Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup makemicromusic New composition

J.Smith escreveu:
> Recently uploaded to ZeBox:
> > Chromatic Fantasie for Violin and Piano
> > It is a free-form work in non-serialist atonality, with 12-tone
> Pythagorean tuning.
> > http://zebox.com/jlsmith/music/ <http://zebox.com/jlsmith/music/>

Nice piece, Jon!

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🔗Carl Lumma <ekin@...>

🔗Jon Szanto <jszanto@...>

Jon,

{you wrote...}
>Chromatic Fantasie for Violin and Piano
>
>It is a free-form work in non-serialist atonality, with 12-tone Pythagorean tuning.

Nicely done, Mr. Smith. While I openly confess to having burned out on post-WWII serialist/expressionist pieces back in my college days, this one captures that flavor quite well. The piece highlights one of your strengths, which is the setting and interplay between main melodic line and the accompaniment. I especially like the few bars where the violin hands over the motion to the piano (solo), and I actually think there is room - even in this short movement - for a little more of that. The fact that the tuning is fairly subtle is a moot point, since it is probably a weakness of my listening rather than the construction.

While it is brief, I can certainly see this as the first movement of a traditional 3 movement sonata, with maybe an Elegy and Con Fuoco movements to follow.

Or not. :)

Cheers,
Jon

🔗misterbobro <misterbobro@...>

Well I enjoy the piece- but I'm a fan of post-WWII serial music,
especially since it's probably the usage of 12-tET with the most
inegrity (and simulataneously doomed by the laws of nature, which may
be a big part of its appeal). But "atonal" is something I've almost
never heard, and must be a great rarity with "harmonic" timbres,
because once the notes start sounding, the field of partials is going
to establish some kind of order within itself. For example, in this
piece I hear the tonal center evenely rocking back and forth between
F and E throughout the piece. Using rational tunings makes phantom
tonalities even stronger. Anyway that's my opinion, nice work.

-Cameron Bobro

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Jon Szanto <jszanto@...> wrote:
>
> Jon,
>
> {you wrote...}
> >Chromatic Fantasie for Violin and Piano
> >
> >It is a free-form work in non-serialist atonality, with 12-tone
Pythagorean tuning.
>
>

🔗Gene Ward Smith <genewardsmith@...>

🔗misterbobro <misterbobro@...>

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith"
<genewardsmith@...> wrote:
> Just keep wandering and anything your ear thinks is a tonal center
> rapidly goes away.

That's the theory, and it doesn't work. What creates a sense of
wandering are changing tonal centers- truly atonal or pantonal music
is static, a field centered on empty point or all points at once
(which was the original goal of the music we call "atonal"-
the "chord of the pleroma", "unus mundi" and all that jazz. :-) ).

The problem is listening with common practice expectations rather
than listening to what is actually there, and mistaking common
practice methods of establishing or deducing tonality for tonality
itself, which is a complex of partials which either writes a
structure in the air or is written (implied) by a structure. In
other words, tonality comes first from sound itself; organization of
tones only reinforces or weakens tonality.

It takes a hell of an organization, truly inharmonic timbres, or
pure sines, to eliminate tonality- or a tuning designed for the
purpose.

Years ago I heard Ned Rorem in an interview, expressing what may
have been an even stronger view, and in what sounded like a very
disparaging tone to me :-), to the effect that much "atonal"
music can even be understood in a late-Romantic ultra-chromatic way.

I don't think I'd go that far, because anyone who has tried to
write atonal music, whether or not it succeded in escaping tonality,
must surely have experienced the pleasure of discovering that it
has its own "thing" which doesn't have jack to do with triadic
harmony however tall or unresolved the chords.

Anyway, I'm sure you'll agree that 12-tET with its almost perfect
fifths and fourths and heavy baggage of associations interval-wise
makes for an uphill battle for atonality, and its surely been
said many times before: hey Mr. Serialist, if you're serious about
escaping tonality, why don't use tunings and timbres that make
difficult to even establish tonality in the first place?

-Cameron Bobro

🔗Gene Ward Smith <genewardsmith@...>

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "misterbobro" <misterbobro@...>
wrote:
> --- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith"
> <genewardsmith@> wrote:
> > Just keep wandering and anything your ear thinks is a tonal center
> > rapidly goes away.
>
> That's the theory, and it doesn't work.

It works fine. It's just that you are requiring "atonality" to mean
something more than failure to have a tonal center. By my way of
thinking, endless sequences such as continual movements of the root
down a fifth are atonal. Of course most listeners wouldn't agree, but
I can't see any other logical way to term it.

> It takes a hell of an organization, truly inharmonic timbres, or
> pure sines, to eliminate tonality- or a tuning designed for the
> purpose.

It's tonality which needs to be established, not atonality. Often the
scale will do that for you almost automatically, but if it doesn't, as
in the case of 12-et, your music to have a tonal center established
needs to have you put it there.

> Years ago I heard Ned Rorem in an interview, expressing what may
> have been an even stronger view, and in what sounded like a very
> disparaging tone to me :-), to the effect that much "atonal"
> music can even be understood in a late-Romantic ultra-chromatic way.

I would say rather that some late-Romantic ultra-chromatic music is
atonal.

> I don't think I'd go that far, because anyone who has tried to
> write atonal music, whether or not it succeded in escaping tonality,
> must surely have experienced the pleasure of discovering that it
> has its own "thing" which doesn't have jack to do with triadic
> harmony however tall or unresolved the chords.

It's perfectly easy to write atonally using nothing but triadic harmony.

> Anyway, I'm sure you'll agree that 12-tET with its almost perfect
> fifths and fourths and heavy baggage of associations interval-wise
> makes for an uphill battle for atonality...

Not really.

> and its surely been
> said many times before: hey Mr. Serialist, if you're serious about
> escaping tonality, why don't use tunings and timbres that make
> difficult to even establish tonality in the first place?

It's not hard to establish a tonal center in 13-et, after all.

🔗misterbobro <misterbobro@...>

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith"
<genewardsmith@...> wrote:
>
> --- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "misterbobro" <misterbobro@>
> wrote:
> > --- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith"
> > <genewardsmith@> wrote:
> > > Just keep wandering and anything your ear thinks is a tonal
center
> > > rapidly goes away.
> >
> > That's the theory, and it doesn't work.
>
> It works fine.

It works fine for an audience that is listening in terms of
a musical language in which patterns are expected and expectations
can be foiled. Languages come and go, and are spoken and understood
to greatly varying degrees.

I'll bet half the people here have had very tonal music they've
written called "atonal" by listeners; all it takes is a few tall
chords and not ceasely flogging I-V-I to get the "atonal" label,
in the case of some listeners.

>By my way of
> thinking, endless sequences such as continual movements of the root
> down a fifth are atonal. Of course most listeners wouldn't agree,
but
> I can't see any other logical way to term it.

Changing tonal centers.

> It's tonality which needs to be established, not atonality. Often
>the scale will do that for you almost automatically, but if it
doesn't, as
> in the case of 12-et, your music to have a tonal center established
> needs to have you put it there.

A single sound, alone, establishs a tonal center. The phenomenon is
so strong that it's used daily in disco music. The demand for "more
bass, more bass!" surpasses practical limits of recording and
playback systems, so you can make "more bass" by putting in a tone
and removing its fundamental (or synthesizing a sans-fundamental
tone). The ear "hears" the bass note. This is done all the time. The
first harmonic partials are all it takes to establish tonality in its
purest and more simple sense- what is a I-V-I, really, other than
spelling out the first few partials in huge block letters (over and
over again, usually).

> > Years ago I heard Ned Rorem in an interview, expressing what may
> > have been an even stronger view, and in what sounded like a very
> > disparaging tone to me :-), to the effect that much "atonal"
> > music can even be understood in a late-Romantic ultra-chromatic
>way.
>
> I would say rather that some late-Romantic ultra-chromatic music is
> atonal.

This is an old controversy of course. In terms of "common practice",
I'd say you're correct, actually- it's just that "common practice"
isn't exactly at the top of the food chain.

> It's perfectly easy to write atonally using nothing but triadic
>harmony.

Which won't sound "atonal" at all to anyone listening without CP
eargoggles, but a mattering of shifting tonal centers, which usually
can be grouped by a smaller set of encompassing tonal centers. The
structural tonal centers wouldn't be apparent until after
a few listens most likely, which brings up another matter, and the
one way to actually "prove" my concept of tonality wrong. :-D If
tonality is something that needs to be immediately apparent, then
I'd have to agree with you completely, for, personally, there are
a huge number of pieces I have to listen to several times before
defining what I'd percieve as tonal centers.

> It's not hard to establish a tonal center in 13-et, after all.

and

>It's just that you are requiring "atonality" to mean
> something more than failure to have a tonal center.

Well there it is: to me, "establishing" a tonal center
compositionally is obviously a somewhat redundant concept. Not that
redudancy, repetition and reinforcement can't be great things, of
course. Atonality doesn't "fail" to have a tonal center,
it must actively create either an absence or complete diffusion of
tonal centers.

Probably we'll just have to agree to disagree- already had this very
same discussion years ago, listening to "Elektra" with a teacher.

take care,

-Cameron Bobro

🔗Rozencrantz the Sane <rozencrantz@...>

So if I'm following you, Milton Babbit's Occasional Variations (which
I use as an example of the most painfully atonal music I know of that
still uses definite pitch) is still tonal because my perception of it
is "three notes in G, followed by a c# chord, and then four notes in d
minor, and then a V-I cadence in F#... and so on" whereas I call it
atonal because the tonality shifts so often and so erratically that I
can't predict the movement at all, whereas with a tonal melody I get
the feeling that "the next note is going to be D" or something like
that.

I guess you have to go to Merzbow to be truly atonal.

Going back to the piece, because it had a beat and a melody it sounded
"semi-normal" to me. I'm finally understanding that I don't know jack
about harmony, so "semi-normal" is as accurate as I'm going to get.
There were no places where the next note felt totally unjustified.
Really, I was reminded of my experience the first time I heard "Rite
of Spring": I enjoyed it, but I didn't see anything particularly
"weird" or "out" about it.

On 11/2/06, misterbobro <misterbobro@...> wrote:
> Well there it is: to me, "establishing" a tonal center
> compositionally is obviously a somewhat redundant concept. Not that
> redudancy, repetition and reinforcement can't be great things, of
> course. Atonality doesn't "fail" to have a tonal center,
> it must actively create either an absence or complete diffusion of
> tonal centers.
>
> Probably we'll just have to agree to disagree- already had this very
> same discussion years ago, listening to "Elektra" with a teacher.
>
> take care,
>
> -Cameron Bobro

--TRISTAN
Dreaming of Eden is a Comic with no Pictures
http://dreamingofeden.smackjeeves.com

🔗misterbobro <misterbobro@...>

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Rozencrantz the Sane"
<rozencrantz@...> wrote:
>
> So if I'm following you, Milton Babbit's Occasional Variations
(which
> I use as an example of the most painfully atonal music I know of
that
> still uses definite pitch) is still tonal because my perception of
it
> is "three notes in G, followed by a c# chord, and then four notes
in d
> minor, and then a V-I cadence in F#... and so on" whereas I call it
> atonal because the tonality shifts so often and so erratically
that I
> can't predict the movement at all, whereas with a tonal melody I
get
> the feeling that "the next note is going to be D" or something like
> that.

If tonality has to be "established", why all the rules and
avoidances of the Second Viennese School and later turbocharged
serialists? Modulate like a nut and throw in some wrong notes and
voila should be enough, shouldn't it? But something compels
atonalists to work hard at it, and that, it seems to me, is the fact
that timbres with orderly partials not only sport their own tonality
(otherwise you wouldn't know what the fundamental is), but that
characteristic extends into the music as well, reinforced by contact
with other timbres, giving birth to difference tones, inspiring
motion, both submitting to and creating structure.

I don't know the piece you're referring to, it may be completely
atonal for all I know. What I believe is, the tonal nature of
harmonic timbre has such a drive to be known in the macro as well as
the micro that it's atonality that has to be established, not
tonality. (I like atonal music a lot, BTW.)
>
> I guess you have to go to Merzbow to be truly atonal.

Easier to do with noise :-)
>
> Going back to the piece, because it had a beat and a melody it
<sounded
> "semi-normal" to me. I'm finally understanding that I don't know
jack
> about harmony, so "semi-normal" is as accurate as I'm going to get.
> There were no places where the next note felt totally unjustified.

Melody has its own logic not necessarily dependent on whether
tonality is perceived, seems to me.

> Really, I was reminded of my experience the first time I
heard "Rite
> of Spring": I enjoyed it, but I didn't see anything particularly
> "weird" or "out" about it.

After growing up with Rimsky-Korsakov, the first time I heard RoS,
it just sounded, to my great disappointment after the hype, like
Korsakov the Next Generation (later I learned that Stravinsky was
his student).

Weirdness and outness are highly overrated, things just are what
they are, and different for different people. Merzbow sounds like
Muzak to me, and "Under the Boardwalk" incredibly tragic- it takes
all kinds to make a world.

-Cameron Bobro

🔗vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...>

🔗Danny Wier <dawiertx@...>

Chris,

That was awesomesauce, especially with headphones. It reminded me of
something from one of the Resident Evil games with a hint of distant
Tibetan horns. Only way to make that better is to add zero-octave bass
notes at critical moments (but I have an infrasonic fixation, so I say
that a lot).

And I forgot how exotic and 13-limit-like augmented and diminished
intervals sound in 19-et, including the tritones.

~D.

On Sat, 2008-11-22 at 05:05 +0000, vaisvil wrote:
> chromatic 19 notes per octave and very very ambient production.
>
> http://clones.soonlabel.com/mp3/daily20081121d.mp3
>
> its just a daily composition experiment so don't expect too much
>
> using sonar and z3ta+ thanks to Carl
>
>
> Chris

🔗Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...>

Thanks for the listen!

I don't have a way to listen to stuff that low - and I've no idea on the
proper intervals.... yet.

On Sat, Nov 22, 2008 at 5:57 PM, Danny Wier <dawiertx@...> wrote:

> Chris,
>
> That was awesomesauce, especially with headphones. It reminded me of
> something from one of the Resident Evil games with a hint of distant
> Tibetan horns. Only way to make that better is to add zero-octave bass
> notes at critical moments (but I have an infrasonic fixation, so I say
> that a lot).
>
> And I forgot how exotic and 13-limit-like augmented and diminished
> intervals sound in 19-et, including the tritones.
>
> ~D.
>
>
> On Sat, 2008-11-22 at 05:05 +0000, vaisvil wrote:
> > chromatic 19 notes per octave and very very ambient production.
> >
> > http://clones.soonlabel.com/mp3/daily20081121d.mp3
> >
> > its just a daily composition experiment so don't expect too much
> >
> > using sonar and z3ta+ thanks to Carl
> >
> >
> > Chris
>
>
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

New composition

🔗J.Smith <jsmith9624@...>

🔗Hudson Lacerda <hfmlacerda@...>

🔗Carl Lumma <ekin@...>

🔗Carl Lumma <ekin@...>

🔗Jon Szanto <jszanto@...>

🔗misterbobro <misterbobro@...>

🔗Gene Ward Smith <genewardsmith@...>

🔗misterbobro <misterbobro@...>

🔗Gene Ward Smith <genewardsmith@...>

🔗misterbobro <misterbobro@...>

🔗Rozencrantz the Sane <rozencrantz@...>

🔗misterbobro <misterbobro@...>

🔗vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...>

🔗Danny Wier <dawiertx@...>

🔗Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...>