It's Solage--but is it polyphony?

Le Basile

http://www.mediafire.com/?h7xrx73tyaeh0lq

Indeed

At 06:02 PM 2/2/2011, you wrote:
>Le Basile
>
> http://www.mediafire.com/?h7xrx73tyaeh0lq

There is a quite a bit more contrary motion. Nice strong cadences - but
that shouldn't confuse the issue.

I can clearly pick out the different bass and soprano melodies.

On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 9:02 PM, genewardsmith
<genewardsmith@...>wrote:

>
>
> Le Basile
>
> http://www.mediafire.com/?h7xrx73tyaeh0lq
>
>
>

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

The Solage has more counterpoint than Pianodactyl, but not much
more. Part of the issue is that a lot of the motion in Gene's
piece is microtonal, and not particularly in any scale, and that
makes it harder to hear. -Carl

At 06:41 PM 2/2/2011, Chris wrote:
>There is a quite a bit more contrary motion. Nice strong cadences - but
>that shouldn't confuse the issue.
>
>I can clearly pick out the different bass and soprano melodies.
>
>On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 9:02 PM, genewardsmith wrote:
>>
>> Le Basile
>> http://www.mediafire.com/?h7xrx73tyaeh0lq
>>
>

I'm thinking there is not going to be general agreement on the issue.

Here is Gene's score rendered in Sibelius - w/o microtonal markups of
course.

http://micro.soonlabel.com/various/pdact-satb.pdf

On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 10:01 PM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:

>
>
> The Solage has more counterpoint than Pianodactyl, but not much
> more. Part of the issue is that a lot of the motion in Gene's
> piece is microtonal, and not particularly in any scale, and that
> makes it harder to hear. -Carl
>
>
> At 06:41 PM 2/2/2011, Chris wrote:
> >There is a quite a bit more contrary motion. Nice strong cadences - but
> >that shouldn't confuse the issue.
> >
> >I can clearly pick out the different bass and soprano melodies.
> >
> >On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 9:02 PM, genewardsmith wrote:
> >>
> >> Le Basile
> >> http://www.mediafire.com/?h7xrx73tyaeh0lq
> >>
> >
>
>
>

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

On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 10:01 PM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
>
> The Solage has more counterpoint than Pianodactyl, but not much
> more. Part of the issue is that a lot of the motion in Gene's
> piece is microtonal, and not particularly in any scale, and that
> makes it harder to hear. -Carl

And also that it's rendered using a GM piano with no dynamics, whereas
a real performer would have been harassed by a music teacher for years
to make all of the lines sound like independent melodies, etc.

-Mike

Mike wrote:
>> The Solage has more counterpoint than Pianodactyl, but not much
>> more. Part of the issue is that a lot of the motion in Gene's
>> piece is microtonal, and not particularly in any scale, and that
>> makes it harder to hear. -Carl
>
>And also that it's rendered using a GM piano with no dynamics, whereas
>a real performer would have been harassed by a music teacher for years
>to make all of the lines sound like independent melodies, etc.

Yep. -C.

A lot of the same performance issues would be applied to Gene's piece as
well.

You can see in the screenshot gene2.jpg his velocity, volume, and expression
channels are essentially flat.

On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 10:25 PM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:

>
>
> Mike wrote:
> >> The Solage has more counterpoint than Pianodactyl, but not much
> >> more. Part of the issue is that a lot of the motion in Gene's
> >> piece is microtonal, and not particularly in any scale, and that
> >> makes it harder to hear. -Carl
> >
> >And also that it's rendered using a GM piano with no dynamics, whereas
> >a real performer would have been harassed by a music teacher for years
> >to make all of the lines sound like independent melodies, etc.
>
> Yep. -C.
>
>
>

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

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
>
> The Solage has more counterpoint than Pianodactyl, but not much
> more. Part of the issue is that a lot of the motion in Gene's
> piece is microtonal, and not particularly in any scale, and that
> makes it harder to hear. -Carl

It's all in Rodan[26] if that counts as a scale. That's fairly irregular, with a lot of 27.6 cent (2\87) steps, which is about the size of a septimal comma.

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...> wrote:
>
> I'm thinking there is not going to be general agreement on the issue.
>
> Here is Gene's score rendered in Sibelius - w/o microtonal markups of
> course.
>
> http://micro.soonlabel.com/various/pdact-satb.pdf

Calling that my score is a little naughty of you, but thanks, it's interesting to see. I think if you compare that to the score of a hymn tune, actual homophony in action, you'll notice a big difference.

ok,

Here is a traditional score of Gene's music.

If you remember I didn't appreciate it when Cameron and Michael S. raked my
piece "The Pond" over the coals for "large vertical chords" - so I do not
wish to make you feel the same way.

All I really wanted to point out was that you have mentioned that the other
entries into the Un12 competition were not polyphonic and I felt that,
ironically, your piece wasn't particularly polyphonic either. What I meant,
and what I should have said, was your piece wasn't particularly contrapuntal
either.

I do not mean to stir up bad feelings

Chris

On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 7:34 AM, genewardsmith
<genewardsmith@...>wrote:

>
>
>
>
> --- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com <MakeMicroMusic%40yahoogroups.com>,
> Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...> wrote:
> >
> > I'm thinking there is not going to be general agreement on the issue.
> >
> > Here is Gene's score rendered in Sibelius - w/o microtonal markups of
> > course.
> >
> > http://micro.soonlabel.com/various/pdact-satb.pdf
>
> Calling that my score is a little naughty of you, but thanks, it's
> interesting to see. I think if you compare that to the score of a hymn tune,
> actual homophony in action, you'll notice a big difference.
>
>
>

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

Chris>"If you remember I didn't appreciate it when Cameron and Michael S. raked
my piece "The Pond" over the coals for "large vertical chords" - so I do not
wish to make you feel the same way"

Right...technically that piece DID have large vertical chords and we were
both wrong...though the way it was performed seemed to hide that fact. Gene's
piece, no doubt, has "large vertical chords"...and it really bugs me people seem
so anal-retentive as to turn around and say "well those chords don't count,
because they don't fit MY specific definition of polyphony/contrapunctual/etc.
...it's like saying an ice-cream sundae is badly made because the cherry doesn't
point the exact way you want it to.

For the record, when I bring up "large vertical chords"...I mean to reference
the song's use of strong tonal color and, on a broader scale, it's ability to
invoke different emotions from tonal color. So my ultimate "goal" in using such
terms is an emotional one, not an 'academic' question of "is such composer
capable of polyphonic music?"

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

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...> wrote:

> All I really wanted to point out was that you have mentioned that the other
> entries into the Un12 competition were not polyphonic and I felt that,
> ironically, your piece wasn't particularly polyphonic either.

Actually, I said just the opposite, I said some of them were.

What I meant,
> and what I should have said, was your piece wasn't particularly contrapuntal
> either.
>
> I do not mean to stir up bad feelings

I wasn't trying to be contrapuntal, especially, I was trying to be Medieval.

Gene wrote:
>> The Solage has more counterpoint than Pianodactyl, but not much
>> more. Part of the issue is that a lot of the motion in Gene's
>> piece is microtonal, and not particularly in any scale, and that
>> makes it harder to hear. -Carl
>
>It's all in Rodan[26] if that counts as a scale. That's fairly
>irregular, with a lot of 27.6 cent (2\87) steps, which is about the
>size of a septimal comma.

Thanks, I'll add that to my metadata.

For purposes of hearing melodies, there's not much going on
over 10/oct. -Carl

I sure am getting tired of this.

Message 25142 by GWS

Re: [MMM] UnTwelve has arrived, sort of

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com</makemicromusic/post?postID=PKoFmsMbCF3rLHokZ25xjoi5UhLuxOX-SN_a4k1E-Xg1T3Tu6kznXPpCjgQwflmKqouCiBq9FKZx3n3SsqHB41F6grq6JS4>,
Michael <djtrancendance@...> wrote:
>
> Gene,
>
> Funny, to me the winners virtually ALL sounded like ambient
soundscapes
(with great focus on timbre and a sense of abstract "wabbly-ness") to me,
rather
than actual songs that progress from one emotion to another (that would
focus
more on, say, chord and tonal color of the scales over the timbre and,
ultimately, direct emotion).

Yes, that's what I meant by saying there seemed to be an underlying point of
view after all in this year's judging, though since I was waiting for more
links
to appear before going on to the rest perhaps I am leaping to conclusions.

It's not color I miss, it's texture. A monophonic texture, with very little
in
the way of polyphony, was a striking aspect of a lot of the winners and
runners
up.

On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 1:49 PM, genewardsmith
<genewardsmith@...>wrote:

>
>
>
>
> --- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com <MakeMicroMusic%40yahoogroups.com>,
> Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...> wrote:
>
> > All I really wanted to point out was that you have mentioned that the
> other
> > entries into the Un12 competition were not polyphonic and I felt that,
> > ironically, your piece wasn't particularly polyphonic either.
>
> Actually, I said just the opposite, I said some of them were.
>
>
> What I meant,
> > and what I should have said, was your piece wasn't particularly
> contrapuntal
> > either.
> >
> > I do not mean to stir up bad feelings
>
> I wasn't trying to be contrapuntal, especially, I was trying to be
> Medieval.
>
>
>

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