As anyone most people who have spoken to me about music know, I like my music slow.  Sometimes extremely slow.  Sometimes ridiculously slow.  That’s not to say I don’t appreciate the occasional fast piece of music, but my interest lies in the slow an gradually evolving tune.One piece that really scratched this particular itch was Lief Inge’s “9 beet stretch“.  Allow me to print the score for you below:

A recording of Ludwig van Beethoven’s 9th symphony is to be stretched to 24 hours, with no pitch distortion.For installation or performance, use either supplied material or augment any full length digital recording of Beethoven’s 9th symphony. As the length of the source recordings varies, so will the ratio of the augmentation vary to reach the full 24 hours length. With a partial performance, the performed part must be augmented with the same ratio as would the whole recording.There is a version for 9 Beet Stretch for each recording available of Beethovens 9th symphony. If there for any reason is hard to obtain a copy of Beethoven’s 9th symphony, please use Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem.    

 So really, this is an idea more than a composition.  But I have listened to many hours of the free audio files provided, and there is something there that is extremely interesting.  I have been searching for a way to do this since  have heard this piece, but all the ways I knew were prohibitively complex.  Until now.I recently stumbled across Paul’s Extreme Sound Stretch, which seems to hold out the promise of providing that Inge-esque sound with an easy-to-use interface.  I can’t find a version that I can compile on Mac OS X, so right now I am running the PC version through Parallels, but I have had good results so far.  Perhaps I will create the Mozart Requiem version of 9 beet stretch.  Or I may see how Conlon Nancarrow fairs after be slowed down a few dozen times.