Seventeen Years in the Sixties

online play

http://chrisvaisvil.com/?p=585

download

http://micro.soonlabel.com/17-ET/daily20110318-seventeen-years-in-the-sixties.mp3

17 edo guitar lead and drone via loop station

12 edo 5 string bass

drums from a box of cracker jack

Just something I felt I had to do tonight.

Chris wrote:

> Just something I felt I had to do tonight.

LOL... Feeling cantankerous tonight, were you? It was a fun, rowdy bit, a little obnoxious with a devil-may-care attitude. The juxtaposition of 12 and 17 really made those extra-sharp major thirds leap out, which, as I think I've said, isn't something I particularly enjoy, but they totally fit your attitude and I liked them in that context.

Going back just a little: I loved the stick! The rough jam was just a jam, I know, so I wasn't looking for high musical quality, but I enjoyed hearing you making lumber talk. Remember the "a fish and a grenade" comment I made? I'd go back and revise it to "a block of wood and some wire" if it didn't mean I wouldn't be exaggerating. The stick has a little bit of a twangy sound to it, somewhere not quite like a guitar and not quite like a banjo; maybe you should consider a country song in 11 EDO. "The sticks" is an expression that means "the countryside", so it's even appropriate. And was that a little bit of The Violent Femmes, "Blister in the Sun", maybe, at the end of the improv?

Also, congratulations on "Free Sue". It's good and interesting, but not better than a lot of other things of yours I hear. I hope you take that to mean that your toss-offs are of award-winning quality. :) You seem to write quite differently from how you improvise; although the moods are totally different, "Free Sue" has a composition style more similar to "Orwellian Cameras" than it does to your guitar improvs -- I'm not sure if I could precisely describe how, but at least there seems to be more emphasis on big chords and textures, that sort of thing.

18 looks like an interesting scale to work with: No good fourths or fifths, but lots of other excellent-to-passable approximations of simple ratios. It might be interesting to play with just to break my dependence on fourths and fifths, though I still have to find a way to use >12-note scales.

Keep up the good work!

Regards,
Jake

Hi Jake,

Thanks for all of the listens and kind comments!

You might be able to do 18 - 18 is 3 whole tone scales 1/3 of s semitone
apart. So 3 copies of a VSTi 1/3 a tone apart will do it - you end up with
36 edo of which 18 is a subset.
I wrote my first 24 edo piece by loading two copies of a VSTi and using the
master tuning to tune one a quarter step above. Then - divided my notes
between the two VSTi but you couldn't tell by hearing it.

Chris

On Sat, Mar 19, 2011 at 2:30 PM, Jake Freivald <jdfreivald@...m> wrote:

>
>
> Chris wrote:
>
> > Just something I felt I had to do tonight.
>
> LOL... Feeling cantankerous tonight, were you? It was a fun, rowdy bit,
> a little obnoxious with a devil-may-care attitude. The juxtaposition of
> 12 and 17 really made those extra-sharp major thirds leap out, which, as
> I think I've said, isn't something I particularly enjoy, but they
> totally fit your attitude and I liked them in that context.
>
> Going back just a little: I loved the stick! The rough jam was just a
> jam, I know, so I wasn't looking for high musical quality, but I enjoyed
> hearing you making lumber talk. Remember the "a fish and a grenade"
> comment I made? I'd go back and revise it to "a block of wood and some
> wire" if it didn't mean I wouldn't be exaggerating. The stick has a
> little bit of a twangy sound to it, somewhere not quite like a guitar
> and not quite like a banjo; maybe you should consider a country song in
> 11 EDO. "The sticks" is an expression that means "the countryside", so
> it's even appropriate. And was that a little bit of The Violent Femmes,
> "Blister in the Sun", maybe, at the end of the improv?
>
> Also, congratulations on "Free Sue". It's good and interesting, but not
> better than a lot of other things of yours I hear. I hope you take that
> to mean that your toss-offs are of award-winning quality. :) You seem to
> write quite differently from how you improvise; although the moods are
> totally different, "Free Sue" has a composition style more similar to
> "Orwellian Cameras" than it does to your guitar improvs -- I'm not sure
> if I could precisely describe how, but at least there seems to be more
> emphasis on big chords and textures, that sort of thing.
>
> 18 looks like an interesting scale to work with: No good fourths or
> fifths, but lots of other excellent-to-passable approximations of simple
> ratios. It might be interesting to play with just to break my dependence
> on fourths and fifths, though I still have to find a way to use >12-note
> scales.
>
> Keep up the good work!
>
> Regards,
> Jake
>
>
>

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

Jake,

Here is the piece I did by loading two copies of a VSTi and using the gross
tuning ability tuneoneof them a quartertone sharp.

http://micro.soonlabel.com/24et/quarterpicnic.mp3

It was a variation on a theme I dimly remember.

Chris

On Sat, Mar 19, 2011 at 9:42 PM, Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...>wrote:

> Hi Jake,
>
> Thanks for all of the listens and kind comments!
>
> You might be able to do 18 - 18 is 3 whole tone scales 1/3 of s semitone
> apart. So 3 copies of a VSTi 1/3 a tone apart will do it - you end up with
> 36 edo of which 18 is a subset.
> I wrote my first 24 edo piece by loading two copies of a VSTi and using
> the master tuning to tune one a quarter step above. Then - divided my notes
> between the two VSTi but you couldn't tell by hearing it.
>
> Chris
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 19, 2011 at 2:30 PM, Jake Freivald <jdfreivald@...>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Chris wrote:
>>
>> > Just something I felt I had to do tonight.
>>
>> LOL... Feeling cantankerous tonight, were you? It was a fun, rowdy bit,
>> a little obnoxious with a devil-may-care attitude. The juxtaposition of
>> 12 and 17 really made those extra-sharp major thirds leap out, which, as
>> I think I've said, isn't something I particularly enjoy, but they
>> totally fit your attitude and I liked them in that context.
>>
>> Going back just a little: I loved the stick! The rough jam was just a
>> jam, I know, so I wasn't looking for high musical quality, but I enjoyed
>> hearing you making lumber talk. Remember the "a fish and a grenade"
>> comment I made? I'd go back and revise it to "a block of wood and some
>> wire" if it didn't mean I wouldn't be exaggerating. The stick has a
>> little bit of a twangy sound to it, somewhere not quite like a guitar
>> and not quite like a banjo; maybe you should consider a country song in
>> 11 EDO. "The sticks" is an expression that means "the countryside", so
>> it's even appropriate. And was that a little bit of The Violent Femmes,
>> "Blister in the Sun", maybe, at the end of the improv?
>>
>> Also, congratulations on "Free Sue". It's good and interesting, but not
>> better than a lot of other things of yours I hear. I hope you take that
>> to mean that your toss-offs are of award-winning quality. :) You seem to
>> write quite differently from how you improvise; although the moods are
>> totally different, "Free Sue" has a composition style more similar to
>> "Orwellian Cameras" than it does to your guitar improvs -- I'm not sure
>> if I could precisely describe how, but at least there seems to be more
>> emphasis on big chords and textures, that sort of thing.
>>
>> 18 looks like an interesting scale to work with: No good fourths or
>> fifths, but lots of other excellent-to-passable approximations of simple
>> ratios. It might be interesting to play with just to break my dependence
>> on fourths and fifths, though I still have to find a way to use >12-note
>> scales.
>>
>> Keep up the good work!
>>
>> Regards,
>> Jake
>>
>>
>>
>
>

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

Chris,

> Here is the piece I did by loading two copies of a VSTi and using the gross
> tuning ability tune one of them a quartertone sharp.

If I understand what you're saying, to do 18-EDO I can tune three VSTi instances 1/3 of a tone apart, write my score, and then distribute the notes to the VSTi instance that can handle them. Seems tedious, but likely to be no more so than Csound.

I'm in a place with lousy WIFI right now, so I'm going to have to forego listening to samples of any significant size until the weekend. I keep getting timeouts on Web sites, downloads, etc. Thank you, though, I'll get to this one.

How did you synchronize the VSTi instances?

Thanks,
Jake

How are you scoring?

A modern DAW (Sonar, Logic, Pro Tools, Reaper, Rosegarden) will let you load
multiple instruments and assign a staff or piano roll to each. In fact, most
likely your VSTi will accept multiple tracks on separate midi channels. So
then the synchronization is automatic.

If you are thinking in csound score blocks then that is not a model that
applies. The model I am describing is very much like reading a real
orchestral score with each instrument being assigned a VSTi.

I agree it isn't as nice as having a VSTi that accepts microtonal tunings.
But even those can be had for not much money.
http://www.12equalboresme.com/Synths/Synths.html

There is one that is a jumble of letters to me - ZynAddSubFX-VDX_VST - that
is free. A price that is hard to beat. Reaper is free to use for personal
use if I remember right - and there are other DAWs out there.

Chris

On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 11:17 AM, Jake Freivald <jdfreivald@...>wrote:

>
>
> Chris,
>
>
> > Here is the piece I did by loading two copies of a VSTi and using the
> gross
> > tuning ability tune one of them a quartertone sharp.
>
> If I understand what you're saying, to do 18-EDO I can tune three VSTi
> instances 1/3 of a tone apart, write my score, and then distribute the
> notes to the VSTi instance that can handle them. Seems tedious, but
> likely to be no more so than Csound.
>
> I'm in a place with lousy WIFI right now, so I'm going to have to forego
> listening to samples of any significant size until the weekend. I keep
> getting timeouts on Web sites, downloads, etc. Thank you, though, I'll
> get to this one.
>
> How did you synchronize the VSTi instances?
>
> Thanks,
> Jake
>
>
>

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