Haupz Blog

... still a totally disordered mix

Conlon Nancarrow

2020-08-29 — Michael Haupt

YAML indentation patterns inspired this.

They did not inspire Conlon Nancarrow, who passed away well before YAML was even conceived of. Nancarrow wrote, or rather, punched, music for player piano. That's the kind of piano that will play music on its own from punched tape. Composing for this instrument, instead of for human piano players, can do interesting things because you don't really have to pay attention to the music being playable with human hands. You can experiment with very precise timing, geometrical patterns, and so forth. Nancarrow wrote about fifty "Studies for Player Piano".

Here's two examples.

Study no. 5 made me think of YAML, or YAML made me think of it. I wonder what happens if you feed this to Kubernetes. It sounds like crazy ants.

Study no. 3a is a bit more conventional. It's Boogie Woogie on steroids.

Tags: music, the-nerdy-bit