The Bottomless Pit is a performance for 15 edo guitar with effects.
The Bottomless Pit
May 20th, 2013And She Said….
May 17th, 2013
Woman Sitting in the Grass by Vincent van Gogh
And She Said…. is a semi-generative piece in Werckmeister III tuning (probably close to Bach’s tuning) using piano and layered synthesizers.
The 11th Blue Moon
May 17th, 2013
Poem
by Richard Leach
and recited / sung (in 12 edo / JI) by Christiane Offenbar
and 11 edo vocoder / 11 edo synthesis by Chris Vaisvil
the one that appears once in forty-four years.
Not the one that is full for a single night -
the one that is full every night it is in the sky.
Not the one on which to see a man or a rabbit -
the one on which there are branches and leaves in silhouette.
Not the one that is drowned out by a glowing city -
the one that is as bright above a city as it is where the sky is darkest.
Not the one by which you might read a newspaper headline -
the one by which you can read what had been invisible.
Not the one whose name is part of a figure of speech -
the one that asks us to say something new.
Not the one that rhymes with hue and shoe and June and spoon -
the one that rhymes with night and weight and hold and hope.
Blue Moon, Blue Moon, Blue Moon
And hope Blue Moon, Blue Moon, Blue Moon
The Collected Speeches of Joseph Stalin ( in 19 Equal )
May 15th, 2013
Thanks to Vassily Kaah who posted this photo.
The Collected Speeches of Joseph Stalin is a piano improvisation in 19 equal. It features the logidy UMI3 pedal which gives me access to the 3 other piano pedals besides sustain that pianoteq supports; Una Corda, Sostenuto, and used here at ~5 minutes the Harmonic pedal which doesn’t exist in a real piano. The logidy pedal is the most cost effective solution to accessing these other pedals ($80 Amazon) and is fully programmable and even supports attaching an expression pedal. Obviously this is also a great solution for owners of an AXiS 49 which for some inexplicable reason doesn’t have sustain pedal capability.
The Broken Cathedral of Christchurch
May 13th, 2013
The Broken Cathedral of Christchurch is an ambient poly-tuning piece using 11, 12, and 19 notes to the octave. The instruments used are a Korg MS2000 synthesizer, 19 edo electric guitar (several tracks), and 5 string bass – all with liberal application of effects, mixing, and mastering. The piece is dedicated to the Anglican cathedral of Christchurch New Zealand which will be brought down and rebuilt due to extensive earthquake damage.
This is a repost because the original post was damaged.
Carl Ruggles Organum for 2 Harmonic Series Tuned Pianos
May 12th, 2013
Organum for 2 Harmonic Series Tuned Pianos composed (in 12 equal) by Carl Ruggles. I have two competing music thoughts – microtonality and the dissonant music of the 20th and 21st century. What lies between them is a wonderful connection because in many respects the music of our period has been written for 12 equal in a way that the music of the 19th century and before wasn’t. So in that sense 12 equal is being used like one would, for instance, 14 or 16 equal. Carl Ruggles is a great example of this. There is very little, if any, sense of classical functional harmony in his work. Of the few pieces he let survive him they all carve out a new vista and a way of treating 12 equal contrapuntally without the use of Schoenberg’s pantonal system.
By way of oblique comparison I am posting a 12 equal version string orchestra version of the two piano transcription of the originally orchestral Organum. Sort of the long way around… but I like it and perhaps you will too.
The harmonic series tuning for the piano version I used follows:
! C:\Cakewalk\scales\harm3-26skip2reduce2oct.scl
!
harm3-26skip2reduce2oct
12
!
25/24
13/12
7/6
5/4
17/12
3/2
19/12
5/3
7/4
11/6
23/12
2/1
RNA Translation
May 11th, 2013
RNA Translation is a directed aleatoric composition for string orchestra, tamtam, and chromatic harps. The piece was realized by pitch extraction of performances by B. Smith, N. Oldani, and S. Moyes.
Spectra’s Mystery
May 5th, 2013
Spectra’s Mystery refers to the tuning devised by Michael Sheiman. Michael’s goal was: “Inspired by how 12EDO mysterious has ratios in between both 9/5-16/9 and 10/7-7/5 (guessing that may have something to do with how is sounds so harmonic despite its high error), I came up with an idea to find a “midpoint-based” scale ”
Which is:
! mysterious.scl
!
Spectra’s Mysterious Ratios
7
!
567/500
1333/1000
717/500
827.15899
447/250
933/500
2/1
As for the “tuning unheard” improvisation. At about 2:30 you can hear the keyboard fall off the stand. I catch it though and the artifact is a fat finger cluster on the low end. About the piece overall. I open with playing the tuning to give you the gamut of pitches, start out slow and then try to push my limits and hit a flurry of bad notes and slow to close. I found the tuning to be pretty interesting and opened up more and more as I played it. Scala file and midi file of the performance for your enjoyment.
The Song of the Cretaceous
May 4th, 2013
The Song of the Cretaceous is a multi-track ambient composition created with a Korg MS2000 using the built in Pythagorean tuning – a version of Just Intonation.
I Love You, Cyanobacteria
May 3rd, 2013
I Love You, Cyanobacteria is a electropop song in 11 edo that acknowledges our debt to cyanobacteria. This is a multi-track recording of my Korg MS2000 with a 12 note user tuning – I doubled Bb and B to get 11 edo which increments about 9 cents extra per note to reach the octave. The drums were run off of the arpeggiator but as you can hear everything else was played. My voice is vocoded.