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Thursday, November 30, 2006

Dance of the mountain-bike fairies

Via a Metafilter post, I notice a bizarre little achievement in instrumental music -- an excerpt from the Nutcracker Suite's "Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies" played entirely by striking various parts of a bicycle. Press the red Play symbol to hear it.

Despite the Metafilter poster's pronouncement, it is not in fact the entire Nutcracker Suite, which no one would listen to anyway. Nevertheless, it's surprisingly mellifluous. I suspect the players have sliced and diced some of the bicycle's spokes in order to realize the tones of a scale. (Think of the various sizes of the bars on a xylophone.) Is that cheating? Who cares.

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