Insufficient Funds is a weekly post in which we feature a free, or very close to it, piece of media that you can enjoy without overdrafting your bank account. So if you're low on funds, stay tuned to Cerebral Pop every Friday morning.
9 Beet Stretch is a playful title for a more mesmeric experience. Norwegian Leif Inge took Beethoven's 9th symphony (Ode to Joy and so forth), and stretched out the piece (which is somewhere between sixty and ninety minutes) to last twenty-four hours. You might, by reading that, have an idea of how it sounds. On the other hand, whatever is playing in your mind, it's slower than that.
Featured on WNYC's Radiolab, Inge was making his rounds in America with 9 Beet Stretch, after staying in Europe for several years. This episode of Radiolab followed listeners to an art house in California, where the piece was played in full, from 1AM to 1AM. The room was full of pillows and people who tried to describe the experience of listening to 9 Beet Stretch. The answers are amusing (if potentially nebulous), and I encourage you to check it out, if our earlier IF entry about the podcast hasn't already swayed you.
Most of the interviewees tried to articulate something they could not: that time felt different when they listened to this day-long symphony. The chord changes are so incredibly slow as to be barely noticeable. A short rest in the music becomes a long period of rare silence. Moving around—and time itself—felt faster to some of the attendees. I can't say for sure how I felt when I listened to it either, but it is so very special.
If you're worried that the pitch is lowered to muddy tones, or that the quality is that of a DJ manipulating a record to slow down with his bare hands, don't. The quality of the sound is impeccable, and the pitches are not altered. I still listen to this sometimes when I need some white noise. It's very relaxing, at some times maddening, and always interesting to think about.
There is a free stream (playable in iTunes) offered here.
Posts
1 comments:
This is so much better than that trend of musicians thinking they were clever by releasing tracks that were just silence.
Post a Comment