Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup makemicromusic Conversation About the Moon

Hi MMM,

I don't know if you remember, but several years ago a guy named Peter
Blasser appeared on the tuning lists -- he had made a 31-edo acoustic
guitar but needed to sell it. Both Dan Stearns and I jumped at the
offer. We decided to "flip a coin" and I won. So I have had the guitar
for a few years and have played around with it off-and-on. I finally
decided it was time to actually *use* it for something... so you can
hear my first (and so far only!) piece for acoustic 31-edo guitar:

http://www.cae.wisc.edu/~sethares/ConversationMoon.mp3

It was recorded in three passes (sort of a rhythm guitar, bass guitar,
and lead guitar, but all done on the same instrument). Then there was
a bit of editing to wipe out the most conspicuous bloopers.

Comments, thoughts, positive or negative are appreciated.

--Bill Sethares

🔗Aaron Krister Johnson <aaron@...>

Nice, Bill! Very moody and relaxing...and lovely stereo imaging.

-A.

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Bill Sethares" <sethares@...>
wrote:
>
> Hi MMM,
>
> I don't know if you remember, but several years ago a guy named Peter
> Blasser appeared on the tuning lists -- he had made a 31-edo acoustic
> guitar but needed to sell it. Both Dan Stearns and I jumped at the
> offer. We decided to "flip a coin" and I won. So I have had the guitar
> for a few years and have played around with it off-and-on. I finally
> decided it was time to actually *use* it for something... so you can
> hear my first (and so far only!) piece for acoustic 31-edo guitar:
>
> http://www.cae.wisc.edu/~sethares/ConversationMoon.mp3
>
> It was recorded in three passes (sort of a rhythm guitar, bass guitar,
> and lead guitar, but all done on the same instrument). Then there was
> a bit of editing to wipe out the most conspicuous bloopers.
>
> Comments, thoughts, positive or negative are appreciated.
>
> --Bill Sethares
>

🔗J.Smith <jsmith9624@...>

🔗Carl Lumma <ekin@...>

🔗aum <aum@...>

🔗Bill Sethares <sethares@...>

I'd like to thank everyone who wrote (both on and off-list)
with comments about "Conversation about the Moon"

http://www.cae.wisc.edu/~sethares/ConversationMoon.mp3

> "Aaron Krister Johnson" wrote:
> Nice, Bill! Very moody and relaxing...and lovely stereo imaging.

Thanks... the stero-ization was
actually a byproduct of the recording process in the
sense that I recorded the piece in three passes of the
guitar, each with a mono microphone (I only have one
good microphone). So when I went to edit and mix it
was very natural to stick one in the middle, one
on the left, and one on the right.
There were also a couple of places where I had
made mistakes and I duplicated what was on one
channel, delayed it a bit, and panned it to the other
(so that one side wouldn't just disappear).

> "J.Smith" wrote:
> Always nice to hear another one of your works, and 31-edo is a nice
> tuning to work with. Thumbs up!

Thanks. I really don't feel like I understand 31-edo yet.
In one sense it's easy to play because there are so many
ways to play familiar sounding things... but in another
sense, that makes it hard because you need to make choices.

> "aum" (Milan) wrote:
> Nice relaxing music, pleasing sound, 31-edo sound very good here.
> Natural sounding instrument, good stereo image - individual parts are
> firmly located.

The instrument itself is nicely made, and has good intonation.
The fretting only goes up to the ocatve on each string,
but that still gives an awful lot of notes.

> But I hear too much disturbing noises in background - breathing?
> manipulation noise? mp3 artifacts?

Ah... yes I noticed about 2/3 of the way through the recording
process that I was breathing fairly loudly in some places...
(breathing is a habit I picked up over the past couple of decades).
I suspect that's what you're hearing... the post-processing
was minimal -- there was a bit of reverb (I tried to keep it
subtle) and a bit of filtering to adjust for the boominess
of the microphone in the low frequencies (I had the mic positioned
very close to the sound hole).

Anyway, thanks for listening!

Bill Sethares

🔗Jon Wild <wild@...>

Hi - in a few days I have to present something to a class using someone else's set-up that I can't examine until it's time to use it. His set-up is Logic, with an EXS24 sampler loaded in, running on a Macintosh which I'll control with a midi keyboard. This person told me that in Logic he can see a drop-down menu with choices of scales, and everything works fine for live retuning--but there are only a couple dozen or so scales visible to him, and when he read them to me I noticed they're all 12-tones-per-octave tunings.

My question is: is there some directory I can drop scala files in so his Logic will find them and give them to me as options in that drop-down menu? And if in Logic I select a scala file with more than 12 notes per octave, will I have any control over the keyboard mapping? I don't mind the awkward non-octave mapping for my immediate purposes, but it might be nice to be able to shift the range for playback, so my 7-octave keyboard doesn't get mapped to the very lowest two octaves of 43-edo, say.

I hope someone uses a similar set-up and can help out! Thanks - Jon

🔗Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@...>

I don't think so. but if you figure out a way let me know.
in fact you can only change any pitch plus or minus 50 cents which makes allot of things limited.
i have gotten around the latter by changing my base pitch. It is a headache
i complained to them about this

Jon Wild wrote:
>
>
> Hi - in a few days I have to present something to a class using someone
> else's set-up that I can't examine until it's time to use it. His set-up
> is Logic, with an EXS24 sampler loaded in, running on a Macintosh which
> I'll control with a midi keyboard. This person told me that in Logic he
> can see a drop-down menu with choices of scales, and everything works > fine
> for live retuning--but there are only a couple dozen or so scales visible
> to him, and when he read them to me I noticed they're all
> 12-tones-per-octave tunings.
>
> My question is: is there some directory I can drop scala files in so his
> Logic will find them and give them to me as options in that drop-down
> menu? And if in Logic I select a scala file with more than 12 notes per
> octave, will I have any control over the keyboard mapping? I don't mind
> the awkward non-octave mapping for my immediate purposes, but it might be
> nice to be able to shift the range for playback, so my 7-octave keyboard
> doesn't get mapped to the very lowest two octaves of 43-edo, say.
>
> I hope someone uses a similar set-up and can help out! Thanks - Jon
>
> -- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island <http://anaphoria.com/index.html>
The Wandering Medicine Show
KXLU <http://www.kxlu.com/main/index.asp> 88.9 FM Wed 8-9 pm Los Angeles

🔗Jon Wild <wild@...>

Hmm, the following page: http://www.xs4all.nl/~huygensf/scala/scl_format.html has a list of "programs which support the Scala format", and Logic is there. Some of the other programs say "12 tones" by their name on that list, but not Logic, which makes me think it should be possible to get it to use Scala files of any number of notes -Jon.

On Mon, 19 Mar 2007, Kraig Grady wrote:

> I don't think so. but if you figure out a way let me know.
> in fact you can only change any pitch plus or minus 50 cents which
> makes allot of things limited.
> i have gotten around the latter by changing my base pitch. It is a headache
> i complained to them about this
>
> Jon Wild wrote:
>>
>>
>> Hi - in a few days I have to present something to a class using someone
>> else's set-up that I can't examine until it's time to use it. His set-up
>> is Logic, with an EXS24 sampler loaded in, running on a Macintosh which
>> I'll control with a midi keyboard. This person told me that in Logic he
>> can see a drop-down menu with choices of scales, and everything works
>> fine
>> for live retuning--but there are only a couple dozen or so scales visible
>> to him, and when he read them to me I noticed they're all
>> 12-tones-per-octave tunings.
>>
>> My question is: is there some directory I can drop scala files in so his
>> Logic will find them and give them to me as options in that drop-down
>> menu? And if in Logic I select a scala file with more than 12 notes per
>> octave, will I have any control over the keyboard mapping? I don't mind
>> the awkward non-octave mapping for my immediate purposes, but it might be
>> nice to be able to shift the range for playback, so my 7-octave keyboard
>> doesn't get mapped to the very lowest two octaves of 43-edo, say.
>>
>> I hope someone uses a similar set-up and can help out! Thanks - Jon

🔗Jon Szanto <jszanto@...>

Jon,

You ought to read Kyle Gann's blog entry of either today or yesterday, speaks directly to this. I believe Logic's internal programs only support 12-note scales. Anyhow, read Kyle's blurb and maybe drop him a line:

http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2007/03/toys_of_microtonal_arcana.html

Cheers,
Jon

{you wrote...}
>Hmm, the following page:
>http://www.xs4all.nl/~huygensf/scala/scl_format.html has a list of
>"programs which support the Scala format", and Logic is there. Some of the
>other programs say "12 tones" by their name on that list, but not Logic,
>which makes me think it should be possible to get it to use Scala files
>of any number of notes -Jon.

🔗Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@...>

as a follow up, basically where you able to 'crack the code'?

Jon Wild wrote:
>
>
> Hmm, the following page:
> http://www.xs4all.nl/~huygensf/scala/scl_format.html > <http://www.xs4all.nl/%7Ehuygensf/scala/scl_format.html> has a list of
> "programs which support the Scala format", and Logic is there. Some of > the
> other programs say "12 tones" by their name on that list, but not Logic,
> which makes me think it should be possible to get it to use Scala files
> of any number of notes -Jon.
>
> On Mon, 19 Mar 2007, Kraig Grady wrote:
>
> > I don't think so. but if you figure out a way let me know.
> > in fact you can only change any pitch plus or minus 50 cents which
> > makes allot of things limited.
> > i have gotten around the latter by changing my base pitch. It is a > headache
> > i complained to them about this
> >
> > Jon Wild wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> Hi - in a few days I have to present something to a class using someone
> >> else's set-up that I can't examine until it's time to use it. His > set-up
> >> is Logic, with an EXS24 sampler loaded in, running on a Macintosh which
> >> I'll control with a midi keyboard. This person told me that in Logic he
> >> can see a drop-down menu with choices of scales, and everything works
> >> fine
> >> for live retuning--but there are only a couple dozen or so scales > visible
> >> to him, and when he read them to me I noticed they're all
> >> 12-tones-per-octave tunings.
> >>
> >> My question is: is there some directory I can drop scala files in > so his
> >> Logic will find them and give them to me as options in that drop-down
> >> menu? And if in Logic I select a scala file with more than 12 notes per
> >> octave, will I have any control over the keyboard mapping? I don't mind
> >> the awkward non-octave mapping for my immediate purposes, but it > might be
> >> nice to be able to shift the range for playback, so my 7-octave > keyboard
> >> doesn't get mapped to the very lowest two octaves of 43-edo, say.
> >>
> >> I hope someone uses a similar set-up and can help out! Thanks - Jon
>
> -- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island <http://anaphoria.com/index.html>
The Wandering Medicine Show
KXLU <http://www.kxlu.com/main/index.asp> 88.9 FM Wed 8-9 pm Los Angeles

🔗Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@...>

as a follow up, basically where you able to 'crack the code'?

🔗Jon Wild <wild@...>

On Tue, 27 Mar 2007, Kraig Grady wrote (about using scala files of more than 12 notes in Logic):

> as a follow up, basically where you able to 'crack the code'?

Nope. And as it turned out, the person whose machine I was supposed to use only had a borrowed copy of Logic, which he had to return, so I ended up not being able to use Logic at all.

Jon

🔗Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@...>

hopefully in the next version they will fix these things.
i had sent a recommendation they do so a year or two ago.
one thing i noticed about the time stretching .
i shot an opera i did in 1989 on three different cameras
( i now think of the piece more as a melodrama as being more correct)
cause these are what the people had.
when i recently had them all converted to mini Dv they all ran at a different speed.
i did not notice any pitch shift which doesn't make sense.
but i tried time stretching the files to make them all the same length
and i noticed to my surprise that sections
of the piece were way off in the middle even though they were now the same length.
possibly as it went on the batteries slowed the speed a bit or it took in less information.
regardless i had to abandoned that idea and am cutting it scene by scene.
which i was going to have to do to a certain extent,
just because i did it 2 nights and some scenes went better than others.

Jon Wild wrote:
>
> On Tue, 27 Mar 2007, Kraig Grady wrote (about using scala files of more
> than 12 notes in Logic):
>
> > as a follow up, basically where you able to 'crack the code'?
>
> Nope. And as it turned out, the person whose machine I was supposed to > use
> only had a borrowed copy of Logic, which he had to return, so I ended up
> not being able to use Logic at all.
>
> Jon
>
> -- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island <http://anaphoria.com/index.html>
The Wandering Medicine Show
KXLU <http://www.kxlu.com/main/index.asp> 88.9 FM Wed 8-9 pm Los Angeles