Oh, wait, you're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. Shots! From WNYC.
And NPR. Hello, I'm Jad Abumrad. I'm Robert Kowich. This is Radio Lab, a podcast.
Today on our podcast, we're going to do, uh, we're going to revisit something from our last podcast, The Number Show. At the same time, we're going to travel to a completely new universe. A whole new universe. Are you ready for this?
Well, I don't know what we're doing. You generally don't know what we're about to do, right? I don't know. Will you just state that for the record?
Audience people, I have no idea what is about to happen. That's good. I like you in that state. Okay, so here's the thing we're going to be revisiting.
Remember this piece of tape? Four, five, six. Yeah. Can you do that?
Can you do it to the microphone? Oh, sure. Of course. This is from the numbers piece.
I'll let you touch the microphone. One, two, three, six. One, two, three. Do you want to tell me to set it up?
Give us some context? Okay, so what you're listening to is one of the stars of Radio Lab. She's now about two years old. She's actually since her second appearance on the program.
That's right. My name's Mina. Okay, Mina, can you count? One, two, three, six.
And Mina, in this case, is learning the business of counting. Yes, that was a raw tape recorded of Mina counting. Lulu Miller recorded it. And Mina's mother, we should also say, is Amanda Aronja.
Okay, so what I'm going to do is take that tape and play it for you in a completely new context. In non-Radio Lab context. What? Maybe I need to say that again.
A completely new context. You're a wild and crazy guy. Okay, I want you to ask why. Go ahead.
I'll set it up for you. Okay, here's the back story. Okay, in 1964, there was a piece of music that we're going to talk about now called In-C. In-C?
In-C. Is that like I-N-S-E-E as in I-C or In-C? No, it's like I-N letter C. Like in the key of C.
Oh, okay. C major. And you can hear it, it's kind of a- Sort of a Phil Glassy kind of thing? Actually, it was sort of the original Phil Glassy kind of thing.
In-C was written by a guy named Terry Riley at a time when music, classical music, had turned very, very dark. You know, people were writing all kinds of like really dissonant stuff. And it was interesting for a while. But then it became- Little though, little though.
Little hurtful, actually. People were losing interest. But then along comes our man, Terry Riley, who writes this piece, In-C. Very choice.
And it was like a watershed moment. I missed, I confess, I missed that moment. It just went right by me. Well, lucky for you, you've got me.
No, no, seriously, like In-C inspired Philip Glass and Steve Reich and like scores and scores of movie music. And you know, that whole explosion of minimalism. You can even say it like inspired techno and all kinds of other stuff. So, in a way, it all comes back to this piece which no one has ever heard before called In-C.
Oh. So here's what I want to do right now. I want to tell you about a project that I was involved in that united my radio lab self with my non-radio lab self and at the same time brought in Mina, the counting two-year-old. Okay.
There's an ensemble called the Grand Valley State New Music Ensemble who decided they were going to re-record In-C. And also, they asked 18 people, maybe it's 16, I can't remember, I always forget, a whole bunch of people to remix the song and I was one of the people they asked. Really? When did this happen?
How did you know this happened? This happened actually right when Emile was born. So I was on leave. So we are about to hear the Abumrad remix of In-C, the world famous that saved America's classical music between Sauri Oki?
That might be overstating its influence a bit, but yeah, I do want to play you that remix. But before that, I want to play you two other of the 18 remixes, which I think are really good. Okay. Starting with this one.
I really like this remix. It comes from a guy named Michael Lowenstern. My name's Michael Lowenstern. Mike Lowenstern.
I'm a dad, a composer, and a bass clarinetist. And a bass clarinetist. Hey, so speaking of bass clarinetist, is that what that sound was? Oh, no, that's the synth.
Whatever it is, I love that sound. You know, the whole thing about In-C is that it's really, it's about randomness. Yeah, because the performers are supposed to improvise. And the whole thing about these remixes is that it's about structure.
Yeah. And so the things that are most usually structured about any mix, any remix, especially dance mix, is going to be the drums. Drums do sound pretty structured. Well, that was the one thing that I threw to a random generator.
What do you mean? You mean, yeah. It just caught up. The drums never sound same twice.
Oh, so you use a computer to, like, algorithmically randomize drums? All of the drums are chopped up. And then it'll, it'll start chopping. So anyhow, it goes on.
The cello got us, beloved by so many of our people right into us. And that's not, that's, you know, that's, you know, that's a tip of an iceberg, yeah, yeah. So Zoe had a very different take. Here's yours.
When I got the call to do it, I was sort of, uh, like, both intrigued and scared, because I wanted to fall over the edge of the waterfall, because I wanted to really have that feeling of, like, okay, okay, okay, okay, here we come. Now we're going to fall off the waterfall. Over! The little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a Thank you.
So that's Zoe's. Isn't that nice? That's really nice. I know.
Kind of makes you feel warm. So are you going to try to improve on that? Because that would be dangerous. I don't know.
I put mine up against hers and Michael's with extreme caution. But here's mine. So let me set mine up. This is pretty brave of you.
Okay. I know. I'm going to talk for a bit so that people forget the glory of what they just heard. Okay.
So, okay. So, here's what I was thinking. I was on paternity leave. And you and everybody else were doing the number show.
Right? And I was hearing some things you guys were doing from time to time. And Lou would play me the piece she was working on, which was that one about counting, which included the tape that we played at the very beginning. Yeah.
Can you do that? Let's just take it. And it was funny because I got in this NC commission and I had this little baby. And I was doing that thing, you know, that people do with babies where you just start counting to them.
It's like an instinct. One, two, three. And so I heard that tape and I was like, oh, that's what I'm doing. But since I had NC in my head, I was kind of counting to that NC ostinato.
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. So that was sort of the two thoughts we used in my head.
I'm already feeling a little sorry for this baby. It was the two thoughts we used in my head. So I thought, I'm going to remix this piece as kind of a children's song. So this is the dedicated to a meal version of NC by me.
It's called Counting NC. It uses that tape of Nina Counting and my own baby makes an appearance. Is your song going to be in this? Yes, he's one of the first things you'll hear.
Oh, you're shameless. You're a shameless father. It's true. It's true.
So why don't we play the whole damn thing? Let's play the whole damn thing. One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five.
One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. So that's mine.
Oh, wow. Look, here's the thing. Don't write and say how much you liked and how you should do this all the time because this would be very, very disconcerting for those of us who work here. What does that mean?
I think that this was just a little bit too good, actually, and it's slightly worrisome. Really, don't write the man because I don't want to think of other career options. Because I could hear nasal stuff, Brooklyn playground stuff, Mina. I heard the drawers of your desk.
It's true. It was kind of shameless. It's true. But okay, no more music for a while.
No more music for a while. If you want more information on the record, check our website, radiolab.org. I also need to thank Bill Ryan, who's the head of the Grand Valley State New Music Ensemble, for making the whole record possible. None of those funders.
And they are... Well, they're the National Science Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and... The Sloan Foundation. Yes.
I'm Jad Abumrah. I'm Robert Coleridge. Thanks for listening. WNYC's journalism and storytelling is heard by millions of passionate listeners.
Sponsors of our programming gain our listeners' attention and their respect. Learn about how your organization can support WNYC and WNYC studios at sponsorship.wnyc.org.