Added: 4 years ago
From: babylonianman
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  • Thanks a lot babylonianman for those awesome comments. I discovered Xenakis a while ago and loved since then what he does, now I start to understand a bit better the why thanks to you.

    If you have any idea where i can learn more about it, please do!

  • waoh, I don't know what to think of it, this comes from another world

  • Μου θυμιζει septic flesh με τα χορωδιακα.

  • 1:42 Part scared me... Amazing... Simply amazing...

  • I first came across this piece about two years ago. I have tried to listen to the whole thing about three times and have got further and further as I have. This time I got to1:44. See you next year. Sincerely, a terrified Rachel.

  • 1:04 oh my god

  • ....ouch,scared music,genius!

  • Wich key is this in?

  • @BigRed4231 Key of H-flat

  • @BagelBites48

    the first partt is in H flat, the second part is on J double flat locran

  • @BigRed4231 I guess this kind of music does not deal with the concept of key in the same way the music you know.

  • Revolution 9!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • 17 ατομα επαθαν μετασταση καρκινου. πως γινεται να μην σου αρεσει μια τοσο ωραια μουσικη ?

  • @painkiller901901

    koita an to les sovara mallon berdeveis to protoporiako gia thn epoxhvpeirama, me thn mousikh.. afto to pragma den einai mousikh.. eleos

    an pali oxi me sygxwreis

  • Oh my god , what is this ? These notes dont even exist !

  • A while back I was babysitting my roommate's six-year-old daughter and she asked me to play some "scary" music for her. I played this. Within a minute and a half she was crying, her hands to her ears, begging me to turn it off. How's that for a musical review! (I love this piece, by the way).

  • how many samples were used in the FFT window of this analysis?

  • beyond belief!

  • Terribly wonderful :p

  • how did you make this representation?

  • @robinschavoir FL Studio got a plugin called WaveCandy, it seems very similar. Search YT for "FL Studio 9: Wave Candy Guitar"

  • Metastasis is scary: The growth of secondary malignant tumors away from the primary one. I can totally feel the terror of the oncoming death.

  • My favorite Xenakis piece and one of my few favorite orchestral pieces.

  • about the THX sound of 1983 it was a cover most inspired by the song "Loom" from YMO made in 1981.

    But i also agree that this "Metastasis" was the original inpiration of the Ryuichi Sakamoto and Haruomi Hosono song.

  • I don't... Understand this.

    I can't say it's bad, I don't think it's bad, but it's not what I would describe as music, not by a conventional sense. To me, this just sounds like a tension track from a horror film. Nothing more than sounds to put the listener on edge or increase susceptibility to a sudden shock.

  • @AxelLeJeff And you're implying that the music used in horror films doesn't count as music? Music can be anything its composer wants it to be. All music requires is sound, and even silence can be a useful tool in music. You just don't appreciate it because it's so different from what you're used to hearing. I'm not trying to insult you, but this is thoroughly musical, but it's different.

  • @AxelLeJeff

    Well the experience of a shock might be what he wanted to express. But as you have mentioned, sounds of terror are recognizable as such because when we hear them we connect them subconsciously with a zombie or a serial killer. A guy in the 50's not having seen any movies at all would have a tottaly diferrent opinion about this track!

  • @AxelLeJeff Trust me, many people don't, he used to play with algorithmes, Iannis was too experimental, here are some enviromental sounds put in order, despite we missunderstood this, it makes sense, try to research for Stochastic Music

  • @AxelLeJeff The only conventional sense for music is: "Sounds and silences in a timeline". =)

  • i think I heard a vuvuzela !

  • May everyone have an unspeakable Feb 4. Long remembrance of Xenakis.

  • I first heard Starvinsky's "Rite of Spring" when I was 7 years old. It sounded like noise to me. I could not get a 'handle' on it. Although at a higher level of abstraction, it evoked in me a feeling every bit as confusing and unnerving as trying to listen to music through a blown speaker cone. I could not avoid it; every few years I found myself re-exposed to "Rite of Spring", and it never made sense to me. Then one day, through no activity on my part, my perception evolved, and it did.

  • This is excellent. Thanks for posting it.

  • Listening to music or experiencing any form of art is individual and subjective-I like this, I will listen to it again,that is my experience and desire.

  • this should be on guitar hero.

  • i dont wonder - i have it seen in vienna - great genious

  • I don't think he's as good as Justin Bieber.

  • @justinbieberforking Justin Bieber, good? O,o you gotta be joking; unless....... please tell you're on an acid trip... x3

  • wish it was louder

  • συγκλονιστικο!

  • in darkness and with my headphones on

  • @MustNotRead, Nature and the Universe are full of Fibonacci sequence and "Golden Mean". Why would you blame an artist for using the natural world as a guide to compose something, be it a visual artist or musician? If Mozart (yawn) were alive today, what makes you think he wouldn't compose something on a synth or computer anyway? Our universe is an incomprehensibly violent place by its own nature, to humans and life in case you haven't learned yet. Do you find THAT pleasing to think about?

  • @deecee10000 I'm sorry, but "Mozart (yawn)"? Come on, your point was so good until you had to bag out Mozart.

  • @deecee10000 I'm sorry, but "Mozart (yawn)"? Come on, your point was so good until you had to bag out Mozart.

  • @TubaTones Big deal. I find him boring, you find Mozart music exciting. Who really cares? In the whole scheme of things it really isn't all that important unless of course someone forces you against your will to listen to gawd awful Mozart (yawn) music. Then it becomes a human rights issue. . . but in my case, if someone tried to torture me by such horrible means, I would probably fall asleep anyway. Do you find every piece of music you've ever heard or played exciting? I doubt it.

  • @deecee10000 The nice thing about you was how you were able to make your inability to appreciate classical music sound like a good thing.

  • Now we know where the THX theme came from.

  • One more horror movie... Freddie Kruger is killing composition teachers one by one... :-)

  • They cut out the "I'd love to turn you on" at the beginning.

  • Not a bad piece; however I still find all those mathematic references in music pretentious and (as for today) overused. I get it, Xenakis wrote this one in the 50's, but how many times will we have to read all the "we based the song on the Fibonacci sequence" bullshit?

  • @europeandouchebag You don't have to read all that "bullshit" if you don't want to. You can just to the piece. Some people are curious about how he wrote the piece and want to read about the mathematical references. Similarly, some people are curious about how Bach wrote the Well-Tempered Clavier and would thus read a "pretentious" Shenkerian analysis, while others may just want to listen to it. If you don't want to read the explanation then don't click the "read more" button.

  • @Nullstellensatz I know I don't have to read anything. You don't have to read my comments either. I also said that I don't mind Xenakis but I despise all those contemporary artists who still think "maths based songs" (which is, by the way, as close to actual mathematics as, say, numerology) are super kewl and edgy.

  • I wish the THX theme continued into this!

  • the best part about listening to these tracks off of youtube is reading all these comments by people who can't tell the difference between their music taste and an objective worldview of what qualifies music

    ugh

  • Interesting sounds reminiscent of the old THX promo.

  • well, if there's one thing that Xenakis proved it is that computers should never be allowed to "create" (calculate) music for humans. this piece is a rambling incoherent mess of sound. I'm sure you can detect the Fibonacci sequence floating around in there somewhere, but is it pleasant to the human ear? not particularly. does it stir emotions and tell a story? perhaps if you're a mathematician it does, otherwise - no.

  • @MustNotRead "but is it pleasant to the human ear?" To mine. Is yours broken? -- "does it stir emotions and tell a story?" Hell yeah it does.

    Your concept of "intuition" is pretty funny. I didn't "get" this music on first listen, but I didn't "get" Bach, Brahms, or Debussy either. Mozart, in all honestly, sounded overly aristocratic and stodgy when I first heard him. Then again, I did "get" Chopin and Schoenberg right away, but that doesn't make their music "objectively" more appealing.

  • This is so...different.

  • i dont understand the science-math "drawing" the music nonsense but it sounds FUCKING AWESOME.

  • reminds me of the music from the last half hour from 2001: a space odyssey

  • @MylesMoore Yep clearly. Also some rude brass hits and psychotic strings like in "planet of the apes" ost

  • We could translate the screenplay for the Godfather into machine language and then shoot radiation through the hard drive and hang the resulting scatterplot in a museum.

    And some hapless graduate student would have to write his thesis about it. Sigh.

  • real art real science unreal music.we bow you to your superior mind.

  • cool ... and hot

    btw ... it depends on own perceptive sensibility i guess, right?

  • cool..but cold music anyway

  • I'm doing a paper on this guy right now and it's fucking miserable.

  • @livetoriga

    Go to hell! Xenakis is God!

  • It's interesting to read the reactions to this piece. This music is based on advanced mathematics models, statistics mainly, concerning probability. It's like a science experiment beeing measured. I've read the same reactions to recorded sounds from the Solar system planets radio signals ("planet songs"). Why are you so scared? This is the closest to the actual sound of the Universe. It's awsome!

  • What's interesting is that "Metastasis" was the finale of a multi-movement piece titled "Anastenaria" (?), recorded for the first time on Col Legno a few years ago. Xenakis felt it was such an advance that he abandoned the earlier movements, and it became his first acknowledged piece. The earlier movements are actually very interesting, they have elements that possibly relate to his controversial late work and show his oeuvre to be wholly unified.

  • What the fuck... That was genuinely terrifying.

  • This is excellent! Thank you!

  • This is a fine example of investigative journalism.

  • I like this one!!

  • Yes, awesome.

  • ah so much tension and never a release, i love it.

  • this fuckin scares me, awesome

  • O_o

  • che spettacolo

  • ...

  • wow 4 min onwards looks like a forest on fire..... the "light purple" are like trees

  • this will just make a horror film even better!! LOVE IT!

  • this is perfect for a Stanley Kubrick movie.

  • Algo complejo y tenebroso!!!, sin centro tonal waw!!, me causa mucha curiosidad elq ue estubo pensando Xenakis al crear esto??? es sumamente compejo tratar de entender

  • Um terror, horrível.

  • Tens bom remédio, não oiças.

  • This is fantastic. On another note though, do I spy a transcode? Probably just at the fault of Youtube quality, but...

  • amazing.

  • this is disturbing.

    and I love it.

  • ,,sounds like the Shining.

  • awesome

  • Completely writing some code and this song completely screwed me up. Like impossible to concentrate on something with this playing...but I like it

  • In regards to comment by DrBoomy: This music is far from emotionless. Its intricate use of chromatic harmony conjurs complex emotions that are inspired by Xenakis' memory of the sounds of warfare. Even assuming that your analysis of the piece as 'cold' is accurate (which I don't necessarily agree with) its status as a meaningful, expressive work of art should not be questioned. You are clearly not qualified to comment on the matter if you consider 'cold' as a subject not be expressed in art.

  • BRAINGASM!!!!! I Love this! It's everything I'm into - all wrapped up in ONE! Many thanks to my Audio-Brother, "229095" for sending me incredible video!

  • Beautiful<3

  • Thanks - nice write-up, and an intriguing way of "looking at" the piece.

  • barbaric, wonderful and refreshing!

    I'm glad that this work has 5 stars, would have never expected that.

  • I don't get it...

    I find this music to be cold and emotionless which are not elements that 'art' are meant to express. It is a interesting concept to make music based on math but it comes out sounds like crap.

    As to Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima 5, that song invoked confusion discuss and horror but not because it felt as is it meant. Because it just sounded so bad. That sad, it is an excellent representation of the bombing of Hiroshima.

  • Who's to say what art is meant to express?

    Generally speaking, art is meant to express the ideas of the artist. As Xenakis was trying to convey Einstein's view of spacetime, he probably intended for it to be emotionless.

  • Why isn't "cold" an emotion that can be expressed in art? If you can feel it (even the absence of feeling is still a feeling, just like black is absence of light, but still a color) you can express it.

  • I guess what I trying to say is that this music is highly enjoyable. It sad that sounds that are so enjoyable and displeasing to the ear are sysmbolic of Einstein's veiw of space and time..... wait... I get it! I guess I hear it now; I hear how it could be symbolic of that. I understand. I guess with that understanding I get why this can be enjoyed.

  • I don't see why DrBoomy guy is being given the thumbs down for expression HIS oppinion which it clearly was "I don't get it", "I find this music..." if everyone liked every piece of art then it wouldn't be art. Get off your high horses.

  • @DrBoomy you suck

  • @DrBoomy

    "(Not because it felt as it meant...) Because it just sounded so bad" *to you*. With, honestly what kind of appears to be not really curious or trained ears or a very open mind. What is musical art 'supposed' to express in your estimation?

    "An excellent representation of...", well that'd be a photgraph or a field recording wouldn't it.

    You don't get it. There are undoubtedly reasons for this.

  • @jancivil

    of course music isn't *supposed* to represent anything absolute. but as you suggest, to appreciate this incoherent mess of sound, would require significant mental gymnastics to the point of deluding oneself. perhaps if you were a robot, you could instantly enjoy this "music" - otherwise you will have to train/brainwash your perceptions for many years to be able to enjoy this. i guess "real" music by, say fe, Mozart, doesnt require such faith. it is naturally appealing.

  • @jancivil

    i think even you have to admit that this video's "music" is more an intellectual audio curiosity than what your intuition would tell you is "music".

  • @MustNotRead

    Your seem to unclear on the concept of 'intution'. You are pushing your cultural, learned norm onto something which doesn't fit it. Which doesn't work.

  • @jancivil

    i wouldn't call this music, it's more like an intellectual audio curiosity.

  • @MustNotRead

    Mozart isn't naturally appealing to me, It's alien-sounding. It would require cultural brainwashing I never fully accepted. I understand it entirely, I'm trained in european harmony - which subverts *natural* harmonic pheneomena rather dramatically, This takes some *knowledge of the object* to understand, as opposed to this largely subjective preference you are pretending is wholly objective.

  • great to see this video!

    Vangelis, Xenakis some of the greatest composers

  • brilliant,,bizzarre and so beautiful

  • Read the info on this video, it is is insightful. It can help the uninitiated, inexperienced people. As far as its classification.......radical pop or jazz? Richtomes is obviously one of the above mentioned. This IS the fine art of composition and at its finest. The concept of using sound masses of huge clusters was coined in this piece, and this piece also inspired Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima 5 years after. Both pieces have been played by numerous world class orchestras.

  • how trippy!!!!!!!!! lol looove it. its so different!!

  • wonderfull!!!

  • I never listened to something like that. It weird, but great! (:

  • Audible frequenices will impact our ears and elicit emotional responses. Film sountracks do just this. The capacity, not to understand or define, but to let a series of sounds permeate your being and generate an emotion, transport you, that's the soul and purpose of music. The merit here is the selection of non-standard formulas for this purpose. Does this composition not elicit an emotion in you? Perhaps your deaf, not in the ears but in your capacity to open up...

  • Thanks! =D

  • Stop posting this everywhere. If you don't like it, don't listen to it.

  • well assuming that your educated u would know why it is atonal music

  • i dont think u realize how far ur head is up ur own ass buddy

  • What a quaint old expression - and the best thing about it from your point of view is it that it gives you the sensation of having delivered a profound truth without having had to use your brain or expressive abilities at all. Rather like this kind of adiabatic 'music'.

  • the horn blast at 1:43 is absolutely monstrous

  • Incredible piece, especially the beginning with all the glissandi. Thanks for posting!

  • Excellent! What software did you use to create that spectrogram?

  • I used Adobe Audition to create it.

  • you should do this with a few other pieces. Ionization or some rhythmic stuff too.

  • Very important, perfect, thank you.

  • Outstanding.

  • Este video es un aporte inmenso a la comprension de esta musica.

  • Wow!!! this is so great!!! just recently I discovered this kind of music, wow!! how did I miss this for so many years???

    Definetely faved, 5 stars... very good job! and thanks for the graphic... it's just amazing...

  • sheperd tone in the beginning

  • Thanks. Xenakis is the greatest. What's interesting to me about the spectral view is that it often resembles graphical scores that composers in the 60s devised intuitively. Indeed, if you have a certain type of mind,  visualization is superfluous -- you perceive all the shapes & colors within the audio itself. But, for many others, visualizations can really assist w/ understanding abstract music.

  • i think without the video this loses a lot of its appeal as a pure piece of music

  • This is excellent! Thanks for sharing.

  • Fine, fine. Nice work.

  • Great work. Thank you for making this and putting it on youtube; it very much enhances my understanding of this piece.

  • 1.06 to 1.09 sounded very creepy

    great.

  • are you kidding? they sound amazing

  • that was interesting, thank you!

  • This is awesome!

  • it really helps to appreciate the music more.

  • Indeed - it speeds up the understanding of a pattern/message. May depend on how 'visual' one's mind is. Perhaps those who can 'hear' the details of the spectrum would find the visualization excessive? Not me though :) Thanks, babylonianman.

  • interesting

  • Muy bueno.

  • This is GREAT. Thanks a bunch for sharing. :-)

  • fuckin wierd

  • I'm a huge Xenakis fan, and that's the way I like it!

  • what software did you use to generate the spectral vid? thanks for posting.

  • I used Adobe Audition to play the piece in spectral view and then screen captured it.

  • yo could aslo use Isotope RX Complete audio resoration and spectrum soft.

    try before you buy tho ;D

  • can anyone recomend me some dimilar videos? music and image.

  • Not bad, really. This is a lot better than Xenakis's other works.

  • The parallel lines especially prominent near the beginning I'm guessing are harmonics from the violin?

  • Ψηλά το λάβαρο της Ελληνικής Διανόησης! Ξενάκης-Χρήστου-Σκαλκώτας στον τομέα της Σύγχρονης Μουσικής!

    5 αστέρια απο μένα!

  • γεια σου Ιαννη Ξενακη

    ειμαστε υπερηφανοι για σενα

  • Very good music .The video is very appropiate for this kind of music .I never heard Xenakis music before .Thanks for posting it .

  • excellent explnation of the video. Thanks for adding it. This has been one of the more interesting videos I have seen on you tube.

  • he is from athens mpravo:D apo tin greece

    he is a war hero and is born in 1922-2001 died

    unforttunately am from skopja,yugoslavija and i dig yanni music and i know that he cuted tape lentgh for electronic uziq respect

  • Merci for posting ! Excellent indeed. And Rosbaud conducting, too !

  • beautiful - wonderful. thank you

  • Thank you for posting this video. I love the Music.

  • I'm glad I'm getting some positive response because this kind of music is rather difficult for the average listener.

  • this is an excellent video... thank you for posting this

  • apo ton papa8anasiou ston xenaki e?

    mpravo :D

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