Playing 100 instruments at once

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Abigail Thorn, Jordan Harrod and Annie Rauwerda face a question about a marvellous musical masterpiece.
LATERAL is a weekly podcast about interesting questions and even more interesting answers, hosted by Tom Scott. For business enquiries, contestant appearances or question submissions, visit www.lateralcast.com
GUESTS:
Abigail Thorn: ‪@PhilosophyTube‬, / philosophytube
Jordan Harrod: ‪@JordanHarrod‬, / jordanbharrod
Annie Rauwerda: / depthsofwiki
HOST: Tom Scott.
QUESTION PRODUCER: David Bodycombe.
RECORDED AT: The Podcast Studios, Dublin.
EDITED BY: Julie Hassett.
GRAPHICS: Chris Hanel at Support Class. Assistant: Dillon Pentz.
MUSIC: Karl-Ola Kjellholm ('Private Detective'/'Agrumes', courtesy of epidemicsound.com).
FORMAT: Pad 26 Limited/Labyrinth Games Ltd.
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: David Bodycombe and Tom Scott.
© Pad 26 Limited (www.pad26.com) / Labyrinth Games Ltd. 2024.

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Опубликовано:

15 май 2024

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Комментарии : 124

@BostonTypewriter 28 дней назад

Thank you for the kind words, Annie. We're working on 100 typewriters. We're almost halfway there! Let us know the next time you're in town.

@purplegill10 28 дней назад

"People were expecting Brahms, and they got cacophony" That's one of the hardest two-person quotes I've ever heard.

@fumthings 28 дней назад

"and they got cacophony" ... like a Russian composer...

@blauw67 28 дней назад

It's been a while since Tom had to sit one out in one of the clips

@illexsquid 15 дней назад

Since he retired he's forgetting all the interesting things he's seen.

@Soul-Burn 28 дней назад

"I heard you like polyrhythms" comes to mind!

@v-1nce 28 дней назад

would've been hysterical if Tom sat out because it was 10 performers dropping a drum kit off a cliff to play a specific rhythm when they hit the ground (but something more complex than "ba dum tss" this time 😄)

@Divig 7 дней назад

This was the video that I found Tom Scott through! Gosh I have followed him for a long time...

@olivier2553 28 дней назад

For reference about the self synchronizing metronomes, there is a video by Steve Mould.

@alextemplemusic 28 дней назад

I once participated in a performance of this piece! It was fun, and reminded me of microwaving popcorn.

@grmpf 28 дней назад

I feel like they severely under-sold who Ligeti was. If I didn't know of him before this, the impression I would get is that of some weirdo who had an odd idea that didn't go over very well, not of someone who is considered one of the most significant composers of contemporary classical music.

@stapler942 28 дней назад

I'm fond of his harpsichord piece Hungarian Rock, and as a pianist I'm definitely intrigued by the unique challenges of his Études, though I've never gotten around to acquiring a score. He's definitely a name I encountered frequently when I was studying music.

@verdatum 28 дней назад

Ligeti is the guy who did that super creepy choral piece from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

@ajs787 28 дней назад

It's for that reason initially I thought it was a choir of 100 people, but that got shot down pretty quick.

@Martykun36 28 дней назад

Kubrick also used one of his pieces for Eyes Wide Shut. The one that's two notes in a piano played repeatedly.

@ji604 28 дней назад

Lux Aeterna

@verdatum 28 дней назад

@@Martykun36 I had no idea, that's hilarious, as I remembered finding that piece especially irritating. Eyes Wide Shut was probably the only Kubrick film I didn't really like.

@WUStLBear82 28 дней назад

Three pieces, actually: Atmospheres, Lux Aeterna, and Requiem. His compositions experimented with sound and tonality rather than melody and harmony.

@Jupiterninja95 28 дней назад

My initial guess after hearing the question: the ten musicians set off a rube Goldberg machine of 100 Instruments and then walked off stage while it played

@verdatum 28 дней назад

Nah, that's the band OK Go!

@Wick9876 27 дней назад

@@verdatum They'd walk all over, under, and around the stage.

@markusklyver6277 28 дней назад

My initial guess was the same as Tom's. In a paper entitled "Synchronization of metronomes," Am. J. Phys 70(10), 992-1000, James Pantaleone developed a mathematical model for the metronome system, if anyone wants to read that paper.

@lucindao 27 дней назад

Thanks. I'm looking into it right now

@kf10147 28 дней назад

I was thinking some kind of marbles on xylophones contraptions

@mindjam5320 28 дней назад

Instantly reminded by that of Marble Machine by Wintergatan

@Ranzha_ 28 дней назад

Once Annie spoke up, Tom knew the answer Ligeti-split!

@IVIaskerade 28 дней назад

I got metronomes early on, but I thought they were all set to different beats and the audience was waiting for them all to tick in perfect harmony

@SmallBlogV8 28 дней назад

The audio equivalent of the bouncing DVD-logo screensaver hitting a corner?

@cuttwice3905 28 дней назад

I've attended a performance. Hypnotic.

@IsYitzach 28 дней назад

If you use too many, the small differences in tempo and phase become too much to synchronize before the windings run out of energy. I think Mythbusters found that out, but it might have been Matt Parker.

@juliesleepydyingmess5443 28 дней назад

hell yeah, first time getting it so quick! I'm so glad and happy and full of love for myself :}

@dliessmgg 28 дней назад

this is the first time that i knew the answer beforehand

@erikharaldsson2416 27 дней назад

My first thought was Tibetan Singing Bowls, same basic principle of it keeping playing after the musicians leave.

@yurisei6732 27 дней назад

There are a hundred staff, but 90 of them are too humble to really consider themselves performers.

@Alsadius 28 дней назад

When I twigged to the instrument, I figured it'd be about the patterns they make when a bunch of them with slightly different frequencies start going, and slowly disalign and realign in really interesting patterns. I've seen it in other contexts (game loading screens using dots, physical pendulums, etc.) but you could do it with these too.

@beatrix-persephone 22 дня назад

I recognized the name Ligeti and knew he was an experimental 20th century composer, but for a while I was thinking of the piece "Pendulum Music" that had several microphones swinging over speakers causing feedback, until I realized that A: that's actually a Steve Reich piece, and B: that piece uses _much_ less than a hundred microphones.

@graflovespeep2487 28 дней назад

My first thought is that the performers set up 100 alarm clocks, and the audience waits until they go off

@Pikachu0071000CS 27 дней назад

I thought it would be microphones - there's another piece I've heard where they set off microphones which resonate against speakers and it's quite nice.

@Pikachu0071000CS 27 дней назад

It's called Pendulum Music by Steve Reich, it's surprisingly good!

@czynx3196 28 дней назад

One of the rare occasions I got the answer pretty quickly

@davidshi451 28 дней назад

I agree with Tom, the wobbly table version sounds more interesting!

@geoffroi-le-Hook 27 дней назад

My thoughts went to John Cage's piece for randomly tuned radios.

@rosssnyder1458 28 дней назад

As a professional classical musician, I just wanted to clarify the pronunciation of Ligeti. It's a hard G and the stress is on the first syllable. Anyway, love the show!

@frgnr88 27 дней назад

My initial thought was something along the lines of John Cage's 4′33″ where it is silence for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. The musician has sheet music that solely consists of rest. They still count it out in their head and turn the page. Every performance is different though because it is reliant on the ambient noise created by the audience.

@Aeropunk08 27 дней назад

I was originally thinking fireworks, as the technicians would start off the sequence and then leave. Probably cooler than the actual answer 😅

@SmallBlogV8 28 дней назад

At one point I thought maybe it was live loop devices somehow set-up to record and loop eachother from an initial piece/sound, but that wouldn't steadily get quieter with nobody operating them...

@zbobhigh 28 дней назад

I immediately thought gongs and was convinced I was right right up until the answer was said

@rjdverbeek 28 дней назад

I checked it just out. It was not the version with the wobbly table.

@megaing1322 28 дней назад

I do agree with Tom, the metronomes slowly getting in sync with each other would be a better performance to watch and listen to.

@dcruz233 27 дней назад

I totally thought this was Poem Electronic for the first half 😂

@londonbobby 28 дней назад

I've come across György Ligeti before and know about some of the weird musical performances he's come up with, so for the first time I instantly got the answer for this one. It's a shame they didn't even try to pronounce his name correctly though.

@hannahk1306 28 дней назад

My first thought when I realised that they had ten instruments each was something like spoons (where you need multiple to make a sound), but I couldn't work out how you would make the noise carry on. Even something like elastic bands, the sound continues for seconds rather than minutes. I don't think I'd ever have got to the actual answer, because I don't think I've ever seen an actual physical metronome (electronic ones or even apps are used nowadays). Any sort of electronic metronome could carry on indefinitely, unless they'd done something clever with the amount of battery left in each device, but that seems too hard to predict accurately enough.

@ifer1280 27 дней назад

I'm calling it: metronomes

@lucbloom 28 дней назад

Printers? Floppy drives? 99 drums and a cymbal off a cliff?

@romainsavioz5466 28 дней назад

Someone actually made a automated version to play it whenever

@Dizzula 28 дней назад

Abigail Thorn!

@lambdalambdalambda3250 28 дней назад

It´s actually music and actually dramatic and interesting, although randomic.

@TurboLingaLanguages 26 дней назад

I was with Abigail... I was sure it was wine glasses!

@PianoKwanMan 28 дней назад

100 phones, I'm guessing. I remember seeing that a while back. fingers crossed Now that I think of it, some tuning forks set up for resonance from externals sounds woiuld be pretty cool too

@wiseSYW 28 дней назад

I thought it was spinning tops.

@winkletter 28 дней назад

This reminds me of that RU-vid celebrity who became famous after he threw some musical instruments off a cliff.

@thekaxmax 27 дней назад

Yeah, some guy called Tom Scott....

@Leo-ct9pm 28 дней назад

I was thinking about Newton's cradle.

@mittfh 28 дней назад

Combine the two: a bunch of metronomes set to different tempos on a movable platform... (Or, more scientifically, set to tempos within multiples of each other, e.g. 40, 80, 120, 160, 200, 240 bpm).

@liefwerk 28 дней назад

Ok, some random guess, I might not be too far off: 10 instruments per musician, it's an instrument that requires tuning beforehand and can resonate during multiple minutes. So a sort of bell that a musician can ring once and then leave ?

@liefwerk 28 дней назад

Eurler disks ?

@liefwerk 28 дней назад

Damn, wasn't too far off ! Amazing, I'd like to see that !

@utofbu 28 дней назад

Ligeti is awesome. Lux Aeterna fo lyfe!

@user-yi4rp4ee3g 27 дней назад

I thought of fireworks...

@krank23 28 дней назад

I don't know why, but my initial thought was: cats. Every performer brought in 10 cats, and… everyone in the audience just stayed around watching and listening to the cats meowing and whatever.

@jd7863 28 дней назад

I think that's a case of answering the question with what you want to see

@krank23 28 дней назад

@@jd7863 ABsolutely! =)

@TR-rz1xt 28 дней назад

I was thinking singing bowls...

@boy638 28 дней назад

I would take a guess, but it could be swing and a miss.

@theadamabrams 28 дней назад

Mythbusters tested the syncing metronomes effect Tom was talking about ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-e-c6S6SdkPo.html and Veritasium did a video the puts it in a larger context of various physical and chemical systems ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-t-_VPRCtiUg.html

@leumas75 21 день назад

Someone else may have said this before, so sorry if a repeat, AND I hate to be “that” guy, but since I studied 20th-century music at university, I feel obligated to point out that the composer’s name is pronounced Li’-ge-ti - Emphasis on the first syllable, and with a hard “g” as in get.

@nanardeurlambda 28 дней назад

0:28 are the instruments record playing devices of some sort? 2:45 megaphones? 3:55 ah! I discounted the metronomes! I thought the quieter part meant they would noticieably stop, which is not quite what I think metronomes do. it's the metronome autosynchronising thing, then? drat! all wrong...

@Fairyslash 27 дней назад

my first thought was balloons, heh

@Fairyslash 27 дней назад

after video: oh hey, someone mentioned balloons, haha. I was imagining balloons whizzing around

@deafeningoctopus 28 дней назад

Can anyone explain how the table wobble thing works?

@SirBradiator 28 дней назад

Look up Dr Hannah Fry giving the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture 2019

@analogicparadox 28 дней назад

"The surprising secret of synchronization" by Veritasium should cover this IIRC

@ToppyTree 28 дней назад

The Veritasium video "The Surprising Secret of Synchronization" talks about it

@matthewstuckenbruck5834 28 дней назад

Matt Parker has a good video on it, called "Synchronising metronomes in a spreadsheet"

@arnelilleseter4755 28 дней назад

All of the above comments. Also, Mythbusters did a thing about it too.

@ineedausername124 28 дней назад

Anthony Braxton wrote a piece for 100 tubas

@mrtnsnp 28 дней назад

That original broadcast that was never transmitted is now on RU-vid: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-qOcBSFTu1oI.html

@TaylerJDust 28 дней назад

My first thought was 100 Newtons Cradles

@MrTandtrollet 28 дней назад

Lol, got this immidiately (the Tom version) but that's from wathing too much RU-vid X-D

@cybergeek11235 28 дней назад

oh, i was thinking a bunch of them ping-pong ball instruments, like "wintergarten" (or whatever the thing's actually called)

@teletextsoda 28 дней назад

For those who stumble upon here, "the thing's actually called" is Wintergatan's Marble Machine.

@cybergeek11235 28 дней назад

@@teletextsoda that's the one - thank you for translating my half-formed thoughts into actual words!

@Dead-EyeJuncan 28 дней назад

My initial guess was wind up toys, like cymbal monkeys or something of the like. Not too far off.

@verdatum 28 дней назад

During that whole avant-garde cubist phase of "modern music" with John Cage and such, that absolutely could've worked.

@JimC 27 дней назад

That Ligeti (the "g" is hard, as in "get", not soft as in "gin") piece is more of a physics experiment scaled up _way_ too much!

@csanadtemesvari9251 28 дней назад

fireflies will also sync up their flashes: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-kV-pnbtfraE.html

@thepandaken5475 28 дней назад

my guess is metronomes at different bpms

@user-ju2vq5mi1g 27 дней назад

Ligeti uses a hard G

@alveolate 28 дней назад

wait ligeti... that sounds like one of those postmodern composers? 100 of those timer things?

@alveolate 28 дней назад

METRONOMES!

@stapler942 28 дней назад

Yeah, György Ligeti (pronounced similar to "George") is one of the big names alongside Stockhausen, Cage, Boulez, Xenakis, Berio, etc in the avant-garde composer world.

@iamagi 28 дней назад

Veritasium

@ManoharOfficial 28 дней назад

Don't mythBusters bust the synchronisation of metronomes ?

@benford1726 28 дней назад

I would imagine that would be very unpleasant to listen to?

@donaldasayers 28 дней назад

First thoughts: Kazoos or Ukuleles.

@fumthings 28 дней назад

"and they got cacophony" ... like a Russian composer...

@loddude5706 28 дней назад

Flash guess: Tubular bells, as their harmonics then drift & sync? Wrong!: Close-ish, but their whole thing WAS based on a ton of regular wind-ups : )

@mk_rexx 27 дней назад

spoilers I learned about this on an Adam Neely video. If I remember correctly, it's in something like a hallway so you're not really digesting all 100 of them at once, which would likely sound terrible if you broadcast them at once. You only digest the patterns that come up as a nearby metronomes drift in and out of sync so every one wouldn't have the exact same experience. Edit: Ok apparently, Adam's performance is not faithful as the original, which is in fact, just all played on the same stage, rather than a hallway. I prefer the hallway version tbh.

@cheeto4493 28 дней назад

I was thinking of something like this but somewhat automated that they started. 15 Note Poly Tempo Pendulum ( ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-lTwg4mFF32E.html ). My son showed me this video after I shared the Palindrome video with him that Tom Scott recommended in his Weekly Newsletter

@expectationlost 28 дней назад

wierd question

@syriuszb8611 28 дней назад

No no, do not make the audience helium sucking performance, helium is a finite resource, and it is extremely important for science and medicine, so please, do not waste helium.

@ToppyTree 28 дней назад

right, but is it dominos?

@cybergeek11235 28 дней назад

"BADGER! IT'S A BADGER! IS IT A BADGER? IT'S BADGER!"

@fariesz6786 22 дня назад

tbh if you're expecting something like Brahms only more modern and then aren't ready for a bunch of metronomes, you managed to be both too pretentious and at the same time not pretentious enough.