Seventeen Dragon Dreams

Hi All,

Here's a link to a piece I wrote a while ago in 17-edo. The video includes some pretty fascinating images and animation by Cheryl Crowley...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mck2PcsZ44

The youtube blurb reads:

The lute player strums in 17-equal tones per octave. Dragons swim through the air, undulating and playing just as you might expect them to: from the temple to the countryside, from the field of frames to the floating gardens. Do they flee in fear or chase for fun? Images from kyoho16's' flickr photostream and music from Sethares "seventeen strings".

Comments/thoughts welcome!

Bill Sethares

Now this is absolutely beautiful. Not only can I enjoy this...but I think I could pass it on to several friends who know nothing about micro-tonal music and have them enjoy it very much.
Was this done with standard instrumentation and or were custom-made/adjusted timbre's used?

I'm very interested to know what the chord theory for this looks like...this is actually very easy to listen to while maintaining
a token micro-tonal degree of tonal color and complexity. This is actually quite a surprise as before I had believed 22TET and
10TET (assuming modified-to-match timbres) were ideal for that sort of thing.

________________________________
From: sethares <sethares@...>
To: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thu, October 8, 2009 1:17:32 PM
Subject: [MMM] Seventeen Dragon Dreams

Hi All,

Here's a link to a piece I wrote a while ago in 17-edo. The video includes some pretty fascinating images and animation by Cheryl Crowley...

http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=_mck2PcsZ44

The youtube blurb reads:

The lute player strums in 17-equal tones per octave. Dragons swim through the air, undulating and playing just as you might expect them to: from the temple to the countryside, from the field of frames to the floating gardens. Do they flee in fear or chase for fun? Images from kyoho16's' flickr photostream and music from Sethares "seventeen strings".

Comments/thoughts welcome!

Bill Sethares

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

nice piece and animation.

Do you remember how you realized the composition?

Thanks,

Chris

On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 2:17 PM, sethares <sethares@...> wrote:

>
>
> Hi All,
>
> Here's a link to a piece I wrote a while ago in 17-edo. The video includes
> some pretty fascinating images and animation by Cheryl Crowley...
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mck2PcsZ44
>
> The youtube blurb reads:
>
> The lute player strums in 17-equal tones per octave. Dragons swim through
> the air, undulating and playing just as you might expect them to: from the
> temple to the countryside, from the field of frames to the floating gardens.
> Do they flee in fear or chase for fun? Images from kyoho16's' flickr
> photostream and music from Sethares "seventeen strings".
>
> Comments/thoughts welcome!
>
> Bill Sethares
>
>
>

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

fun piece and concept

/^_,',',',_ //^ /Kraig Grady_ ^_,',',',_
Mesotonal Music from:
_'''''''_ ^North/Western Hemisphere: North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island <http://anaphoria.com/>

_'''''''_ ^South/Eastern Hemisphere:
Austronesian Outpost of Anaphoria <http://anaphoriasouth.blogspot.com/>

',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',

a momentary antenna as i turn to water
this evaporates - an island once again

Chris Vaisvil wrote:
> >
> nice piece and animation.
>
> Do you remember how you realized the composition?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Chris
>
> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 2:17 PM, sethares <sethares@ece. wisc.edu > <mailto:sethares%40ece.wisc.edu>> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > Hi All,
> >
> > Here's a link to a piece I wrote a while ago in 17-edo. The video > includes
> > some pretty fascinating images and animation by Cheryl Crowley...
> >
> > http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=_mck2PcsZ44 > <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mck2PcsZ44>
> >
> > The youtube blurb reads:
> >
> > The lute player strums in 17-equal tones per octave. Dragons swim > through
> > the air, undulating and playing just as you might expect them to: > from the
> > temple to the countryside, from the field of frames to the floating > gardens.
> > Do they flee in fear or chase for fun? Images from kyoho16's' flickr
> > photostream and music from Sethares "seventeen strings".
> >
> > Comments/thoughts welcome!
> >
> > Bill Sethares
> >
> >
> >
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Michael <djtrancendance@...> wrote:
>
> Now this is absolutely beautiful. Not only can I enjoy this...but I think I could pass it on to several friends who know nothing about micro-tonal music and have them enjoy it very much.

Thanks! Sometimes I wonder with a piece like this if a naive listener can tell it's microtonal...

> Was this done with standard instrumentation and or were custom-made/adjusted timbre's used?

This is one of the earliest spectral mappings I did -- it's a "celtic harp" instrument from an Ensoniq EPS, with the samples mapped to the nearest 17-edo scale steps. There is an interesting artifact of the mapping method (I later figured out how to avoid it) that you can hear -- it's kind of a high pitched jingling that permeates the background. For this piece, it acts something like a drone and actually adds somewhat to the depth of the sound.

> I'm very interested to know what the chord theory for this looks like...

It's in a bunch of different pentatonic subsets of 17. I can't remember which ones anymore, but the changes from one 5-tone subset to another are probably the most noticeable tonal changes in the piece, they kind of act like chord changes.

this is actually very easy to listen to while maintaining
> a token micro-tonal degree of tonal color and complexity. This is actually quite a surprise as before I had believed 22TET and
> 10TET (assuming modified-to-match timbres) were ideal for that sort of thing.

Thanks again -- I'm glad you find it easy to listen to.
But really, I think most any tuning can be handled well (or poorly!)

Thanks for listening!

--Bill
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: sethares <sethares@...>
> To: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Thu, October 8, 2009 1:17:32 PM
> Subject: [MMM] Seventeen Dragon Dreams
>
>
> Hi All,
>
> Here's a link to a piece I wrote a while ago in 17-edo. The video includes some pretty fascinating images and animation by Cheryl Crowley...
>
> http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=_mck2PcsZ44
>
> The youtube blurb reads:
>
> The lute player strums in 17-equal tones per octave. Dragons swim through the air, undulating and playing just as you might expect them to: from the temple to the countryside, from the field of frames to the floating gardens. Do they flee in fear or chase for fun? Images from kyoho16's' flickr photostream and music from Sethares "seventeen strings".
>
> Comments/thoughts welcome!
>
> Bill Sethares
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

Hi Chris,

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...> wrote:
>
> nice piece and animation.

Thanks -- though of course Cheryl deserves much of the credit for the visuals. I did help with some of the flash programming.

> Do you remember how you realized the composition?

Using the spectrally mapped timbres (I described a bit in the reply to Michael), I played the various parts on a MIDI guitar. Then I edited them together and patched things up (because I'm pretty good at making mistakes).

Thanks for listening!

--Bill

> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 2:17 PM, sethares <sethares@...> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > Hi All,
> >
> > Here's a link to a piece I wrote a while ago in 17-edo. The video includes
> > some pretty fascinating images and animation by Cheryl Crowley...
> >
> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mck2PcsZ44
> >
> > The youtube blurb reads:
> >
> > The lute player strums in 17-equal tones per octave. Dragons swim through
> > the air, undulating and playing just as you might expect them to: from the
> > temple to the countryside, from the field of frames to the floating gardens.
> > Do they flee in fear or chase for fun? Images from kyoho16's' flickr
> > photostream and music from Sethares "seventeen strings".
> >
> > Comments/thoughts welcome!
> >
> > Bill Sethares
> >

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "sethares" <sethares@...> wrote:
>
> --- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Michael <djtrancendance@> wrote:
> >
> > Now this is absolutely beautiful. Not only can I enjoy
> > this...but I think I could pass it on to several friends who know
> > nothing about micro-tonal music and have them enjoy it very much.
>
> Thanks! Sometimes I wonder with a piece like this if a naive
> listener can tell it's microtonal...
>

I got the impression that a naive listener will not notice that it is microtonal. It sounds to me as one of those microtonal pieces where all "weird" intervals are carefully avoided (I tend to write those, too...).
But beautiful it is!
--
Hans Straub