Honestly, this is piece is the peak of minimalism in my opinion. When you start to add pitches and repetitive harmonies, it becomes pretty mundane very quickly. I think that's why both Glass and Reich moved away from this kind of process music later in their careers. It can be very restricting, in a similar way as twelve-tone rows, in expression.
I take back everything i said, I'm going around listening to the strangest music I can find and this is easily the second best, experimental and unique, and still functions as a tune one could listen to on a regular basis
It’s very eye-opening when you realize that cycles don’t have a definitive “end” or “beginning” and you can hear any downbeat as an upbeat (and vice versa) with enough practice. Wake up sheeple, measures are a lie
Good job, this makes this music so more interesting! (At 3:08 and 5:16, there is one fleeting measure where there are more dots on screen than instruments.)
Every day I get in the queue (too much, Magic Bus) To get on the bus that takes me to you (too much, Magic Bus) I'm so nervous, I just sit and smile (too much, Magic Bus) Your house is only another mile (too much, Magic Bus)…
The piece itself is a model of additive process minimalism. The visualization applied is aesthetically appealing taken on its face, but I feel as if this could also be impetus to creating (and perhaps communicating) rhythmically-driven composition, even adding dimensions for pitch, dynamics, and articulation. Feldman had experimented along these lines in his graph scores, though I submit to you the possibility of expansion upon that. Something to ponder for a Monday morning :)
It also is basically just replicating the interface of an old drum machine or step sequencer (e.g., an 808), lest you think there's not prior art, here.
That pale blue piece of wood i tap beats on my skull/desk when i’m agitated. the pale blue one calms me which i guess is also the beat in clapping music
Yeah! With a small percussion ensemble, using different sized claves :D We ended up memorizing it so we could play it without sheet music as well. It's just evolving/layering/devolving patterns, so it ends up looking & sounding harder than it is xD
I played this as well, we had sheets so it matched up with the animation in length (teacher thought it would be cool to have this in background) I was playing the red line, not technically challengimg, but the pressure is astonishing
I seem to remember this being "double-featured" some years ago in a Proms concert together with a Scriabin symphony. I suppose it was appropriate, given that both composers were innovators....
Not sure this is an example of polyrhythms. All of the instruments play in the same time signature (6/4, 4/4, and finally 3/4) but certain instruments are playing the offbeat, giving it a different sound. An example of a polyrhythm would be playing a 3/4 over a 4/4, or a 7/8 over a 4/4 or something, none of which is present here. In polyrhythms, the beat only comes together ever few measures or so (12 beats on a 3/4-4/4 polyrhythm, 20 beats on a 5/4-4/4) but this has everything repeating after each bar, with new notes added in once in a while to change the pattern up, but it still sticks to the same signature.
