15 Note Poly Tempo Pendulum [video]

If anyone’s curious to see complete pieces built out of this sort of technique, check out Conlon Nancarrow’s Studies for Player Piano (he does some other pretty crazy polytempo stuff too, like changing the speeds of different parts at different rates).

Personal favorites that use the same polytempo technique are No. 36 [1] and No. 37 [2].

I’ve been studying his music lately and am working on a piece with similar rhythmic experimentation, so happy to try to answer questions!

[1]: https://youtu.be/IOlId8O6D5w [2]: https://youtu.be/g0gNoELvpPo (I prefer the Werco recordings, but this is a cool vizualization)

The audio equivalent of this:

https://sciencedemonstrations.fas.harvard.edu/presentations/...

Submitted here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40023245

An early example of this is "Poème symphonique", a 1962 composition by György Ligeti for one hundred mechanical metronomes. Basically, start a hundred mechanical metronomes on a random speed and let them run out. Famously recorded for Dutch TV ages ago, here's a version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAYGJmYKrI4. It stops being chaotic noise at about 4 minutes in.

If you want to go even further: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SthcxWPXG_E

I truly hope that someone is able to show Steve Reich this video.

An example of what is commonly known as “phase music”, popularized by Steve Reich (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_music).

Steve Reich would like a word with you.

Whenever this concept pops up I think of a classic CSound piece made by Jacob Joaquin in 1999. It's the first execution of the idea that I'm aware of. He gave the notes a slower envelope so they sometimes seem to merge into a single tone. The source is also (not so surprisingly) quite short.

https://freaknet.org/martin/audio/csound/#:~:text=Another%20...

Reminds of pendulum waves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVkdfJ9PkRQ

A more visual way https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsAlFKXAMjM

I absolutely love that he did this in this manner. Not demoing the concept in Abelton Live or some other music program where it would have taken seconds to do is just much more endearing. I hope it was as rewarding for him to complete it as I am impressed in it being made.

The whole time I kept thinking he needed to wear the glasses that the Hartnolls wore on stage as I kept thinking of the tracks they made with this concept.

There are some places in that where it sounds to me like there is someone singing a repeated three syllable word with one syllable on each hit of the 3 notes on the left end of the top row and sung at the tone of that note.

Anyone else hearing illusionary singing in there?

The place I first got that illusion was around 3:24, and I was listening with my eyes closed which I think might make it more likely to hear issusions.

i think the video might be out of sync, the lowest note seems to drift from what the video is displaying. Threw me for a bit of a loop when i was trying to find some of the higher notes striking in the video.

Here's a better demonstration of the technique: https://youtu.be/SthcxWPXG_E

This is very reminiscent of some Shpongle jams.

The video description says 0.2 bpm difference between these notes. What is the base (slowest) tempo? 60 bpm?

What chord does he play?

Why do this manually?