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.
Archive for the ‘improvisation’ Category
And She Said….
Friday, May 17th, 2013The Collected Speeches of Joseph Stalin ( in 19 Equal )
Wednesday, 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.
Spectra’s Mystery
Sunday, 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.
Erhu Duet
Thursday, May 2nd, 2013
click to make big and see the captured “score” thanks to FFT math.
I used my newly made Erhu to play a decidedly non-Chinese drone duet. I marked out a scale I made up by ear with a marker and used a capo to clamp a $5 piezo pickup to the fingerboard. I’m assuming that its a good bet this is a just intonation something or other. I hope you like it. Now… I’m thinking of making a version that I can ebow. I have an inkling that may be pretty slick.
Emerging From a Shell
Friday, April 19th, 2013
Emerging From a Shell – a remix of performances by Christiane Offenbar, Roger “ErocNet” Sundström, and Paul Mimlitsch with derivative tracks created from pitch extractions of the originals.
Hail, Hail – uses the same technique in a combination of manipulated piano improvisation and recording of a hail storm.
Two 19 Edo Guitar Improvisations
Friday, April 5th, 2013
19 edo guitar, ravish sitar pedal, Lexicon reverb software, and for part two ebow, Sonitus modulator software
DIY Electric (franken) Cello
Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013I received an unused electric bass and purchased an ebony cello fingerboard and cello bridge from Amazon. After removing the fretboard I cut down the fingerboard to the desired length and glued it in place. I created a nut by taking a 1/4″ long section from what I cut off the fingerboard and glued it to a 1/4″ x 1/4″ square dowel and filed string guides to a comfortable depth. I cut down the cello bridge and also cut shallow guides into it. The pickup was raised as far as it could go. I finger pick and bow the instrument for the sound track in the video. I still have to work out a “foot” and probably cut away more wood after mounting the electric controls below the bridge. I also have to learn how to play it with more dexterity – what you hear is proof-of-concept.
A Song for Night Traffic
Monday, April 1st, 2013
A Song for Night Traffic in what I guess is a 13 limit JI tuning detailed below. And – those are not mistakes, only notes I didn’t intend as deeply as the others, in the end its all relative anyways.
! E:\Cakewalk\scales\7-9-11-13.scl
!
7 9 11 13
13
!
14/13
13/11
11/9
14/11
9/7
18/13
13/9
14/9
11/7
18/11
22/13
13/7
2/1
Keyboard Slope +35
Sunday, March 31st, 2013
(truth in advertizing, that is NOT my set up.
The picture is from Wikipedia commons.)
Keyboard Slope +35 is a short piece in an unknown tuning (I don’t have time to do the obvious comparing to a known set of tunings this evening.). Consider it a proof of concept of using the MS2000 virtual patch to set a non-12 equal “slope” to the keyboard => the basic idea was found when answering a question about microtuning mu MS2000. Please excuse the pops – my synth is getting pretty old (+11 years) and has a forming bad solder joint at one of the outputs. I start off with a chromatic C-C’ in case someone with good pitch perception can identify the tuning. I do play with parameters as I go along.
The basic idea => Route [KBD TRACK] to [PITCH] in the VIRTUAL PATCH and set the intensity of the modulation to +35. The keyboard now plays in a non-12 tuning.
Ravens in the Snow
Friday, March 1st, 2013Ravens in the Snow – a piano improvisation in John O’Sullivan’s Raven v2 tuning. More on the tuning at www.johnsmusic7.com (I’m working on my left hand… it needs improvement I know.)
Full quality video is in this folder: http://micro.soonlabel.com/Raven/