Friday, April 24, 2009

Innovation In C

Tonight I participated in the miracle of Terry Riley’s 'In C' (to borrow an expression from Louis CK) at Carnegie Hall. 'In C' is an amazing piece. This is what the score looks like:The rules of the game are as follows: All performers play the same page of 53 melodic patterns in a sequence but with each musician having the freedom to determine how many times to play a specific sequence before moving to the next. Any kind of instrumentation is possible.

Basically the entire piece is improvised which is neat as each musician chooses when to phase in or out. But what’s really neat about it is that it gets you thinking about innovation. We tend to think of innovation as a one-man show. (And even in cases in which we say that organizations innovate we don’t really think it’s the group being creative). Here, on the other hand, the individual’s contribution isn’t interesting – what’s interesting is how the group innovates. It’s the interaction between individuals that creates musicality. As Terry Riley puts it in the performing directions:

“One of the joys of 'In C' is the interaction of the players in polyrhythmic combinations that spontaneously arise between patterns. Some quite fantastic shapes will arise and disintegrate as the group moves through the piece,”

Note that Riley writes “as the group moves through the piece”. 'In C' strikes me as the perfect example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Music flows from the interplay of patterns that "spontaneously arise". I tried to think of any digital equivalents during the performance but came up blank. Not sure mashups meet the bar. Any suggestions? (Listen to a sample?)


PS: Also, if you will, why not consider 'In C' as a metaphor for (internet) business. It seems dead easy to perform (I’ll probably regret saying this), but in principle anyone who can read rhythms can do it – much like anyone with basic programming skills can put together an app. Provide the platform and have others do the legwork

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

w00t! Soundcloud!

Eric and Alex at Soundcloud just raised $3.3 mn. Supercongrats to the most brilliant team ever!

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Self-surveillance

My flip arrived a couple of days ago. I have been flaunting it to my friends and realized what it means to be a product advocate. I have relished in recorded conversations, jokes, smiles and heated debates (no worries I keep them to private as I was born into a generation obsessed with privacy). Now I’m just waiting for proper audio and video search so I won’t have to tag everything in my lifestream. Even better of course if it had enough memory for me to hang it around my neck and not worry about capturing all the fun going on. Highly recommended.