Image via Wikipedia
I started listening to Tom Johnson's Chord Catalogue last night (rdio). It's definitely minimalistic and appealing but still a bit of a slog. As I resume it this morning, I'm not as captivated last night but I'm in the middle of the longest section. It looks the remaining parts get shorter and richer and maybe allow just a little more variety.
The sections:The Chord Catalogue
all the 8178 chords possible in one octave
the 78 two-note chords
the 286 three-note chords
the 715 four-note chords
the 1287 five-note chords
the 1716 six-note chords
the 1716 seven-note chords
the 1287 eight-note chords
the 715 nine-note chords
the 286 ten-note chords
the 78 eleven-note chords
the 13 twelve-note chords
the 1 thirteen-note chord
The Kyle Gann quote:
"Extreme and, one would think, extremely simple. A lesser man would have arranged those 8178 chords in some symphonically meaningful, or else quasi-random order, but Johnson proceeded methodically up the chromatic scale from two notes at a time, three, four, so on to 13....By the time we reached 10-note chords, the information overload was such that differences were hardly perceptible, a situation reminiscent of serial music. Far from being heavy-handed minimalism, The Chord Catalogue was a pointed lesson in music history and the relativity of perception."
Comments