Seth Kim-Cohen [Six Things #6 for Henri Vaxby by John Lely]
February 2006

On the 19th of February 2005, John Lely, composed Thing #6 for Henri Vaxby . Lely's instructions (for analogue clock and guitar) are as follows: “When the second hand of the clock crosses the hour hand, play a note. When the second hand crosses the minute hand, play a harmonic.”

Coincidentally, on the 19th of January 2006, Seth Kim-Cohen composed Six Things #6 for Henri Vaxby by John Lely. The instructions – for analogue clock, guitar, microphone and multi-track recording device – call for six performances of John Lely's Thing #6 for Henri Vaxby. The first thing is recorded. Then the second thing is also recorded, while the recording of the first thing is played back. The third thing is recorded, while the recordings of the first and second things are played back, and so on. By the time the sixth thing is recorded, it is accompanied by the previous five things. The organization of sound events is determined by the movement of the hands of the clock, with the intervals between sound events shifting as the relative positions of the hands change.

Six Things #6 for Henri Vaxby by John Lely was presented as a live thirty-minute performance (six five-minute things) on Live from Greene County on free103point9.org on the 4th of February 2006.

The recording presented here is the final ten-minute thing (including the recordings of the five previous things) culled from a sixty-minute version (six ten-minute things). It was made from 6:00 - 7:00 on the 12th of February 2006 (during the Blizzard of '06).

Click HEAR to listen to the recording of Six Things #6 for Henri Vaxby by John Lely.