After the runaway success of my Pop Studies, with the public clamoring for a follow-up, I retreated into my creative space to develop a new idea.
Listening to the radio on some errand, I heard the beginning of Gloria Estefan/Miami Sound Machine’s “1-2-3” (ironically enough, on that video they cut out the opening counting sequence, but you get the idea). I thought, “Wait a minute, is that Einstein on the Beach?”
(here’s a video of some lego men performing “Knee Play 1,” the opening of Einstein on the Beach)
It was not Einstein on the Beach, of course, but I decided to make it so, using the magic of computers. I took samples from 1-2-3, a couple other Gloria Estefan songs, and an interview with Gloria that I substituted for the spoken word parts, and came up with:
I won’t bore you with too much of the technical detail, but it might interest you to know that:
- I had to reconstruct the “eight” out of parts of a “seven” and a “three,” because the “eight” in the original has a big snare hit behind it.
- The spoken word text has been arranged to mirror the motifs and repeats of the original spoken word part, for example: “Will it get some wind for the sailboat?” becomes “and he was playing ‘Do the Hustle’ on the accordion.”
Overall, I think the result is pretty crazy, and significantly less calming than the original.
My Claps
The second piece I’m putting up today is a new one, continuing the pop-sample covers of minimalist landmark pieces:
This one is a version of Steve Reich’s “Clapping Music,” using a sample from the Black Eyes Peas’ “My Humps.”
In the original piece, a 12-beat rhythm is clapped by two people. They start in unison, but at the end of each 12-beat phrase, one clapper offsets his rhythm back by one beat. This happens repeatedly until the two clappers are back in unison. The result is the generation of new rhythms from repetitions of the same pattern.
I took the first twelve beats of “My Humps” and repeated them according to the same rules in “Clapping Music,” as you can see in the small excerpt image above, and ended up with My Claps.
These are the first two drafts from what I intend to be an album’s worth of ‘Minimalist Studies,’ so stay tuned!
and if you were worried, you can always download the newest goodies over in the sidebar at the bottom.
