Archive for the ‘piano’ Category
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.
Posted in ~Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license., 19 edo, improvisation, performance, piano, Technique | No Comments »
Sunday, 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
Posted in ~Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license., 12 edo, chamber, harmonic series segment, piano, string orchestra | No Comments »
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.
Posted in ~Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license., improvisation, Just Intonation (general), piano | No Comments »
Sunday, April 21st, 2013
(In The Rooks Have Returned (1871) by Alexei Savrasov, the arrival of the rooks is an early portent of the coming spring.)
The Seventh Rook is a piece composed for solo microtonal piano in the Rook scale commissioned by John O’Sullivan who devised the scale. Rook is a subset of Raven version temperament. More tuning information is here at John’s website. The score is here which includes the cents value for the Rook tuning. The piece was composed and realized using Sibelius and Pianoteq.
This score and sound recording may be used by students, educators, and nonprofits with attribution.
Posted in composition, piano, Raven, score | 2 Comments »
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.
Posted in ~Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license., 12 edo, 12 equal music, advant garde, ambient, chamber, collaboration, electronic, ensemble, improvisation, performance, piano, re-composition, vocal, woodwind | 2 Comments »
Thanks to Vassily Kaah who posted this photo.
