4'33''

A musical work composed by American experimental composer John Cage in 1952. Made up of 3 movements, it is comprised solely of four minutes and 33 seconds of silence. However in performance, the work is supposed to capture unintentional sounds such as audience whispers, coughs etc. It challenges the very definition of music.

Pretentious people claim to like it.

Art student: John Cage's 4'33'' is so compelling and thought provoking. It makes those students at the conservatorium look like a bunch of show-offs. They just don't appreciate the sound of silence.

Sane man: You're a twat.

55👍 10👎

Prolog

A trippy 70's computer programming language that uses recursion like a motherfucker. It is a logical programming language designed for expressing human logic instead of specific machine instructions. Unlike procedural languages such as C, it has very little practical use outside of a university environment.

Uni student #1: Holy shit. Recursively manipulating lists in Prolog is totally screwing with my head! Btw, why the fuck is my program stuck in a loop?

Uni student #2: You've got to create a base case for your predicate. Otherwise it just backtracks up the list and down again.

Uni student #1: Thanks. Fuck. I don't know if I'm gonna pass this course.

Uni student #2: Don't worry. It's not as if this shit is useful anyway.

90👍 15👎

detrain

A newspeak-esque term QRail train conductors use to describe the act of getting off a train.

Train conductor: Passengers for the Ipswich, Beenleigh and Gold Coast lines, please detrain at Central. Make sure you collect all of your belongings before detraining. Thank you.

Passenger: WTF!?!?

8👍 1👎

detrain

A newspeak-esque term QRail train conductors use to describe the act of getting off a train.

Train conductor: Passengers for the Ipswich, Beenleigh and Gold Coast lines, please detrain at Central. Make sure you collect all of your belongings before detraining. Thank you.

Passenger: WTF!?!?

E minor

A musical key that guitarists know all too well.

Musician: Instead of playing this song in E minor, can you play it in G minor?

Guitarist: What?

53👍 10👎

Beethoven

Arguably the greatest composer of all time. Also the name of a shitty movie.

Music lover: Hey Beethoven's pretty cool.

Movie buff: You sicken me.

469👍 86👎

minimalist music

A style of music originating in the 20th century. It is characterised by repeated motifs, varied slightly over a long period. Also common are long notes played over these repeated sections.

Interestingly enough, John Cage's famous silent piece 4'33'' is not considered minimalist, even though it is the most repetitive and minimal song ever composed.

*music playing*

Guy #1: Hey your stereo is broken.

Guy #2: No that's a Philip Glass CD. It's minimalist music.

40👍 14👎