Pendulum Music is the name of a work by Steve Reich, involving suspended microphones and speakers, creating phasing feedback tones. Steve Reich Steve Reich (born Stephen Michael Reich, October 3, 1936; last name pronounced []) is an American composer. ... Inside a condenser microphone. ... In music the compositional technique phasing, discovered by composer Steve Reich, is that while the same part is played on two musical instruments, one instrumentalist keeps playing in steady tempo, while the other gradually moves ahead of the first until it becomes out of and then back in phase (the... For other uses, including Audio feedback, see Feedback (disambiguation) In cybernetics and control theory, feedback is a process whereby some proportion or in general, function, of the output signal of a system is passed (fed back) to the input. ...

Three or more microphones are suspended above the speakers by means of a cable and stand. The microphones are pulled back, switched on, and swung back and forth over the speaker. As the microphone nears the speaker, a feedback tone is created. The music created is then the result of the process of the swinging microphones. A cable is two or more wires bound together which may be bare, covered or insulated. ...

Reich specifies the piece should continue until all the microphones are at rest over the speakers, each emitting a continuous tone. The microphone jacks are then to be pulled out simultaneously, cutting the sound off.

The piece has been performed rarely, and recorded by Sonic Youth. Sonic Youth is a rock group formed in New York City in 1981. ...

Reich came up with the concept while working at the University of Colorado. He was swinging a microphone in the style of the cowboy's lasso, and noting the produced feedback, he composed for the "orchestra" of microphones. The University of Colorado (CU) System consists of five campuses: University of Colorado at Boulder University of Colorado at Colorado Springs University of Colorado at Denver University of Colorado Health Sciences Center Fitzsimons campus of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, scheduled to open in 2007 in Aurora, Colorado... A cowboy (Spanish vaquero) tends cattle and horses on cattle ranches in North and South America. ... A lasso is a loop of rope that is designed to be thrown around a target and tighten when pulled. ...