Re: Xenharmonic treasures of Margo Schulter

Hi Margo,

Well, that temporary download glitch has cleared up
for your music, great (still can't download Jon's piece
at all; perhaps it depend on the date it was uploaded or
something).

I'd never have guessed it was 13-tet - very consonant,
especially the Chowning organ piece, with some nice
mysterious lingering chords in it (like the bar just
before the end).

I expect it is because of the timbre, after reading
your notes to Jacky's e-zine.

While the other one is more adventurous sounding - starts
off sounding pretty conventional but then gradually gets into some
stranger territory later on, like the chord just before 2 mins
into the piece - a succession of similar resolutions, with the
last one really wild.

The second last chord of the piece comes as something of a surprise too -
an appropriately medieval sounding one.

I'm really enjoying them, thanks!

I've been doing a bit of experimenting with 13-tet after
listening to your piece, and was fascinated to find
the diminished 7th type chord 0 3 6 9 13
with three minor thirds and one major third, and to
find that on some of the timbres I have it sounds sweet
and pleasant to listen to and on others it sounds very
rough.

E.g. it's sweet on the Sitar voice of my SB LIve!, but not on the
Sitar of the Yamaha softsynth. Not on recorder or 'cello of
the Sb Live!, but great on the Glockenspiel and the Celeste.

Made a little fractal tune experiment using those observations,
which sounded sweet on my SB live! soundcard, and rather raucous
on the Yamaha Softsynth. So you've got me started on 13-tet
- I haven't really explored it before now.

I look forward to reading about the pieces and your technical
notes.

Robert