Music from the masses

Terry Riley, In C

I recently came across Darren Solomon's project In Bb 2.0, a collaboratie music project that consists of a "wall" of YouTube videos of people playing musical phrases in Bb. Users can start or stop any video at any time to create their own mix of music.

I was immediately reminded of Terry Riley's in C, often cited as the first minimalist composition (above). Whereas Solomon's project invites musicians to contribute amorphous and timeless musical phrases in the key of Bb (and lets the user determine how the piece will be played), Riley instructs his musicians to play his piece in the order written, but allows them the choice to repeat phrases as often as they wish or skip phrases entirely to create a unique performance each time the piece is performed.

On the other side of the spectrum, Kutiman takes found musical videos and remixes them to create new pieces of music. He's documented his compositions at ThruYou.