Electrifonon
So, let me reflect on what I did...
I fed the lyrics of Gentle Giant's classic “On Reflection” into my beggar-thy-neighbor game simulator. This provided me with three voices, which I assigned to various instruments (piano, percussion, contrabass, vibraphone...)
The musical material was then divided into two major “chunks”, and the two chunks were overlapped. The percussion fragment at the end of the piece corresponded to the conclusion of the longest lasting chunk.
A 2s fragment of the contrabass voice was mixed in at several track loci.
A 0.7s silent fragment was added at time 0 of all voices.
A small fragment of the percussion voice was then mixed in at the new time 0.
And then I set to find a name for the resulting piece!
I took the string “on reflection” and I selected permutation “electrifonon“
“Fonòn” can be read out as in Greek word “φωνόνιο” (phonon). From Encyclopaedia Britannica one learns that
“A phonon is a definite discrete unit or quantum of vibrational mechanical energy, just as a photon is a quantum of electromagnetic or light energy.”
Of course my being a devote Zappaphile, I immediately associated the phonon to the vibrational energy that generates everything (even the ponies), namely the Big Note.
Now, the first thing one tries when they meet a phonon is to electrify it — obviously. And this produces an electriphonon. I think. You betcha thought we couldn't do it, right?
That's right, I vibed together Gentle Giant and Zappa's cosmogony. On reflection!
And what about the picture? Oh that's a polychrome woodblock print by Katsukawa Shuntei (1770–1820). Its title is “Ono-no-Komachi Looking at Her Reflection” 😊
And who was Ono-no-Komachi? They say she was a woman of fabled beauty and a poetess of immense skill... I will study about her!
Cheers, Eidon.