Feedback Pendulums & Lucier Wires

The class session where we performed Steve Reich's "Pendulum Music" was inarguably the most intense thing we've done or will probably do this year. The sheer loudness created sounds that were not only heard, but very definitely felt also. While a few of the other pieces had this element of "feeling" the music in your body, none compared with the magnitude and force of this one. As for the actual experience and what was heard, it was a case where the sounds were the most interesting in the beginning with the microphones movings very quickly and somewhat in sync with each other in a pendulum motion of movement. Hearing how they changed as they stepped out of the same movement and how they worked together (all of 3 of them) was very interesting. As it slowed down the lower, more comforting sounds of one of the three greatly constrasted from the sort of squelchy whooping of the other two mics. I was surprized to learn later that the speakers and sound intake was set as low as possible in order to achieve feedback. The idea that this could not be performed any quieter than this was somewhat amusing! With most of the things we have done I wondered how experimenting with the set-up would change the results, such as adding in other noises that would be picked up by the microphones or setting it up as to where they would all collide into each other at various random points. With Lucier's music for a long thin wire, I think it was a bit hard for me to understand the mechanics of what was going on. It would have been curious to see more things done with that or it going on longer and with a longer wire, but as we discovered, the set-up was pretty temperamental!