Self as Fractal

April 13, 2009: What a grid of squares has done to my ears

You've probably seen Andre Michelle's Tone Matrix site, but in case you haven't, here you go and I'll see you in two hours.

At least, I've spent that much time playing with it. Why so much time? Because it makes me feel like a Real Composer even though I'm clearly not, and because it does weird things to my auditory perception. For instance:

4256,4256,32768,34048,4116,4116,35328,32768,8512,8512,32768,37888,8202,8202,34048,32768 (copy this and right-click, you should have an option to Paste)

Here's the pattern as it looks on screen. I did the red-dotted ones first, then blue, then purple:




That red part is, of course, from Massive Attack's "Teardrop." I wanted to see how possible that was. Everything else is elaborations. Those are the ones I meant. But when I listen with it in the background, the patterns group up differently. And if I listen to it while looking it and concentrate on different groups of squares, I start hearing those patterns really distinctly. To the point where it changes the whole dynamic of the thing.

I'm overanalyzing this.

Posted by Sarah at 9:48 PM

Labels: music, websites of joy