Random Violins

May 26, 2017 3:31 PM

infinitestringquartet.com - no bow necessary; just drag and drop the circles on the grid and see what happens.
tl;dr it makes music! [via jessamyn]
posted by not_on_display (11 comments total)

Now all we need is some Sax to go with the Violins. (old joke, but still fits)
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:50 PM on May 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Very Philip Glass.
posted by Fizz at 3:51 PM on May 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Calling that music is a bit generous. The best I could do is the sounds of an orchestra warming up.
posted by Hactar at 5:39 PM on May 26, 2017

I find it pretty astonishing at how well it makes (admittedly dissonant) music. I could easily imagine throwing on a Kronos Quartet album and hearing some combination of these sounds. I also like how little control it seems to give you -- you don't really know what any of the colors or positions mean (if they mean anything at all) and some circles start right away while others take awhile to start. But there is just enough feedback to make you feel like you have a hand in creating something.
posted by treepour at 6:29 PM on May 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Holy shit this is remarkable. Gidon Kremer up the yingyang.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 9:04 PM on May 26, 2017

If you're into this kind of thing, Morton Feldman's string quartet no. 2 is...not infinite, but about 6 hours long (it's available on DVD), and pretty cool...if you're into this kind of thing.
posted by uosuaq at 9:53 PM on May 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

The one on hat is a desert islander for me, but hard for me to find any resemblance to what's going on with this toy. If you can get it to do Feldman-y things, you're waaaaay better at it than I am.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 12:47 AM on May 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

Wow is this like listening to public radio at night in the 80s.
posted by randomkeystrike at 12:01 PM on May 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

Does the placement of the circles (left/right, foreground/background) mean anything? I played with it some, but couldn't figure it out.
posted by straight at 12:49 PM on May 27, 2017

Does the placement of the circles...?

I couldn't discern a difference.
posted by not_on_display at 6:52 PM on May 27, 2017

Hey, I was just playing with this site tonight (neat find!) and I can answer the question about the placement of the circles. I'm pretty sure the grid represents spatial relation to the user.

The left/right scale is where you hear the circle, stereo-wise, i.e. the panning control. If it's far left, the audio will lean stereo far left; if it's in the middle, it will sound stereo center, and so on. I wasn't able to place the circles in such a way to get 100% left or 100% right, though.

The foreground/background scale is for how loud the circle is in relation to you, i.e. volume control. The farther away, the quieter it is. The volume differences are kinda hard to hear, especially between close distances, but I verified this by monitoring the audio levels while playing a single circle as centered as possible, waiting until is was over, and then playing the same circle at a different distance, rinse, repeat.

I also noticed that putting too many circles on the grid at once seems to overload the application because they just get stuck there and don't get played; I can still add new ones but have to wait until a few circles have run their course.
posted by rangefinder 1.4 at 1:15 AM on June 4, 2017 [2 favorites]