Nº5 of seven Little Etudes for beginner and intermediate piano players based on different cardiac electrophysiology aberrations for day 5 of WHRW2020: World Heart Rhythm Week (1-7 June 2020). Little Etude Nº5 is based on the potentially deadly Torsade de Pointes (TdP). This is a kind of polymorphic ventricular tachycardia that can resolve spontaneously or degenerate to ventricular fibrillation and lead to sudden death.
On the ECG, the TdP creates the illusion of a twisting of the peaks around the horizontal axis, hence its name. Little Etude Nº5 is a direct mapping of a short ECG recording of a TdP episode. The pitches are obtained directly from the peaks and troughs of the TdP on the ECG graph paper.
