Watching this makes me proud to be human. Look at the complexity of the patterns in that.

Indeed, the theme from "Rollerball" always brings a tear to my eye too.

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right next to the mashed potatoes

You infidel!

I'd like to see the Brandenburg Concertos mapped out like this. Of course, I would prefer to see the patterns while listening to my LP recordings of them on my hi-fi, as performed by the Wurttemberg Chamber Orchestra, with Susanne Lautenbacher on 1st violin.

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Albert Einstein, "On the Ether", 1924

Particularly the 3rd. - one of my all-time favourite works.

Nothing like that Adagio second movement of the Third Brandenburg. What a variety of interpretations! All out of a simple Phrygian modal cadence. Gee!

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Hi

i am cutting a long story short...you guys probably heard it...

After the Pioneer 10+11 missions were launched with pictorial plaques aboard,
Carl Sagan was asked, how the inscriptions were decided upon.

Human scripts would not be apt. Hence the neutral graphics.
Mr Sagan said 'we thought we'd send Bach..but that would have been boasting!'

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If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. CARL SAGAN

That graphical representation is really nice for fugues. You can see all the lines right away, rather than having to listen to the piece again and again to get it all. I especially liked the part where there are many little runs up which occur with longer and longer notes, giving a little fan shape on the display. Very neat way of looking at it.

On second thought, though, I'd rather listen to it many times, discovering a little more each time through.

The scary thing: Bach probably just sat down one day and cranked out that piece.

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"It's turtles all the way down."

My favorite "Bach works"...

Passacagilia And Fugue In C Minor...

All the "books" of The Well Tempered Clavier...(which are "basically" keyboard exercises, and beautiful music.)

The Passacaglia is up there on my list as well. How Bach could take the same 10 note sequence, repeat it about 28 times (not sure on actual number), and come up with such infinite variety is astounding. I have to admit to a soft place for the 3rd Brandenburg. It's essentially the piece that got me hooked on Bach, and since then other orchestral composers, at about 13.

What I liked about the video is how it allowed a visual recognition of the entries and permutations of the fugue theme. The inversions were especially obvious. I think I caught some of the retrograde variations as well. Those can be hard to catch aurally, but pop up on the visual.

Thanks for the link Tofu.

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

Unfortunately, the link in the OP is on my employer's banned list.

Apart from that, has anyone else read Evening in the Palace of Reason?

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"The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head" Terry Pratchett

thanks for the tip on the book. I just ordered it.

Another composer that I like quite a bit is Rachmaninoff, in particular his opus 43, Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, is very good from a technical point of view. Unlike the Bach piece in the OP, Rachmaninoff made use of just one theme. It's really amazing how much life he was able to squeeze out of it. I've read analysis of this piece where the author says, "at this timestamp, he's on this variation" and then describes the variation, but I have trouble following it. I'd love to see it mapped out like the Bach piece was.

Here btw is the animation author's website: Stephen Malinowski
http://www.musanim.com/mam/watch.html

I presume that the first video on the page is the version you mean.

There is no indication of the size of the file. Even after I started to
download it, there was no indication of the size. Also, at the same
moment, Internet Explorer crashed. But the download was working,
so just let it come and hoped it wasn't too big. Four hours and 21
minutes later the download ended. 33.2 MB, if I recall correctly.
At least there were 5 MB of free space still left on the drive after
the downlad. It would have been @#$!%#! if it had been 40 MB!

I sent it to Windows Media Player, which promptly told me that the
file had some kind of problem and couldn't play it. It was a generic
error message. It did not say the problem was a needed codec or
a corrupt file or that WMP couldn't recognize the format-- just that
it was faulty. So I deleted it.

IE 5.0 which came with Windows 98 SE, WMP 6.4.07.1112.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

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http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves

It's not really possible to tell, the ones that are media files are multiple formats, both wmv, quicktime and possibly others.
Not really professionally done.

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And the "driving on the freeway on a scooter" analogy still holds true because the pilots are sitting in 7 to 30 ton aircraft o' doom and you are running around them in your very own Meatbody, Mark I. Beep, beep.
Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

If you look at that music animation, you really think some parts are quatre mains, but they're not. In another video you see a woman performing the piece on a single keyboard organ. This brings you into major trouble at double voiced (impossible unless someody can access tone layers very rapidly for you) and crossover points (where your fingers get tangled and you must find tricks to cope with the double key hit at coinciding crossover keys).

I play organ myself, but I'm nowhere even remotely close to these kind of performances.

Speaking of amazing musical abilities and being proud to be a human:

If we ever meet aliens and want to show off our abilities, please send this act:

LINK
(Michel Lauzière, and yes this is certainly real! It's amazing how he designed the suit to be both playable and feature visually appealing moves on a multitude of chords and hence songs. He must be about the only person in the world who can actually play such a suit. The man has other excellent performances, often including music and always very soft, family friendly toned and of the absolute highest quality.)

(on a lighter note than Bach, but extremely challenging!)

I should warn that many of the other videos on that site are unfit for this board, but the linked video is as innocent as a qute little lamb in a spring field.

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I've no musical training so don't have the terminology; but I agree wholeheartedly - the 2nd mvt. is wonderful. I must say however that the thing that takes me every time is that fascinating ponit-counterpoint in the 1st between violin and viola, then later between viola and cello. It flicks from an almost martial theme to soft sweetness in the space of a bar, with a thousand variations on that same basic theme. It's a just plain fun piece to listen to. Itseems like musicians - and conductors - must have loads of fun with this piece as well.

I heard it played when I visited the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam (as a tourist).
It wasn't a concert, somebody was practising.
No form of electronic reproduction that I have ever heard can do it justice.
The sound of a real big church organ is just breath-taking.

Don't miss a live performance if you ever get the chance.

I believe Miss Denise Hewitt is somebody we would find hard to explain to ET.

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ROFL! That was hilarious! Isn't that the guy that used to climb into a giant ballon and dance around to Also Sprach Zarathustra?

Indeed he has this act where he is up to his neck and beyond into a giant transparent (round) balloon. (I did not see a full video of that one though). I wonder how he keeps the air inside while doing things like clapping. I think that it must stay more or less into shape without too much overpressure, though it does burst like a balloon (or he really tears it open just by spreading his arms very wide?).

He also has a very interesting flying craft, made very simple from a balloon and a rotor. I did not fully get it though. The balloon is upside down, so trying to get down. But the craft goes up, so that means the rotor should be pulling it up. However, it appeared he just put the balloon over the rotor axis without fixing both together, yet still they stayed together.

When I think about it, he must have made a bearing with air ducts, over which he places the balloon while keeping the balloon's neck closed. Making the rotor such that it just can counteract the force of the balloon must have been dificult, yet he just cut it out of a plastic plate. It's seen on his commercial video.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

http://www.leadingauthorities.com/18...l_Lauziere.htm

This video is even more amazing (it shows the balloon as well)

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I wonder if this is universal or if it's a cultural thing. I mean, does Asian or Indian music make use of the same frequencies?