Bad Henkings
a collaboration of Alister Flint – Carlo Serafini – Chris Vaisvil
This piece uses multiple tunings simultaneously and is the inaugural work of Fuzzy Boundries – an internet group devoted to producing music with 2 or more tunings either serially or in parallel as presented here.
Henk Badings harmonic scale, 9/8 5/4 11/8 3/2 13/8 7/4 2/1 9/4 5/2
and
Carlos Gamma
and
19 edo
Download
Tuning Survey July 16th 2010
Having some time with my Fender Mustang, Fractal Tune Smithy and GR-20 last night so I played through a few more tunings from the scala archive.
First – a (15 meg) medley of all of the below pieces in order of presentation.
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=849
So Many 37′s
in Lydia Ayers, algorithmic composition, subharmonics 1-37
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=843
37/36 37/35 37/34 37/33 37/32 37/31 37/30 37/29 37/28 37/27 37/26 37/25 37/24 37/23 37/22 37/21 37/20 37/19 37/18 37/17 37/16 37/15 37/14 37/13 37/12 37/11 37/10 37/9 37/8 37/7 37/6
Sitar Abuse
in Al-Farabi’s Greek genus non continuum acre
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=842
9/8 21/16 63/44 3/2 7/4 21/11 2/1
The G-8 “thinks” for flutes
in Scale of an anklung set from Tasikmalaya
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=847
206.12 382.329 610.009 823.607 1234.478 1406.12 1633.425 1841.204
Genetically Modified Senators
in 10-tET approximation with minimal order 13 beats
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=844
14/13 8/7 16/13 4/3 17/12 3/2 13/8 7/4 13/7 2/1
The G-8 “thinks” for strings
in Scale of an anklung set from Tasikmalaya
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=846
206.12 382.329 610.009 823.607 1234.478 1406.12 1633.425 1841.204
For Anthony (Phillips)
in Al Farabi’s theoretical octave division with identical tetrachords, 10th c.
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=841
256/243 18/17 162/149 54/49 9/8 32/27 81/68 27/22 81/64 4/3 1024/729 24/17 216/149 3/2 128/81 27/17 243/149 81/49 27/16 16/9 243/136 81/44 243/128 2/1
Doesn’t Deserve a Name
in Al Farabi’s Chromatic c700 AD
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=840
9/8 27/20 729/512 3/2 9/5 19/10 2/1
Terry Cloth Harps
in Terry Cloth Harps 12 equal at the same time as Terry Riley’s Harp of New Albion scale, inverse Malcolm’s Monochord, 1/1 on C#
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=839
16/15 9/8 6/5 5/4 4/3 64/45 3/2 8/5 5/3 16/9 15/8 2/1
Mission Microtonal
in 12 equal at the same time as Nineteen-tone equal major
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=845
189.474 378.947 505.263 694.737 884.211 1073.684 2/1
This is a proof of concept piece in Wendy Carlos Alpha tuning http://www.microtonal-synthesis.com/scale_carlos_alpha.html
(a perfect 5th in 9 steps)
What I did to create this piece is use Fractal Tune Smithy on the same computer as Sonar 8.5 and at the same time. By doing this I was able to play my Fender Mustang, and thus my Roland Gr-20, real time in Carlos Alpha tuning for each melodic instrument. I discovered I was able to record midi and audio though session 3 drummer was finicky and sometimes would not play unless I re-loaded Sonar. Unfortunately I learned about the midi recording while enroute to the piece so I didn’t take real advantage of it – just routed some extra notes to session 3 drummer. So I regret the tone of the guitar – I feel at this moment it doesn’t fit in well with the rest of the timbres. Nontheless since I recorded audio I was able to use audio effects on the guitar, bass, and sax. So consider this a microtonal version of some stupid 70′s heavy funk tune. It does sort of break down about 1:38 but then so is gravity apparently but I feel ok because I’m fighting entropy in a universe of disorder. *beams*
I think it was Igs that brought up the difficulty in melodies in Alpha (aka Valentine-ish) – well that difficulty seemed to melt away once I put some proper chords under it. The melodic scale became a sort of octatonic type thing that changed a bit between parts.
Download here
http://www.notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=824
I had not touched my keyboard for a long time – couple months? So it was inspiring to play it again. I set it up in the living room of the new house and played pianoteq on my laptop using a Just Intonation tuning (below). Actually I had to improvise the piece twice since I screwed up saving from pianoteq standalone and had to fire up Sonar 8.5 to capture the performance. Then I edited the performance to what you hear. About 20% of the notes were messed with – the rest is the original improvisation.
The title comes from the Collaborative Ambient Project for which I wrote this piece and is sponsored by a Russian associate Luigi Verona. I’ll bet this is the only solo piano piece he’s received so it will be interesting to see if its accepted.
http://www.notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=546
! harm12s.scl
!
Harmonics 1 to 12 and subharmonics mixed
11
!
9/8
8/7
5/4
4/3
11/8
16/11
3/2
8/5
7/4
16/9
2/1
Chris Vaisvil’s interview on Andrew Heathwaite and Jacob Barton’s Oddmusic Shower + music selections for radio play.
WRFU 104.5 Urbana Illinois – aired June 29th, 2010.
Topics include my musical history and views on microtonal music / composition.
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=515
Some of the music was unfortunately cut off – the full mix is here
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=492
and the individual tracks plus notes for each piece of music is here
http://notonlymusic.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=377&start=0
This is a microtonal Jazz-ish piece produced with some newly developed techniques.
Norm Harris provides the excellent percussion. I probably could have made it easier on myself by not being so chromatic… but there it is.
Download or Play
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=483
The piano, bass, and saxophones are a Roland GR-20 played in 19 notes per octave – how this is done is described below.
Fender guitar to Roland GR-20 – the GR-20 has “local control off” and each string has its data sent on a separate channel
midi from the GR-20 (the play of the mustang) goes to the laptop (midi to usb)
Fractal Tune Smithy takes the midi in and re-tunes it live from 12 edo to 19 edo using closest midi note + pitch bend commands
the re-tuned midi data is sent back to the GR-20
The GR-20 plays the data and gives analog output and the analog out is sent to the Alesis mixer and then to the desktop computer
The desktop running Sonar uses the analog input as it would any live signal and records it.
The lead guitar is a Fender Squier Strat copy which I ripped off the frets and then back filled the fret cuts with plastic wood + sanded. The Squier is run through an Alesis mix into Sonar with Guitar Rig 4.
I took about 6 shots at the lead using Sonar’s automatic multiple take function and then edited the takes to take what I wanted. The leads could be better – though this is the first time I tried something so microtonal in this idiom with the fretless guitar.
Here is a another set of tunings I tried with my Fender guitar, Roland GR-20, and Fractal Tune Smithy
And the Heavens Opened Up
Partials of a major 3rd bell – root 523.6 Hz, 9th is hum note.
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=425
The Mechanics of Government
Boethius’ chromatic – the chromatic interval is 19/16
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=427
Monkey at the Keyboard
Blackjack tuning I assume is centered on G and D
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=423
Children in the Laboratory
Rational in Wilson and Grady style version, Paul Erlich
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=426
Dying Swans in Gorky Park
Blackjack tuning maximizing 1:3:7:9:11
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=424
Almost Jazz (Sorry for the high end aliasing – hmmm not sure what to do about that – it was clean during the performance.)
Big Gulp tuning – whatever that is!!
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=421
Quasi Music
Sounds a lot like 12 equal…. Quasi equal temperament
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=422
Using the same Roland GR-20 / Fender Mustang / Fractal Tune Smithy technique I explored a few more tunings:
9 ET Sorog
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=335
12 tet & 17 limit quasi-meantone simultaneously
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=334
In A 12 tet
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=333
A blend of 12 tet and Stellated one out of 1:3:5 triany
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=332
The other night I was able to use a new version of Fractal Tune Smithy which worked wonderfully as a relay tuner for my Roland GR-20.
I then did a survey of a small portion of the *vast* number of tunings in the scala library. Essentially I loaded an interesting tuning and tried to find some chordal or melodic something to base an improvisation on and if I could find something I tried it. A few of these improvisations didn’t get saved to saved – I captured the ones most interesting to me. Also, in this series I include several GR-20 patches including piano and sometimes an inboard effect from my Alesis mixer.
Unmelodic Chromatic genus of Aristoxenos Dorian Mode
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=255
Six Tone Triadic Cluster 4:5:6
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=254
harmonics 4 to 16 in 2 oct
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=253
Eight Tone Triadic Cluster 4:6:5
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=252
Graham Breed fourth based 12-tone keyboard scale
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=251
Clavichord tuning Giovanni Maria Artusi (1603) 1/4th-comma with mean semitones
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=250
13th root of e
http://notonlymusic.com/board/download/file.php?id=249
Using Fractal Tune Smithy I retuned my Roland GR-20 to this tuning
116.129 387.097 425.806 696.774 812.903 1006.452 2/1
Which is named: Strange diatonic-like strictly proper scale
I then improvised finger picking on my Fender Mustang. Most everything I hit was ok sounding.
I think the improvisation came out ok if you ignore the noise and a couple missed notes.
Download: Strictly Proper Strange Diatonic