Conlon Nancarrow's Impossible Piano

[@12tone]

I forgot to link my sources in the description so here they are: Sources: rhizome.org/editorial/2013/sep/23/impossible-music-black-midi/ www.willshare.com/willeyrk/creative/papers/study37/ www.classicfm.com/discover-music/latest/insane/ www.teentix.org/calendar/event/contemporary-piano-iii-sequentia-cyclica-super-dies-irae zztt.org/lmc2_files/Cowell_New_Musical_Resources.pdf

[@ajadrew]

"I'm not noting this"......;-))) Adam said he wanted to do something with you as well...that'd be cool!

[@3k9x]

You can change the description whenever you want

[@guillermosantamarinalagune6184]

well, gracias por la honorable mención de que fue mexicano... not really, dear... by the way, he was fiercely criticized here because he hardly could speak spanish!

[@nugget2809]

My god, that eight octave power chord was glorious.

[@NovemberXXVII]

Sounds a lot like the chord at the beginning of High Hopes by Pink Floyd.

[@djomni115]

"I'm not notating this" I'm dying

[@guitarguy11695]

Daniel Weger i died at that point also

[@RedstoneManiac13]

lmao tru

[@Simoran]

That 8 octave power chord actually sounds fucking great, almost like the start to an insanely difficult boss battle.

[@TomasIlluminato]

The other day I went to a masterclass Jacob Collier did. He was talking about intervals and the ratios between them and he mentioned that a triad is a ratio of 4:5:6, and immediately proceeded to do a 4:5:6 polyrythm on the mic with just three fingers of one hand (i believe it was his left but I'm not so sure now). He counted each of them out to assure us it was actually a 4:5:6. The police and firemen got there about five minutes after, alarmed, having heard the violent explosion of the minds of everybody in the room. Oh and yeah, he only did this to say he was showing us an example of a very very very slow triad. True story.

[@KalebPeters99]

There's no way that man is actually human

[@EchoHeo]

Thought Jacob is not a human???

[@AbhiBass96]

What masterclass was it? Berklee School of Music?

[@saswatamohanta1023]

ye its insane. he also did an instagram story or tik tok or something where he showed this

[@CogitoEdu]

This is fascinating. I'm excited to go listen to his work now.

[@RReger]

Thanks for doing this. Nancarrow is fascinating. Hopefully I'm not nitpicking but Nancarrow was an American composer who lived a large chunk of his life in Mexico, supposedly because his communist ideas made living in America difficult. Thanks again for the nice overview.

[@12tone]

Good catch! It was my understanding than Nancarrow was of Mexican descent, and since he also lived and worked in Mexico as a citizen for much of his life it seemed accurate, but I'm not entirely sure that was correct, and looking back at my sources I can't actually find the claim that he was of Mexican descent so I may have misunderstood something. Anyway, I didn't want to get too much into his history because I think Adam Neely's video covered that well and I didn't want to retread the same ideas, but you're absolutely right: He was born an American citizen and moved to Mexico to avoid persecution for being a communist.

[@vanguard4065]

well he can move back now as america is completely fucked up and he will find a place among the antifa and left wing media

[@db1958]

@@vanguard4065 ignorance demands its face be shown I guess

[@Hecatonicosachoron]

oh god, I love Nancarrow. He actually really did write miniature masterpieces.

[@TheTrueAltoClef]

"I'm not notating this" that broke me 😂😂

[@12tone]

^_^

[@benhavey4107]

It's important to note that composers inspired by Nancarrow were able to implement his ideas successfully in ways human players could play them! Ligeti's piano etudes are heavily influenced by Nancarrow (the opening of Study 37 is used as the basis for Cordes a Vide from Book 1). Parts of John Luther Adams and Elliott Carter reflect Nancarrow and Cowell's ideas as well. Also James Tenney wrote a piece for player piano for Nancarrow that's incredible. Thanks for the video!

[@RCAvhstape]

Player pianos are amazing devices, MIDI before there was MIDI. What's also cool is the kind of whole band machines made by companies like Wurlitzer for merry-go-rounds and other carnival-type settings. They also run on paper rolls and they have all kinds of instruments built in so the whole thing sounds like a marching band. I saw one once and they had programmed it to play some Michael Jackson tunes.

[@AlbertSirup]

Cowell did actually put his ideas into practice. He invented, together with Léon, a machine called the Rhythmicon which can play polyrhythms based on the harmonic scale. It uses rotating discs and photoreceptors.

[@johnappleseed8369]

Nancarrow's music is fucking fun and awesome, pick up a 2/3 CD set whenever you get the chance :)

[@capsfox]

It's cool to think about using frequency this way! I usually just think of it in terms of human speech, but this is a cool approach to music for it.

[@giuseppebassi7406]

3:26 a random Mandelbrot set

[@aviuscomposer2605]

Nancarrow was not Mexican! He was born in America. He moved to Mexico after fighting in the Spanish civil war because the American authorities were giving him hell for being a communist, he moved to Mexico in the 1940's - became Mexican in 1956 I think, but he was born American.

[@AidanMmusic96]

Thomas Ades and Rolf Hind recorded two of Nancarrow's studies on an album including Ades' In Seven Days piano concerto :)

[@jacquesstrauss6975]

I would love to see a colab with you and Adam Neely

[@patrickhodson8715]

There's a moment in Debussy's _Sunken Cathedral_ where the right hand plays 6 notes at once. It's all white keys spanning an octave, iirc a pentatonic scale, so you just hit two adjacent notes with the thumb, but still it's noteworthy Edit: I looked it up. It's bar 24 in the _left_ hand, and yes it's a Dm pentatonic scale spanning an octave, so hit the C and D with the thumb

[@louisgardner5580]

There's a part of charles ives' piano sonata where the player is to use a 14 inch plank of wood to compress a long cluster of black notes. Furthermore the forearm can be used to press a lot more than 5 notes obviously which is employed by free players such as cecil taylor, still theres an indeterminacy in doing this and you can't play anything other than all the notes in a given range this way

[@AmandaKaymusic]

Great cartoon for an obscene travesty. Thanks for the clip.

[@alsatusmd1A13]

That's exactly the thing about programming a machine to execute music independent of a human performer: the machine, at the hands of a crazy enough programmer, can not only do things that, if any way exists for any humans to do them, no composer would "normally" dare to ask those humans to do them, but do (almost) nothing but such things for the duration of a composition. But is it still possible for humans to comprehend the execution of such a composition as music?

[@jwc3o2]

yes

[@Enogimka]

Omg I think you have finally manage to do what other videos didn't manage to make me understand about the frequency number of a note such as A 220 440 660 880 1100 And the intervals of notes as an octave 2:1 and the 2:3 and 5:4 I din't fully understand it but with the context of the introduction you did about those O'll listen to it again to make sure to make sure my hypotheses/understanding is the same as the REAL theory. Because I'm learning by my self and by the help of the internets my interpretation isn't quite as fit ad the real stuff so I have to question myself about the stuff I think I know and than search for the real answer about my hypothesis. Your videos really helps me really bad you don't know how much!!! Without it I might have never gotten into trying to understand music theory like I do. I actually had piano classes where she explained to me some theory but I didn't connect to it or the way it was introduced to me in the context of it.

[@briancornish2076]

yes an early example of machine learning - nancarrow taught the piano to do something it hadn't previously realised that it could do

[@pilotdrift05]

Conlon was born in my hometown in Arkansas

[@sannylad9204]

I don't think he's Mexican, actually. He was from the US, fought in a war, then lived in Mexico.

[@georgemueller7290]

I actually own a 4 cd set of Conlan Nancarrow and I find them fascinating. I do have to take them in smaller doses than other music that I listen to. I had this thought a long time ago and thought maybe you might enjoy it: My understanding is that George Gershwin learned to play the piano by standing in front of a player piano and he would mimic what the piano was doing with his hands. My thought was: What if instead of the Tin Pan Alley tunes that his player piano was playing, the player piano played Conlon Nancarrow. What would Rhapsody in Blue have sounded like then? Thanks for all your videos. I love music but know absolutely nothing about the theory behind it although I sometimes read neuroscience writings and try to hear music in that light.

[@db1958]

This video shows the device built to perform Nancarrow's music live on traditional rather than player pianos. I saw this used for a piano duet at the Baldwin Piano store in NYC as part of New Music America and was able to speak with both Nancarrow and Trimpin after the performance. It was an inspiring experience. (link to Nancarrow percussion piece in comment) kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z4vKgatpbNuHZ8k

[@db1958]

A percussion piece composed by Nancarrow kzbin.info/www/bejne/n2rQpotvZsRro6M

[@W34R3N00BZ]

diggin the mandelbrot doodle as a metaphor

[@michaelglendening2098]

You peaked my interest so I took a listen to the Opus Clavicembalisticum. I'm not normally a fan of music like that but it's surprisingly beautiful. But it got me thinking about something that I hope you cover sometime- You've talked about rhythmic building blocks, but I wonder about how we should think about the rhythm of a melody when writing a song, especially a vocal melody?

[@AnAardvark]

It's one of my favorite works, and there are now multiple recordings of it.

[@asdfasddfff]

VG! I subed you when you had less than 10k subs, but now you have 79k!

[@khkhohoh]

Brilliant ! Thanks.

[@goed1adit]

Damn, there's alot of things behind steampunk black MIDI.

[@ConnorR.mp3]

5:30 also defies the laws of physics, because irrational units of time can not exist.

[@AbhiBass96]

What do you mean by "irrational units of time can not exist"?

[@zeroflowne]

This is the perfect amount of Sonic

[@adammorvant]

You should do a video on Tool. I believe they have some polyrhythms on their 10,000 days album if Im not mistaken. The song Jambi and Vicarious

[@prodcdebeatz7205]

cool vid

[@callmeaderplastname6648]

Hey I was wondering if you could do a video on creating sheet music as fast as possible, you could call it the original daw: an how to

[@joejtunes]

"Most people have no more than 10 fingers"

[@ragnkja]

Imabeluga4lyfe The qualifier is necessary because some humans have polydactyly.

[@MmeHyraelle]

I know nancarrow is more fascinated by canon's than polyrythms, but it can be argued it gets to the same point, so whatever^^

[@MyUsernameIsAlsoBort]

Nancarrow's music is difficult, but I love the fact that he tried all this before computers were around. But you made one mistake that should be annotated- he was not Mexican. He spent his career and most of his adulthood there, but he's an American who emigrated.

[@AnAardvark]

He was a "pre-mature anti-fascist", having served in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil war. When my mom was in college she and some of her girl friends visited him in Mexico City. (She didn't remember who he was, but I can think of only one man who lived in Mexico City and had two very loud player pianos.)

[@CogitoEdu]

Just listened to study 37 and its sound very unsetteling :P. Still interesting from a theory standpoint.

[@12tone]

Yeah, it's pretty unrecognizable from a standard musical perspective, but that's what makes it so cool!

[@CogitoEdu]

12tone. Thats whats strange about it. It doesnt sound like "bad" music or even a piano being played badly. It just sounds entirely foreign. Really cool.

[@duckapus424]

The first time I heard of Conlon Nancarrow was on a Frank Zappa live album where at the end of the show Frank thanks his band members by name but also thanks a long list of other "great Italians" (whether or not they are Italian), including Nancarrow. Other than Nancarrow's Boogie Woogie Suite I had a hard time with his player piano studies, but Study 37 stands out as particularly, um, ...listenable? Found this paper/website analyzing it: www.willshare.com/willeyrk/creative/papers/study37/

[@jwc3o2]

Frank also referred to Nancarrow's music as "like bionic ragtime". his namechecks (the ones that make you respond "who?") are always worth investigating (Nicolas Slonimski!).

[@TimothyCookUSMCRetired]

Actually he wasn't Mexican. He was a self exiled American.

[@QuikVidGuy]

i can't wait until i start learning 4/9 time

[@ivankhoroz2784]

Hey, can you explain how sirens by Pearl Jam works?

[@flatboost]

God! You draw what is so boring to read sometimes! Thanks to communicate ;)

[@paulnbassett2437]

There are no degrees of uniqueness, something is either one of a kind, or it is not.

[@peterskatesameter5783]

Dammit, here comes another midlife crisis...

[@vxidastronaut]

Henry Cowel is fucking lit

[@a52productions]

He's like a musical James Joyce.

[@yanic6484]

im related to him

[@AlexKnauth]

Hi

[@jordan98127]

At 4:16 you say playing more than 10 notes at once is impossible... this isn't true. A lot of pieces call for the pianist to use his thumb on two keys at once. Also I knew a guy who would play tone clusters with his elbows in the middle of a piece.

[@12tone]

True! There's certainly some work-arounds in specific contexts. I didn't want to get into them there 'cause they're not super relevant to the point, so I included a couple qualifiers like "_precisely_ playing" (To exclude tone clusters played with forearms and the like) and "_pretty much_ impossible". (To allow for situations where you can arrange the voicing so that multiple notes can be accurately played with a single finger.) But you're definitely right: Clever composers and players can certainly find ways around that limit too!

[@n7275]

There's a renaissance treatise about basso contino from the late 1600s that show examples of some really modern sounding 14 note chords

[@stokesa3122]

Nancarrow wrote prog metal before it was co- ah, who am I kidding, prog has never been cool.

[@Roro-rg9mf]

Stokes A ha, laughed at this one

[@TheApostleofRock]

I choose to be triggered by this

[@browncoat697]

Stokes A I'm a huge prog fan, can confirm, never cool.

[@factsverse9957]

Henry Reich supported your Patreon? Is he from minutephysics or another person? I mean, KZbinrs like to support each other, bigger KZbinrs to smaller ones. Like TodayIFoundOut.

[@12tone]

Yep, same Henry Reich! He's been a big supporter of our work for quite a while now.

[@valeriov910]

I'm still asking myself why do you draw elephants

[@SirWhiteRabbit-gr5so]

Too much caffeine? Too little?

[@3k9x]

I'm curious, how old are you? Your voice seems a 23 years old one, am I right?

[@12tone]

27.

[@toddclarkson6060]

Dude, you sound different now...

[@wilh3lmmusic]

It’s pronounced claviCHembalisticum, not claviSembalisticum

[@estoy1001]

Hemiola = Shave and a Haircut

[@_fluffyy1028]

4/9? really?

[@joeyharrison]

Why do you talk so insanely fast?

[@SodThisGiveMeABeer]

@12tone check out Edward Chilvers!