Uploaded May 2013 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago

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Inspired by the "Goedel, Escher, Bach" book of Douglas Hofstadter and by the Seaside Canon poem by Julia Galef. Read the original poem here: measureofdoubt.com/2011/06/06/a-crab-canon-for-douglas-hofstadter

This crab canon is different from my previous crab canon in the following aspects:

1. This canon was conceived after serendipitously finding a poem written by Julia Galef, who kindly granted me permission to use it.

2. It uses more and longer pedal notes. What can I say - I just love pedal notes!

3. The music modulates to different keys. Have you discovered my free modulation book yet? Get it here: a-touch-of-music.blogspot.be/2012/09/modulation.html.

4. It's not just a crab canon, it's also a palindrome canon. When you reverse the raw audio samples and listen to the result, you get the same piece again. Mind you: I'm not just talking the notes, but also the timbres! Nothing should sound weirder or more "backward" than in the original piece.

5. The spectrogram (black on white) looks like the sea, and the score layed on top of it in colored rectangles looks like a frontal view of a crab. Ok, that's a joke - nevertheless, try squinting your eyes... :D

W.r.t. the images that pass by: in black on white you can see a spectrogram of the piece.
In colored rectangles I've overlayed half of the notes that are being played in the forward version of the canon (four voices). The other half of the notes come from the same canon simultaneously being played backwards.

I've developed a systematic method for constructing music canons, crab canons, palindrome canons and table canons, fully documented in a series of free articles that can be found via my blog: a-touch-of-music.blogspot.com (search for "Canon").

I'm aware that my method in its current form has its limitations and does not yield music that can truly compete with the Big Composers, but who knows... I may still have some ideas on how to improve things.