musical mind-games

During my study of music at uni, I picked up an appreciation for musical experimentation. I heard, and participated in, musical expressions which played with more than just notes and rhythms and instrumentation — music which rearranged the concept of music itself as a part of its performance. This was music which was more often described with words than with traditional notation. Or perhaps not even described at all, just existing as the result of a process.

One of my favourite examples was a piece called "I Am Sitting in a Room" by Alvin Lucier. You can find a description and a recording here. Basically, Lucier recorded himself reading out a script in a room, then recorded a playback of the recording in the same room, and repeated the second step many times. By the final repetitions, you can barely hear his voice anymore; you can only hear the resonant frequencies of the room corresponding with the rhythm of their production in his voice. It's not exactly pleasant listening, but I find it fascinating.

Another which I was quite impressed by was "Dripsody" by Hugh Le Caine. It uses the sound of a drop of water falling into a bucket, re-recorded on tape at different speeds, to create something astonishingly complex.

From the sublime to the ridiculous... I found this today: "Call Me Maybe Acapella 147 Times Exponentially Layered" by Dan Deacon, obviously based on "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen.

If you can get past the unfortunately original-sounding beginning, and the fact that the ludicrous lyrics are repeated ad nauseum, you can find another iteration of what intrigued me about the two more serious pieces above. When you mix sounds in unconventional ways, you can hear things you did not expect. The formerly-prominent elements sink into abstraction, while the background sounds take on new and unrecognised forms, somehow bigger and more elaborate than you thought they could be. I know it's based on one of the worst and most insidiously catchy songs ever, but I do admire the kind of musical mind-game that this, and the more venerable works above, are playing at.