A friend sent me the programme for a piece of music, with the thought that I would be interested in its beat cycle. I haven’t heard the music yet, but wondered what it would look like. It is “subdivided 9-7-6-5-4-3-2-3-4-5-6-6-5-4-3-2-3-4-5-6-7-9, with contrasting sections based on a cycle of 2x(12×4+6)”. This is what a quick bit of Flash coding makes of it:
The piece is Terry Riley’s “The Cusp of Magic” (he has a rather shocking website). The notes go on to say that 108 is considered a sacred number in India, on which prayer beads are based.
There, that was a harmlessly factual, if obscure, beginning to this blog. I’m not even sure what it means, beyond the fact that I wanted to see what something looked like! Perhaps prayer beads make for an auspicious start to the journey.