The M.C.Escher of Music?
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- čas přidán 13. 07. 2020
- Who is the master of musical illusions? The Music equivalent of M.C.Escher? Escher himself would probably say J.S.Bach but in this video I make the case for Hungarian composer György Ligeti, whose work is full of Musical Illusions. In this video I look at the following musical illusions:
03:36 The Infinite Loop Illusion (The Shepard Tone)
06:37 The Risset Tone
07:31 Multiple Speeds illusion
09:20 The Imaginary Melody Illusion
11:22 The Negative Space Illusion
12.54 Frozen Time Illusion
15:15 Fractal Spiral Illusion
Finally I question why there is a difference in reception - Ligeti highly respected in the music establishment, but less well known to the general public, whereas Escher is hugely popular with the public and somewhat looked down on by the establishment. Why??
Thanks to Ptit Rockeur • J.S. Bach - Crab Canon... and Sintagma Piano Duo for permission to include clips of their music
#ligeti #musicalillusions
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Pieces
6 Bagatelles for wind quintet
• György Ligeti - Six Ba...
Complete Etudes • György Ligeti - Études...
Atmosphères • György Ligeti - Atmosp...
Ligeti Étude Nr. 1 "Désordre" • Andaloro - György Lige...
Ligeti Studies Book 1 • György Ligeti - Études...
Yuja Wang plays Ligeti's Fanfares • Yuja Wang plays Ligeti...
Ligeti Devil's Staircase • György Ligeti: Étude N...
Piano Concerto • Ligeti Piano Concerto ...
Continuum • Ligeti - Continuum for...
Chamber Concerto • György Ligeti, Concert...
Samuel Andreyev's Analysis of Ligeti's Chamber Concerto: • György Ligeti's Kammer...
Research
Risset rhythms
pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2de1...
Auditory Streams in Ligeti's Continuum: A Theoretical and Perceptual Approach
pdfs.semanticscholar.org/525b...
Diana Deutsch has a lot of research on musical illusions
deutsch.ucsd.edu/psychology/pa...
Mandelbrot zoom • Video - Hudba
Love the idea of the Risset rhythm! Great video man, love me some Ligeti
Are there many jazz composers influenced by Ligeti's techniques, Adam? 😊
Adam, I love your work.
Gonna repost this here Adam! I think you’ll appreciate it.
You know what’s a fine illusion that is fairly conventionally musical? Third matrices - circle-of-thirds compositions. The most famous & pioneering ones are of course by John Coltrane: “Giant Steps” (tonal center continuously descending in major thirds from B to G to Eb and again), and “Central Park West” (tonal centers in minor third relation to one another, including a modulation by tritone - B to D to Ab to F and again). “Giant Steps” especially feels as though it is both ascending and descending in key infinitely, and the changing tonic simultaneously acts as a changing home base as much as it acts as a pivot to the next key.
There is also a completely under-discussed example: “Knights of Cydonia”, a fairly popular song by Muse, cycles in descending major thirds through the same guitar & vocal motif performed in E minor -> C minor, then C minor -> G# minor, then G# minor -> E minor. And interestingly about this song, the melodic motion is upward as it modulates, yet the keys are most easily understood as being in plagal, *down-leading* relation to the key before. To me the song repeatedly feels like it’s rising to the heavens as much as it’s surrendering itself to the dirt.
Exploiting the cycle of keys gives the impression of a new key in fractal-like relation to the last one, even though it is harmonically identical to the key played one cycle before. One might want to say that that key is completely new. For instance, B major might actually feel like C-flat major due to continuously descending in thirds. E minor becomes “F-flat minor” if G# minor is read as Ab minor instead, even though Ab minor is more coherently modulated to from a key like C minor as it is a major third down instead of a diminished fourth down. A move from D major to the key a tritone away can be read as Ab major or G# major, which recontextualizes the key a minor third above as Cb major as well as it could B major. One could read it also as though it were indeed that same key being played again, or as though the song is continuously progressing to a key that truly resolves it. And all of these interpretations would be simultaneously correct and incorrect because the notes relate harmoniously, but the tonics are dissonant to one another such that the roots of each tonic would become ambiguous - “perfectly dissonant”? - if put together as a chord (an augmented or diminished seventh chord), though harmonious - imperfectly consonant - if the chord resulting were separated into dyads (major or minor thirds).
A modulation by major third, diminished fourth, minor sixth, or augmented fifth can be sensorily interpreted from the same modulation... and namely, when modulating by a tritone like occurs in “Central Park West”, the relation by augmented fourth or diminished fifth is ambiguous and becomes simultaneously upward and quintal in movement as much as downward and plagal in movement. Like the Shepard tone, it’s a musical Penrose stairs. Up morphs into down, down morphs into up, consonance quickly becomes read as dissonance and vice-versa, yet the structure itself is cyclical and unchanging.
And indeed, you can make a dissonant interval sound consonant through chordal extension. A sharp eleven and a sharp fifteen are both fairly common in music (namely the former), even though they both create dissonance with the root and fifth of the chord. And even a major seventh becomes dissonant the moment that it is inverted, as it creates minor ninth dissonance. But if thirds are stacked in an alternating pattern of major and minor, they become consonant by being quintally related to one another. This is illusory consonance because the chord as a whole has dissonances that can be brought out of it.
czcams.com/video/dCjUdOUMaSQ/video.html This trance track uses the Risset rhythm. The effect starts at 2:30
I always loved the piece "Clocks & Clouds". The title is so great to and felt like a great metaphor for Liget's music.
definitely, right
Love that piece also! Named for the title of a Karl Popper essay.
Brilliant video! 😊🎶
On the subject of negative space, there's an auditory illusion called the Zwicker Tone where a listener is played white noise that contains a spectral gap.
When the noise is switched off, listeners perceive a single tone ringing in their ear which fills the spectral gap.
Theoretically, you could create a melody using white noise samples with differently spectral gaps, corresponding to the notes of a scale. It would probably be a bit irritating to listen to... a burst of white noise followed by "tuned tinnitus", then another burst of white noise!
I have that constantly, I thought something was switched on. Can you get a remedy for the Earwicker Tone?
Google time, thank you!
this has been done before; I heard it years ago used in an electronic piece and ever since I've been desperately trying to find out what it was!
Really?? That's interesting! Gonna look into this 😬👌🏻
I imagine it would be something like Picture at an Exhibitions' Catacombs, but even more
Interesting. Would it be safe? As in: would it not induce (more) tinnitus in people who have (or are receptable ) to it?
Mandelbrot was a formidably creative figure whom I was honored to interview in the eighties. My article in the College Math Journal and the interview from "Mathematical People" are both available for free online to anyone who's curious.
Amazing! Fractals have always fascinated me.
When I heard Ligeti's Ricercata No. 7 I got the whole vibe immediately. Great pick for the introduction!
And you ended the video with the same piece. The fast never ending pattern encapsuled the whole video pretty nicely. Easy to come up with but one still gets a nice feeling out of it.
Same with Ricercata No. 3
Was surprised to see my recording of Ligeti's Désordre included! Thanks for the feature David!
Thank YOU Paul! I thought that performance of Désordre really gave the feeling of 'lift-off' Ligeti talks about - I'm sure he would have loved it !
That's most vividly visceral performance of that etude i've ever heard. Especially when it goes to the pentatonic middle section. Love it!
Congrats!! Sounds awesome!!
subscribed
@@DBruce the solution is to use some of the popular forms, the drums kit, electric bass, accessible tonal melodies,
and then use these various devices with or without additional instrumentation which could be anything, string sections, bass sections, synthesizers
Godel Escher Bach...love that book.
Was going to mention this one myself but 12 others got there first! :-)
Achilles and the tortoise approve this comment
haha was also about to mention that book. Such a terrific read.
yess
I am sadly not aware of this work, is it a analysis/comparison of their aestethics?
Although not exactly an illusion, it's worth checking out Alvin Luciers "I Am Sitting In A Room", where Lucier records himself speaking a short sentence ("I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now...") plays it, records the playback, then repeats the process over and over again. Each "re-re-recording" imperceptibly adds overtones, so that by the 10-minute mark the speech starts to become indistinct, and it eventually turns into nothing but "musical" notes. I find it quite fascinating.
It's actually a gradual creation of reverberation formed by the acoustics of the space in which the piece is recorded. That's the critical component of the piece. The gradual accretion of the individual parts describes the physical acoustical space in which the speaker is speaking, in much the same way that a series of photons shot from different positions in different directions bouncing around a three dimensional reflective space would result in the visible manifestation of that space.
"Oh it's been so long since a David Bruce Composer® video let's see if he has uploaded."
*2 seconds ago*
"Okay"
I think the question of "who's the Escher of music" is an individual perception. For me personally, it's not Ligeti, but Arvo Part. All of his music accomplishes, basically, all of these illusions: Time standing still, fractal-like shapes that are infinitely incrementing, etc.... not to mention, his music is much more accessible to the general public; the way Escher's drawings are.
Brilliant. Really appreciate the amount of research and production that must have gone into this video.
anyone remember the Mario64 endless staircase with its unreachable door when you did not have enough stars yet?
I thought of the same too!
Here it is: czcams.com/video/B-udfiFZcko/video.html
@@PabloPerroPerro ha! exactly. that upward shepard scale built up so much anticipation, it made me run for much longer than i would have without it i guess. well. at least one did not have to walk the same distance down again to get out :D
I built one using command blocks in minecraft
Hahaha that was trippy 😂
A worthwhile example of the constant change in tempo illusion is Autechre's fold4 wrap5 which continuously slows down while subtly introducing more rapid subdivisions to create a cycle, like a machine revving down.
I’m pretty sure from listening the illusion comes from 2 Risset processes that function in polymeter, so you lose the sense of phrasing. It’s the greatest rhythmic illusion I’ve heard, although unfortunately kind of a boring piece of music
I love that track, and I came here to comment about it, too. A couple of years ago, Second Woman made an entire album around this concept, undoubtedly inspired by fold4 wrap5, it's called S/W, and it's dealing with the illusion on a much faster rate, right where rhythm becomes low tones. It's pretty great. czcams.com/video/xYtWu1uPfa8/video.html
I have a modern auditory illusion for you. Its by a contemporary artist, Nine Inch Nails. A song called The Background World on the Add Violence album. Please don't let the title scare you away, its quite brilliant. The track ends on a phrase that ends not on a full measure but is very clear. Slowly he introduces distortion over many bars. At the end the sound is mangled beyond recognition to straight white noise. Jump to the end and listen, but if you listen to the whole section, you can still hear the musical phase in the noise. Amazing! Especially when you consider the title of the track.
Wow! What a wonderful homage to the composer who rocked my world when I was eleven in 1968 and changed the course of my musical life forever. Come to think of it, my whole life. Thank you, David.
Electronica giants Autechre’s track Fold4, Wrap5 always reminds me of the Shepard’s tone. Instead of a continuous change in pitch we get a continuous change in rhythm. The is achieved by slowing the tempo of a straight 4/4 rhythm to half it’s original speed over the course of two bars, but then double timing the latter half of the second bar, in effect adding an extra 2 beats, and landing the tempo right back where it was at the beginning of bar 1. For me, it produces the sensation of constantly falling. over backwards..
I studied Ligeti in depth in grad school, and it took a little while to "get it". This video grasps the spirit quite well. Thank you!
Isaac Dweck ? What a silly and foolish thing to say. Being a good musician (composer, performer, whatever) does not mean you need to be good at “getting” or not getting one composer’s style and music easily.
Also, it’s sounds like you used “basic music” as an insult. What wrong with basic. Is complexity better music? No. Listening to a piece with 128 independent voices playing at once doesn’t mean that piece is better than say, a Bach fugue, with usually 2-4 voices. Listening to a piece with complex, ever changing 20 note chord harmonies is not automatically better than one of Satie’s Gymnopedies, which consist of simple (mostly) harmony.
Up next, “basic math”. All music is pretty much math. Rhythms, math. Time signatures, math. Harmonies, math. The sound of notes, math. Additionally, math can be a tool, which Ligeti uses, but that does not mean it devalues a piece of music for using math as a device.
Finally. is beauty in basic, simple music, as a composer could do so much, with let’s say, 4 pitches/sounds or a small motif. Several popular melodies of today only span an interval of a third or less. I mean hell, the ever popular 4 chord harmony in much of today’s modern music is incredibly popular and loved by many.
Not understanding 1 composer for a little while doesn’t make you a bad musician, a piece of music being “basic math” doesn’t mean it’s bad music when music is based on math, and basic music does not bad music.
I don't know why but David's videos on Illusion look very satisfying. I love his narration and editing as well as his compilation of information , honestly.
Thank you, David for enlightening me with interesting techniques and music illusions for composition, etc.
🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
D I V A D
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I went to the Escher Museum awhile back. It took forever to get to the second floor!
Oh, you!
I will be whistling these at work tomorrow.
Another excellent video of yours, David Bruce, both educational and enjoyable.
As always excellent job by the man, the myth, the legend, David Bruce. Can’t wait to send this to my students.
Thanks for making this - truly amazing production values, and great content!
I have found my next favourite channel! So well structured and fluent and entertaining!
This was sooooo great! Thank you so much!
Cracking stuff. Thanks, David.
David Bruce, you are a beautiful human being. Thank you for continuously creating some of the most inspiring and insightful content any musician or composer could ever ask for. You are a gem.
Thanks for putting in the effort to create this David, this was a delight!
When I saw the title of this video first composer who came to mind was Steve Reich and his "phasing." There's another minimalist who played similar "illusion" games... at least I think- but his name and title of pieces escape me at the moment so I can't even look them up to confirm if I'm remembering correctly. But this is great! I didn't know about many of these Ligeti pieces. Thank you!
Thankyou David! So insightful!!!
When I think of fractal sounding music I think of Autechre. Those dudes have done some truly mind twisting work
exactly, here is a musical fractal : czcams.com/video/SLvFsP1izS4/video.html
Always awesome to find someone who can relate the Gestalt laws of visual perception to music. Thank you.
Thanks for that well thought-out comparison and fascinating analysis.
My favourite composer since I was about 14. This is an excellent video.
You can do an illusion with keys as well. During a verse or section, you sneakily modulate down a semitone or two, then it sounds like the return to the start is jumping up a key. I've only found two examples:
Pirate Jenny by Weill
The Dona nobis pacem from Bernstein's Mass.
I really admire both of these.
A whole video of Ligeti. I love you, David. Great Video as always
There's always something interesting, even fascinating, on your channel. Thanks, David.
This channel is getting more incredible day by day ! We are so lucky
Wow! The detail here is awesome!
Very, very interesting...Thank you for this video!
David, your videos always give me new ideas and as a composer myself that’s just priceless. I’ll hopefully be able to become a patron very soon. Thank you and best of luck with any and all future projects!
I've only recently discovered your channel. And I'm so happy I did. Great content. My mind becomes more open with each video.
Fascinating and informative - so much stuff to take on board - some familiar and some less so - thanks Brucey for keeping us learning and listening
need to watch this 2-3 times... thats a good thing
Hehe I thinking the same.. even 5, 6 here for me + taking notes.
Love this so much and you did an absolutely amazing job on this video. Thank you for it!
This is fantastic content, I love it. Thank you
I love your videos. And the way you analyse music!
Great and engaging content as usual, thanks!!
Love it. Excellent video.
can you please release a video or soundcloud track of the risset rhythm you composed, its honestly one of the most beautiful pieces of music I've heard in a long time!
This was absolutely stimulating! Excellence!
Just wrote my doctoral dissertation on Ligeti, touching on this very aspect of his music.
Great Job! Very interesting watch. Have a great day.
Marvelous video, nice to see some admiration for Ligeti.
I _adore_ Ligeti. So glad you made a video about him!
Thank you for contributing this level of depth and sophistication to music analysis.
Thank you for this wonderful introduction to Ligeti! I fell in love with Atmospheres, Lux Aeterna, and the Requiem excerpts from 2001 when I first heard them as a boy. My explorations into his wider work as an incomplete music major and later in life left me scratching my head but still determined to appreciate his oeuvre. Your explication has given me a new place to start from. Very exciting!
The Super Mario 64 staircase is also a shepard tone-like illusion where melody seems to ascend infinitely
👀 I never realised how clever vgm was until I started listening to The Consouls - they use the original tunes as jazz 'standards' and make great music which I highly recommend if you like jazz
Thanks for the informative video, Danny Boyle
Interesting and nicely presented. Thank you.
Thanks Dave for your superb videos and sharing so much knowledge with always clear and enjoyable expositions. Bravo!
The animation of this thumbnail when it moves up and down in the recommended bar is such a cool little detail
Just discover your channel! Awesome!! Thanks!
For me, I don't "hear" the Ligeti illusions if I shut off my analytical part of my brain. The less engaged I am, the less prominent the illusion. Without some of your explanations, I wouldn't have perceived an illusion at all. This is quite the opposite from my experience with optical illusions, for which I have to thoroughly engage my brain in order to not fall for the illusion. Personally I think Bach is closer to Escher since even with my brain as disengaged as possible, I hear the self-similarity. This really could come down to a difference of familiarity. I grew up practicing Bach on the piano since I was a kid, I've only been exposed to Ligeti as an adult.
I agree, it makes more sense to call Bach the Escher of music than Ligeti.
It's not necessarily fractals or the illusions that define Escher or Bach, but more so the combining of mathematics and art; creating meaningful mathematical art in which something relatable and recognizably human can be found, e.g. emotions or animals.
Yeah but what’s illusive about Bach’s music
I'm glad I found somebody who mirrored by thoughts on this video. It just all seems very forced to me, like I have to lie about what I'm directly experiencing in order to pretentiously go along with these supposed illusions but, as you say, with optical illusions that is rarely an issue. I'm not very familiar with Bach yet though so I'll look into what he might add
@@brodjefferson3513 Illusion is not necessarily fundamental to Escher's art. Bach and Escher share an affinity towards the same kind of clever enigmatic structures that are both mathematical and relatable on a human level, that often leave people wondering how it works. And Bach does actually have his fair share of illusive tricks, e.g the infinitely modulating canon.
I think it’s really telling when he asks “why isn’t Ligeti as popular as Escher?” It’s his pet project of advocating for Ligeti. Ligeti may be fine, but these are not illusions.
awesome man, absolutely engrossing.
This video made a lot of the things I already experienced by playing around with arpeggiators and scales but couldn't explain, fall into place for me. Thx for that.
Very cool, thanks for the video!
Fantastic!
Brilliant video!!!
Excellent!👏😎
Great video dave!
That fractal segment 16 minutes into the video is absolutely brilliant!
Thank you so much for this video!
Inspired by your video I fell into the deep rabbit hole of Ligetis music :)
Oh yes! Ligeti.....
Thank you so much for so much!
This is very educative, me love this video a lot! Thanks David for sharing this with great explanations.
Excellent videos dude
A wonderful lecture. I've had considerable exposure to abstract art and contemporary classical music (or "serious music") and you've helped me to appreciate these subjects even more. Thanks!
Thank you for a really educational video on Ligeti and all this great paralells between art and music a most inspiering piece of work David Bruce, and while at it in general always nice to see your videos too! I wish there where some of the videos that could be a little longer(this one is actually comming around really a lot in the time-frame, fantastic!) and cotinue to examine whatever topic it is dealing with but where the music examples are a little longer sometimes and just that there where a chance to go on a little more than these short videos wich are the general concept on youtube often...(when things are interesting you want it to go on for ever) Thanks for a great channel!
thanks do much for this insightful video, for me a reason to listen and play more Ligeti also!
The new editing is amazing 😦
This is wonderful. Thank you so much David. I studied Ligeti back in the 80s at Uni and only discovered Le Grande Macabre last week. What a wonderful blow-out for the ears and mind after so much virus doom! :-)
I played Ligeti's 6 bagatelles for wind quintet in college and it was one of the most raucous fun times I think I had at conservatory.
Brilliantly informative video and the idea behind Patreon supporters getting to have their 1 minute compositions played by a professional pianist is such a great incentive! Great stuff. Cheers! :)
Thanx for your Videos🙏👍
Ending that section with a mini-brot was just... Mwah! So satisfying.
Perhaps your most interesting video so far.
very cool,. I had no idea - thanks
"Otoacoustic emission" seem like a good candidate for musical illusions too. Like, the stuff Maryanne Amacher was working on? It's not as "listening friendly" as Ligeti but it's definitely interesting.
I was vibin' to her "Chorale"!
You think Ligeti is "listening friendly"? For me, Ligeti pieces are all too long & I can't wait for the blissful end when the noise stops.
@@resourcedragon I think you misplaced your comment
Amazing!
Your work is amazing
Cool!!
Super rich, video, David, thanks a lot, I will be checking your channel from now. Greetings from Hungary by the way 🙂
Per Nørgård’s music is filled with auditory illusions. His infinity series are fractals.
Completely spaced out whilst watching the fractal illusion bit and now I can see the universe
Incredible research, very well paced and informative video! Hope you get more views, because you deserve more.
Very fine piece Sir
Very interesting video, the technique of negative space in music used in creative ways particularly
Wow, you really presented this so well. I had so many ah hah moments during this. Thank you. Subbed ~
Thanks, this was really interesting.