#17

Run your gear off batteries, stop when the power goes out.

5 Likes
#18

At one point I was trying to come up with some alternative oblique strategies…

One was something along the lines of “until it hurts, then keep going”…

I realize that may sound a bit masochistic and possibly dangerous, but it is honestly part of how I learned to play guitar!

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#19

You can count the clicks of a Geiger counter, along the lines of Giorgio Sancristoforo’s Radioaktivnost sequencer which uses a USB (or simulated) Geiger counter to advance its clock.

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#20

I used to be into making pieces as long that lasted as long as it took a teapot to boil.

Or, alternatively, coffee to brew.

As long as it takes for a cup of something hot to cool?

As long as it takes for a cup of something cold to reach room temperature?

Until you get used to a certain smell.

Until you no longer notice a certain background noise.

For a certain number of breaths

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#21

A really long domino run, or Rube Goldberg machine. Or a marble clock:

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#22

I like that candle clock idea. If you add three nails, you’ve marked the end of three movements. And then you can ask the audience how many nails to add, or how far apart to space them. It provides rigid structure, without being rigid about what structure it’s adding…

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#23

Eat a sandwich.

…

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#24

I love this thread, very thought provoking.

I can’t find the video any more, but Wooden Veil performed once while a giant balloon was slowly inflating–from some source that I’m not clear about–and the piece ended when the large balloon exploded.

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#25

i’m generally obsessed about time on stage and have used many versions of clocks over the years.

i just recently commissioned a giant double pendulum to take care of some rhythmical duties to the structure of my performance while i do some programming on stage:

likewise, i’ve been using a mic’d euler’s disk to take care of some clock duties recently, though it only lasts for a couple of minutes:

there’s another amazing double pendulum which i can’t really find for sale anywhere that’s realistically affordable:

and something i used for years when i was starting out was a standard alarm clock, just the regular analogue kind with the 2 bells on top which you can wind up. it was great to have 20 of these all set to go off at the same time- set them for, say, 1 hour to create the end of the show. of course they were not very well made so they would all go off at slightly different times and it was a really fun game and good way to get interrupted and know when to stop!

15 Likes
#26

Maybe a light sensor on a sundial, or anywhere you’re expecting a shadow? Or, more visually interesting, a mirror reflecting sunlight onto the wall. What I’m trying to say is that if you’re playing after sunset, I’m not really going to be much help.

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#27

Woah these are all really cool suggestions—love the idea of using these physical objects as clock sources, and yeah some kind of constant motion would be amazing to have for an audiences eyes to wander off to.

That’s what I loved so much about Anthony Braxton’s use of the clock—there was so much stimuli on stage—13 people all playing in different combos at the same time----but there was always this sand timer that you could watch, and that grounded the whole thing.

1 Like
#28

I like the idea of having something like cookies baking in an oven, and the audience being able to watch them like a kid sitting in front of the door waiting for them to be done. Maybe not logistically feasible to have an actual oven but giving people fresh cookies also seems fun, but I may just be hungry.

5 Likes
#29

“If music be the food of love, play on!”

  • Shakespeare
#30

reminds me of Dead Moon (RIP), who played with a candle mounted on the kick drum and frequently stopped when it died

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#31

I have found that if I record harsh noise at home with no plan and paying no attention to the time, I almost always decide its finished at 7 mins. So I guess that must be my attention span

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#32

What are natural sources of periodicity?

In other words, what are some physical objects or systems that have the tendency to recur at intervals? Some considerations I’m looking for:

  1. The object/system should be able to be recorded by some means.
  2. The object/system should be able to sustain for length of a song (>5 minutes) without needing to be recharged / replenished / etc.
  3. Frequency of object/system is within range of musical tempos (40 - 240 bpm / 0.6 to 4 hz)
  4. No electronics (okay if powered by electricity, but no cpus/555 ic’s)

I’d like to use these physical objects to modulate tempos and LFOs in a live, realtime setting. For instance, I’ve been working on using my pulse rate to send out MIDI clocks to modulate the tempos of all the connected sequencers.

Some ideas for physical sources of periodicity so far:

  • Metronome
  • Water dripping
  • Clothes spinning in a dryer
  • Heart beating
  • Cheap Geiger counter
  • Light from a lighthouse

Not sure if a new thread is necessary, feel free to close if this has been covered. The closest thread I could find was on Nature’s clocks which is illuminating but not exactly a list of sources of periodicity since they aren’t recurrent.

11 Likes
#33

There was a post from last year not sure if you’ve seen it - Nature Timers

Edit: I see now that you have found it, disregard

1 Like
#34

Pulsars!! There’s gotta be a way to hook up to some .gov API or something to stream pulsar data.

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#35

Pulsars are a great idea! I forgot about space stuff. There is photon data from pulsars from Nasa. There is also geomagnetic activity, like measured from U of Alberta. Both are not super realtime but could be useful to generate some time-varying signals from historical data.

I thought of some more natural periodic sounds:

  • crickets
  • train going over train track
  • ocean waves cresting near the shore
#36

Many of my jams end with my wife walking in on me unexpectedly:

1 Like