Approximately Nothing
.minimal piano music
and images
.
Audio Links for "Approximately Nothing:"
► Listen on DSound
► Listen from source (IPFS)
► Listen on Soundcloud
► Listen on YouTube (embedded below)
Musical notes
This piece is called 'Approximately Nothing' because in the grander scheme of things, that's exactly what it is. Technically something, but still asymptotically approaching nothing in terms of cosmic significance. Or approaching everything, if you must be an unrelenting optimist: but that's a piece for another day.
It's also the first time I've touched piano keys in approximately several months, which isn't rare per se, but I find it surprises those aware of the fact that it was the subject of my years-long undergraduate study. That's a long story, but this piece isn't. It's approximately 4 minutes and 44.447 seconds long, just so you know what kind of commitment you're getting yourself aurally into.
This is a very minimalistic improvisation, meant to have plenty of empty space, played mostly in the lower register—and mostly with the left hand only. Thus, the goodly too-muddy sonorities characteristic of the lazy and brooding soul too early in the morning on a cold rainy day. It is free-metered and tuned to A=444 hz.The single take was multiplied three times: once centered and normal, plus two additional tracks with complementary (mirrored) automated panning. The two tracks had large-space-simulating reverb and sporadic manually-automated ring modulation respectively.
Finally, a nine-minute recording was made of the light rain outside, halved, and panned ±22 to the left and right to add ambient depth and an authentic sense of the atmosphere in which the improv was created. This rain was also given a large-cavern-simulating reverb, which enhanced the already-box-sounding acoustics captured by my iPhone in the brick, concrete-and-wood-door-sided one-open-faced vertical rectangular prism that happens to function primarily as the front porch of my house.
Now that I have given you far more information than you care to have regarding what is, ultimately, the somewhat-pleasant-sounding-but-truly-astonishingly-low-effort-creation-of-a-once-rigorous-improvisationally-oriented-composer-realizing-with-chagrin-the-vast-stretches-of-time-he-lets-said-skill-atrophy-and-determining-to-make-something-approximately-nothing-on-a-cold-rainy-morning, and still too little information about other things perhaps mattering up to or exceeding a great deal more, I shall take my digital leave. { * walks out of room without saying goodbye * }
It's also the first time I've touched piano keys in approximately several months, which isn't rare per se, but I find it surprises those aware of the fact that it was the subject of my years-long undergraduate study. That's a long story, but this piece isn't. It's approximately 4 minutes and 44.447 seconds long, just so you know what kind of commitment you're getting yourself aurally into.
This is a very minimalistic improvisation, meant to have plenty of empty space, played mostly in the lower register—and mostly with the left hand only. Thus, the goodly too-muddy sonorities characteristic of the lazy and brooding soul too early in the morning on a cold rainy day. It is free-metered and tuned to A=444 hz.The single take was multiplied three times: once centered and normal, plus two additional tracks with complementary (mirrored) automated panning. The two tracks had large-space-simulating reverb and sporadic manually-automated ring modulation respectively.
Finally, a nine-minute recording was made of the light rain outside, halved, and panned ±22 to the left and right to add ambient depth and an authentic sense of the atmosphere in which the improv was created. This rain was also given a large-cavern-simulating reverb, which enhanced the already-box-sounding acoustics captured by my iPhone in the brick, concrete-and-wood-door-sided one-open-faced vertical rectangular prism that happens to function primarily as the front porch of my house.
Now that I have given you far more information than you care to have regarding what is, ultimately, the somewhat-pleasant-sounding-but-truly-astonishingly-low-effort-creation-of-a-once-rigorous-improvisationally-oriented-composer-realizing-with-chagrin-the-vast-stretches-of-time-he-lets-said-skill-atrophy-and-determining-to-make-something-approximately-nothing-on-a-cold-rainy-morning, and still too little information about other things perhaps mattering up to or exceeding a great deal more, I shall take my digital leave. { * walks out of room without saying goodbye * }