[music] composition based on composer's brain activity

[tamaranth]

Just heard this on Radio 3 and it is ... I don't know. I have to Listen Again. It features the ondes Martenot, an electronic instrument similar to theremin but earlier and odder, of which I'd never heard.

Michel Redolfi, 'Mare Teno' (46 minutes in)

review of the album from which this came and which I have just ordered from Amazon. (Yay Naxos!)

Comments

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

I've been vaguely aware of the Ondes as an instrument - through without a clue of what it looks like or how it works - for a long time. It's reasonably common in SF themes of a certain era.

I've never seen it performed though, unlike the theremin, an example of which was in use at Hawkwind's recent gig at the Junction.

Wibbly-Wobbly sounds

[(Anonymous)]

It's a great instrument that somehow still manages to sound unique even now. I saw the Philharmonia orchestra do the Messaien Turangalilia at the local concert hall a couple of years back. The joyous burbling other-worldliness of it really stood out.
As i recall, it's a big box of valves which puts out multiple simultaneous combinations of simple waveforms (squares, sines, saws ,pulses etc,) all of which are continuously variable simultaneously. The Theremin type aspect of it is a ring on a cable beneath the keyboard, which lets you do huge glissandi and is a bugger to control, at least on my one attempt of playing one years back.

sorry for the anon - Chris U (still in Hampshire with loads of synths!)

[perlmonger.livejournal.com]

Second shout out for the Turangalîla, one of my all time favourite pieces of music.