Musicians: play music out of sync Adam Neely: oh, that's a double nested hyper mega tuplet

@CosmicTeapot

2 жыл бұрын

Speaking of old regulars, I love how Martin (Tantacrul) still kinda peeked his head in this video through Jeremy showing his Musescore parts.

Thanks for having me, David! It was a fun challenge to try and write around. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go play music in time again

@mrmaestronyc

2 жыл бұрын

Thank you SO much for your creativity and for you wonderful composition!

@PeterJnicol

2 жыл бұрын

It's hard to compete with David Bruce, but your piece was extremely well composed and that showed in the execution. It sounded great.

@MPlegos

2 жыл бұрын

Awesome piece! Great inspirations as well, I believe the orchestra that recorded that for The Beatles wasn’t able to execute it with just Paul’s instruction, so George Martin had to write it out in score form for them to be able to play it.

@rainbowkrampus

2 жыл бұрын

I really loved the way your piece came together as well. Great job.

@Mark-Zhark

2 жыл бұрын

Yours was my favorite

To me, the most successfully musical idea was Jeremy Blake’s, who _isn’t_ classically trained. Jeremy is coming from the background of modular synthesisers where “controlled chaos” is the daily bread, so it’s only natural that he best knew how to approach this challenge for a very musical result instead of your usual atonal music. Way to go, Jeremy.

@PeterJnicol

2 жыл бұрын

Umm. Not sure if Jeremy would answer you or not, but he was classically trained in Flute I think. He has mentioned it a few times here and there.

@vinylarchaeologist

2 жыл бұрын

@@PeterJnicol You’re right, I should have specified: classically trained _composer_ - he even says it himself at 5:54

Jeremy's work just sounded like being in nature, in the woods, with your eyes closed, every sound around you doing its thing, the wind, the birds, the water, the animals.. But everything just still feels ethereal and sublime.

@JosuaKrause

2 жыл бұрын

to me it's very reminiscent of the Cities: Skylines soundtrack :D kzread.info/dash/bejne/ZHx926eocsrbp6g.html

@feminine_desires

2 жыл бұрын

I was thinking very much on similar lines, but as a game designer my mind went: "this would be great as a soundtrack for a complex environment". With each instrument phasing in and out as you move through the environment you would be able to hear an evolving harmonic song that evolved at the pace you moved. Works nicely because the easiest way to tie music to the environment is to attach them to a fixed point in the environment, like you just put a speaker there.

@martifingers

2 жыл бұрын

For some reason I felt that Jeremy's piece would work well with some spoken word on top - a poem perhaps...

@monikamoon14

2 жыл бұрын

Can totally envision all of this with a cloud mountain top and rolling clouds and the sun is coming out in a documentary, with David Attenborough.

@GuyNamedSean

2 жыл бұрын

That was exactly what I was envisioning as he described his construction of the piece. The only thing that threw me out of the natural harmony vibe was seeing "Trumpet in C" on the sheet. As a former trumpeter, it was like an eclipse of the sun turning a bright and beautiful day into a dark, cosmic horror.

Next time: “Five composers, one SET OF POWER TOOLS!” (I probably would watch it too, I love this series)

@RCSDominoToppling

2 жыл бұрын

Ok but why does that idea sound really fun though, haha

@PentameronSV

2 жыл бұрын

*Industrial/drill music intensifies*

@andrew_owens7680

2 жыл бұрын

That reminds me of Norm. His show I call "How to make $50 worth of furniture with $50,000 in tools.

@wilh3lmmusic

2 жыл бұрын

Mick Gordon appears

@petebenes948

Жыл бұрын

Brings me back to one of my favorite odd CDs of my teenage years, “Texas Chainsaw Orchestra.”

This is such an interesting look into how we make music. It's weird but this is probably the first time in the entire history of music where musicians can make music together without being in the same room, leading to truly random music. Whereas if you were to play your pieces in person, the orchestra would probably naturally drift to keep time with eachother. Super cool!

The first piece nailed it. Essentially designed so that out of sync would sound like chorus-y or delay effect. I'm less certain about the "because we couldn't use a click track, instead I used a click track though...

@toericabaker

2 жыл бұрын

yea..... someone didnt understand the assignment teehee

Without the composer's reactions there's something about this video that feels viscerally wrong. Hmmm.

@JohnnyJohnathan

2 жыл бұрын

Agreed, that was always the best part!

@PeterJnicol

2 жыл бұрын

Agreed.

@wiesorix

2 жыл бұрын

yeah, their reactions usually provide some good insight in the music, and some different perspectives to listen from... hope they are back next time

@rainbowkrampus

2 жыл бұрын

Throwing my voice to the choir. The reactions are really good. I can see how coordinating that could be a pain and understand if it's not always going to be possible. But in general I'd rather there be reactions than not.

@dananskidolf

2 жыл бұрын

Without anything to coordinate them, they were just always reacting to things at the wrong time so in the end they had to cut the footage.

I'm a bit sad that there weren't any reactions from the composers on each others pieces. I've always enjoyed their commentary

The unsynchronized vibrato of June Lee's piece is hypnotic and beautiful, and would actually to be hard to recreate if they were all in the same room

I wonder what might happen if a composer paired a composition with a video file, e.g. a scene of a child playing at a playground or something. Instead of normal orchestral coordination, permit each musician to interpret the music within the environment sketched by the video file they would watch as they performed.

@GizzyDillespee

Жыл бұрын

At least since your comment, Ryan Leach has been doing "5 composers, 1 scene" type of videos

@josephm.benoit9202

7 ай бұрын

Miles Davis did this to compose a score for a French film.

I must admit I think it wasn't a stupid idea at all! It's so cool to see how passionate everyone was. I think it glowed with intention and connection. And it was interesting to see the different approaches after to each other. Cheers for continuing this wondrous series, David!

@mrmaestronyc

2 жыл бұрын

Thank you, Bec, for lovely ideas and for your composition!

@rainbowkrampus

2 жыл бұрын

Awesome work. Really enjoyed your composition.

@qwertyTRiG

2 жыл бұрын

It was good to see you back on the channel, Bec Plexus!

This right here is music in the COVID era. Pieces shrouded in uncertainty, but strangely, there is unity.

The flute line in Jeremy's piece is so good! Incredibly pretty, the kind of music I'd have in my head running around in the woods as a kid

Music is organised sound. This was the definition I was given at university, and according to the definition, this has been organised, thus it is music. It's definitely interesting and to me at least, a bit challenging. It actually makes me think of Steve Reichs 'Different Trains'. This must have taken a lot of work to do. Fantastic stuff as always David 👏

@bro748

2 жыл бұрын

Not everything that is organized sound is considered music, though. Language, for example, is very organized, sometimes even moreso than music, yet by itself it's typically not considered music.

@morbidmanmusic

2 жыл бұрын

This to me, is hyper organized, actually. I'm a weird musician...

@CosmicTeapot

2 жыл бұрын

A definition that truly encompasses everything: Music is intended sound (not only intended as voluntarily produced, but also as in intended to be heard, so that includes unintended sounds that are voluntarily presented to another human being). I don't think any piece/genre gets left out with this definition.

Faces of "am I doing this right" are fun

June's sounds absolutely incredible! By removing the rhythm the players were forced to embrace their individual expressiveness and June's harmonic architecture ties it all together.

I actually quite enjoyed Jeremy's and Bec's pieces. The first one has a "nature" vibe to it, like all the different instruments playing are various animals in a forest, and the flute melody is like a bird soaring over it all. Very peaceful. The third one made me imagine a rainstorm. The pizz. strings at the start resembling the beginning light raindrops, and then when the winds come in it adds a certain chaos, like the dark clouds rolling in. I don't know quite how to describe the feeling the guitar adds to it, except that it starts fairly "in-key" with the strings and then gradually grows more dissonant when the winds come in. Maybe a traveler getting lost in said storm? Maybe it's just me, but those two pieces brought such clear images to my mind!

All the pieces were very interesting but Jeremy's connected with me the most. At times it even evoked Philip Glass a bit for me. Very nice!

@WoWOmegor

2 жыл бұрын

Exactly what I was thinking - was expecting to hear rumbling "Koyaanisqatsi"s

@mrcoatsworth429

2 жыл бұрын

I'm glad you mention Glass. In music class, about 10 years ago, we listened to a piece. I think it was by Glass. And it was just one note building up for a few minutes. I've never been able to find it again. Does anybody know what it could be? (Sorry for hijacking your comment)

@akash.srivatsa

Жыл бұрын

@@mrcoatsworth429 "Two Pages", maybe?

8-Bit Music Theory’s and David’s pieces produced the best soundscapes, in my opinion. The idea of coordinating where the beginning and the end of the piece goes seems to work pretty well.

@PeterJnicol

2 жыл бұрын

Agreed.

Okay, to be completely honest, a lot of this music just sounded like an orchestra tuning. But there are also a lot of times when suddenly something beautiful emerges from the chaos. Very interesting chaallenge, and definitely some interesting music! Also, huge respect for the players. Having a lot of freedom with no reference from other musicians must be an incredibly weird and difficult experience!

@kanchanchaudhary1973

2 жыл бұрын

an orchestra tuning sounds really good tbh

@wyattstevens8574

5 ай бұрын

I agree with the "tuning" analogy- especially in 8-Bit's track!

This idea has some kind of similarity to Frank Zappa's editing-as-composition technique of Xenochrony. He'd take isolated tracks of different instruments (usually improvised solos) that were performed at different times in different tempos and sometimes different keys, and edit them together in interesting ways. This is kind of that concept in reverse, but there are still choices in the edit that would change the outcome drastically.

@Bushwhacker-so4yk

Жыл бұрын

David Gilmour did something similar where he would improvise for a long stretch of time, then play back the recording to find the best bits, stitch them together, and then see if he could play the result.

These compositions were magnificent! They remind me of my youth when I was first getting into music. When I listened to university concerts as a child, I was always fascinated by the pre-concert warmup noise. It's the reason why I got into noise music later in life. These sound a lot like that warmup noise, though lightly structured into something like an impressionist painting. A stupid idea? Maybe. Maybe not. But it turned into something wonderful!

Reminds me of a couple decades ago in the metaverse Second Life, musicians regularly did live concerts, playing together for an audience, and incorporating audience reactions, requests and feedback in their performances, regardless of where they were in the world. A popular prominent performer was an Australian blues guy living in an Asian country, Japan perhaps, accompanied by someone in Europe and others in America playing together live. The hardest part was time zones, as one would obviously have to be up before dawn not having had breakfast yet, others it was midday, and the rest were tired at the end of their evenings!

Jeremy set the bar very high as usual :D It's funny that he never believes in himself and then when the final composition gets revealed its like WOOOOOAAAAH

Oh my the guitar in becs guides this so well, really hits the emotions

I'm surprised that none of the composers used more open spaces in their pieces.. It's the type of approach I would use in such a challenge.

For me, the first one was the most immediately accessible; but listening to Bec's piece, it felt like a sort of overture and I found myself wanting to hear the full composition that might follow such an overture. Some of the others felt like they could be used within a film score, depending on the mood one was trying to convey.

Amazing experiment, the results are fascinating… AND I almost cried at the end hearing the orchestra conductor thanking his musicians 🥲

sounds like the orchestra before the practice session just playing random stuff all at once. i absolutely love it

These were really beautiful. I wanted more. I want more.

I was quite surprised at how much cohesion all the pieces had and how enjoyable the were too. Jeremy's in particular which reminded me of Lark Ascending!

honestly, i loved the music that came out of this. lovely and organic.

Jeremy should turn his piece into a whole suite, I'd love to hear more of that since it instantly gave me chills.

I once watched a 45 minute live performance of Morton Feldman music that felt like four hours.

i honestly love these kind of peices with the chaos of everything. very good work.

Very nice to see Bec Plexus back on the channel. And it was good to get the conductor's opinion too. The music was, of course, strange, but it's surprising how much of it worked. I must be getting old: many of the players looked like children.

8:00 this sounds like the flute solo being the calm in the middle of chaos

All of these are so fun, and unique. They have such a strange feeling. Some feeling more evolving and always being together, and others being wandering about a familiar place feeling sound wash over you.

Clicked like already after just hearing "David that sounds bad" because it amused me so much and I knew I was in for a treat no matter how things turned out.

That was an intriguing idea, and I was really impressed with the results. As Mark said, the individual composers' voices came through. Each piece IMO was successful, each in a very different way. When stripped of rhythm, harmony was a natural focus. Perhaps working in a whole tone scale could have produced some interesting results as well.

this was a good idea, I loved the natural chaos that developed while also having harmony. As though the notes were a flock of birds.

Considering how mind bogglingly unlikely it is that every one of these performers have a professional recording setup, it just sounds amazing.

8 bit work was really cool I really like what was done. Good job everyone.

Its really surprising how good you are at making youtube vids. Everybody knows you are a respectable composer and all, but thats a slightly different skill. Yeah, I know you know beats and scoring but this doesn't mean you did video editing/producing/effects/script etc... and asking composers to be charismatic is a whole other problem, usually! Well done, sir!

Hey Mr. Bruce, I’ve just started watching this series and I can’t help myself to congratulate and be grateful for you, the amazing musicians, and all the people behind the scenes that are able to make things like this possible! I’m sure there are many individuals that have recommended for other great ideas in regards to this series, but I wanted to recommend “5 composers write for a Marching Band”. More specifically, an HBCU band.

@thegabe666

Жыл бұрын

Some bands I’d recommend are: Sonic Boom of the South The Marching 100 World Famed Tiger Marching Band The Human Jukebox The Marching Storm

You are brilliant. All of you, including the conductor and his orchestra. LOVE it.

I love the way free time sounds, it is simultaneously beautiful and cacophonous

These were all so interesting and beautiful! I love the different approach each composer brought to their piece. And massive kudos to the students for a great performance!

I love the ending chord/sting at 8-Bit Theory's piece - I really appreciated the texture!

12:56 yo that guitar sounds amazing for being home recorded

This is amazing. I'd argue it's one of your best ideas and probably ahead of its time. Rule based music composition with an element of chance is so much more interesting to me than musicians reading off of a score. I'd be curious to hear any one of these compositions played by different sets of musicians to see how the performances vary. Or even played on different instruments to see how they translate.

Wow, David, all of the pieces were well done. All of them were very unique and the orchestra was amazing. Thanks to all of you.

Your video production is on another level now, amazing to see how much that has elevated in even the past year!

Jeremy's piece was amazing! The lead flute part really was so beautiful and really tied it all together. Great stuff!

This was yet another brilliant and inspiring idea by David! I love how his videos make me rethink my music production processes and even the question of ”what is music?”.

Love these composition challenges, there's always something unique and interesting to listen to in them!

Love how the production quality is going up and up!😁👍👍

Absolutely fantastic! I loved all of these pieces - they all had an inherent chaos and naturalness to them.

Oh noooooooo!!!!!! are there no reactions!!!!?? Like, seeing how they approached the problem was interesting but I was so looking forward to seeing their reactions after that first one came out so lovely

I would have had a large section playing a drone, then long swells with a slow attack/decay, playing notes from an interesting scale. It could also be cool to have the drone be a bunch of pizzicato violins just playing a single note in quarter notes. Since it would be neat to hear the tempos diverge and see points emerge where groups lined up.

What an exceptional video!!!! I have never ever thought about music in this way before! truly inspirational! I personally liked your composition the best David!

loved the guitar solo in Bec's piece

Damn, I love this channel! Kudos to the musicians! Excellent work!

I liked them all. I’m a big John Cage fan, so I thought the concept and execution by each composer was very successful and enjoyable, actually very tonal sounding. I was a little surprised that many seemed a bit put of by the idea, especially considering the history of the avant-garde that most composers are familiar with.

John Cage, Eric Whitacre, Philip Glass, Morton Feldman, Cornelius Cardew, Terry Riley: Exist David Bruce: "One of the dumbest Idea I've ever had, There was even some doubt in my mind whether this could be called music at all." Jeremy Blake: This is bad

Phase is some studio ghibli type stuff and I can just IMAGINE the scene it belongs to. Something beautiful for sure. Maybe wind picking up leaves as they come up a hill and bare witness to the size of a town they never seen before. Perhaps a windy region.

*Absolutely* fascinating. It would be great to have a follow up vid with each piece being conducted as one would normally and hear the compositions sync'ed. I think it would also be interesting to see the two different compositions used in a something like a sound track (movie or videogame) where one scene uses the related music and another scene uses the sync'ed music.

You feel like the music theorist dad I’ve always wanted, I think it’s your sense of humor.

David, your piece sounds like the orchestration in a Radiohead song. Cheers dude

such different approaches , happy to hear and see the process

My top vote goes to #1. It was really quite beautiful. My bottom vote goes to #2; it pretty much just sounded like an orchestra tuning up. Numbers 3, 4, and 5 I rate sort of randomly across the middle; each had better and worse aspects. Fascinating experiment, David.

As a Macalester alum I'm delighted to see my school being part of something like this.

One of my composition teachers (Gilius van Bergeijk) had a piece where he puts two pianists in different rooms and each one plays a hand of a Chopin nocturne. They start together and soon they start drifting away since they can't hear each other (The audience could hear and see the result). It sounded fantastic 😛

interesting experiment! these are mu fave kinds of videos by david because it really shows how different people problem solve. brava!

Really loved this one! Keep getting more experiential with the premises lol. I do wish we got the reactions from the other composers tho

A big shout out to the musicians of Macalester, right here in my hometown. I liked Jeremy Blake's the best. It felt like it would fit in nicely as a film score.

I love how when I saw June's score I was immediately like "Yup, that's definitely something he would do lol" Teasing aside I love his work and will always look forward for the next thing he does in life!

Jeremy’s was actually beautiful. I’d listen to it on its own.

The craziest part about this is that it's easier to pull off this sound through these means as opposed to traditionally.

Wow! Jeremy's piece reminds me of the things I like about MIke Oldfield, like Incantations, loved it. June's had some Mingus Jazz orchestra about it with some unease for good measure. Bec's was like BBQ sinister cinematic crickets. 8-bit's like the fantasy world inside an ancient gigantic cuckoo clock. David's like a dreaming inmate. I really liked this challenge and enjoyed listening to the results a lot! Well done everyone.

I loved Jeremy's one. It remains me of some Philip Glass work! A mix between "Einstein on the Beach" and his more nature related works! The one from 8-bit Music Theory is also amazing, very minimal and beautiful!

They all came out better than I had expected. Void was probably my favourite.

I think this well proves the importance of people coming together into a single place to build something together.

Surrendering control to make music...creativity at its best, wonderful idea David! I find them all really pleasing

I didn't dislkie any of these pieces. Each had a wonderful fragility to them. Jeremy's piece is exquisite!

Void..perfect rainy day music! Beautiful work, all.

Loved Bec's piece!!!

I would call every one of these compositions a success and all of them deserve a life beyond this video.

Brilliant idea and the outcome! Maybe the shortest 22 mins ever.

So glad you went canon-esque. My first thought at the beginning was math-rock asynchronized canon-line counterpoint melodies of different bar lengths but all in the same relative scale (maybe not the same mode though).

I am so freaking inspired by this. Its so liberated!

This somehow reminds me of Whitacre's Deep Field where a smartphone app was used to create some of the sound - played by all who had downloaded a specific app. In the Royal Albert Hall, it was like magic.

I feel like this is the kind of background music you would hear wondering around the feywild in D&D

For me, 8-bit's was the most enjoyable to listen to. Had I been one of the composers doing this project, I probably would have gone full John Cage and tried to embrace the inherent indeterminacy and randomness as much as I could. Inventing a chance process by which each player came up with the note or notes to play might be a fun exercise.

I feel like a clever way to write for this would be to use a call and response structure, with some space between the calls and responses, perhaps focusing on a sort of swelling idea, feel like it could be a way to get something resembling a more melodic structure anyway, especially if there are soloists in there

Really interesting project. I’ll bet Zappa would have approved!

The pizzicato violins in Bec's piece sounds and feels like rain

Thank You for show the way, how is it done!

This was quite the interesting experiment. I like a lot of the results.