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Thursday, 16 September 2010 13:00

Programing a 5-Movement Symphony in 8 KB

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Photo: Greg Broom

Photo: Greg Broom

Tristan Perich, a New York composer of experimental music, wanted to see how small he could make big philharmonic pieces. His new release, 1-Bit Symphony, is a 40-minute, five-movement opus

programmed onto a tiny 8-MHz, 8-KB microchip in super-efficient assembly language. The dinky chip containing this program (source code included in the liner notes) is installed in a CD jewel case and wired to a watch battery, volume knob, and headphone jack. Order the assembly at bangonacan.org, hit the On button, and the music flows through your earbuds.

Listen:

“I wanted to pare things down as much as possible and remove all of those extra layers,” Perich says. “Ultimately, the lowest you can go is 1 bit.” He couldn’t get quite that small; but still, at under 8 KB, the richness of his composition, which sounds like a grand polyphonic score performed in pulsing Nintendo bleeps and bloops, is surprising. And so is its conclusion: The final movement of 1-Bit Symphony is programmed never to end—the last tone simply goes on forever, or at least until the 3-volt watch battery runs out.

Authors: Mario Aguilar

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