The Clock of the Long Now will have chimes that play 10 tones, in unique combination, every day over the course of 10,000 years.
I tend to listen to a bunch of Long Now seminars in a row and noticed something about the chimes played at the start and end of every recording: they are the same.
So that got me thinking. They should be playing different chimes every day. And, I am not sure about the algorithm, but if you can calculate the chimes for each day, then why not play the chime particular to the day of the seminar?
I also started wondering if there was somewhere I could hear the chime for a particular day. And indeed there is. Seam M Burke, on his site Interglacial, has built a generator of MIDI chimes for any date. Brian Eno, in his exploration of the chimes (he was a big part of the idea behind the 10 notes and chimes) came out with a CD, too. The folks at the EMUSIC-L site also have been toying with this, trying to make better tones through their own chimes generator (MIDI is a bit ugh), but I haven’t played with it.
from: Clock: Chime Generator (Long Now Foundation site)
