Using YouTube as a musical instrument

This little experiment is a simple fugue structure -- a solo voice that follows a pattern, and then it is repeated in cycles, so that the pattern becomes more multi-layered. This bit uses some musical phrases from the composer Gyorgy Ligeti (you'll probably recognize his work from the soundtrack of 2001: A Space Odyssey) as well as several other musical phrases.

The process was simple: record the solo fugue line on the iPhone, then upload to YouTube, then open six pages (for six voices), then set up the iPhone to record the "performance" - in which each of the six pages is started after a 2-second interval.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/MFg1RESlMOQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

By the way, "musique concrete" is the term for music that is made from recorded sounds, usually not intended to be used in a musical composition. Here of course the voice was intended for the composition, but other incidental sounds were not.

Of course it's possible to use other sounds on YouTube in this way -- even spoken words. (The musician Steve Reich is known for his work with spoken text made into music.] Here is a simple test fugue made from our 2014 message for our Portland NGO:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/-ZPvGuQhQZA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>