Junk (random input) Composing

I did this with my spoked bike wheels once, wrote a set of little
pieces. The spokes were plucked like harp strings and amplified. It's very
like choosing some ratios or notes at random. Also based a sketch on the
ratios between front and rear sprockets.

Mark

Christopher Bailey <cb202@columbia.edu> wrote:

>Yes, but it's important to note that even with a high degree of formalism,
>there can still be lots of room for "freewheeling allegoric whirls." As a
>composer, this is my favorite state to work in: it's like junk sculpture,
>I'm given some fairly tightly constraining garbage, perhaps a bizarre and
>random collection of it, and I have to make cool music out of
>it. I love composing this way. It may not always work out best for the
>listener, and that I'm well aware of, but as composer it's a lot of fun.