the music of harry partch part1

[RealAudioNetwork]

Ahhh 240p... We meet again... >=C

[haloforgenatic]

I love Harry Partch's music

[tablatom]

I went to a concert of his music performed in 2002.

Performed on his insrtuments.

I loved it but i couldn't stop laughing.

I was crying with laughter for 2 hours. People sitting near by were getting annoyed with me.Lol.

I was really impressed with the musicians for 2 reasons.

1. how do you learn music with so many notes, incredible.

2. how did they not laugh and pull funny faces while playing?

[lsasm123]

that guy is related to me. he's my grandfathers cousin. my moms last name is Partch

[cozymonk]

My musician dad recommended him when I pointed out that the octave scale is actually infinite and not just twelve integers. And said he invented his own octave scale of 43 integers. When I first heard it, I was like, "wtf? this doesn't sound like music. it sounds like the stuff you hear on college radio when a bunch of students drop acid and bang their head on a piano." but as I listen to it more, it makes more and more sense! Although some of his "notes" sound so similar to one another.

[michaelwiese]

I had the good fortune when I was 12 to visit his studio about a movie theater in Champaign Illinois and the University of Illinois. He invited me back and he let me bang on all the instrument. This experience, I believe, was what in part, led me to be study and play Balinese gamelan.

[maynrdjkeenan]

This guy is fucking amazing.

[amg602]

the genius part isn't so much about his songs or compositions. It's the fact that he recognized that there are more tones that need to be incorporated into the scale system. This doesn't mean much if you are not a musician, but he was a mathematical genius. An Albert Einstein of sound and vibration.

[AzureDrag0n1]

This guy has more talent than most popular music.

[diesel828]

Oh wow. I didn't realize hipster garbage has had such a long history.

[macklemoreosis]

this sounds kind of like gamelan.

[dbtexters]

oh Harry partch...

4:12 Announcer: Why, Harry, I'm interested in this diamond marimba of yours!

Harry Partch: Okay. Come look at it.

[AYGHOR]

oh yea, this tastes liek acid.

[swedishbaker12]

How the hell did and argument over religion break out over a video of a crazy musician.

[christuimbirek]

harry is fuckin awsome

[StevenShields29]

At the beginning he looks like my cat scratching on the couch.

[wizotch]

best thing ive heard yet. where did this kind of beauty disapear to?

[GPLguitar]

ok at first i was like "what the f is this guy smoking?!" but now i see the beauty of it

[Tabla461]

@GPLguitar its easy to see the beauty of it when you realize that he hated the 12 tone scale and wanted to compose microtonal music. all of our western instruments use the 12 tone scale so he built his own.

[GPLguitar]

@Tabla461 yes thats what i realized

[bunnypaw]

omg he is completely fricken amazing

[ul1553x]

Julián Carrillo... Sonido 13...

[craigkbryant]

So grateful to see this. Harry Partch, for me, was the ultimate 20th Century artistic visionary. He built his own tools, worked out his own theories, and made an art that was uniquely his. His work with music reminds me of Tolkien's invented languages, Picasso and his compatriots in Cubist painting, and (more recently) Gehry's architecture seemingly ripped free from the constraints of physics. Partch was a universe unto himself.

[Composerland]

thanks for posting this.

[LordsLight]

@MrMeddled what you like brother?or shall I call you brethen? Repent man,you heading the WRONG WAY, the pit fall is straight ahead if you don't stop and turn from walking in the dark.

[LordsLight]

@MrMeddled your favorite movie is dumb and dumber? cuz you talk like one, almost the world knows about Jesus and you sit there saying it aint real. How much research you have on this subject, I'm sure you done more research on the monkey head evolution, and each time they keep coming up with a "new" specie that is "closer" to man. How stupid is that, man is closest to man, and GOD made man. You need to do more research before calling someone ignorant, you ignorant.

[Beelzubub13]

@LordsLight

you are crazy right?

[LordsLight]

@Beelzubub13 you replying to the guy that prefers the devil right?

[LordsLight]

@MrMeddled No historic proof? are you alrite man? wonder where you been? hopefully not in a circus cuz you aint gonna find anything real in there,but a bunch clowns.

[LordsLight]

@MrMeddled No,you're just stupid enough to believe the devil's lie that Jesus aint real, let me tell you again that JESUS is for REAL and your sins will be accounted for, if you don't REPENT,clowns and monkey heads are a joke, so are those who deny that Jesus is the Son of GOD,the Messiah,Christ.

[LordsLight]

@MrMeddled you a Christian? If you are then I won't get off this page cuz I'm about the Master's business. Hear ye you Christians, Christ does NOT tolerate sin, nor support sin, REPENT and read your HOLY Bible to know what a Christian is.

[LordsLight]

any Christians up in here? check my video out, I was born Red(u weren't born gay).

[stankler]

big deal .it sounds like hes lifted the lid on a piano and plucks the strings.a harp?big whup.lots of eastern instruments predated this.did he ever write a song?precursor of the hippies.

[ToothpickMcBrainy]

unlike any music I've ever heard...atonal, yet melodic. the influences from classical works are obvious, but there is a unique chaos to how he composes pieces....amazing.

[emulatorgeeknes]

I love this guy. I bet Steve from Nurse With Wound owns a few of his records.

[LudwigVanDirks]

I titan of ancient ritualistic music.

[LIFEONPLANETBECK]

His sensibility reminds me alot of John Cage; though it would appear that Partch's legacy was in fact even more industrious and and affeting to his medium(which is obviously VAST to say the least...) Beck wrote a tribute song to him that brilliantly captured the essence of his life's work..

[felipeaca]

@LIFEONPLANETBECK Who is Beck?

[cheekymonkey1979]

@felipeaca Glenn Beck. He's a huge fan. :-)

[maurocerutti]

Harry♥

[jjmatashi]

This is alien/extraterrestrial music for sure. Should have been used as the theme for District 9.

[nicodagger]

Partch was a visionary and a genius.

[imsofreakingcooldude]

@nicodagger this music is annoying

[imsofreakingcooldude]

ALL THIS IS IS RACKET HES LIKE A 5 YEAR OLD HITING THINGS.. THIS IS RETARDED

[TheModCon]

@imsofreakingcooldude Some people get Harry Partch, some people don't, but to say it's retarded just makes YOU look like the retard :)

[imsofreakingcooldude]

@TheModCon LOL! you're ignorant, if im the retard then why is this old man making noise, if you want to hear music, theres actual SONGS out there

[TheModCon]

@imsofreakingcooldude How is being open minded ignorant? Music is subjective. If you want to go and listen to 'actual songs' then fine. But don't be a knob about music you're way too closeminded to ever understand. Because seriously, you're the one who is looking like a dickhead, not me.

[hallugi]

@imsofreakingcooldude you said if you want to hear music listen to some songs.first of all learn the difference of those two and then try to judge what is music and whats not.

[djstkora]

@imsofreakingcooldude It is retarded. And that's what makes it cool. Dude.

[imsofreakingcooldude]

@djstkora yeah.. lemme go get my nephew and grab some pots and pans.. and maybe ill be as famous as this faggot

[jasae468]

all good

[galenct]

anyone have any idea what the music is at the beginning of the documentary?

[eoanthropus3000]

Thats from the beginning of Delusion of the Fury.

[cullanpiano]

It's actually one of the etudes from "petals" but then was used in Delusion.

[adamg709]

Thank G-d for youtube!

[diddywahdaddy]

Amen to that!! But is this available on DVD somewhere as well? Would love to own it and watch it for the rest of my humble life!!

[toztizok]

annie gosfield is good too.

[Wagnerlover777]

While Harry Partch may have created one of the oddest soundworlds in modern music, his music is so uniquely genius that there can be no question of its superiority to other modern composers who glue themselves to old traditions.

[mynumberonehat]

what about bill laswell?

[Wagnerlover777]

Though I admit Mr. Laswell is good, he doesn't quite reach the level of Partch, no insult to Laswell, but the very ideas of extreme microtonality which Partch uses far outdo Laswell's concepts, don't you think? I don't mind if you don't, just think about it.

[mynumberonehat]

yea, good words. i would just say that maybe laswell is like a modern day partch. maybe he couldnt get as innovative since partch already pushed the envelope super far. are you familiar with john cage. i do believe he paved the way for most modern day music if not all. especially hip hop and electronic genres.

[Wagnerlover777]

Hah! The perfect comparison! Cage and Partch, the masterminds of modern music! Perfect! (and Laswell's somewhere in there). Brilliant!

[mynumberonehat]

thanks. i definitely look up to all of those guys as inspiration since i am a turntablist and that has just widely become acceptable in popularity

[wutangtim]

I really don't see the connection of cage to hip hop, explain

[mynumberonehat]

sup wit it WUTANGtim? basically, cage was the first person to scratch on a turntable and use that sound in a piece of music. although he didnt record any songs with him "scratching", just the idea lent itself to modern music. also cage was really experimental, which relates to hip hop because hip hop music is highly experimental, especially modern hip hop turntablism.

[adamg709]

You do have a point there.

[fillspekter]

eh

arguably so

but pierre schaeffer in france was fucking with turntables before cage. but, i still dont think either of them really contributed aesthetically to the creation of hiphop. you think grand master flash knew about cages whole body work? no. he knew about funk records and turntables.

[mynumberonehat]

thanks for the knowledge about pierre schaeffer! grand master flash, while he was really dope, is not a standard of hip hop.

[lurxtlifeson]

@fillspekter just wondering, (since I don't know much about him yet) what does partch have to do with hip-hop?

[imsofreakingcooldude]

@fillspekter no one fucking cares

[TehCthulhu]

@fillspekter

Because clearly, all that matters in music is who contributed aesthetically to the creation of hiphop. Fuck all this creativity, ingenuity, and experimentation with scales. If there wasn't a generic beat and someone rhythmically talk it's just a bunch of pretentious bullshit.

[MattLeGroulx]

What's all this about "superiority" mr. "Wagnerlover777?"

pretty creepy.

[Wagnerlover777]

Superiority in the sense that he was able to expand musical boundaries farther than anyone in the 20th century. Obviously I don't think that the "Great Soviets" (Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Khachaturian), Ives, Stravinsky, Schoenberg and the rest of the Second Vienesse School, etc. were anything to laugh at, for they weren't. However, Partch was amongst the unique few able to concieve methods "outside the box", if not ignoring it all together.

[MattLeGroulx]

I haven't read Partch's book nor am I a Partch expert by any means but it seems to me Partch achieved his originality by looking to the distant past, Greek and Chinese theater and the temperaments that go with them. And while he did devise his own temperament I think he took quite a bit from the ancient musics he heard as a child. In which case he wasn't really expanding boundaries that much, he was just taking what he loved and creating his own art from it.

[Wagnerlover777]

It can be said that he expanded from said ancient ideas, for though much of his musical ingenuity is a derivative from ancient times, nowhere in there were the concepts of the instruments which Partch created. The Harmonic Canon for instance is like a massive mandolin, except with a tuning rod. Thusly, it is more the idea of what precisely is "expansion" and what is music to begin with.

[SweetSweetWaldo]

Oh! Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful! Thanks so much for posting this. Harry Partch's music is a whole world of its own! I can't wait to watch part 2...

[Garrison2]

Amazing!! Heavy influence on the Residents and now on me!

[SmokinAryan]

Time disappears even more profoundly with Harry Partch than it does with Olivier Messiaen. Isn't it great to have these videos?

[MyGreatestHeist]

Anybody heard "When Acting As a Particle" off the new Dillinger Escape Plan album? It sounds like they either sampled him or just imitated him really effectively.

[stapelia7]

Oh my god!! Thank you for this precious video.. I'm very interested in microtonal music and this video offers me priceless informations about Harry Partch.

[LFORSK]

soo dreamy and wierd!!!!

[VintageFuzz]

thank you, generous soul...

[orpheus63]

helps me to see that something like a sympathic American is possible

Partch for President

[erploco]

#1 outsider composer. great for Eskimos and residents. and hobos too.

[calmclam123]

i love his hitchiking in barstow and also his THE LETTER

couldyou PRETYY PLEASE post them as swell?

[rascalrascal]

i really like the glissando type thing hes doing down that harp??

[ADURG1]

thank you for sharing. phenomenal!! did i spell that word right? if not...oh well. got to check out # 2!!

[reelden]

Great to see him perform!! Magnificent!!!

[dahliafully]

this is the best of what you tube can offer. thanks for posting this and sharing your footage. i was hoping to find this and voila!!

[kenrubes]

I completely agree.

[zenpainters06]

This is the sh.. Right on.... This technology making it avail to us all is revolutionary. 2 much.. not enough..THIS IS A BEAUTIFUL THING......