• 58008@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I believed this was real until I searched for it 😂 To be fair to my own credulity, Plutonium Jazz would not be the most insane thing people did with radioactive materials back then. The “medicines” alone make Plutonium Jazz sound pretty tame.

  • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    The third sentence makes it clear it’s fake

    • Geiger counters aren’t rhythmic, they’re random
    • How would the audience know the beat matches the counter?
    • Random music doesn’t sound good, the audience would be more excited for good music

    Disappointed in the people who believed this.

    • i_love_FFT@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      Well… This is jazz… I’m skeptic as well, but what if it was some sort of experimental modern jazz where the musicians would try to predict the next click?

      • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        You can’t predict the next click, that’s what random means. This would never have gotten far enough to appear in front of an audience. They would have tried it at rehearsal and realised it was impossible.

        • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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          1 month ago

          It does have a rate though. Each click is random, but overall they’re at a predictable rate. Still, it wouldn’t be useful for music really. I could see someone trying to make it happen though. I’ve heard of dumber things.

          • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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            1 month ago

            Well in that case all you’ve done is reinvent tempo but worse. Unless you vary the rate on the fly, which requires moving the counter and/or radioactive material on the fly. And then all you’ve done is create a very bad musical instrument.

    • philipp_@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 month ago

      And even if it worked, you wouldn’t need a radiation source more dangerous than a banana to make a geiger counter go click enough to play along.

  • brown567@sh.itjust.works
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    1 month ago

    If there were hazardous levels of radiation, the clicks would be a squeal, you wouldn’t be able to match a rhythm to it

    • toddestan@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      Right. If you were to attempt something like this, you’d be better off with something like a chunk of granite than plutonium.

  • lugal@sopuli.xyz
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    1 month ago

    Since “Geiger” is German for “violinist”, you can replicate it with a guy who counts how many violinists are present