…the [musical] score, the requiring that many parts be played in a particular togetherness, is not an accurate representation of how things are. These [composers] now compose parts but not scores, and the parts may be combined in any unthought ways. This means that each performance of such a piece of music is unique….The parallel in art is the sculpture with moving parts, the mobile. ~ John Cage
There’s an experiment I’ve been wanting to try for some time, but have only just now found a means for presenting. It may not be the most original idea in the book, but it was fun creating and then playing with.
The basic idea is to have several small pieces of audio, of varying lengths and sounds, play randomly and loop indefinitely to see what types of atmospheres evolve as the pieces interact with each other over time, producing not only something unintended and spontaneous, but hopefully something interesting and engaging as well. The listener becomes active in the musical arrangement by their choice of sounds to include (hopefully all of them), and when they choose to start them…and if they choose to turn some of them off (though here again, the interesting things happen as all the sounds evolve and writhe together over time). (more…)
