Wednesday, January 24, 2007

John Lennon's "Radio Play"

The approximately 8-minute piece made my John Lennon has two tracks playing at the same time. One track sounds almost like a constant tapping sound made from taking tiny clips of a radio program. The other track only plays sometimes during the piece, and it is John Lennon speaking at a much lower volume so that his voice is only in the background and you cannot actually make out what he is saying.

The piece is hard to tolerate or comprehend because it is so choppy and the sound of broken static almost hurts the ears. The only tolerable parts are those with Lennon's soothing British voice in the background. I was expecting the tapping to evolve into a steady, rhythmic beat eventually, but it turned out to continue at a random pace with random pitches. It must have been interesting to experiment with the sound clips and multiple tracks, but the finished piece was not pleasant to listen to and did not flow together as well as it could have.

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