I was recently introduced to the phenomena of Ultra Slow Music. This is where a piece of music is drastically slowed down whilst retaining the pitch and texture of the original piece to create something with a unique character of it's own.
Most notably I was impressed by a post on Soundcloud by Birdfeeder where he had slowed down John William's theme to Jurassic Park (listen here). The result is uplifting, emotive and a wonderful piece of music (the original work is fine as well but has a wholly different effect on the listener).
I decided to experiment and soon realised it's not as straight forward as you may think. Many pieces I tried just did not work and it's hard to put your finger on why a lot of the time (although strong rhythmic pieces do not work well). However, when it does work it is extremely rewarding, the results can be breathtaking.
I've found two pieces so far that I think are successful, this post is for the first one, Albinoni's Adagio for Strings.
This is one of my favourite pieces of music and I had a hunch it would suit the Ultra Slow treatment and it most definitely does, IMHO of course. In fact I think the result is stunning (and represents slowing the original piece down by a factor of about 100)
It's best listened to fairly loud, in a relaxed environment and is quite capable of retaining the listener's interest for it's hour long duration (this from a piece that originally lasted 8 minutes).
I've posted the result to Soundcloud and I'd be very interested in your opinions.
