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I was thinking - books sometimes take weeks to read - why shouldn't songs take weeks to listen to? Taken in increments, sure, but say, a 72-hour composition is completely recordable/ingestable in our digital age. It's the whole thing we need, I mean, about an attack on our afflicted attention spans. A radical reactionary attention movement.
— Aug 12, 2016 07:00AM
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Tony
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Aug 12, 2016 07:03AM
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An hour and 15 minutes? That's child's play to what I'm proposing! Now, I'm sure this has been done before, I mean, nothing was new under the sun back when the Bible was wrote - but, it should be more common - a genre rather than an experiment! And yes yes I know the Ring Cycle u.s.w
Bela Tarr's Satantango? A drop in the ocean of what I'm proposing.
(At home I'm currently assembling a machine that will produce infinite music - one I can leave on for days and check back in on every now and then and see what it's been up to, see how the parameters I've set are slowly morphing - see this isn't just talk - the radical attention revolution is afoot - Bottom's Dream is a fellow traveler on these dangerous roads - and our lighthouse is The Wake!)
The exuberant joy imparted to me by that clip of The Song That Never Ends will last well through this weekend. Merci Anthony!
you mean like Out1? or... perhaps a rather musically complex dodecaphonic metal concept album? that'd be interesting...
Now, 12 hours, that's a noble attempt, no doubt. But we must go past the cycles of night and day, it must encompass at least a 24-hour cycle, at the bare minimum. We will count by Circadian moments.
You have a nice stereo system. You press play. You go about your life. Eat, sleep, work, fuck, shower, exercise, watch TV, etc. In the background of your days unfolds the 168-hour composition. You pass by it, check in on it, see how it's slowly changed, move on, return, etc. It will be a different form of time-awareness.
Not exactly a song, but what about John Cage's piece Organ²/ASLSP? The performance on an organ in Halberstadt, Germany started in 2001 and is scheduled to end in 2640. I think 639 years are hard to beat.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Slow...
Yes yes yes! Just that very thing! See, nothing new under the sun! Now, more of these type things! Proliferate!
Maybe Autechre's recent releases fit into this idea. Though it is for a particular audience (an artistic statement by being a single piece with no silence? Or something split into movements like a classical piece?)
- I really get the principle but prefer to listen to the same few circa-one-hour albums frequently rather than always having to have new stuff. Depth rather than magnitude.
I think it ends up an experiment rather than a genre because of the way people use music. Particularly if it's longer than, say a working day. Fewer people have the capacity to hold that much music in their heads to feel what the work has been like so far, over multiple days, than have for a 1500 page book.
None of which is meant to say don't do it, obvs. It's interesting and ambitious and those are some of the things that making art is about.
I just think it can't help but be niche.
But, the original intent of 20 to 70 minutes is just very disappointing and not radical at all. Fuckin' John Cage.
I can envision an epoch where people have weeks-long compositions always playing behind the fabric of their days. Well no not really but it's a thought that is fun to pursue.
There's an even longer one with the title - wait for it - Longplayer [how boring]. Started on Jan 1 2000, ends 1000 years later.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longplayer
You could have an app that syncs it up to your device so that as you go around your daily life it can be playing on your headphones, and when you get home it will be at the same place in the composition on your home stereo.
Boring title, Matt, but exactly what I'm thinking
Geoff wrote: "(At home I'm currently assembling a machine that will produce infinite music - one I can leave on for days and check back in on every now and then and see what it)'s been up to, see how the paramete..."Have you ever used Buddha Machines? (Although I'm guessing you mean something more melodic than drone?
Geoff wrote: "You have a nice stereo system. You press play. You go about your life. Eat, sleep, work, fuck, shower, exercise, watch TV, etc. In the background of your days unfolds the 168-hour composition. You ..."
The amount of variation within the piece[s] would be interesting re. what this experience is like. I have put entire artist discographies on over a day or two, or more, but that's with knowledge of bits of it already - which reduces the amount of new information to process at once, and to see parts within a whole. I'm sure it depends on the individual but I think there needs to be attention within the creation to how you want to handle boredom / claustrophobia: by varying the sound, by going for something minimal that fades into the background like white noise. It can give a weird sense of time not really passing, of stasis, if the music feels the same all the time - but that can also be what a person needs to get things done.
I'm not really envisioning stasis, but slow textural/timbral morphing - but there shouldn't be limits to this - this frees up the artist to fill time in so many ways - an hour long section of long tones - two hours of those tones randomized into glitches - a half a day of field recordings, etc. With random voltage generators and logic modules all sorts of things are possible.
Ali Smith's How To Be Both contained two copies of the novel in different orders. I don't think many people read the content it twice, but quirks of presentation like that could be interesting as a way of looping music, where people are much more likely to listen to a sound they like repeatedly and it could be an integral part of the work.
Antonomasia wrote: "Ali Smith's How To Be Both contained two copies of the novel in different orders. I don't think many people read the content it twice, but quirks of presentation like that could be interesting as a..."Very true, recurrence would almost have to be a factor to make it an actual composition. There should be movements, returns, coda loops, etc. But the artist would have to envision it on altered timescales.
Josh wrote: "https://www.discogs.com/Terre-Thaemli... Haven't been able to listen to it, but I will someday."31 hours! This is getting there! thanks for that!
Geoff wrote: "Josh wrote: "https://www.discogs.com/Terre-Thaemli... Haven't been able to listen to it, but I will someday."31 hours! This is getting there! thanks for that!"
No problem!
There's a guy, Jim Zamerski, who turned the first 226 digits of the number π into music, and it's actually quite listenable. The piece lasts only about 4 minutes:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOaR4...
The are currently 12.1 trillion digits know of π (see http://www.numberworld.org/misc_runs/...)
If you turn all of these digits into music the resulting piece would play roughly 1500 years. And it'll never repeat (that's the nice thing about π). Alas, this is all just theoretical.
Someone's done a fairly in depth review of it herehttps://rateyourmusic.com/release/alb...
The longest track is apparently just two chords
ETA: Terre Thaemlitz - Soullessness
There are also many youtube videos of normal songs stretched 20, 50, even hundreds of times their normal length. They make for pretty interesting slowly morphing pieces. Sometimes I put them on as background music when I work.
Jimmy wrote: "There are also many youtube videos of normal songs stretched 20, 50, even hundreds of times their normal length. They make for pretty interesting slowly morphing pieces. Sometimes I put them on as ..."Time-stretched pieces are pretty interesting. I've heard several Beethoven works and enjoyed them. William Basinski used to be one of my faves.
Basinski is a definite inspiration here
I haven't dug into the time stretched pieces that much - links to ones you dig would be appreciated
Matt wrote: "There's a guy, Jim Zamerski, who turned the first 226 digits of the number π into music, and it's actually quite listenable. The piece lasts only about 4 minutes:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO..."
This should certainly be done.
Anthony wrote: "http://www.youredm.com/2015/06/11/the..."Thom Yorke! Okay okay that doesn't discount this from being exactly what I'm going for
Well, here's 180 minutes of The Ode To Joy ::https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_AyA...
I know someone not long ago stretched the entire Ninth into 24 hours. [ah, yes, I see that's come up already]
And Wagner's Ring of course is 16 hours ; of music, not just sound. ; )
The Complete Work of Bach is laid over 172 CDs (how many hours?) ::
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Works...
Vivaldi's over 66 discs.
And the later two, if like me, you subscribe to the Conceptual Continuity view of an artist's work, would constitute very loooong works.
Maybe one of you minimalist guitar hero types might record a 24 hour version of Heroin?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFLw2...
Yes Nathan yes to all of these things! FYI I have some VU bootlegs with hour+ renditions of Sister Ray and some loooong versions of Heroin. But Sister Ray they would play for entire evenings!
Stockhausen's Licht opera cycle is even longer than Wagner's, and weighs in at around 24 hours, if I recall correctly.But just like books can be speed-read without understanding them fully, but take much longer to read and comprehend them, what if these works were instead highly symbolic like books so that one could watch them in a few days, but have to watch or listen to it multiple times in order to fully grasp their depth?
