat redundant. It still work if the music was played along the cross section of the Mobius strip, front to back, endlessly. It would work because the piece is symmetrical and when you cut it in half no matter which way you are playing, the counterpoints from each half would seamlessly match. So I think the Crab Canon does have the property of Mobius Strip, to some extent.

The remarkable thing isn't the mobius strip visualization, but the the crab canon is played both forward and backward at the same time. This is certainly almost unique to this piece.

It would certainly make noise, but it wouldn't work musically. It'd be cacophony.

This comment is cursed

Hello fellow digenerate. Guess us weebs all notice these things.

This comment is blessed

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Good book.

Nice!

Searching for this comment P.S.: MU

MUU

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bichord - I don't know. Something just doesn't add up.

thank you for that!

Joel Carli it's not serialism, it's not 400 years before, but I do agree it's genius ;)

Not 400 years, true, I overshot it haha. And it's not explicitly the same as serialism, but it is similar, in that yes, it's genial.

Joel Carli Serialism is not aesthetically pleasing, whereas this is, despite it's logical complexity. That's why it's FAR SUPERIOR to serialism.

+alphaknave you clearly haven't heard the right pieces then :P done well, serialism can be as delightful as some of bach's work (though I must admit that this canon in particular is one of my favourites)

+Xatnu Rowan You're right: I haven't heard much serialism. I heard some of Schoenberg's, vomited all over myself, and vowed "never again!"

Uau, você tem sinestesia?

Bach doesn't use the crab process usually. He prefers to play a theme at various speeds and upside-down. I think this is pretty unique in his production. Of course he has a few short themes which have that sort of symmetry (for example the BACH theme is the same played in reverse or upside-down).

@@frenchimp Indeed Bachs work is stunning. He was the midi master overall. He could edit music in his head as he was playing while additing and deleting material all simultaneously, a living breathing DAW. Its enough to say he knew counterpoint in all species + did work maintenance on church Organs, that alone says the type of skillful innovator he was to music itself.

To be fair, any crab cannon, or palindromic sequence for that matter, could be cut in half and presented in this manner. Eunoia is right when he says it doesn't have a true "mobius cannon" property. I agree he is wrong about it applying to any song but he does admit it wouldn't sound great for most cases. Regardless, there is no need to be patronizing, especially to someone who is seeking out Bach! Encourage the next generation to experience a variety of music not scold them for what they've been sold.

What?

@@acrid8952 On a Möbius strip, the piece of music would play twice from left to right. It would only flip upside down. In this video, it's playing backwards, which isn't possible to happen if replicated physically. Vihart made a video showcasing this exact idea, but using an actual piece of paper.