Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup makemicromusic My Untwelve 2010 Review

At the time of this writing, about 14 entries aren't yet available
for download
http://www.untwelve.org/2010_competition.html
Looking forward to Praveen's entry, among others.

I listened to all of the ~24 entries that are available so far at
least once. Of these I selected 11 to comment further on. If your
piece isn't one of them, it means I couldn't think of anything nice
to say about it.

Here are those 11 by alpha artist's name. I also list whether the
piece won or placed in the contest, as well as +1/2, +1 or +2 scores
of my own, if applicable (you got +0 otherwise).

I think it's safe to say the quantity and quality were both higher
than last year, and overall there is a staggering degree of
musicianship on display here. Bravo!

Chuckk Hubbard
The World Is Ours
Nice piece. I like the portamenti, odd percussion, and silly tuba
lines. +1/2

Craig Evans
Hymn of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Not sure I get the point of the miniatures, but the last one really
kicks butt. It's something like Pianodactyl, but upstages that
entry. +1

David Hamill
Cool My Head
This one has vocals. This one has vocals. +2 on general principle.
Also there's some xentonal deja vu going on, involving James Taylor.
Dude.

Donald Craig
Study in 31 [finalist]
Not bad, but a letdown for me compared to his excellent entry last year.

Gene Smith
Pianodactyl
Unmistakably GWS, but perhaps not his best work, though performance
values seem improved. Love the title. Relentless theme and variations
appreciated as usual, but perhaps go on a bit too long, especially
considering the shear quantity of sound here.

Igliashon Jones
Persephone Descends [winner]
A-section confirms: Igs is the fifth Eurythmic. The change at 4:09 is
to die for. +1

James Wyness
A Dissolving View [finalist]
Much prettier than your average this-sort-of-thing. The word "beautiful"
even comes to mind.

Jon Lyle Smith
Dithyramb
Sounds good. The themes have a high cliche factor but miraculously
this doesn't create any problems for the piece.

Joseph Post
US Gold [finalist]
Fascinating piece, but something's holding it back. +1/2

Monroe Golden
Incongruity [winner]
Nice polytonal aspects. The construction is somewhat artificial, a bit
too literally Philip Glass. It is strong sonically... I can see why
the judges liked it. Backward fade-out is total cheese. At the end of
the day, +1/2

Shaahin Mohajeri
The Battle of Ahuramazda and Ahriman [finalist]
Recording has issues - dynamic range, lack of high frequencies, etc.
Wonderful writing, though I can hear it working practically the same
in 12-ET.

-Carl

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

🔗Michael <djtrancendance@...>

Carl> If your piece isn't one of them, it means I couldn't think of anything nice to say about it.

Wow, so my top 2, Chris's and Domina's...didn't even make it on your list. Not to mention my own...but I'll leave that one out of it unless you (hopefully) contact me personally about it. I really start to wonder if people on the scene dislike or find unimaginative virtually any sort of non-soundscapish songs...as, aside from "Cool My Head" and "Pianodactyl"...virtually all the songs on your list were, again, soundscapes.

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

🔗Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...>

Michael that is ok. Domina's, yours, and my pieces are better than Carl's
non-entry. j/k

:-)

On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 7:31 AM, Michael <djtrancendance@...> wrote:

>
>
> Carl> If your piece isn't one of them, it means I couldn't think of
> anything nice to say about it.
>
> Wow, so my top 2, Chris's and Domina's...didn't even make it on your
> list. Not to mention my own...but I'll leave that one out of it unless you
> (hopefully) contact me personally about it. I really start to wonder if
> people on the scene dislike or find unimaginative virtually any sort of
> non-soundscapish songs...as, aside from "Cool My Head" and
> "Pianodactyl"...virtually all the songs on your list were, again,
> soundscapes.
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>

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

🔗Carl Lumma <carl@...>

Hi Michael,

>Carl> If your piece isn't one of them, it means I couldn't think of
>anything nice to say about it.
>
> Wow, so my top 2, Chris's and Domina's...didn't even make it on
>your list. Not to mention my own...but I'll leave that one out of it
>unless you (hopefully) contact me personally about it.

That's subjectivity for you. There's no accounting for (my) taste.
Had I been judge this year, I would have listened on two or three
occasions, not just one like last night. It's a tremendous task to
listen to 24 unique pieces of music and reach any kind of informed
conclusion about them. My main comment on your piece was that the
recording sounded overcompressed / tape-like somehow.

>I really start
>to wonder if people on the scene dislike or find unimaginative
>virtually any sort of non-soundscapish songs...as, aside from "Cool My
>Head" and "Pianodactyl"...virtually all the songs on your list were,
>again, soundscapes.

Of the 11 pieces on my list, the only ones that I would consider
soundscapey are James Wyness and Monroe Golden's. Maybe Joseph Post
and Jon Lyle Smith's. I consider yours soundscapey.

-Carl

🔗Carl Lumma <carl@...>

That goes without saying. Especially when I consider how difficult
it is to wrangle instruments to microtonal whims, I'm just blown away
by level of effort shown here. To answer the question I posed to
Cameron earlier, I wouldn't dream of being able to hire such output
for $900. So the contest was a total success and it proves that
microtonal music has 'arrived', and is truly too big for any one venue
to contain it (as these lists once did). Furthermore even though I
hate tape music concerts, the idea of a dark concert was awesome and
I would have loved to attend.

-Carl

At 06:51 AM 2/1/2011, you wrote:
>Michael that is ok. Domina's, yours, and my pieces are better than Carl's
>non-entry. j/k
>
>:-)
>

🔗genewardsmith <genewardsmith@...>

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 12:55 PM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
>
> That goes without saying. Especially when I consider how difficult
> it is to wrangle instruments to microtonal whims, I'm just blown away
> by level of effort shown here. To answer the question I posed to
> Cameron earlier, I wouldn't dream of being able to hire such output
> for $900. So the contest was a total success and it proves that
> microtonal music has 'arrived', and is truly too big for any one venue
> to contain it (as these lists once did). Furthermore even though I
> hate tape music concerts, the idea of a dark concert was awesome and
> I would have loved to attend.

Alright, I retract my statement. Here we don't go. I was expecting the
first major flamewar of the year, but I was wrong. You win this round.

Maybe it's time for microtonal music to finally blow up :) Milestone
#2 is to get a microtonal composition to win a general composition
contest.

-Mike

🔗Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...>

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 3:12 PM, Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...> wrote:
>
> Mike I think that would be a worthy goal.
>
> 1st order of business is to identify a competition that does not
> explicitly exclude non-12 tunings.
> So probably we are talking about something that doesn't involve scores
> for performance.

I can already tell you that our first target market will be all of the
hip avant-garde "electro-acoustic" festivals taking place across the
country. Check out the SEAMUS conference, for example, which just
finished, and which my teacher ended up managing:

http://www.seamus2011.org/

There were 7 concerts worth of compositions, and they ranged from 7.1
surround musique concrete sound sculptures, to instruments playing
with crazy realtime DSP effects, to iPad mobile phone synth quartets,
etc. Microtonal stuff would fit in well there and Colby Leider is a
microtonal composer himself (he studied with Larry Polansky at
Dartmouth and tends to prefer JI, tangentially).

So that's next for us. In the meantime, I'll keep slowly working out
the kinks in EWQL, so I can participate in all of this. :)

-Mike

🔗Carl Lumma <carl@...>

🔗Michael <djtrancendance@...>

>"That's subjectivity for you. There's no accounting for (my) taste. Had I been
>judge this year, I would have listened on two or three occasions, not just one
>like last night. It's a tremendous task to listen to 24 unique pieces of music
>and reach any kind of informed conclusion about them."

True but, I guess it just goes to say, whatever effort was made by Untwelve's
method of judging, or either of ours...doesn't lead to obvious answers. Which
brings up the possible task of finding a judging method that does find common
patterns,

>"Of the 11 pieces on my list, the only ones that I would consider soundscapey
>are James Wyness and Monroe Golden's. Maybe Joseph Post and Jon Lyle Smith's.
>I consider yours soundscapey."
When I say soundscapey, I mean ambient with few to no obvious leading
melodies and no obvious verses. You might not LIKE the melodies in my
piece...but that doesn't mean they aren't there...
BTW, considering the definition of "polyphony", my piece has a string
section, a bass line on a different rhythm, and 1 to 2 leads on yet another
rhythm...if that doesn't qualify as polyphonic (or perhaps even contrapunctual
when both leads kick in)...what does?

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

🔗akjmicro <aaron@...>

I have no idea what anyone means by "sounscapey", but I have a clear idea what "sound-trackish" means! :)

AKJ

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "genewardsmith" <genewardsmith@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Carl Lumma <carl@> wrote:
> >
> > Of the 11 pieces on my list, the only ones that I would consider
> > soundscapey are James Wyness and Monroe Golden's. Maybe Joseph Post
> > and Jon Lyle Smith's. I consider yours soundscapey.
>
> Then I have no idea what you mean by "soundscapey".
>

🔗akjmicro <aaron@...>

I have no idea what anyone means by "sounscapey", but I have a clear idea what "sound-trackish" means! :)

AKJ