give me a bouncy c (13. 872)

Though I appreciate musical synthesisers and mixers as a genre of web toys, I admit I don’t have the patience or native talent to stick with a project usually after a few discordant notes.

This exercise in open scoring—courtesy of Web Curios (lots more to explore there)—however, is rather enthralling and one will want to sit with and to listen to the original 1964 minimalist composition by Terry Riley that defined the movement, In C, wherein any number and any kind of instruments (voices and electronic keyboards are welcome too) in an orchestra are directed to play a series of melodic fragments in an improvised way, drawing on traditions of jazz and Indian classical music, with the repetition intended as a way for live musicians to play in the style of tape loops and delays—placing the conductor, in Riley’s description, in a shamanistic, transporting role. One can layer performances and vary the tempo. A bit reminiscent of Ravel’s Boléro for the progression, it was a major influence on Philip Glass and other postminimalists.