When I was 18, my college radio station played this in its entirety. I never got the name of the piece, but was captivated by the memory of sitting in a cold studio, listening to the sound of a room. I recently read something which finally brought me here. RIP Alvin Lucier. Thank you for the memories.
Amazing - what college radio station was that, out of curiosity? I was in junior high in the late 90s, before stuff like UA-cam, music blogs, or Napster took off, so my local college radio station was a great resource for finding out about weird/experimental/underground stuff - I remember sometimes I used to turn it on and just hit record on a 90 min tape, then would bounce the songs I liked onto another tape, jot down the artist/track name and make this shitty-sounding homemade compilation tapes. Good times. Don’t think they ever played anything this out there, though.
@@cavesprite I just can't imagine any other station but WREK. Arthur played it several times. Then finally on one of my shifts I played it. But I only played it late night. Arthur played it on a Friday afternoon. I drove right over from work to ask him what it was.
"I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice, and I am going to play it back into the room again and again, until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves, so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room, articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have."
I once listened to this whole thing the night before a math exam before studying at all and it was about 1:30 am and I got a D on that exam but at least I enjoyed those 45 minutes.
Almost profetic, as it turns out. Alvin Lucier just announced a new LP featuring Oren Ambarchi and Sunn O)))’s Stephen O’Malley - on Black Truffle. Shit just got real!
This came on my spotify randomly the other day, and as I listened it gave me a weird thought. That somehow this is what we would hear if we finally picked up on alien communications, distorted by resonant frequencies through the cosmos.
If you just heard the last iteration as a standalone piece without knowing its origin, it would still be a quite amazing piece, I think part of the impact of the complete piece is that in some way you try to relate it back to the 'pure' recording of the first iteration, try to recognise the speech within the decay.
Loop 9 is when it started bugging out my shitty laptop speakers I really like how loop 13 sounds. Loop 19 is also very cool, and now my speakers aren't angry anymore. Loop 29, I'm so amazed that this sound was just a guy sitting in a room. I need to listen to more concept albums
Even better: start with the speech played backwards, create the recordings from that, and then reverse THAT so that the voice slowly comes back to coherence. Actually, I think I might try this.
This is the sonic equivalent of standing between two large bathroom mirrors aimed at each other, and pondering the denizens of the worlds represented by each reflection, which are essentially each a distortion of yourself the observer.
Idea for an experimental piece - Lucier said this could be performed in any room. It is intended to reveal the resonances of that specific room. But what if we constructed a room in such a way as to manipulate the resonances ourself, then take some simple generated noise - and play it in the room to hear the resonances we constructed - as opposed to exploring the natural resonances of a room.
Charx it is intended to reveal my arse, try it, precisely on 44:59 into the song, if you would listen to it carefully and can survive without any brain damage your brain will halucinate my arse, life changing experience
Technically if you build ANY room you are already manipulating the resonances yourself. But this is kindof already a thing. Lookup plate reverb on google. Given it is not a room but a plate, but it's the same general concept.
I've heard this Alvin Lucier piece a million times on college radio, as listener and disc-spinner. Only this second, listening on crystal clear UA-cam recording, did I immediately think "Holy Crap he sounds like HAL 9000/ Douglas Rain." I guess the resonant frequencies of an LP plus radio distortion got in the way. Interesting and puzzling. Guess I'll sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.
I heard this twentyfive years ago (almost exactly) and was fascinated - and didn't know how to find it since. Thank you so much! I think about this piece *often*.
sad i missed out on this piece for so long, it gets fascinating really quickly. reminds me of ring modulation sounds i love without a lot of the harshness that can sneak into it, probably since it's monophonic and static initially.
On your suggestion, I opened two tabs of this video. I set one at the beginning of the recording, skipped forward a few cycles on the other, and synced them. Highly recommend, would create sonic chaos again.
I just decided to listen to the suggestion that Duff Harris made above. Since I posted the time points for all 6 of the first 6 repetitions of this speech I decided to go to #1 and then start #6 3 seconds later. I would hear the 1st example for 3 seconds then hear the 6th example just after it. Even after only 6 repetitions there was NOTICEABLE difference.
I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have
I just typed in the first 5 time points of repetition at the top of the page in case you'd like to record "only one" specific stanza or phrase to hear how much more distorted it becomes each successive occasion.
The thing I always wonder about this is doesn't the recording and playback equipment have as much of an impact on the resulting sound as the room does? If the playback equipment (tape head/wiring/amplifier/filter/speaker) has a non-linear frequency response, that would seem to have a pretty sizeable impact on the results.
Poo Guy Maybe it's sounds exact, but it still won't be an exact replica. Any small variances will get amplified with each playback, so I think they definately influence the results.
It’s probably not pedantic to mention that, it’s a good point; probably many people who use sound recording equipment wonder about that.. It’s naturally the resonance of both the equipment and the room. It’s kind of exciting to think that maybe a flatter digital system would bring out a purer room resonance. Mentioning it doesn’t take away from the coolness of the piece, I’m sure the dude wasn’t trying to put it down or anything:)
when i was around 18-19 i lived with my sister and her husband and he would play this until i woke up and turned it off this happend everyday until i heard "i am sitting in a room" and i was up and it was off, funny looking back on it now but now i can wake up and stay away when ever
9:31 nice to know there's at least 8 orders of feedback in british train stations when they inevitably announce your train has been cancelled over the tannoy
what an interesting experiment. it's so intriguing how the voice slowly morphs and deteriorates with each replay. I'm only 9 minutes into the recording, but I'm planning to listen to the whole thing. edit: 12 minutes in. the voice is already unintelligible, it sounds like reverb-soaked hums and vibrations. edit: DONE. very cool. by the end the voice is reduced to what sounds like pure ambience, it's surprising that it originated from a speech by a real human.
this is such a cool sound design idea. now that convolution reverb is easily accessible you could replicate this entirely digitally which creates really otherworldly textures
POV: Your a man who believes himself to be a chipmunk named Alvin, but you are attempting to become sane again by recording affirmations on your tape recorders
Its like a broken record, or rather, thousands of copies of a record, all broken in an identical way. This demonstration, oe the concept of this process, was probably a milestone in audio processing and influenced the idea of how to emulate a sound played in specific acoustic environments, that could be subjected to a recording, regardless of what type of environment it was recorded in. When using any type of reverb, delay or echo audio effects, its using this principle, applied within various tuned parameters. The musician known as Flume is one of the more modern examples of this process (only Fluke did it using software only). If you youtube Flume Mixtape, and play the hour long version, the intro to it is an experiment very much like this.
I'm a little surprised that this isn't mentioned in the book 'Godel, Esher, Bach'. It ties in with several themes in the book. If you listen to this piece in a room which is not different, does the room explode?
![Hiroshi Yoshimura (吉村弘) - Wet Land (1993) [Full Album]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Z3m7HXeiHpg/mqdefault.jpg)
![Hiroshi Yoshimura (吉村弘) - Wet Land (1993) [Full Album]](/img/tr.png)
When I was 18, my college radio station played this in its entirety. I never got the name of the piece, but was captivated by the memory of sitting in a cold studio, listening to the sound of a room. I recently read something which finally brought me here. RIP Alvin Lucier. Thank you for the memories.
That was a damn good radio station.
Amazing - what college radio station was that, out of curiosity? I was in junior high in the late 90s, before stuff like UA-cam, music blogs, or Napster took off, so my local college radio station was a great resource for finding out about weird/experimental/underground stuff - I remember sometimes I used to turn it on and just hit record on a 90 min tape, then would bounce the songs I liked onto another tape, jot down the artist/track name and make this shitty-sounding homemade compilation tapes. Good times. Don’t think they ever played anything this out there, though.
I have a 15 watt Chinese FM transmitter blasting this out on 95.7FM right now.
Was it WREK by any chance?
@@cavesprite I just can't imagine any other station but WREK. Arthur played it several times. Then finally on one of my shifts I played it. But I only played it late night. Arthur played it on a Friday afternoon. I drove right over from work to ask him what it was.
"I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice, and I am going to play it back into the room again and again, until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves, so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room, articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have."
Timestamp?
True, it give more sens of the "experience". I like harmonic sounds it was create.
Mine is "oo oom shoomoom oom oroom, moomoomt foom om on oo oor oon oo."
ɮɛռ ɮʊƈӄʟɛʏ քʀօɖʊƈȶɨօռֆ "ɨ ǟʍ ֆɨȶȶɨռɢ ɨռ ǟ ʀօօʍ ɖɨʄʄɛʀɛռȶ ʄʀօʍ ȶɦɛ օռɛ ʏօʊ ǟʀɛ ɨռ ռօա. ɨ ǟʍ ʀɛƈօʀɖɨռɢ ȶɦɛ ֆօʊռɖ օʄ ʍʏ ֆքɛǟӄɨռɢ ʋօɨƈɛ, ǟռɖ ɨ ǟʍ ɢօɨռɢ ȶօ քʟǟʏ ɨȶ ɮǟƈӄ ɨռȶօ ȶɦɛ ʀօօʍ ǟɢǟɨռ ǟռɖ ǟɢǟɨռ, ʊռȶɨʟ ȶɦɛ ʀɛֆօռǟռȶ ʄʀɛզʊɛռƈɨɛֆ օʄ ȶɦɛ ʀօօʍ ʀɛɨռʄօʀƈɛ ȶɦɛʍֆɛʟʋɛֆ, ֆօ ȶɦǟȶ ǟռʏ ֆɛʍɮʟǟռƈɛ օʄ ʍʏ ֆքɛɛƈɦ, աɨȶɦ քɛʀɦǟքֆ ȶɦɛ ɛӼƈɛքȶɨօռ օʄ ʀɦʏȶɦʍ, ɨֆ ɖɛֆȶʀօʏɛɖ. աɦǟȶ ʏօʊ աɨʟʟ ɦɛǟʀ, ȶɦɛռ, ǟʀɛ ȶɦɛ ռǟȶʊʀǟʟ ʀɛֆօռǟռȶ ʄʀɛզʊɛռƈɨɛֆ օʄ ȶɦɛ ʀօօʍ, ǟʀȶɨƈʊʟǟȶɛɖ ɮʏ ֆքɛɛƈɦ. ɨ ʀɛɢǟʀɖ ȶɦɨֆ ǟƈȶɨʋɨȶʏ ռօȶ ֆօ ʍʊƈɦ ǟֆ ǟ ɖɛʍօռֆȶʀǟȶɨօռ օʄ ǟ քɦʏֆɨƈǟʟ ʄǟƈȶ, ɮʊȶ ʍօʀɛ ǟֆ ǟ աǟʏ ȶօ ֆʍօօȶɦ օʊȶ ǟռʏ ɨʀʀɛɢʊʟǟʀɨȶɨɛֆ ʍʏ ֆքɛɛƈɦ ʍɨɢɦȶ ɦǟʋɛ."
👊𝔟𝐄𝓝 𝔟𝓤𝓬Ҝᒪ𝐄ʸ 𝔭ℝㄖ𝓭𝓤𝓬𝓉เㄖ𝓝𝕤 "เ 𝒶𝐦 𝕤เ𝓉𝓉เ𝓝Ğ เ𝓝 𝒶 ℝㄖㄖ𝐦 𝓭เ𝔽𝔽𝐄ℝ𝐄𝓝𝓉 𝔽ℝㄖ𝐦 𝓉𝓗𝐄 ㄖ𝓝𝐄 ʸㄖ𝓤 𝒶ℝ𝐄 เ𝓝 𝓝ㄖŴ. เ 𝒶𝐦 ℝ𝐄𝓬ㄖℝ𝓭เ𝓝Ğ 𝓉𝓗𝐄 𝕤ㄖ𝓤𝓝𝓭 ㄖ𝔽 𝐦ʸ 𝕤Ⓟ𝐄𝒶Ҝเ𝓝Ğ ᵛㄖเ𝓬𝐄, 𝒶𝓝𝓭 เ 𝒶𝐦 Ğㄖเ𝓝Ğ 𝓉ㄖ Ⓟᒪ𝒶ʸ เ𝓉 𝓫𝒶𝓬Ҝ เ𝓝𝓉ㄖ 𝓉𝓗𝐄 ℝㄖㄖ𝐦 𝒶Ğ𝒶เ𝓝 𝒶𝓝𝓭 𝒶Ğ𝒶เ𝓝, 𝓤𝓝𝓉เᒪ 𝓉𝓗𝐄 ℝ𝐄𝕤ㄖ𝓝𝒶𝓝𝓉 𝔽ℝ𝐄ợ𝓤𝐄𝓝𝓬เ𝐄𝕤 ㄖ𝔽 𝓉𝓗𝐄 ℝㄖㄖ𝐦 ℝ𝐄เ𝓝𝔽ㄖℝ𝓬𝐄 𝓉𝓗𝐄𝐦𝕤𝐄ᒪᵛ𝐄𝕤, 𝕤ㄖ 𝓉𝓗𝒶𝓉 𝒶𝓝ʸ 𝕤𝐄𝐦𝓫ᒪ𝒶𝓝𝓬𝐄 ㄖ𝔽 𝐦ʸ 𝕤Ⓟ𝐄𝐄𝓬𝓗, Ŵเ𝓉𝓗 Ⓟ𝐄ℝ𝓗𝒶Ⓟ𝕤 𝓉𝓗𝐄 𝐄ⓧ𝓬𝐄Ⓟ𝓉เㄖ𝓝 ㄖ𝔽 ℝ𝓗ʸ𝓉𝓗𝐦, เ𝕤 𝓭𝐄𝕤𝓉ℝㄖʸ𝐄𝓭. Ŵ𝓗𝒶𝓉 ʸㄖ𝓤 Ŵเᒪᒪ 𝓗𝐄𝒶ℝ, 𝓉𝓗𝐄𝓝, 𝒶ℝ𝐄 𝓉𝓗𝐄 𝓝𝒶𝓉𝓤ℝ𝒶ᒪ ℝ𝐄𝕤ㄖ𝓝𝒶𝓝𝓉 𝔽ℝ𝐄ợ𝓤𝐄𝓝𝓬เ𝐄𝕤 ㄖ𝔽 𝓉𝓗𝐄 ℝㄖㄖ𝐦, 𝒶ℝ𝓉เ𝓬𝓤ᒪ𝒶𝓉𝐄𝓭 𝓫ʸ 𝕤Ⓟ𝐄𝐄𝓬𝓗. เ ℝ𝐄Ğ𝒶ℝ𝓭 𝓉𝓗เ𝕤 𝒶𝓬𝓉เᵛเ𝓉ʸ 𝓝ㄖ𝓉 𝕤ㄖ 𝐦𝓤𝓬𝓗 𝒶𝕤 𝒶 𝓭𝐄𝐦ㄖ𝓝𝕤𝓉ℝ𝒶𝓉เㄖ𝓝 ㄖ𝔽 𝒶 Ⓟ𝓗ʸ𝕤เ𝓬𝒶ᒪ 𝔽𝒶𝓬𝓉, 𝓫𝓤𝓉 𝐦ㄖℝ𝐄 𝒶𝕤 𝒶 Ŵ𝒶ʸ 𝓉ㄖ 𝕤𝐦ㄖㄖ𝓉𝓗 ㄖ𝓤𝓉 𝒶𝓝ʸ เℝℝ𝐄Ğ𝓤ᒪ𝒶ℝเ𝓉เ𝐄𝕤 𝐦ʸ 𝕤Ⓟ𝐄𝐄𝓬𝓗 𝐦เĞ𝓗𝓉 𝓗𝒶ᵛ𝐄."
I once listened to this whole thing the night before a math exam before studying at all and it was about 1:30 am and I got a D on that exam but at least I enjoyed those 45 minutes.
worth
you should have been listening to an indian man talking about math
lol, *fuck* *yes*
thanks for the no happy ending
Update, I am now studying contemporary dance and working with his music, worthhh ittttt
'I Am Limiting Myself to the 45 minutes of the LP Format'
Starts as speech. Ends as Sunn O)))
sunn o best o
Great analysis
Almost profetic, as it turns out. Alvin Lucier just announced a new LP featuring Oren Ambarchi and Sunn O)))’s Stephen O’Malley - on Black Truffle. Shit just got real!
I always thought this was the greatest concept album ever
You clearly haven't heard JaJaJaJa NeNeNeNe
@@humavenado6401 pff that's for normies ;)
Or not.
RIP Alvin Lucier, thank you for everything.
I remember getting so blazed to this back in college
dam thats a weird choice for getting stoned
That's strange for a geology course on igneous rock...
Im doing that right now its sooo good
@@TheLocust830 same
me, currently
This came on my spotify randomly the other day, and as I listened it gave me a weird thought. That somehow this is what we would hear if we finally picked up on alien communications, distorted by resonant frequencies through the cosmos.
Interesting thought! Maybe we have heard from them but have misinterpreted it as radiation noise.
It becomes like the infinite resonance of a singing bowl by the end. The vibrational essence of reality. Inspired!
More like the vibrational essence of the room
Essence reality quantum consciousness liminal laminaria markovian parallax denigrate!
edit: vibration, frequency
Stranger: So what music are you into?
Me: *Sweats nervously*
answers: ***patrician***
I hate answering that question. Lol.
😂
I like electronic music
Oh like EDM?
Kinda :)
Same
What if we kissed in a room, different than the one you are in?
😳
Haha…
Unless?
LOL XD
genius
why does this read like a mid-2000s emo track title
RIP Mr Lucier ... your voice has become echo ... final iteration...
This blew my mind back in my college Electronic Music class in the 70s. So glad to see it on YT~!
"i am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now" greatest anime opening of all time.
unfamiliar ceiling
My head just melted
putting ads in this piece is a crime
YES! And should be punished according to the gravity of the offence!
I feel like it was whoever has the copyright who got UA-cam to put those ads in
having no AdBlock in 2018 is a crime!
Listening to this through UA-cam and not getting a physical release of it is a crime.
adblock.
If you just heard the last iteration as a standalone piece without knowing its origin, it would still be a quite amazing piece, I think part of the impact of the complete piece is that in some way you try to relate it back to the 'pure' recording of the first iteration, try to recognise the speech within the decay.
I hope that today, all record shoppes play this throughout the day - December 01 2021, the day this artist died.
This is the meaning of Internet. Redundance and redundance, until it will remains only resonance without meaning.
bruh i smoked a fat weedo X)))
lol
damn.
I guess john cage will tell you he didn't need internet to bring any meaning to him.
but still, nice try to be profound, just like your icon.
you forgot the outrage
the beginning is better than most ASMR out there
Ikr his voice is so soft! You can hear the change in his voice as he aged in the later version on Spotify, but both are fantastic
Well, that's because ASMR is tiresome bullshit.
the end too
Loop 9 is when it started bugging out my shitty laptop speakers
I really like how loop 13 sounds.
Loop 19 is also very cool, and now my speakers aren't angry anymore.
Loop 29, I'm so amazed that this sound was just a guy sitting in a room.
I need to listen to more concept albums
Tracklist:
00:00 - 1
01:21 - 2
02:42 - 3
04:04 - 4
05:24 - 5
06:46 - 6
08:08 - 7
09:31 - 8
10:54 - 9
12:18 - 10
13:42 - 11
15:05 - 12
16:28 - 13
17:51 - 14
19:14 - 15
20:37 - 16
22:01 - 17
23:25 - 18
24:50 - 19
26:16 - 20
27:41 - 21
29:06 - 22
30:32 - 23
31:58 - 24
33:24 - 25
34:51 - 26
36:18 - 27
37:45 - 28
39:13 - 29
40:41 - 30
42:09 - 31
43:37 - 32
Show less
REPLY
alright
It's getting dim
This comment should be pinned
THANK YOU
Many big thankings.
Sounds very interesting particularly at the end, I wonder what it would be like listening to it in reverse.
Very good point!! And agreed!! It would be like the gradual appearance of order and language from apparent chaos!
Even better: start with the speech played backwards, create the recordings from that, and then reverse THAT so that the voice slowly comes back to coherence. Actually, I think I might try this.
Rob Cerasuolo did u try it?
the same almost
Read this, looked it up, and couldn't find, was a good idea so why not make it? ua-cam.com/video/4u9R4p-DCDs/v-deo.html
I will make it play at my funeral.
This is equivalent to that infinite feedback effect you get when you point a video camera at a TV.
R.I.P. Alvin. You have left us this magnificent memorial to your legacy.
this piece is genuinely so powerful. rest in peace alvin lucier
Sorry to hear of Alvin’s passing. He was a really interesting guy.
This is the sonic equivalent of standing between two large bathroom mirrors aimed at each other, and pondering the denizens of the worlds represented by each reflection, which are essentially each a distortion of yourself the observer.
Groovy, man!
Well done man
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droste_effect
I always described it as a painting of am easel on an easel, on an. ..
Top comment, nice one.
More accurately: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mise_en_abyme enjoy the rabbit hole, gang.
I can use a thesaurus, too.
Idea for an experimental piece - Lucier said this could be performed in any room. It is intended to reveal the resonances of that specific room.
But what if we constructed a room in such a way as to manipulate the resonances ourself, then take some simple generated noise - and play it in the room to hear the resonances we constructed - as opposed to exploring the natural resonances of a room.
Charx it is intended to reveal my arse, try it, precisely on 44:59 into the song, if you would listen to it carefully and can survive without any brain damage your brain will halucinate my arse, life changing experience
Charx in that sense I guess it can be called picturesque
Thats an amazing idea. Hmm, it may just work.
Technically if you build ANY room you are already manipulating the resonances yourself. But this is kindof already a thing. Lookup plate reverb on google. Given it is not a room but a plate, but it's the same general concept.
IQ 200 😫
Coronavirus has us all sitting in different rooms :(
The matrix has us all together in a single room, yet each experiencing individual realities entirely alone.
Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop Dave? Stop, Dave
I've heard this Alvin Lucier piece a million times on college radio, as listener and disc-spinner. Only this second, listening on crystal clear UA-cam recording, did I immediately think "Holy Crap he sounds like HAL 9000/ Douglas Rain." I guess the resonant frequencies of an LP plus radio distortion got in the way.
Interesting and puzzling. Guess I'll sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.
I WILL NOT STAHP!!!
My mind is slipping
...this conversation can serve no purpose anylonger - goodbye dave...
I'm sorry Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Music class brought me here. Very weird, but I won't deny, it starts to become a little hypnotic after a while.
Same here lol
the word you're looking for is "avant-garde"
this makes me feel something i didnt know i was capable of feeling
Truly a _memester_ ahead of its time doing a
"_____ but the audio gets worse every time"
It's the first anar- deep fried meme
"But the audio gets more distorted and lovely at the same time"
The room is resonating even without speech!
Probably why he chose that room for the experiment.
@@rommix0 yeah, good choice!
Is it just me or did this get surprisingly eerie really fast?
I love googling science and ending up on art. I really like this.
Where did you start?
where did you start??😂
I'm on the third looping and it's already sounding very cool
oh you just wait
Ah man, imagine having this in stereo.
I heard this twentyfive years ago (almost exactly) and was fascinated - and didn't know how to find it since. Thank you so much! I think about this piece *often*.
I love how it transforms from recognizable speech into pure sounds that could be considered music.
One of my favorite pieces of music. Thanks.
I discovered this in a magazine that had an attached album in 1970. A great time to discover something like this.
Source. That version was only 15 minutes long. It’s also where I first heard it. Years later I ended up studying with Alvin.
RIP Legend, dear Alvin Lucier
🙏
Whoa you long user name
It is how we all become in space in the end.
THAT WAS AN AWESOME PIECE!
sad i missed out on this piece for so long, it gets fascinating really quickly. reminds me of ring modulation sounds i love without a lot of the harshness that can sneak into it, probably since it's monophonic and static initially.
it's really beautiful and musical by the end!
Listening to this with Terry Riley's In C playing as well. Pretty nice.
I would love to hear one of the last ones mixed in with the first one. That would be a pretty interesting reverb effect.
On your suggestion, I opened two tabs of this video. I set one at the beginning of the recording, skipped forward a few cycles on the other, and synced them. Highly recommend, would create sonic chaos again.
Yes Alex, I'd like "Henry Potts for the win please"...............(8^)
I just decided to listen to the suggestion that Duff Harris made above. Since I posted the time points for all 6 of the first 6 repetitions of this speech I decided to go to #1 and then start #6 3 seconds later. I would hear the 1st example for 3 seconds then hear the 6th example just after it.
Even after only 6 repetitions there was NOTICEABLE difference.
this would be great to look at on a spectrograph. in fact i might do that now
May I see the results?
I hope you find your special place in hereafter, Alvin. RIP to another pioneer. We all admire your experimental contributions to music.
hauntingly beautiful
I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am
recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back
into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room
reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps
the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the
natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I
regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact,
but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have
And by the end it goes:
OOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOooooooOOOoOOOOOOOOOOOOOO X50
Thanks for the lyrics bro
I just typed in the first 5 time points of repetition at the top of the page in case you'd like to record "only one" specific stanza or phrase to hear how much more distorted it becomes each successive occasion.
R.I.P Alvin… truly a genius
I'm finding it really hard to dance to this.
When the professor's lecture is too boring and you are about to fall asleep....
He does end up sounding a bit like the teacher in the Charlie Brown cartoons.
This is so rewarding!
RIP to the realest
Thank you for posting this, my CD recording of it has started glitching
This is magnificent.
The thing I always wonder about this is doesn't the recording and playback equipment have as much of an impact on the resulting sound as the room does? If the playback equipment (tape head/wiring/amplifier/filter/speaker) has a non-linear frequency response, that would seem to have a pretty sizeable impact on the results.
Poo Guy Maybe it's sounds exact, but it still won't be an exact replica. Any small variances will get amplified with each playback, so I think they definately influence the results.
romulusnr who cares really? It’s a brilliant idea and a fantastic concept album overall. No need to get pedantic.
It’s probably not pedantic to mention that, it’s a good point; probably many people who use sound recording equipment wonder about that.. It’s naturally the resonance of both the equipment and the room. It’s kind of exciting to think that maybe a flatter digital system would bring out a purer room resonance. Mentioning it doesn’t take away from the coolness of the piece, I’m sure the dude wasn’t trying to put it down or anything:)
Resonance of his original voice too I guess; a different sound source might bring out different harmonics. Just a guess though, makes me wonder.
It probably does have a significant impact on the sound.
Rest in Peace you mastermind
Lucier OG, spitting rhymes on the mic 🎤
🤣🤣🤣
when i was around 18-19 i lived with my sister and her husband and he would play this until i woke up and turned it off this happend everyday until i heard "i am sitting in a room" and i was up and it was off, funny looking back on it now but now i can wake up and stay away when ever
A great art piece!
A master piece.
"I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now." NO SHIT HOLMES
I really enjoy this guy's voice
Thanks fir providing access to this
The best way to smooth out any irregularities in speech that was ever invented!
9:31 nice to know there's at least 8 orders of feedback in british train stations when they inevitably announce your train has been cancelled over the tannoy
Now this is what I call noise music.
G-Man out here with the hottest mixtape of 1981.
Rest in peace 🌹🖤
I find it weird that I just now found this album 40 years after it was created... the day of it's creators death of all days.
thank the algorithms
@@markfisher6404 Talking about dead.
what an interesting experiment. it's so intriguing how the voice slowly morphs and deteriorates with each replay. I'm only 9 minutes into the recording, but I'm planning to listen to the whole thing.
edit: 12 minutes in. the voice is already unintelligible, it sounds like reverb-soaked hums and vibrations.
edit: DONE. very cool. by the end the voice is reduced to what sounds like pure ambience, it's surprising that it originated from a speech by a real human.
Joke's on you, I'm sitting in the same room ax you.
+Aderic
Can one sit in the same room twice.
I'm sitting in an exact replica of the room he was sitting in.
Joke's on you, you can't spell. (*as)
Behind you!
Thank you Tape Op magazine, for turning me on to this!
Imagine this on repeat at distorted volume locked in a room having a bad LSD trip.
1. 0:00 - 2. 1:20 - 3. 2:41 - 4. 4:02 - 5. 5:23
6. 6:45 - 7. 8:07 - 8. 9:30 - 9. 10:52 - 10. 12:17
11. 13:40 - 12. 15:03 - 13. 16:26 - 14. 17:49 - 15. 19:11
16. Master, we're in a tight spot. Tighter than tight.
16. 20:00 - 17. 21:20 - 18. 22:40 - 19. 24:00 - 20. 25:20 ???
I can't,
my brain.
4. Itchy
tasty
this is such a cool sound design idea. now that convolution reverb is easily accessible you could replicate this entirely digitally which creates really otherworldly textures
This is so scary, but so cool.
Rest in power, Alvin 🌹🖤
Plot twist: He is sitting in a room exactly like the one you are right now.
POV: Your a man who believes himself to be a chipmunk named Alvin, but you are attempting to become sane again by recording affirmations on your tape recorders
RIP Alvin Lucier.
Its like a broken record, or rather, thousands of copies of a record, all broken in an identical way. This demonstration, oe the concept of this process, was probably a milestone in audio processing and influenced the idea of how to emulate a sound played in specific acoustic environments, that could be subjected to a recording, regardless of what type of environment it was recorded in. When using any type of reverb, delay or echo audio effects, its using this principle, applied within various tuned parameters. The musician known as Flume is one of the more modern examples of this process (only Fluke did it using software only). If you youtube Flume Mixtape, and play the hour long version, the intro to it is an experiment very much like this.
I'm a little surprised that this isn't mentioned in the book 'Godel, Esher, Bach'. It ties in with several themes in the book. If you listen to this piece in a room which is not different, does the room explode?
no, it explosively decompresses.
I love that book. The production of the sound in this composition is like Hoffstadter's "strange loop"
rest in power to a real artist.
It's my sleepover and I get to choose the music
it starts out as a speech, ends with x æ a Xii introducing themselves
It doesn't even take that many re-recordings for the original recording to become mostly unintelligble, around 9-10.
I'm RIPping in a room
rip to a real one
It is transformed, and transforming.
Alvin Lucier walked so that nintendo switch click sound 1 millions times could run
I love the idea of a kiss, it is as though the sound is kissing the room.
We need a 10 hour version of this.
mluiga no not really
mluiga use 0.25x
ахахаххахахахахахха)))))))