cyberinsekt

Ever catch the sound of the wind as it howls between tall buildings, and hear a chord? Ever be stopped in your tracks by the electric rasp of an air conditioner as it makes a sound like a Brian Eno wet dream? Ever walk across broken paving slabs, and hear them rock and clatter under your feet like a giant xylophone? There are plenty of undirected phenomena that make music.

There are directed ones as well, ones that are distinct from what we might think of as "playing" music, but which nonetheless result in music. I've written before about the Morse-Thue Sequence, a non-threatening piece of binary mathematics that can be used as a generative root for music works. This sort of composition, where details of which sounds will be played is out of the control of the the composer, is called process music.

One of the classic pieces of modern process music is Steve Reich's Pendulum Music. Microphones are hung overhead, directly above the amplified speakers to which they attached. The volume is adjusted so that this produces feedback. Then the mics are put in motion, pulled back and released as free pendulums. When they pass above their speakers, they produce sound. As time goes by and they lose their angular momentum, they are producing sound more constantly. Eventually, they will stop altogether and the piece ends in a howl of constant noise. There may be people who would disagree with the part of this piece where it describes itself as "music", but there's no denying that this is an extraordinary aural experience.

Steve Reich - Pendulum Music