Alvin Lucier: Music for Pure Waves, Bass Drums and Acoustic Pendulums (1980)

Demo performance of the work using bass drums, suspended ping pong balls, and a subwoofer for the sine tone. This video is a demonstration of the work, and is spliced together from a longer performance. Audio is at a low amplitude.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• alvin
• lucier
• sine
• tone
• acoustic
• pendulum
• ping
• pong
• balls
• pure
• waves
• bass
• drums
• i'm
• sitting
• in
• room
• music
• for
• solo
• performer
• queen
• of
• the
• south

[ZanterM]

It may be possible to predict the resonance, but one would have to take separate measurements for each drum, and would likely need to do so so repeatedly for temperature changes etc. I'm not a physicist, but the drums typically do not respond as is suggested below--they resonate in response to the frequency of the sine tone being played behind the drum (sub woofer in this case).

[ZanterM]

The drum heads vibrate at frequencies that are resonant with the sine tone--meaning that at resonant frequencies they vibrate more, and at "non" resonant frequencies they vibrate less or not at all. Impossible to predict when any particular head will resonate--its non-linear.

[tigerbody69]

This is from 1980?

[ZanterM]

@tigerbody69

The work was written in 1980

[HearSeeLearn]

So as you increase frequency the ping bong balls play quicker?

[ZanterM]

Respond to this video... 

[smslocum]

@ZanterM Impossible to predict? Drum heads have different patterns of resonance than, say, strings, but they're not impossible to predict.

[wfly81]

@HearSeeLearn

Well it's frequency, which literally means how frequently (often) a wave repeats itself. So as the waves repeat more often, their effect on the ping pong balls increases frequency as well (through agitation of particles in the air).