>...how slow can we write a piece of music?
In my case I’ve been working on my “Kitchen Sink Concerto #1” for over a decade.
As far as John Cage, I’m sure that, had he been composing a few decades later he would have taken advantage of the wonderful tools that the computer affords in aiding the musical process.
I’m sure he would have taken advantage of “Paulstretch”, a free piece of software found here http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch/ that allows one to slow down audio files. There are a lot of examples on YouTube that use a factor of 800%, such as the following...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phAVrw11GNI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI0LCYspTN4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDI4Vm9tAys
I find it quite useful for making drones and ambient beds for pieces, as well as allowing me to smooth out technical mistakes I make on keyboard.
To get results that positivly dwarf ASLSP one can use hyperstretch mode. The user can slow things down by 1e+18x so that a one minute audio file will take 1.90129 trillion years to play ! The only problem is that if one were to try to render the file as a .wav a solution would have to be found for storing the rather large file size.
Not all of YT teaching videos are useful or even especially accurate. But there are many which add flavor to homeschooling in areas that the teacher will need help.
And Lo! Here are serious comments from folks that know what they are talking about or have composed in the past. This is the one of the beauties of Free Republic, to have such a collection of talent on a single board.
And I shudder to think, that if Cage had lived past 1992, what could have come from the depths of his mind ...