Scale and composition in 5.11.31 subgroup

Here's a new composition in honor of tomorrow, May 31, 2011. (I probably won't get the leisure time to release it tomorrow, so the timing is what it is.) It's just a little under three minutes long, and under 3 MB to download.

http://www.freivald.org/~jake/documents/May 31, 2011.mp3

It's slow and mellow, even languorous, so don't listen to it if you're not in that sort of mood.

What follows is a mix of the tuning and compositional aspects of the piece, since this is crossposted to MMM and Tuning.

----

If you're like me, once you start to obsess over something, you see it everywhere: $3.86-per-gallon gas makes you think of a major third, that sort of thing.

A few weeks ago, I noticed that the end of may was 5/31/11, so I noodled around with the 5.11.31 subgroup and derived the following scale. I don't see any relevant subsets or supersets of it in the Scala archive, so perhaps it's essentially unused.

! C:\Program Files (x86)\Scala22\2011-may-31.scl
!
May 31, 2011 scale -- based on 5.11.31 subgroup
12
!
125/121
33275/29791
34375/29791
31/25
155/121
1331/961
1375/961
961/625
961/605
1331/775
55/31
29791/15625

Note that it's actually three chords of 125/121, 33275/29791, 34375/29791, and 31/25, stacked with an intervening 125/121. Clearly, as a non-octave scale, you could split it up at any chord boundary, but I found it convenient to keep it to twelve notes.

It's strictly proper, and Scala's SHOW DATA function shows a bunch of other stuff I don't know much about. (Vogel's harmonic complexity is too high to compute? Should that intimidate me? What about the fact that the Rothenberg Stability is 1, but the Lumma Stability is only 0.55?) I figured that, since it contains tones with Tenney Heights as high as 1024065625, I shouldn't worry about the theoretical calculations much if I were going to try to compose with it.

It has three interval sizes, but I figured I shouldn't temper them, for three reasons: First, because people with golden ears might miss the 31-ness of it all, instead hearing 7-based ratios or some other interval; second, because I couldn't find any advantage to tempering, though perhaps someone else could see something worthwhile; third, because I think the different interval sizes add something to the character of the scale.

I started writing a few faster pieces using bongy-gongy inharmonic timbres, since people talk about those being useful for this for high-prime scales, but I didn't like anything I was doing. I started over, this time with a Warm Pad slowly playing the most harmonious chords I could find. Those include things like two stacked 31/25ths, a 55/31 split by a 31/25 on the bottom, and an 11/5 split by a 55/31 on the bottom. Since they have crazy ratios like 15625:19375:29791 (the two 31/25ths), I didn't bother to compute them.

I set up chord progressions in an A-B-A structure, and I decided to give a theme to a saxophone (A) and a somewhat rambling solo to a nylon-string guitar (B). I also doubled the Warm Pad with strings and added tubular bells as an accent.

The Warm Pad might be a cheat -- it sounds deeper than the string sample I have, so I'm guessing it doubles down an octave -- but I like it, so I'm keeping it. After all, every timbre has some tones in it that aren't part of the scale, right? :)

I wrote it using LilyPond and rendered it with Timidity++.

Regards,
Jake

P.S. Yes, I know 5/29/11 was just yesterday, but I thought of 31 first, and didn't think I'd have time to write something for 5/29. I did try to generate a scale for it, but I didn't like it as much as this one anyway.

I like especially the portions with the saxophones and the tubular bell
works rather effectively.
Overall a nice other worldly sound.

Chris

On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 11:41 AM, Jake Freivald <jdfreivald@...>wrote:

>
>
> Here's a new composition in honor of tomorrow, May 31, 2011. (I probably
> won't get the leisure time to release it tomorrow, so the timing is what
> it is.) It's just a little under three minutes long, and under 3 MB to
> download.
>
> http://www.freivald.org/~jake/documents/May 31, 2011.mp3
>
> It's slow and mellow, even languorous, so don't listen to it if you're
> not in that sort of mood.
>
>

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

Jake wrote:

>Here's a new composition in honor of tomorrow, May 31, 2011. (I probably
>won't get the leisure time to release it tomorrow, so the timing is what
>it is.) It's just a little under three minutes long, and under 3 MB to
>download.
>
> http://tinyurl.com/3mppv7t

Something about this made me like it.

>What follows is a mix of the tuning and compositional aspects of the
>piece, since this is crossposted to MMM and Tuning.

If all music is reposted on tuning, what's the point of MMM?

>If you're like me, once you start to obsess over something, you see it
>everywhere: $3.86-per-gallon gas makes you think of a major third, that
>sort of thing.

I'm like you. Except I can only dream of gas that cheap.

>It's strictly proper, and Scala's SHOW DATA function shows a bunch of
>other stuff I don't know much about. (Vogel's harmonic complexity is
>too high to compute? Should that intimidate me?

Nope. Vogel's harmonic complexity isn't a good harmonic
complexity.

>What about the fact that the
>Rothenberg Stability is 1, but the Lumma Stability is only 0.55?)

I wouldn't worry about it. ;)

>I wrote it using LilyPond and rendered it with Timidity++.

Thanks for saying so. I like to keep track of who's getting
what kind of results with what. That way if somebody starts
getting amazing results with something, I'll know to check
it out.

-Carl