160 Seconds

Have YOU ever wanted to time 160 seconds? We ALL have to time 160 seconds at some point in our lives. Now YOU can time 160 seconds like an expert!

This song is based on a really old MIDI I created for timing games of Scattergories played over AOL Instant Messenger. As the rules went, the moderator would post a letter of the alphabet and a list of categories in a chat room, and the players would have two and a half minutes to type up a list of one answer per category, each one beginning with that letter, and then ten seconds to IM their lists to the moderator. The purpose of the MIDI (and this MP3) is to assist the moderator in the timing aspect of the game.

The music is rather subdued in the first two and a half minutes. This is completely intentional, and is not because I suck at music or was rushed to create this piece. A jarring noise in the tone of E occurs to alert the moderator when two minutes, one and a half minutes, one minute, thirty seconds, and ten seconds of "thinking time" remain (a warning which the moderator then passes on to the players). Then we suddenly switch to a crescendo, amping up the tension of the ten seconds of "sending time".

Despite the minimalism of this piece and the fact that it was designed for counting off seconds, there's a certain quality about it that compels me to listen to it again after it's over. :)