Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup makemicromusic Review of the UnTwelve 2010 contest entries

I've spent some time listening to the 2010 Untwelve entries -- "studying" would be too strong of a word, but not by much -- and with the recent talk about making music instead of arguing about theory, I thought I'd critique the pieces from that contest. All of the critiques here are offered with the utmost respect for the people who created them.

Yes, it's late. No, I have no credentials. C'est la vie. :)

A few times in here, I mention the "King Crimson treatment". At their best, they had Adrian Belew and Robert Fripp on guitar; Fripp's job was to lay down a steady and interesting foundation, and Belew's was to create a pillar of sound over the top of it. (Full credit should go to the other musicians, too, all of whom were very talented and usually played one of those roles as well.) The foundation gave the mind something to latch on to, which made it possible for the pillar of sound to be as tall or wide or variegated or textured or *whatever* as much as it wanted, while still feeling somehow coherent. For several of the soundscapes, I found my mind wandering rather than paying attention to the music.

-----

Michael Sheiman, Dimension: I didn't care for this piece, but it's in a style that I would normally avoid anyway. If I look past that as well as I can, I think this entry tends to wander. There's always stuff going on, and it's always harmonious (I wouldn't necessarily pick this out as untwelve if I didn't hear it in the contest's context), but I'm not sure where it's going. Take that with a salt block, though, since this isn't my style.

Domina Catrina Lee, Eidolon: I really enjoyed this piece. The alternations of slow and fast keep the interest moving. The repetitions of certain chords and bass lines really anchor the piece, but there's enough going on over the top to keep things from getting dull. One of the best pieces in the competition.

Gene Ward Smith, Pianodactyl: Extra points to this piece just for the title. :) I liked the clangy sounds of this tuning -- like Thelonious Monk desperately trying not to swing -- but I felt like the piece itself wandered too much. I think I'd like this piece more if I got just a bite of it instead of a meal, maybe two minutes instead of six. An interesting example of doing something musical with a dissonant tuning, but I liked this more with my head than with my ears.

Focal Chords, Cool My Head: I have a lot of respect for the writers and performers of this song, but ultimately I don't think it quite works. It's using a microtonal palette in a traditional pop setting, which just makes it sound like an out-of-tune pop song. Maybe, to say it another way, it doesn't sound microtonal *enough* to pull off what it's doing.

Kathy McTavish, bent / hOwl: Soundscape. Not a style I'd normally choose to listen to, but not a style I dislike. I liked the sounds it contained, and the sustained melodies backed by feedback-ish-sounding tones made it stand out as more than just texture, like trees in mist. There was a certain amount of tension throughout, and it seemed to grow toward the end. I wouldn't necessarily have picked this out as untwelve. So, I consider this a good example of its genre, but I don't know that it's superior to 12-TET versions. I don't think it needs the King Crimson treatment.

Lee Noyes, August Moon: Minimalist. This piece is about sound and silence as much as it is about tuning. The timbres and scale has a vaguely oriental sound to my ear, though I don't know its tuning, so Asians might find it just as foreign. I like many of the sounds, including the muting of the strings (I presume that these are real strings) and the squeaky scratching (bowing?) of them, and I like the very close notes and beating that happens at various points throughout the piece. However, this piece doesn't seem to have a goal or a purpose, and I probably wouldn't choose to listen to it if it weren't part of the competition.

Giovanni Damiani, Sintonia di spettri. I tried to listen to this several times, and I just found my mind wandering. Lots of potentially interesting tonal colors, lots of timbres, but not a lot of purpose, it seems. I don't think this would benefit from the King Crimson treatment. Just not for me.

Jacques Dudon, Parallel Worlds. Soundscape. Not a style I'd normally choose to listen to, but not a style I dislike. I thought this wandered too much, and it lacked cohesion to me. It was listening to M. Dudon's piece that I first thought about the King Crimson treatment -- there are things that I like in here, but nothing to keep my mind anchored. Something similar with a foundation beneath it might be more accessible.

John Seales, out of the subway ... into the sound: Too disjointed for my tastes, wanders around a lot. His emphasis seems to be on sounds, which is fine, but that reduces its appeal to me.

Jon Lyle Smith, Dithyramb: I liked this piece. The tonality was interesting; I have no idea what it was, but he played with it right up front in the "vocal" part (synthesized, unfortunately -- I'll bet that would be killer with real voices) and got it on the table that this was going to be an untwelve piece. There's a comfortable structure here, with refrains, steady chords, fast downward runs on a harp, and so on. That gives the "solos" context and makes them easy to latch on to. It's not a pop song by any stretch (which is good, in my book), but it's accessible, clearly microtonal, and interesting. Nicely done.

For what it's worth, Jon has produced several other pieces that I thought worked very nicely. "Nigel-38, or Love & the Automation" was very good. (At one point I had forgotten its name, and I started calling it "The Love Song of J. R2D2 Prufrock," because it has that kind of a feel to it.) I also liked his setting of Te Deum Laudamus. I definitely have my eye on him.

Joshua Musikantow, Tonos: Soundscape employing very harsh timbres. I know this sounds mean, but it didn't seem particularly musical to me. It's more the kind of thing a friend of mine used to listen to on an old LP of Doctor Who special effects.

Craig Evans, Hymn of the Flying Spaghetti Monster: I didn't particularly care for this one. I'm not sure where the name came from; it's a disconnected set of individual tunes glued into one. The guitar production on one part it was tinny and a little sloppy, but I think that was deliberate; either way, I didn't care for that aspect of it. None of the other mini-pieces in the suite struck me as particularly noteworthy, good or bad.

Chuckk Hubbard, The World Is Ours: This wasn't bad, but it would have been better as a shorter song; I think it either needs more motion or less time spent on it.

Christian Theil, Preludes Behind the Scene (excerpt): I felt like this wandered around too much. Nothing bad in it, but it didn't really go anywhere.

Shaahin Mohajeri, The Battle of AhuraMazda and Ahriman: I liked this quite a bit. I think it's the first instance I've heard of microtonal program music, and it does a good job of conveying the idea of a battle between these two dieties: The martial character of the bass rhythms and drums, the repeated motif of four descending chromatic notes, the cacophany of the battle trumpets, and so on all contribute to a very nice piece of music. I wish I could hear this done properly, by an orchestra.

Chris Vaisvil, Godzareh Depression: I enjoy a lot of Chris's work, and something that he tosses off in a 5-minute improv would, at this point, take me weeks to create and still not sound as good. This piece, though, didn't do much for me. It's pretty, and perhaps it relays the idea of depression reasonably well, but it's not that impactful. I also feel like it's a little bit too long; some of Chris's better work is 2-3 minutes long, and I think that's good, if that's as long as the song wants to be.

Igliashon Jones, Persephone Descending: This is a tour de force, and easily the most accessible of the pieces in the contest. I love the sound, whether it's the traditional electric piano and real guitars or the bells and synthesizers; not only are they varied, but they're well-orchestrated, with the various timbres fitting together nicely. The "non-standard" notes don't seem out of place or out of tune; for instance, Igs hits a high note with the guitar, which is "in tune", but then gives it a little microtonal oomph up to another note that *would* have sounded out of tune if he had hit that first. It adds tension and lends everything a microtonal feel without sounding awkward. The heavy guitars are excellently done and totally authetic -- I'm guessing that Igs plays metal or hard rock pretty regularly? -- and have an edge that, again, doesn't sound out of tune. I like some of the other pieces, but this was the clear winner to me.

Martin Loridan, brume, espace, temps...: This didn't suffer from the "not going anywhere" issue that many others did in the competition. I mostly don't enjoy it, but at times, when I'm in the right mood, I do. I don't consider that a bad thing, by the way -- the music seems to fill a particular niche. The repeated overlapping arpeggios played by flutes reminds me of a large flock of seabirds taking off, rising, coming back down, rising again, and calling in conjunction with their actions. This won't go on my top ten list, but it's an interesting bit that I think was well worth listening to multiple times.

Joseph Post, US Gold: This isn't a style I like, but it's a good example of the style. The out-of-sync rhythms (not syncopations, because there aren't more than one going at a time) keep an otherwise potentially dull drum line from getting boring. The weird soundscapey bit in the middle pulls you out of the street-rap-whatever-that-is at the beginning, and then makes you feel like a kite: you're anchored by long-held church-organ chords in the background, and wind-tossed by broad textures over the top. Then he pulls you back to the street and continues down that weird way he had in the beginning. It's a mini-street-symphony in structure, if you think about it: Fast, slow, fast, with some shared themes in the various parts. I can't say I like this song, but I can listen to it despite myself and I admire its composer.

James Wyness, a dissolving view: Soundscape. Okay, and with some very nice sounds, but nothing I would choose to listen to.

Donald Craig, Study in 31: I like the chord progressions at the beginning, but at about two minutes into the piece I really start to hope that they *go* somewhere. The drums feel like something's going to take off sort of like Igs's piece did, but it turns out they're really just texture (which is fine, by the way, just not what I expected from that drum sound). Then there starts to be more melodic motion, which is fine but a little repetitive. The alterations as the piece goes on are good, but only good. While this is worth listening to in order to get a good feel of the chords and notes of 31, I didn't feel like it was something I'd want to just listen to gemerally.

Ann Cantelow, Lu Dong Bin's Dream: If I recall correctly, this is a piece of program music. (I'm on an airplane right now, so I can't look it up.) I also recall that the first time I listened to it, I thought it fit the idea pretty well. Listening to it again now, I think that without the program, it's hard to follow this music. It starts in a relatively straightforward way, and then gets more chaotic for a while, and then mellows out a bit but without losing the frenetic ghostly voice that has been driving through it for so long. I think this might be very good as a short film of which Lu Dong Bin's dream is the subject, but this doesn't feel particularly musical to me -- more sound effects with a slight musical underpinning.

David Snow, Etudes for Imaginary Harp: I like the sound of harps, and this does live up to the promise of its name: exotic and resonant. (I think it would be better if a real harpist could play this imaginary harp, because the touch on the strings is just too uniform.) That said, I think this one also goes on too long; the pause at about the four-minute mark, before the second etude, is a relief. I like the funky stuff that happens in that etude, although it also seems to wander a little. The third etude is minimalist in a Philip Glass sort of way, and I like it -- it helps me really hear the notes in the overall tonal context, which gives me a good sense of the harmonic structure he's using -- but it also goes on a little long. (That's okay, though; I feel the same way about Philip Glass sometimes.)

Soressa Gardner, Mayne at Midnight: I liked this. I almost didn't want to -- it was slow, and a little repetitive. But it was almost plaintive, and I think that insistent call is what made it really worth something to me. I wouldn't put it in my top three, but it was very good. I especially liked the little intervals that Soressa used as accents.

Monroe Golden, Incongruity: It took a several listenings, but I grew to like this one quite a lot. The chord progressions are what made it for me. The little ripples of piano are nice and add a little spice, but if they weren't over the top of these progressions I don't think they'd be as good. Also, this one really built up -- Golden spent a lot of effort building a structure that would start off a little mellower, but with promises of tension and excitement, and gear up by the end into something that, if not frenzied, is at least very active and intense. Very well done.

-----

Lessons learned:

For me, there has to be a balance between repetition and change, and that's perhaps the biggest issue with all of the music here. Many pieces felt unrooted because they didn't seem to contain enough similarity along the way; others had the opposite problem and felt repetitious. It's possible that I'm just a philistine and didn't notice the structures that would have made some of these pieces seem less rambling, so take that with a grain of salt. But the lesson learned for me is that I need to include a fair amount of repetition without getting into "schoolboy repeats".

Interesting intervals, and even interesting timbres, aren't enough for me. I've mentioned before that I really like the sound of the 6:7:8 and 6:7:9 chords, but they're not a piece of music on their own. In this competition, the pieces I liked the most had some kind of signficant, and at least partly rhythmic, movement. Go somewhere.

Those two things make it sound like I want pop music, but that's not the case. I don't even *like* pop music most of the time.

I think we need to give a flavor of the differences in our chosen tonality up front, and ideally it should be something that's not like something else that's just out-of-tune. I'm reminded of one of the things people talk about with fiction writing: You need to identify the genre of the story up front a little bit. If it's a fantasy, you need to indicate almost immediately that there's magic allowed in your story; if it's science fiction, you need to have some indication of how far in the future you are right up front. Similarly, I think that if the first few chords or melodies contain some confident microtonal sounds, the listener is less likely to be startled by "off notes".

Make the piece as long as it needs to be, and no longer. I would actually consider asking the UnTwelve folks if they'd be willing to cut the minimum limit to three minutes. A competitor could make suites out of smaller works, which games the system anyway.

Regards,
Jake

Thanks for your review! I enjoyed reading it and thinking
about the tunes again and from a different perspective. -Carl

Jake wrote:
>I've spent some time listening to the 2010 Untwelve entries --
>"studying" would be too strong of a word, but not by much -- and with
>the recent talk about making music instead of arguing about theory, I
>thought I'd critique the pieces from that contest. All of the critiques
>here are offered with the utmost respect for the people who created them.
>
>Yes, it's late. No, I have no credentials. C'est la vie. :)
>
>A few times in here, I mention the "King Crimson treatment". At their
>best, they had Adrian Belew and Robert Fripp on guitar; Fripp's job was
>to lay down a steady and interesting foundation, and Belew's was to
>create a pillar of sound over the top of it. (Full credit should go to
>the other musicians, too, all of whom were very talented and usually
>played one of those roles as well.) The foundation gave the mind
>something to latch on to, which made it possible for the pillar of sound
>to be as tall or wide or variegated or textured or *whatever* as much as
>it wanted, while still feeling somehow coherent. For several of the
>soundscapes, I found my mind wandering rather than paying attention to
>the music.
>
>-----
>
>Michael Sheiman, Dimension: I didn't care for this piece, but it's in a
>style that I would normally avoid anyway. If I look past that as well as
>I can, I think this entry tends to wander. There's always stuff going
>on, and it's always harmonious (I wouldn't necessarily pick this out as
>untwelve if I didn't hear it in the contest's context), but I'm not sure
>where it's going. Take that with a salt block, though, since this isn't
>my style.
>
>Domina Catrina Lee, Eidolon: I really enjoyed this piece. The
>alternations of slow and fast keep the interest moving. The repetitions
>of certain chords and bass lines really anchor the piece, but there's
>enough going on over the top to keep things from getting dull. One of
>the best pieces in the competition.
>
>Gene Ward Smith, Pianodactyl: Extra points to this piece just for the
>title. :) I liked the clangy sounds of this tuning -- like Thelonious
>Monk desperately trying not to swing -- but I felt like the piece itself
>wandered too much. I think I'd like this piece more if I got just a bite
>of it instead of a meal, maybe two minutes instead of six. An
>interesting example of doing something musical with a dissonant tuning,
>but I liked this more with my head than with my ears.
>
>Focal Chords, Cool My Head: I have a lot of respect for the writers and
>performers of this song, but ultimately I don't think it quite works.
>It's using a microtonal palette in a traditional pop setting, which just
>makes it sound like an out-of-tune pop song. Maybe, to say it another
>way, it doesn't sound microtonal *enough* to pull off what it's doing.
>
>Kathy McTavish, bent / hOwl: Soundscape. Not a style I'd normally choose
>to listen to, but not a style I dislike. I liked the sounds it
>contained, and the sustained melodies backed by feedback-ish-sounding
>tones made it stand out as more than just texture, like trees in mist.
>There was a certain amount of tension throughout, and it seemed to grow
>toward the end. I wouldn't necessarily have picked this out as untwelve.
>So, I consider this a good example of its genre, but I don't know that
>it's superior to 12-TET versions. I don't think it needs the King
>Crimson treatment.
>
>Lee Noyes, August Moon: Minimalist. This piece is about sound and
>silence as much as it is about tuning. The timbres and scale has a
>vaguely oriental sound to my ear, though I don't know its tuning, so
>Asians might find it just as foreign. I like many of the sounds,
>including the muting of the strings (I presume that these are real
>strings) and the squeaky scratching (bowing?) of them, and I like the
>very close notes and beating that happens at various points throughout
>the piece. However, this piece doesn't seem to have a goal or a purpose,
>and I probably wouldn't choose to listen to it if it weren't part of the
>competition.
>
>Giovanni Damiani, Sintonia di spettri. I tried to listen to this several
>times, and I just found my mind wandering. Lots of potentially
>interesting tonal colors, lots of timbres, but not a lot of purpose, it
>seems. I don't think this would benefit from the King Crimson treatment.
>Just not for me.
>
>Jacques Dudon, Parallel Worlds. Soundscape. Not a style I'd normally
>choose to listen to, but not a style I dislike. I thought this wandered
>too much, and it lacked cohesion to me. It was listening to M. Dudon's
>piece that I first thought about the King Crimson treatment -- there are
>things that I like in here, but nothing to keep my mind anchored.
>Something similar with a foundation beneath it might be more accessible.
>
>John Seales, out of the subway ... into the sound: Too disjointed for my
>tastes, wanders around a lot. His emphasis seems to be on sounds, which
>is fine, but that reduces its appeal to me.
>
>Jon Lyle Smith, Dithyramb: I liked this piece. The tonality was
>interesting; I have no idea what it was, but he played with it right up
>front in the "vocal" part (synthesized, unfortunately -- I'll bet that
>would be killer with real voices) and got it on the table that this was
>going to be an untwelve piece. There's a comfortable structure here,
>with refrains, steady chords, fast downward runs on a harp, and so on.
>That gives the "solos" context and makes them easy to latch on to. It's
>not a pop song by any stretch (which is good, in my book), but it's
>accessible, clearly microtonal, and interesting. Nicely done.
>
>For what it's worth, Jon has produced several other pieces that I
>thought worked very nicely. "Nigel-38, or Love & the Automation" was
>very good. (At one point I had forgotten its name, and I started calling
>it "The Love Song of J. R2D2 Prufrock," because it has that kind of a
>feel to it.) I also liked his setting of Te Deum Laudamus. I definitely
>have my eye on him.
>
>Joshua Musikantow, Tonos: Soundscape employing very harsh timbres. I
>know this sounds mean, but it didn't seem particularly musical to me.
>It's more the kind of thing a friend of mine used to listen to on an old
>LP of Doctor Who special effects.
>
>Craig Evans, Hymn of the Flying Spaghetti Monster: I didn't particularly
>care for this one. I'm not sure where the name came from; it's a
>disconnected set of individual tunes glued into one. The guitar
>production on one part it was tinny and a little sloppy, but I think
>that was deliberate; either way, I didn't care for that aspect of it.
>None of the other mini-pieces in the suite struck me as particularly
>noteworthy, good or bad.
>
>Chuckk Hubbard, The World Is Ours: This wasn't bad, but it would have
>been better as a shorter song; I think it either needs more motion or
>less time spent on it.
>
>Christian Theil, Preludes Behind the Scene (excerpt): I felt like this
>wandered around too much. Nothing bad in it, but it didn't really go
>anywhere.
>
>Shaahin Mohajeri, The Battle of AhuraMazda and Ahriman: I liked this
>quite a bit. I think it's the first instance I've heard of microtonal
>program music, and it does a good job of conveying the idea of a battle
>between these two dieties: The martial character of the bass rhythms and
>drums, the repeated motif of four descending chromatic notes, the
>cacophany of the battle trumpets, and so on all contribute to a very
>nice piece of music. I wish I could hear this done properly, by an
>orchestra.
>
>Chris Vaisvil, Godzareh Depression: I enjoy a lot of Chris's work, and
>something that he tosses off in a 5-minute improv would, at this point,
>take me weeks to create and still not sound as good. This piece, though,
>didn't do much for me. It's pretty, and perhaps it relays the idea of
>depression reasonably well, but it's not that impactful. I also feel
>like it's a little bit too long; some of Chris's better work is 2-3
>minutes long, and I think that's good, if that's as long as the song
>wants to be.
>
>Igliashon Jones, Persephone Descending: This is a tour de force, and
>easily the most accessible of the pieces in the contest. I love the
>sound, whether it's the traditional electric piano and real guitars or
>the bells and synthesizers; not only are they varied, but they're
>well-orchestrated, with the various timbres fitting together nicely. The
>"non-standard" notes don't seem out of place or out of tune; for
>instance, Igs hits a high note with the guitar, which is "in tune", but
>then gives it a little microtonal oomph up to another note that *would*
>have sounded out of tune if he had hit that first. It adds tension and
>lends everything a microtonal feel without sounding awkward. The heavy
>guitars are excellently done and totally authetic -- I'm guessing that
>Igs plays metal or hard rock pretty regularly? -- and have an edge that,
>again, doesn't sound out of tune. I like some of the other pieces, but
>this was the clear winner to me.
>
>Martin Loridan, brume, espace, temps...: This didn't suffer from the
>"not going anywhere" issue that many others did in the competition. I
>mostly don't enjoy it, but at times, when I'm in the right mood, I do. I
>don't consider that a bad thing, by the way -- the music seems to fill a
>particular niche. The repeated overlapping arpeggios played by flutes
>reminds me of a large flock of seabirds taking off, rising, coming back
>down, rising again, and calling in conjunction with their actions. This
>won't go on my top ten list, but it's an interesting bit that I think
>was well worth listening to multiple times.
>
>Joseph Post, US Gold: This isn't a style I like, but it's a good example
>of the style. The out-of-sync rhythms (not syncopations, because there
>aren't more than one going at a time) keep an otherwise potentially dull
>drum line from getting boring. The weird soundscapey bit in the middle
>pulls you out of the street-rap-whatever-that-is at the beginning, and
>then makes you feel like a kite: you're anchored by long-held
>church-organ chords in the background, and wind-tossed by broad textures
>over the top. Then he pulls you back to the street and continues down
>that weird way he had in the beginning. It's a mini-street-symphony in
>structure, if you think about it: Fast, slow, fast, with some shared
>themes in the various parts. I can't say I like this song, but I can
>listen to it despite myself and I admire its composer.
>
>James Wyness, a dissolving view: Soundscape. Okay, and with some very
>nice sounds, but nothing I would choose to listen to.
>
>Donald Craig, Study in 31: I like the chord progressions at the
>beginning, but at about two minutes into the piece I really start to
>hope that they *go* somewhere. The drums feel like something's going to
>take off sort of like Igs's piece did, but it turns out they're really
>just texture (which is fine, by the way, just not what I expected from
>that drum sound). Then there starts to be more melodic motion, which is
>fine but a little repetitive. The alterations as the piece goes on are
>good, but only good. While this is worth listening to in order to get a
>good feel of the chords and notes of 31, I didn't feel like it was
>something I'd want to just listen to gemerally.
>
>Ann Cantelow, Lu Dong Bin's Dream: If I recall correctly, this is a
>piece of program music. (I'm on an airplane right now, so I can't look
>it up.) I also recall that the first time I listened to it, I thought it
>fit the idea pretty well. Listening to it again now, I think that
>without the program, it's hard to follow this music. It starts in a
>relatively straightforward way, and then gets more chaotic for a while,
>and then mellows out a bit but without losing the frenetic ghostly voice
>that has been driving through it for so long. I think this might be very
>good as a short film of which Lu Dong Bin's dream is the subject, but
>this doesn't feel particularly musical to me -- more sound effects with
>a slight musical underpinning.
>
>David Snow, Etudes for Imaginary Harp: I like the sound of harps, and
>this does live up to the promise of its name: exotic and resonant. (I
>think it would be better if a real harpist could play this imaginary
>harp, because the touch on the strings is just too uniform.) That said,
>I think this one also goes on too long; the pause at about the
>four-minute mark, before the second etude, is a relief. I like the funky
>stuff that happens in that etude, although it also seems to wander a
>little. The third etude is minimalist in a Philip Glass sort of way, and
>I like it -- it helps me really hear the notes in the overall tonal
>context, which gives me a good sense of the harmonic structure he's
>using -- but it also goes on a little long. (That's okay, though; I feel
>the same way about Philip Glass sometimes.)
>
>Soressa Gardner, Mayne at Midnight: I liked this. I almost didn't want
>to -- it was slow, and a little repetitive. But it was almost plaintive,
>and I think that insistent call is what made it really worth something
>to me. I wouldn't put it in my top three, but it was very good. I
>especially liked the little intervals that Soressa used as accents.
>
>Monroe Golden, Incongruity: It took a several listenings, but I grew to
>like this one quite a lot. The chord progressions are what made it for
>me. The little ripples of piano are nice and add a little spice, but if
>they weren't over the top of these progressions I don't think they'd be
>as good. Also, this one really built up -- Golden spent a lot of effort
>building a structure that would start off a little mellower, but with
>promises of tension and excitement, and gear up by the end into
>something that, if not frenzied, is at least very active and intense.
>Very well done.
>
>-----
>
>Lessons learned:
>
>For me, there has to be a balance between repetition and change, and
>that's perhaps the biggest issue with all of the music here. Many pieces
>felt unrooted because they didn't seem to contain enough similarity
>along the way; others had the opposite problem and felt repetitious.
>It's possible that I'm just a philistine and didn't notice the
>structures that would have made some of these pieces seem less rambling,
>so take that with a grain of salt. But the lesson learned for me is that
>I need to include a fair amount of repetition without getting into
>"schoolboy repeats".
>
>Interesting intervals, and even interesting timbres, aren't enough for
>me. I've mentioned before that I really like the sound of the 6:7:8 and
>6:7:9 chords, but they're not a piece of music on their own. In this
>competition, the pieces I liked the most had some kind of signficant,
>and at least partly rhythmic, movement. Go somewhere.
>
>Those two things make it sound like I want pop music, but that's not the
>case. I don't even *like* pop music most of the time.
>
>I think we need to give a flavor of the differences in our chosen
>tonality up front, and ideally it should be something that's not like
>something else that's just out-of-tune. I'm reminded of one of the
>things people talk about with fiction writing: You need to identify the
>genre of the story up front a little bit. If it's a fantasy, you need to
>indicate almost immediately that there's magic allowed in your story; if
>it's science fiction, you need to have some indication of how far in the
>future you are right up front. Similarly, I think that if the first few
>chords or melodies contain some confident microtonal sounds, the
>listener is less likely to be startled by "off notes".
>
>Make the piece as long as it needs to be, and no longer. I would
>actually consider asking the UnTwelve folks if they'd be willing to cut
>the minimum limit to three minutes. A competitor could make suites out
>of smaller works, which games the system anyway.
>
>Regards,
>Jake

Review of the UnTwelve 2010 contest entries

🔗Jake Freivald <jdfreivald@...>

🔗Carl Lumma <carl@...>

🔗genewardsmith <genewardsmith@...>

🔗Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...>