Steve Reich / Pendulum Music
March 1st, 2008I was listening to Steve Reich’s ‘Pendulum Music I’ and wondered how anyone could play something like that. Turns out it’s ‘played’ by hanging mics.
“The microphones are pulled back, switched on, and released over the speaker, and gravity causes them to swing back and forth like pendulums. As the microphone nears the speaker, a feedback tone is created.
The music created is then the result of the process of the swinging microphones. ‘The piece is ended sometime shortly after all mikes have come to rest and are feeding back a continuous tone by performers pulling the power cords of the amplifiers’”