Chord Sequences Using Sliding Pitches

Have people here made music based on chords who's notes slide smoothly (or jerkilly) up or down? For example, you could have a major triad who's notes slide together up a quarter of an octave over a couple of bars, or you could have chords inwhich the notes are sliding in opposite directions, or at different speeds. On guitar, sliding chords can be played with a bottleneck or using a fretless fingerboard. With electric keyboard, I have speculated that you could replace the pitch wheel with a pitch pedal that could be foot operated allowing both hands to play while the pitch smoothly rises or falls, but I have not modified a keyboard to try this.

Prent Rodgers has done that with csound

http://prodgers13.home.comcast.net/~prodgers13/

He's quite accomplished and has had his works performed in the Vox Novous
60x60 and more.

Chris

On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 9:35 PM, Mark <mark.barnes3@...> wrote:

>
>
> Have people here made music based on chords who's notes slide smoothly (or
> jerkilly) up or down? For example, you could have a major triad who's notes
> slide together up a quarter of an octave over a couple of bars, or you could
> have chords inwhich the notes are sliding in opposite directions, or at
> different speeds. On guitar, sliding chords can be played with a bottleneck
> or using a fretless fingerboard. With electric keyboard, I have speculated
> that you could replace the pitch wheel with a pitch pedal that could be foot
> operated allowing both hands to play while the pitch smoothly rises or
> falls, but I have not modified a keyboard to try this.
>
>
>

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

That's an interesting idea, especially with very slow movement. I did once such thing in my work Digital Music 02/87, with the help of Pitch pot on multitrack cassette recorder... About three or four minutes static chord, where more and more notes were added, and that all moved I think up, about one third. Very strange for people with perfect pitch :-)

Controlling this effect with pedal would be difficult, I know this as an Yamaha Electone player where one of pedals could be assigned for Pitch bend. Rather impossible to have exact control. Besides all sounding notes go in the same direction and interval.

On guitars it's difficult as well because sound goes quickly away. But maybe with some kind of fuzz, sustainer, gizmo or E-bow it would be possible.

On synthesizers it's possible to use Portamento controller, which is better than pitch bend as tones can go also in opposite direction and few octaves far. Switch on/off with CC 65, speed can be set up with CC 5. Also Legato control (CC 68) can be important here. And of course we can use more MIDI channels to get better control.
Some synthesizers have Ribbon controller or Touchpad which is better than Pitch bend wheel for glissando effects.

Daniel Forro

On 13 Jul 2010, at 10:35 AM, Mark wrote:

> Have people here made music based on chords who's notes slide > smoothly (or jerkilly) up or down? For example, you could have a > major triad who's notes slide together up a quarter of an octave > over a couple of bars, or you could have chords inwhich the notes > are sliding in opposite directions, or at different speeds. On > guitar, sliding chords can be played with a bottleneck or using a > fretless fingerboard. With electric keyboard, I have speculated > that you could replace the pitch wheel with a pitch pedal that > could be foot operated allowing both hands to play while the pitch > smoothly rises or falls, but I have not modified a keyboard to try > this.

You looking for sliding chords? I got some here: http://bumpermusic.blogspot.com/2010/07/amazing-grace-transformation-8.html or for the short version: http://alturl.com/9arju

This may not be what you are talking about, but it seems close. There are lots of chords that start at 7:9:11/8, with each note going up or down to 4:5:6/8. For example, the 7th overtone might go up to the 8th, the 9 down to 1, or the 4 up to 6. Each note can chose to play a note in a just major third chord, or drift to it over time. The slide can have a variety of trajectories, either moving fast or slow, and sometimes shaking up and down when it gets there. The effect is like a slide on a guitar or two. Or twelve.

This piece is derived from 7 passes through Amazing Grace, the famous old hymn. Ben Johnston did a very wonderful piece using this as the base in his 4th string quartet. Mine is more like a cross between Conlon Nancarrow, Jimmy Page, and Sviatoslav Richter playing Schubert. I've been listening to a lot of those guys lately, and it probably shows. Can you believe the tempo in the first movement of Schubert's Piano Sonata #21? Awesome. That guy had patience.

Prent Rodgers

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...> wrote:
>
> Prent Rodgers has done that with csound
>
> http://prodgers13.home.comcast.net/~prodgers13/
>
> He's quite accomplished and has had his works performed in the Vox Novous
> 60x60 and more.
>
> Chris
>
> On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 9:35 PM, Mark <mark.barnes3@...> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > Have people here made music based on chords who's notes slide smoothly (or
> > jerkilly) up or down? For example, you could have a major triad who's notes
> > slide together up a quarter of an octave over a couple of bars, or you could
> > have chords inwhich the notes are sliding in opposite directions, or at
> > different speeds. On guitar, sliding chords can be played with a bottleneck
> > or using a fretless fingerboard. With electric keyboard, I have speculated
> > that you could replace the pitch wheel with a pitch pedal that could be foot
> > operated allowing both hands to play while the pitch smoothly rises or
> > falls, but I have not modified a keyboard to try this.
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

Hi Mark,
most of these pieces are based on the sliding pitches. But I think they are not exactly what you are looking for, some have too many notes and the others too little. All is done with csound.
http://www.uvnitr.cz/mg/flex/flex.html
Best
Milan

On 07/13/2010 03:35 AM, Mark wrote:
> Have people here made music based on chords who's notes slide smoothly (or jerkilly) up or down? For example, you could have a major triad who's notes slide together up a quarter of an octave over a couple of bars, or you could have chords inwhich the notes are sliding in opposite directions, or at different speeds. On guitar, sliding chords can be played with a bottleneck or using a fretless fingerboard. With electric keyboard, I have speculated that you could replace the pitch wheel with a pitch pedal that could be foot operated allowing both hands to play while the pitch smoothly rises or falls, but I have not modified a keyboard to try this.
>