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Wednesday 20 April 2011

Adagio for Strings



Today's cross-training and my left calf was feeling a little tight so I decided to go to my local pool for a swim. Over the speakers they played all sorts of thumping techno music, which made the pensioners grumble a bit. One of the tunes was this drum-thumping mix of Adagio for Strings which copies what William Orbit did, but overpowers the melody with a generic drum beat. Listen to it, it's awful.

I find Barber's original movement difficult to listen to while sitting still, but the languorous chords makes it very difficult to settle into a rhythm while running, unsurprisingly since the piece is supposed to be played slowly.

Some may find this sacrilege, but I like William Orbit's remix perfectly well, and the added beat makes it easier to find a rhythm when running. He speeds up the tempo a tad and uses a basic trick of splitting the longer notes into repeated shorter ones. It's a simple trick used to great effect to create movement in the remix while avoiding making it farcical by increasing the tempo too much.

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