Re: Noises through pickups (rather gongs, or pieces of wood...)

[Tim Nelson <tcn62@ici.net>]

This reminds me of something that happened to me at a NEXUS performance a
week or so ago: the opening piece was Steve Reich's "Music for Pieces of
Wood". (Although there are no looping devices used on this piece, it IS
quite loop-topical due to the cyclical and repetitive nature of the
composition.) Anyway, I'm fairly certain I had heard this piece before in a
recorded form, but this was the first time I'd ever heard it performed
live. It was amazing; the sound was reflecting all around the room (an old
church with lots of wooden surfaces and an arched ceiling), and the
interference between frequencies in combination with the rhythm of the
piece set up a very strange sensation in my inner ear. It wasn't the
volume; it was the pulsation of the music, and I began to hear frequencies
that could not have been produced by the instruments alone (five sets of
claves in different sizes), but rather by the interaction and interference
of all the sounds in combination. Very enjoyable!

Tim

At 02:30 PM 10/13/00 -0700, you wrote:
>Second, someone here (don't remember who and it's been deleted) said it
>is physically impossible for singing bowls to produce the low tone that
>you hear.  Maybe what they really meant was "physically incredible"
>because, since you _do_ hear the tone, it is indeed possible.  I
>remember some years ago reading about bells and the mathematical formula
>for determining the "perceived" fundamental frequency.  The word
>perceived is important here because bells are not like organ pipes or
>strings.  Organ pipes and strings actually produce their fundamental
>tone.  Bells do not.