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~Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. microtonal Music Reinhard 128 (8th octave) Technique video

Clouds of Angel Tears


Image from Katerina Art – click on image to view more work by this great graphics artist. If you follow the link you will see that she has dedicated this image to the victims of 9-11. Katerina of course owns all rights to her image and is not covered under my Creative Commons License.

I didn’t intend this – I created this piece of music on my AXiS 49 as a demonstration and many people liked it. When I feel what the music evokes in me it is a sense of sadness but diffuse and delicate sadness. Thus I choose “Clouds of Angel Tears” as the title and searched google images on that title and found Katerina’s image. I hope she doesn’t mind I have associated the two.

Technically – the piece is in Johnny Reinhard’s 8th octave harmonic series tuning. The tuning is something that Johnny has been working on and was introduced to when I met him at the 2011 Xenharmonic Praxis in West Virginia. Because of the relationships between the notes “clouds” of harmonics and harmonies evolve. Since I only have a 98 key controller I was only able to use about 2/3rds of an octave in this piece.

Chris

Here is playable audio only

More technical information. Below is an animated score video of the piece which demonstrates graphically how I approached the improvisation. The score used is called a “piano roll”. This is preferred over using a conventional staff in the animation because of the very large number of notes involved. The piece was performed on an AXiS 49 in selfless mode giving me access to 98 notes of the tuning, or roughly 2/3’s of an octave. The areas in the piano roll correspond 1:1 with areas of the AXiS 49 in selfless mode.

One reply on “Clouds of Angel Tears”

Dear Chris,

A very interesting piece. I like your use of space as well as the interesting harmonies/patterns you created and the way they overlapped. A very solid piece. I love the overtones that drift into each other and the way it ended as well. Thanks for posting!

Peace,

Mike

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