From Alex Ross: The Rest is Noise:
“According to the notes in this new Naxos release…the photograph was taken on June 28, 1925, two days before the completion of the First. It comes from the DSCH Archive in Moscow.”
Have you encountered any other noted composers with cats? (John Cage is a well-known example.)
A few weeks I go, I attended CCRMA Modulations 2011, an evening of live electronic music and sound installations by CCRMA (the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford) and special guests at SOMArts in San Francisco. The event was an eight-hour marathon, though I only stayed for about half the time, seeing many of the installations and most of the live-music performances.
The first part of the evening featured sound sculptures from Trimpin and his students at CCRMA. This particular project, the “Boom Boom Record Player” by Jiffer Harriman stuck with me.
The output from the record player is used to drive the electromechanical instruments on the right. I thought the instruments were well crafted – but I thought it was particularly fitting to have a classic Earth Wind and Fire LP on the record player.
[Click image to enlarge.]
Trimpin’s offering featured coin-operated robotic percussion where the drums included just about every model of Apple notebook computer going back to an early PowerBook (and even earlier as I think I espied an Apple IIc).
[Click image to enlarge.]
The live-music portion of the evening with Tweet Dreams by Luke Dahl and Carr Wilkerson. Audience members with Twitter access were encouraged to live-tweet messages to a specific hashtag #modulations. The messages were then analyzed in real time and the data used to affect the music. As I was planning to live tweet from this event anyway via iPhone, I was ready to participate. Of course, inviting audience participation like this is a risky proposition for the artists, as one cannot control what people may say. I will freely admit I can be a bit snarky at times and it came out in some of my tweets. The music was relatively benign, with very harmonic runs of notes – and I exhorted them to “give me something harsh and noisy”. Inspired by another participant, I also quoted lines from the infamous “More Cowbell!” skit from Saturday Night Live, much to the delight of some in the audience. The main changes in the music seemed to be in density, rhythm and some melodic structure, but all within boundaries that kept the sound relatively harmonic and “pleasant.” I would have personally liked to see (as I suggested via Twitter), more complex music, with some noisy elements and more dramatic changes. But the interaction with the music and and the audience was a lot of fun.
The next piece, Sferic by Katharine Hawthorne, featured dance and electronics. It was described as “using radio and movement improvisation to explore the body as an antenna.” The dancers, dressed in black outfits with painted patterns, began the movement to a stream of radio static. The motions were relatively minimalist, and sometimes seemed strained. Gestures included outstretched arms and fingers pointing, with Hawthorne walking slowly as her dance partner Luke Taylor ran more quickly. Rich, harmonic music entered from the rear channels of the hall, and dancers moved to being flat on the ground. The static noise returned, but more crackly with other radio-tuning sounds, then it became a low rumble. The dancers seemed to be trying very hard to get up. Then they started pointing. The music became more anxious, with low percussive elements. The dance became more energetic and active as the piece came to a close.
This was followed by Fernando Lopez-Lezcano performing Dinosaur Skin (Piel de Dinosaurio) a piece for multi-channel sound diffusion, an analog synthesizer and custom computer software. The centerpiece was a custom analog synthesizer “El Dinosaur” that Lopez-Lezcano build from scratch in 1981.
The instrument is monophonic (but like most analog synthesizers, a very rich monophonic), multiplied for the purposes of the performance by audio processing in external software and hardware. The music started very subtly, with sounds like galloping in the distance. The sounds grew high in pitch, then descended and moved across the room – the sense of space in the multichannel presentation was quite strong. More lines of sound emerged, with extreme variations in the pitch, low and high. The timbre, continually changing, grew more liquidy over time, with more complex motion and rotation of elements in the sound space. Then it became more dry and machine like. There was an exceptionally loud burst of sound followed by a series of loud whistles on top of low buzzing. The sounds slowed down and became more percussive (I was reminded as I often am with sounds like this of Stockhausen’s Kontakte (II)). Then another series of harsher whistles and bursts of sound. One sound in particular started the resonant quite strongly in the room. Overall, the sound became steady but inharmonic – the timbre becoming more filtered and “analog-like”.
The final performance in this section of the evening featured Wobbly (aka Jon Leidecker) as a guest artist presenting More Animals, a “hybrid electronic / concrete work” that combined manipulated field records of animals with synthesized sounds. As a result, the piece was filled with sounds that either were actual animals or reminiscent of animal sounds freely mixed. The piece opened with pizzicato glissandi on strings, which became more wailing and plaintive over time. I heard sounds that either were whales and cats, or models of whales and cats. Behind this sounds, pure sine tones emerged and then watery synthesized tones. A series of granular sounds emerged, some of which reminded me of human moaning. The eerie and watery soundscape that grew from these elements was rich and immersive. After a while, there was a sudden abrupt change followed by violent ripping sounds, followed by more natural elements, such as water and bird whistles. These natural elements were blended with AM modulation which sounded a bit like a helicopter. Another abrupt change led to more animal sounds with eerie howling and wind, a strange resonant forest. Gradually the sound moved from natural to more technological with “sci fi” elements, such as descending electrical noises. Another sudden change brought a rhythmic percussion pattern, slow and steady, a latin “3+2+2” with electronic flourishes. Then it stopped, and restarted and grew, with previous elements from the piece becoming part of the rhythm.
After an intermission, the seats were cleared from the hall and the music resumed in a more techno dance-club style and atmosphere, with beat-based electronic music and visuals. Guest artists Sutekh and Nate Boyce opened with Bands of Noise in Four Directions & All Combinations (after Sol LeWitt). Glitchy bursts of noise resounded from the speakers while the screens showed mesmerizing geometric animations that did indeed remind me a bit of Sol LeWitt (you can see some examples of his work in previous posts).
Later in the evening Luke Dahl returned for a solo electronic set. It began calmly with minor chords processed through rhythmic delays, backed by very urban poster-like graphics. Behind this rhythmic motif, filtered percussion and bass sounds emerged, coalescing into a steady house pattern, with stable harmony and undulating filtered timbres. At times the music seemed to reach back beyond house and invoke late 1970s and early 1980s disco elements. Just at it was easy to get lost listening to Wobbly’s environmentally-inspired soundscapes, I was able to become immersed in the rhythms and timbres of this particular style. The graphics showed close-ups of analog synthesizers – I am pretty sure at least some of the images were of a Minimoog. I did find out that these images were independent of the musical performance, and thus we were not looking at instruments being used. I liked hearing Luke’s set in the context of the pieces earlier in the evening, the transition from the multi-channel soundscapes to the glitchy noise and to the house-music and dance elements.
I was unfortunately not able to stay for the remaining sets. But overall it was a good and very full evening of music and technology.
Yesterday morning I received the sad news that Max Mathews, considered by many of us to be the “father of computer music”, passed away.
Not only was he among the first to use general-purpose computers to make music, but his work spanned many of disciplines within the field that we know today, including sound synthesis, music-programming languages, real-time performance and musical-instrument interfaces.
He studied electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, receiving a Sc.D. in 1954. Working at Bell Labs, Mathews wrote MUSIC, the first widely-used program for sound generation, in 1957. For the rest of the century, he continued as a leader in digital audio research, synthesis, and human-computer interaction as it pertains to music performance. [Wikipedia]
The “MUSIC-N” languages have influenced much of how we still program computers to make music. It has direct descendants such as Csound, and has also influenced many of the other languages for composer, perhaps most notably Max (later Max/MSP) that was named in his honor.
His rendition of “Daisy Bell” (aka “Bicycle Built for Two”) is one of the early examples ofphysical modeling synthesis. Sections of the vocal tract were modeled as tubes, and sound generated directly from physics equations. His work inspired the version of “Daisy Bell” sung by HAL9000 in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey (though he did real at a talk in 2010 that the version in the film was not his recording.)
Mathews continued to expand and innovate throughout his career, moving into different areas of technology. In the 1970s his focus shifted to real-time performance, with languages such as GROOVE, and then later with the Radio Baton interface, which can be seen in this video below.
I had the opportunity to see and hear Mathews at the ICMC 2006 conference and MaxFest in 2007, both events that honored his 80th birthday and five decades in music technology. At 80, it would be relatively easy and quite understandable to eschew the latest technologies in favor of earlier technologies on which he did much of his work, but there he was working with the latest MacBooks and drawing upon new research in connection to his own work.
[Max Mathews at GAFFTA in 2010. (Photo by Vlad Spears.)]
More recently, I saw him give a talk at the Gray Area Foundation For the Arts in 2010, where he introduced the work of young artists and researchers, something he continued to do all the way to the end. He was at the Jean-Claude Risset concert at CCRMA (and I later found out, gave the introduction, which I had missed.) I have also heard comments over the past day that he was still involved in email and discussions over current projects up through this week, a testament to his character and his love for this field and for the work that he pioneered.
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to see composer and computer-music pioneer Jean-Claude Risset present a concert of his work at CCRMA at Stanford. Risset has made numerous contributions to sound analysis and synthesis, notably his extension of Shepard Tones to continuously shifting pitches. The sound of the “Shepard-Risset glissando” where pitches ascend or descend and are replaced to give the illusion of a sound that ascends or descends forever. You can hear an example here, or via the video below.
Sadly, I arrived slightly late and missed much of the first piece Duo for one pianist (1989-1992), featuring Risset himself on a Yamaha Disklavier piano. The duo comes from the computer control of the piano simultaneous to the live human performer. It’s not a simple computer-based accompaniment part, but rather a duo in which the actions of the live performer are interpreted by a program (written in an early version of Max) and inform the computer response in real-time.
The remainder of the concert features works for multichannel tape. The first of these pieces, Nuit (2010): from the tape of Otro (L’autre) featured eight channels with meticulous sound design and spatialization. The ethereal sounds at the start of the piece sounded like either frequency-modulation (FM) or very inharmonic additive synthesis (actually, FM can be represented as inharmonic partials in additive synthesis, so hearing both techniques makes sense). Amidst these sounds there emerged the deep voice of Nicholas Isherwood speaking in French, and then later in English as well – I specifically recalled the phrase “a shadow of magnitude.” Surrounding the vocal part was a diverse palette of sounds including low machine noise, hits of percussion and wind tones, a saxophone trill, tubular bells and piano glissandi. There were examples of Shepard-Risset glissandi towards the end of the piece.
The next piece Kaleidophone (2010) for 16-channel tape begins with similar glissandi, providing an interesting sense of continuity. In this instance, they were ascending, disappearing at the top of the range and re-emerging as low tones. Above this pattern a series of high harmonics emerged, like wispy clouds. The glissandi eventually switched to both up and down motions, and subsequently followed by a series of more metallic tones. At one point, a loud swell emerged reminiscent of the distinctive THX announcement at the start of most movies; and a series of percussive tones with discrete hits but continuous pitch changes, getting slower and slower. There was a series of piano-like sounds with odd intonations played more like a harp, followed by gong-like sounds reminiscent of gamelan music but with very artificial pitches and speeds. Industrial metallic sounds gave way to a section of tense orchestral music, and the long tones that subtly and gradually became more noisy and inharmonic. A sound like crackling fire seemed to channel the early electronic pieces by Iannis Xenakis. Highly-comb filtered environmental sounds gave way to eerie harmonies. They constantly changing sounds lull the listener in a calm state before starting him or her with a burst of loud noise (perhaps the most intense moment in the entire concert). This was followed by machine noises set against a sparse pattern of wind pipes, and a large cloud of inharmonic partials concluded the piece. I had actually not looked in advance at the subtitle in the program of “Up, Keyboards, Percussion I, Percussion II, Winds, Water, Fire, Chorus, Eole” – but my experience of the piece clearly reflected the section titles from perception alone.
The final piece Five Resonant Sound Spaces for 8-channel tape began with orchestral sounds, bells and low brass, gongs (or tam tam), timpani. The sounds seemed acoustic at first, but gradually more hints of electronics emerged: filtering, stretching and timbral decomposition. A low drone overlaid with shakers and tone swells actually reminded me eerily of one of my own pieces Edge 0316 which was based on manipulations of ocean-wave recordings and a rainstick. This image was broken by a trombone swell and the emergency of higher-pitched instruments. The overall texture moved between more orchestral music and dream-like water electronics. A series of fast flute runs narrowed to a single pure-tone whistle, which then turned into something metallic and faded to silence. All at once, loud shakers emerged and granular manipulations of piano sounds – more specifically, prepared piano with manual plucking of strings inside the body and objects used to modify the sound. The sound of a large hall, perhaps a train station, with its long echoes of footsteps and bits of conversation was “swept away” by complex electronic sounds and then melded together. A series of high ethereal sounds seemed to almost but not quite be ghostly voices, but eventually resolved the clear singing voices, both male and female. The voices gave way to dark sounds like gunfire, trains and a cacophony of bells – once again, channeling the early electronic work of Xenakis. A breath sound from a flute was set against a diversity of synthesized sounds that covered a wide ground, before finally resolving to a guitar-like tone.
The concert was immediately followed by a presentation and discussion by Risset about his music. His presentation, which included material from a documentary film as well as live discussion covered a range of topics, including using Max and the Disklavier to perform humanly impossible music with multiple tempi; and marrying pure sound synthesis with the tradition of musique concrete, with nods to pioneers in electronic music including Thaddeus Cahill, Leon Theremin, Edgard Varese, and Max Matthews (who was present at the concert and talk). He also talked about the inspiration he draws from the sea and landscape near his home in Marseilles. The rocky shoreline and sounds from the water in the video did remind me a lot of coastal California and made it even less surprising that we could come up with pieces with very similar sounds. He went on to describe his 1985 piece SUD in more detail, which used recordings of the sea as a germinal motive that was copied and shifted in various ways. Percussion lines were drawn from the contours, he also made use of sounds of birds and insects, including the observation that crickets in Marseilles seem to sing on F sharp. I did have a chance to talk briefly with Risset after the reception about our common experience of composing music inspired by coastal landscapes.
Overall, this was an event I am glad I did not miss.
Luna inspects the equipment for the next show during a recent practice session:
UPDATE: Luna just posed more regally next to the Nord keyboard. I think it’s a better picture (what do you think?).
The Nord Stage continues to be the main workhorse for idiomatic music, such as the jazz, caberet, etc. that may work its way into the performance. The iPad (barely visible here) will provide the experimental counterpoint.
And here is Luna with some of the “analog” instruments:
The prayer bowl will be part of the show tomorrow, but the toy piano and tablas probably will not.
Weekend Cat Blogging #306 is at Pam’s Sidewalk Shoes. Check out the great close-ups of all three cats.
The Carnival of the Cats will be hosted this Sunday by Pet and the Bengal Brats at Pet’s Garden Blog.
And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.
Another weekend, another show planned. This time poetry with musical accompaniment. The Headlands Center for the Arts is not far from the location of this week’s Wordless Wednesday photo.
Sunday, April 17 · 3:30pm – 4:00pm
Headlands Center for the Arts, Main Building
2nd Floor, East Wing, 944 Barry
Maw Shein Win will be reading poetry with musical accompaniment by Amar Chaudhary for the Headlands Center for the Arts Spring Open House in Marin on Sunday, April 17. Under the title “Pitta of the Mind”, the duo will combine poetry with a mixture of electronic, ambient and pop-infused music.
The Open House is from noon-5PM. The performance is 3:30-4PM. Arrive early to get good seats.
Admission FREE
Unlike a museum, gallery, or theater showing finished works of art, Headlands Center for the Arts supports the creative process. Come discover how a composer composes, what inspires a playwright, and how a painter decides when to put down her brush. Visit studios of more than 40 local and international artists working across artistic disciplines, explore our historic, renovated military buildings, and enjoy a homemade lunch in our Mess Hall Café.
More info:
http://www.headlands.org/event_detail.asp?key=20&eventkey=958
Directions:
http://www.headlands.org/article.asp?key=23
On March 16 I attended the latest installment of Pamela Z’s ::ROOM:: series at the Royce Gallery in San Francisco. This concert, entitled room: GLASS NOODLE, featured Pamela Z and Carl Stone in solo performances, and then together as the duo.
The performance opened with a series of solo works by Pamela Z. I had heard several of these before, at the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival and earlier ::ROOM:: performances. As in previous performances, she began with a piece that featured live looping of melodic singing turned in harmonies, along with extended vocal techniques, “street textures” against sung lines, and bubble wrap. This was followed by a humorous piece the features the sounds and gestures of a manual typewriter, both key clicks and the carriage return – the narrative at the beginning of the piece is that the performer is writing to her penpal on a typewriter because her MacBook is broken. In the background, the video features transformations on old QWERTY typewriter keys. The round mechanical keys lent themselves to playful rolling animations. Over time, the music shifted to short voice loops and sample glitches, and gradually became darker. One piece that featured the experience of going through airport security (including an operating singing of the familiar “did you pack your own bags” inquiry) seemed familiar from SFEMF, although in that performance I recall a longer section in which people spoke about their contents of their suitcases. Pamela Z concluded her solo performances with sketches from new pieces. There were eerie loops of pure tones, whispers, stop motion video of the artist on a wooded path – bits of sound that resembled prepared piano were followed by several voices talking about memory.
Carl Stone’s performance was an electro-acoustic tour de force. His continuously changing samples and other electronic sounds weaved together a complex structure with both energy and sense of direction. It started off subtly, with a build-up of granular synthesis and complex harmonics that quickly became enveloping. Some of the sonic elements evoked a sense of relaxation, even as they were metallic and machine-like. A section of rhythmic percussive sounds and plucked strings seemed to suggest a rock influence, which gradually morphed into something more South Asian featuring tabla and other drums. As the sounds further transitioned from percussion to vocals with rolling watery lines, it seems we were traveling further east towards Southeast Asia. The music settled into an undulating six-eight rhythm, that every so often would pause abruptly and resume. String instruments provided both the harmonies and the rhythm, the vocals grew more tonally complex. Bell sounds emerged into the mix, at first part of the overall Asian sound but then becoming a more abstract element. It seemed that the bells were growing, with a soundscape of large metallic sounds, and constant harmonies against an ethereal background. The overall sound grew in intensity and sounded “choral”. After a period of time in this pattern, the Asian-influenced percussion and voice fragments re-emerged, although at times the voice seemed to be in a more classical Western style. Towards the end of the continuously evolving piece, there was at least one false ending where the sound disappeared, before returning, until it drew to a true close.
After a brief intermission, Carl Stone and Pamela Z returned to perform as a duo called Glass Noodle. The set started out very quietly with low granular sounds and low pitches that seemed like machinery winding down. Slowly, the sounds became a little higher and faster. Videos of glass noodles were projected on the background as Pamela Z began reciting noodle recipes. (For anyone reading this article who is not familiar with glass noodles, they are quite tasty and I highly recommend trying them.) The short vocal samples, which were looped and granulated, built up and became more complex over time, and were eventually joined by percussion and melodic bell-like sounds. As the voice and electronic sounds again became more subdued, the video became more glitchy, and I heard a recipe for fish source thrown in amongst the noodles, as well as vocal sound effects that evoked “deliciousness”. Minor harmonies emerged against the recipe recitations, along with references to red chili peppers and pickled garlic. If I had not already eaten before this performance, I am sure I would have been quite hungry (glass noodles and the other foods described are all quite tasty). The order and complex counterpoint of the music eventually decayed into a series of asynchronous loops.
The next section began with classical piano and granular sounds, sparse vocals and bird calls. The loops, pitch bends and other effects were quite playful, and evoked the sound experiments of the late 1960s (think “Revolution 9”). The sounds of the birds and voice gave way to strange percussive sound effects, squeaking and rubbing, before the voice returned in the distance. Over time the texture became more complex, with short hits of metal and glass sounds and a glitchy voice loop. The noodles being projected at this point seemed more brittle than the sinuous textures from the earlier part of the set – then all of a sudden they “melted” as the sounds grew more extended. As the sound once again grew glitchier and noisier, the piece drew to a close.
live visuals by Bill Hsu
Two Sundays ago, I attended a performance at Artist Television Access featuring electro-acoustic audio-visual improvisations with John Butcher, Bill Hsu and Gino Robair. Bill Hsu provided the visual elements of the performance using the visualization environment Processing. (I have been interested in Processing for a while, and used it in the abstract graphics in my video piece featuring Luna.) Gino Robair had an array of electronic devices, including a Blippo Box and an Alesis effects unit, and acoustic percussion for a variety of sounds. John Butcher provided the low-tech counterpoint on saxophone.
I arrived late to an already pitch-black room as the first piece was concluding. (I was late because I was looking for a parking spot, which in the Mission is usually an ordeal. and I rarely drive there, but I had to on this night because of other obligations.) The next piece began in darkness, with small colored dots and a very sparse musical texture. The sound primarily consisted of electronic drones and long saxophone tones. As the the dots began to expand, so did the music. It became more active and featured more percussive sounds from Robair. As the graphics grew more complex, with swells and streaks, the music veered from discrete sounds to outright skronking with long runs of fast notes from both performers.
The next piece featured graphics that reminded me a bit of finite-element simulations with large numbers of particles forming in and out of patters. At first the particles seemed to form glyphs or characters of a written language, but then dissolved into smoke. This was set against sparse music, featuring bowed metal. (It was too dark to see, but I am pretty sure this was Gino Robair’s signature cracked cymbal.) The graphics shifted gradually over time, sometimes it seemed more like water, sometimes more like sand. Towards the end, the music (both saxophones and percussion) moved towards rather piercing high tones.
After a brief intermission, the performance resumed with the now familiar sound of the Blippo Box. It is interesting how despite having chaotic processes, this instrument has a very distinctive set of timbres and contours that are quickly recognizable. I did find out after the performance that the Blippo Box was being used in conjunction with an Alesis effects unit, which added more dimensions to the sound without changing its inherent character. Butcher attempted to match the sound on his saxophone, coming into unisons on the steady-state pitches, but then moving in chaotic runs of fast notes are growling timbres during the more turbulent output from synthesizer. The graphics during this piece focused on two closed elements, one yellow and one purple. They were mostly round shapes that curved in on themselves, but they occasionally coalesced into representational objects, such as a complex cross shape with sub-bars on the end (a bit like an Eastern Orthodox crucifix), and vague outlines of human figures.
The next piece was a sharp contrast musically, with drum samples and live percussion set against percussive saxophone effects, such as key clicks and tonguing. The graphics featured a red star with a roiling plasma surface that expanded over time.
The graphics in the final piece connected most strongly with my own visual aesthetics. It featured patterns of vertical bars overlaid periodically with large dots. The patterns started out simple, focusing on just a few elements on colors, but got more complex and richly colored over time. The music set against these visuals again featured the Blippo Box and its constantly changing but distinctive sound palette. But rather than attempting to match it, Butcher’s saxophone provided a counterpoint. He wove together active lines and melodies that on occasion were distinctively jazz-like, and then moving back and forth between long runs and series of loud inharmonic tones.
Every year, we at CatSynth join numerous other mathematics enthusiasts, geeks and otherwise eccentric characters in celebrating Pi Day on March 14.
March 14 is notated in the U.S. and some other countries as “3-14”, which evokes the opening digits of π (pi). Although the date representation is a very arbitrary connection to the number, we also recognize that the representation of π in decimal digits is arbitrary, an accident of human beings having ten fingers. So this year we are exploring the representations in binary and other related bases.
To represent an integer in binary, one of course presents it as a sum of powers of two, e.g., 11 = 8 + 2 + 1 or 1011 in binary. But one can also represent fractional numbers in binary. Digits to the right of the decimal point represents powers of one-half. So the binary number 0.11 is 1/2 + 1/4, or 3/4. Fractions like 1/3 can be represented with repeating digits as 0.010101…, much like in base ten. And this concept can be extended to irrational numbers like π.
The author of this website has calculated 32768 digits of pi in binary. We reprint the first 258 below:
11. 00100100 00111111 01101010 10001000 10000101 10100011 00001000 11010011 00010011 00011001 10001010 00101110 00000011 01110000 01110011 01000100 10100100 00001001 00111000 00100010 00101001 10011111 00110001 11010000 00001000 00101110 11111010 10011000 11101100 01001110 01101100 10001001
The initial “11” represents the 3 in π, and the remaining digits begin the non-integral portion. Like in the decimal representation, the binary representation continues forever with no particular pattern. While not as iconic or memorable as the decimal representation 3.14159…, there is something about the binary representation that makes it seem more universal, i.e., based on fundamental mathematical truths rather than a quirk of human anatomy. For me, the binary representation also lends itself to musical ideas. And for the occasion, I have created a couple of short synthesized pieces representing the 32768 binary digits of pi. In the first example, each binary digit represents a sample. The “1” represents full amplitude and the zero represents no amplitude (silence). The result, which at 44.1kHz sample rate is less than one second long, can be heard below.
The random configuration of digits sounds like noise, and more specifically like white noise, suggesting something approaching uniform randomness at least to human hearing. I also made an example slowed down to a level whether the individual samples became musical events. I find this one quite interesting.
With some additional refinement (and may some more digits to extend the length), it could certainly stand alone as a composition.
One interesting counterpoint to the notion that digits of pi form white noise is a conjecture related to its representation in hexadecimal (base 16), which as a power of two is “closer” to binary and seemingly less arbitrary than decimal. From Wolfram MathWorld, we find the following “remarkable recursive formula conjectured to give the nth hexadecimal digit of π – 3 is given by 
where 
is the floor function:
The formula is attributed to (Borwein and Bailey 2003, Ch. 4; Bailey et al. 2007, pp. 22-23). If true, it would add some sense of order to the digits, and thus additional musical possibilities.
I will be attending and participating in this performance tonight at the Luggage Store Gallery. The evening will unfold as an interaction among Laurie Amat, the Cornelius Cardew Choir and the Free Reed Vibrating Society. The two ensembles will trade off pieces, with Laurie Amat performing a solo in between.
In between performances by the Cardew Choir I may be live tweeting @catsynth. As long as it doesn’t seem too tacky.
The Luggage Store Gallery
1007 Market Street @ 6th
San Francisco, CA
Music in Motion focuses on the ongoing dialogue between space and sound. The sound helps define the space. The space helps define the sound.
Space/Sound investigators are:
Laurie Amat – solo voice and movement
Cornelius Cardew Choir
Tom Bickley – director and co-founder
Eric Theise, Sarah Rose Stiles, Dean Santomieri
Nathan Rosquist, Kalonica McQuesten, Marianne McDonald
Bob Marsh (co-founder), Cathryn Hrudicka, Ryk Groetchen
Tom Duff, Amar Chaudhary, Diane Caudillo, Nancy Beckman
Anne O’Rourke
Free Reed Vibrating Society
Bob Marsh – president, melodica
Sandra Yolles – melodica
Rent Romus – accordion
CJ Borosque – melodica
Melissa Margolis – accordion
David Slusser – accordion
Diane Caudillo – melodica
Juliayn Coleman – harmonica
Suki O’Kane – accordion, melodica
Michael Zelner – harmonica
Tom Bickley – melodica
Jim Ryan – melodica